Celebrating innovation — Startupbootcamp Smart City & IoT Demo Day 2018
One of the most exciting times in startup land has to be demo day. This is it. After 3.5 months of trials, mistakes and learnings, last Thursday it was time to show up at the Johan Cruyff Arena for the Startupbootcamp Smart City Experience. A packed house of investors, mentors and stakeholders from the Amsterdam tech ecosystem were present to check the products, achievements and future plans of the startups that took part of the program.
The Smart City Experience kicked off with Manuela Krull-Mancinelli, MD of the program discussing the growing pains in startup life.
Shortly after, the moment we’ve been waiting for the last +3 months… the pitch!
Shortly after, speed-dating sessions and knowledge squares were organized on a variety of subjects such as healthier and greener cities, crowd management and safer cities. Guests like Stephanie Leonard from TomTom and Bas Boorsma from Rainmaking Urban talked about the important role startups can play within the Smart City ecosystem, as well as some of the biggest challenges within the Smart City space.
Stephanie Leonard and Bas Boorsma
As the idea of the Smart City Experience was that each startup showcase their products in an interactive way, Bitz was used to order drinks at the bar.
Attendees were able to experience Bitz first-hand by accessing the menu and ordering through the app. By doing so, we later draw a winner among everyone who used it to get tickets for an Ajax match.
The outcome of the event was beyond positive . We managed to gather more relevant feedback about the user experience and technically the app showed no issues at all during the event. We were able to show how the product works in real time to potential clients, investors and by doing so we could establish meaningful connections aiming towards the near future.
It’s been a journey
108 days ago we joined Startupbootcamp Smart City & IoT program after a 4-month selection process. We barely knew by that time what was yet to come.
We had our ideas and thoughts about how this would looked like. Some had been proven right and many other wrong. For us, Startubootcamp was like a wise old man. This wise old man full of scars and experience held our hands the past months and would tell us everything he knows to be safe and thrive out there.
There is no way we could be more thankful about that.
This wise old man called Startupbootcamp in reality looks more like a mix of seasoned investors, mentors and entrepreneurs who had been providing hand-on coaching along the way. And it also looks like this bunch of great people that orchestrated everything from day 1 for all of us to make the best out of the program.
Next steps
The future looks bright!
Throughout the program we have been developing meaningful relationships with our network of mentors, potential clients and investors. With the goal of finding our first launching customer we will be focused on nurturing this relationships together towards our public launch in Summer 2019.
Also, regarding funding, our seed round through Leapfunder with the goal of expanding the team and further develop the product will open soon so stay tuned for that!
