Demo Day Paris… done!

This first stage, which took place in Paris, went well and again we thank all of you for coming along.
*Check out reactions from the Press here
*Read the impressions of two young innovation students, not only were their points of view but also highly relevant. Here & here

This milestone behind us, we’re only one day out from the second stage of our Demo Day Tour. Let’s go to Berlin, THE City, where it is, apparently, where it’s all at…

According to OleaPark, an open-minded ecosystem

To pitch to Berliner investors, we have selected Found Fair, an incubator based in Berlin’s inner North.

But you may not be very well acquainted with the ecosystem in Berlin so to give you an idea, we picked the brain of Florent Quinti, one of the founders of OleaPark, among our startups in the second season, who has been in Berlin for the last three months since their stay with us at Le Camping.

“The Berlin ecosystem is very open-minded“, he explains. “The geek community really does mix it with the artistic community and its a real plus, what they add is something special, an openness, something less conventional.“

All the ingredients brought together within an explosive ecosystem

“They’ve also got something they call the Swedish Mafia! Many Swedes and Danes have come to set up their startups right here in Berlin, emulating others like SoundCloud, the seminal startup founded by Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, both Swedes.

They are actually soon to move into “The Factory”, an ambitious project with a 10 000m² surface right in the heart of Berlin-Mitte, which will take on such companies as Mozilla.

There are lots of events, all the time, even during the Summer months and unifying places such as the co-working space Betahaus or, with a more underground and hacker feel, C-base, which itself has become a force to be reckoned with within the tech-hack-art scene.“

To top it off, all these ingredients are brought together within an explosive ecosystem with cheaper facilities than in Paris (which might just give them the edge over Paris), very strong links with the US (all the VCs have Berlin offices), outstanding startups (such as the aforementioned SoundCloud or Zalando) and ambitious projects such as The Factory.

Where does OleaPark fit in among all that?

“We had certain goals when we left, firstly to quickly integrate into this new ecosystem. In the space of just one week, by careful selection of tech events and using Twitter, we basically got to know everyone!

We also developed new features such as the capacity to see the event programme and speakers, which got us a berth at Tech Open Air, which chose to use OleaPark, we also pitched at Found Fair.“

Lots of other projects are in the works, but to know more we’ll have to wait a few months.

Translated by Huw Ryan