On 3-4th of June we attended DEMO Europe 2013. DEMO is the oldest tech forum in North America, one that has been held for more than 20 years. This year DEMO received more than 20000 applications, of which 1500 have been chosen. We’ve been lucky to be among the chosen ones! DEMO center received several hundred applications from more than ten countries, including the US and UK, as well as countries in Europe and Asia. The DEMO experts short-listed 50 projects, determined in collaboration with Microsoft BizSpark, and made up 30 demo pitches — detailed demonstrations of how the product works — lasting six minutes, and 20 alpha pitches—short 90 second speeches. Project leaders (among whom was Inga Nakhmansson from Fitting Reality) were assisted by experienced trainers as they presented their innovative developments to the DEMO Europe audience. The demo pitch authors had the honor of working with legendary Silicon Valley business trainer Nathan Gold, a veteran of work with IBM, SanDisk and Palm, while those making alpha pitches worked with British consultant Andrea Cockerton, who has already helped over 600 companies attract investment. (Please visit the site to view this video) Inga Nakhmansson's on stage presentation The two day schedule saw guests of the conference enjoying addresses from IT experts from around the world: Sergey Belousov, senior partner and co-founder of Runa Capital; Marcin Hejka, Intel Capital European director, and his Russia and CIS colleagues Maxim Krasnykh and Igor Taber; Maxim Gurvits, founder of Eleven Startup Accelerator, a Bulgarian company; David Cohen, CEO of the American business accelerator TechStars; Gentry Underwood, CEO of Orchestra; Henrik Brandis, managing partner of the Earlybird VC fund; and others. DEMO Europe also featured panels devoted to the problems facing European venture funds and the latest startup accelerator technology, and a recording of a special release of the interactive TV project October Evolution hosted by Erick Schonfeld, producer of American DEMO conferences and the former senior editor at TechCrunch.
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