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- United Kingdom
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- London
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- startupcenter.blogspot.com/
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© 2009 Created by Saul Klein on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
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I would like to connect with you there also. I am trying to make more friends and fans so that I can spread awareness for breast cancer during pregnancy. I was diagnosed Stage 3 in the 5th month of my pregnancy in May. My status updates on Facebook and LinkedIn are usually about my fight.
You can become a fan of mine on Facebook here:
Facebook Natalie Regoli
You can connect with me on LinkedIn here:
LinkedIn Natalie Regoli
My name is Rita, i saw your profile today and became intrested in you,i will also like to know you more,and if you can send an email to my email address,i will give you my pictures here is my email address (rita_appolo01@yahoo.com) I believe we can move from here! Awaiting for your mail to my email address above Rita.(Remeber the distance or age or colour does not matter but love matters alot in life)
How entrepreneurial do you consider yourself? Your peers? Your area in general? How do you think it compares to US, rest of EU, UK?
Very, had a few successful startups and a few flops/zombies. I have friends who are entrepreneurs both here and in the US. Ireland is very entrepreneurial but perhaps for the wrong reasons. The government encourages it with grants and assistance and they the angle of first resort. They have had a few great successes but many failures. The rest of Europe is much the same as the US except that VC money is harder to find but probably easier to get.
Question 2:
Do you feel you have enough local resources to start your business? What are they? E.g. News sites, blogs, groups, VCs. How adequate are they? How easy is it for a startup?
Recourses in Ireland are scattered. I suspect that most start ups are non technical and the use of the Internet as a source of information and connections is not as ubiquities as in the USA. As I mentioned earlier Enterprise Ireland offers quite a lot of help but the money they give is usually cheap but has a lot of paperwork associated with gaining it which may not actually be that useful for the enterprise.
There are many internet start ups and pretty much everyone knows everyone else so peer support is quite good.
www.startupbusiness.it -- not unlike opencofee's ning, with starups, investors both present. A decent amount of activity, organized by Tech journalist Emil Abirascid.
people.techgarage.eu -- mini social network backed by a seed fund (dPixel). They also organize pitching competitions under the same TechGarage brand
Blogs:
Ahh... there are tons. A good person to ask is Nicola Mattina, he knows all the local top bloggers: http://opencoffee.ning.com/profile/nicolamattina
Good luck!
All the best,
Chris
Pretty entrepreneurial in the last two years - starting 3 big start-ups that happen to be small :)
Most of my close peers are also entrepreneurial as I've met most of them
on entrepreneurship events or classes.
Still there is not enough entrepreneurial spirit in my area, probably because of the post-socialistic reality. However in the last few year this spirit continually arises and there are some young business guys, not only old "fat" businessmen.
Currently - light years away form US/UK as there is no built ecosystem. Mostly sporadic, though heroic ventures. I'm not enough informed how things are in the rest of EU, as I mainly use US for reference.
Answer 2:
In general people and organizations are open for win-win partnerships, at least the good companies. However - still organizations are quite slow although their size is relatively small according to world standards, but big-enough-to-be-slow for our national standard.
The VC funding is in its baby years, at least in the tech sector. There are only two tech-oriented VC funds. The angel investing is also in its infancy and usually individual.
Hmm... what to say :) Despite everything that I wrote I could say that starting a start-up here is pretty interesting experience. Probably if you mange to do it here, you'll can do it almost anywhere afterward ;)
1. Yes, I'm entrepreneurial. My peers are as well, but there's a general lack of business know-how in general. There's nothing even remotely similar to the startup scene in the US or UK. Some community building initiatives are gaining traction, but there's a long way to go. Italy is far behind in the startup scene.
2. Starting up in Italy is an uphill battle. There are few resources, and only a handful of VCs. A lot of the money is tied up in public funds, and the real sore spot is lack of proper finance law (for example, preferred stock is *illegal*). Starting a company requires red tape and is quite expensive, while the service industry like lawyers, accountants etc tend to bleed small companies while being not very well informed about global issues.
On the upside, we've got a boatload of talented people with crazy innovative ideas. And prolific bloggers. :)
Cheers.
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