We are back in the office!
After some days spend networking, pitching our project, getting up
really early, listening to inspiring personalities and drinking beer, we
are sitting at our desks again, trying to process all these impressions.
But let’s start at the beginning: We started planning to go to Munich
for the startup fair Bits & Pretzels at the end of July. Bought the
tickets, designed and ordered Flyer and a Roll-up for our booth, applied for the
pitch and planned our schedule of speeches and classes.
Last Saturday we went to Munich early in the morning so we would have
some time to see Munich before we had to get up real early on
Sunday morning. The doors to the ICM (International Congress Center Munich)
opened at 8 a.m. for the exhibitors. Before the visitors started pouring in at 9 a.m., we had to prepare our stand which also meant setting up the computers with a local version of the SpeaQ With Me platform.
This was the first time we showed the language learning platform to
the public. We were quite curious about the feedback. The hall filled up with
other startups and visitors quickly and we were completely engaged in
explaining our product, finding out about all the other startups and alternately
earning some new experience in different master classes. We had our booth placed close
to the entrance of the main stage, so that many people walked by and we had the
chance to show them the SpeaQ With Me language learning platform live. Most people
that came by were entrepreneurs themselves, some with businesses young as ours and others already
with successful companies. It was very nice to hear about their experience and
to see how far they have come.
Besides all the networking we had the chance to listen to Kevin Spacey
and Sir Richard Branson talking about the start of their career and motivating
us to keep up the work and enrich the world with our ideas. It was nice to get
this extra inspiration, but the master classes held by equally successful speakers
were actually more significant for us. They covered topics like recruiting an awesome
team, mastering legal and accounting basics or raising money.
As if that wasn’t already a lot to do, n-tv (a German television news channel)
gave us the chance to appear in their weekly show Startup News! That was a big
chance we surely took, but it also meant more logistics, as we needed to assure
someone is at our booth all the time, that we can take all our classes and also give
some interviews in between. Still the experience was awesome and we are proud they
choose us to make the reportage with.
Both days did not end with the ICM closing its doors. We went to
different After-Events for more networking, some beer and more pitching. The
events were fun and we didn’t get to bed before midnight.
The last day was the most casual. The founders of Bits & Pretzels
booked a huge part of the Schottenhammel tent on the Oktoberfest. We met the
n-tv team again and concluded the filming for their broadcast. A lot of
attendees came dressed in traditional Bavarian Lederhosen and Dirndl to have a
hearty meal and of course one or more Maß
(=1-liter jug) beer.
Still pitching our language learning platform to others, we began to
relax and enjoy the last hours in Munich on a more personal level. Later in the
evening we grabbed our suitcases, headed back to the train station and made our
way home. In the train we all fell asleep fast, trying to process the last days
and exhausted from all the talking, standing and eating way to little.
Today, some sleep and good meals later, we still feel the effect of this
event. We started to contact all the people we met at Bits & Pretzels, plan
our next steps and already watched the short reportage about SpeaQ With Me
(link at the end of this post).
Now it is time to get back to work and make sure we get to most out of
our experience and to apply all what we learned.
SpeaQ to all of you soon,
Kerstin
P.S. If you want to watch the reportage click on the link below:
http://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/sendungen/Start_up_News/Networking-auf-dem-Oktoberfest-article18754711.html
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