Highlights of the BLOOM conference in Milan

 

On May 13, 2012, the BLOOM conference was held in Milan, at the Fabbrica del Vapore. It was the first international conference dedicated to the startup and investment world with an entire day organized by U-Start to promote the meeting between the biggest players in the Italian, European, Russian, Brazilian and South African startup ecosystem.

Marcelo Sales, 21212 partner and Sebastian Saaibi, founder of 21212 startup Aentrópico, were invited to take part in the conference. Over 410 guests from all over the world attended, 25% of which were investors. The conference was divided into 7 panels which presented the themes: the Italian Ecosystem, the top business opportunities in Russia, Brazil and South Africa, important international accelerators and  Media4Equity (Ad4entures, Hitta.se, RCS, Media Group, Schibsted). The Italian startups were put to the test by a jury of 11 international investors. The investors, after watching a video pitch from each startup, evaluated their capacity to work on a team by quickly solving the task of allocating an investment of 200k.

From the 10 startups selected to present at the conference, Sardex was the winner, receiving a prize of an invitation to go on a European roadshow with the U-Start team to meet some of the most important European investors. The second place startup was FileRock, who received the opportunity to attend the DEMO EUROPE event in Moscow for free. The event also had representatives who attended were Gianluca Dettori, founder of president of Dpixel, Andrea di Camillo and Sebastian Feldmann di MAS Angle Fund (Germany).

Marcelo Sales expressed how impressed he was by the startups that presented and the event overall.  “It was an international environment, with local investors, where innovation and novel ideas were the focus. I was able to gain insight for 21212 from the multicultural gathering and it was a pleasure to be a part of such an inspiring event.”

Sebastian commented: “Having the opportunity to meet investors, entrepreneurs and representatives of the Russian, South African and European ecosystems was a wonderful experience, which opened investment and commercialization opportunities in these countries. Every detail of the event was thoroughly organized and planned by U-Start, they deserve a lot of credit for putting such an event in a relatively short time period.

I would highly recommend entrepreneurs to join the U-Start platform as a way to get exposure and access to European investor deal flow and other business opportunities.”

We are glad the event was such a success and we look forward to the next BLOOM conference!