I was presenting today in Turin, Italy, at Europe Unlimited’s venture contest before an international investor and expert panel. At the end of the day I was thrilled to see Tuxera was awarded as the event winner! We are thus among the top 100 companies selected from different events around the Europe during the fall…
During the day I had interesting talks with investors and other entrepreneurs. One of the most positive and energetic persons was undoubtedly Rick Salmon who runs Xelerator out from Oslo, Norway. He answered to those who said you should start from local markets that when a company finds the right focus the market is and must be global. Cannot agree more. Tuxera’s market has been global from day 1.
Update 27.11. Here is a short video clip of the award ceremony and my interview after the event.
I am giving company presentations in various events. Tomorrow I will once again invade Moneytalks event in Espoo, Finland, this time with a seven-minute pitch.
Next month I will talk at Eurecan European Venture Contest semi-final in Turin, Italy. Date is November 5 and I expect it will be very exciting to network with central European companies.
Spent this morning at Microsoft’s BizSpark event in Espoo.
It was a three hour session with a number of short talks and enthusiasm to get Microsoft partners to work and cooperate together. Keynote speaker was Petri I Salonen who runs IAMCP and TELLUS International in the US. A well motivated talk from a seasoned software entrepreneur.
I also explained Tuxera to Artur Surov from Technolopolis Ventures and I am going to pitch Tuxera again 10.9.2009 in their MoneyTalks event.
Overall it was a surprisingly lively morning event and also productive for us. It was nice to get direct feedback on who we are and what we do at Tuxera. I am confident we can find opportunities with other partners in the Microsoft ecosystem in the near future.
At Microsoft. From left: Anton Altaparmakov, Mikko Välimäki, and Szabolcs Szakacsits.
“I can’t believe we are here!”, Szabolcs remarked as soon as we had driven from the Seattle airport to Redmond and signed in to our mighty American-size hotel rooms. It was indeed a trip with a lot of preparation. Our talks with Microsoft had started almost a year ago when the company was founded. I had changed my role from an outside counsel to a company man sometime in March. First and foremost to get this deal done.
We came to Redmond to have an agreement, and in the end that is what we got. Three days of intensive meetings and talking — it was very impressive to see a big company work very effectively when they finally wanted to go for it while we were there.
After we had signed, someone from Microsoft asked: “Have we ever done a deal so quickly?” “I don’t think so,” was the answer.
A quick signature for a man, but a giant leap for the company.