A typical Wayra Investor DemoDay - Munich, June 2013
Rahul and I founded Taskhub and our team was one of the first startups to be accelerated at WayraUK in London from June 2012 to April 2013.
A few days ago, Rahul and I received an invitation from Tanja Kufner, the Academy Director of Wayra Germany (Wayra DE), to attend their first Demo Day in Munich.
As Wayra Alumni, we had such a great time at Wayra UK that we spontaneously accepted the invitation!
But… you may wonder, what is a DemoDay? And what is Wayra?
DemoDay, what is this?
An incubation at Wayra may last between 6 and 9 months at the end of which the residing teams are invited to present their products and services to a crowd of investors. In a way, Wayra facilitates the access to the next found of funding by inviting people prone to invest in these innovative businesses.
Our first impressions of WayraDE
After an early flight, Rahul and I landed in Munich and made our way to Wayra DE, which is conveniently located nearby the Marienplatz in downtown Munich.
I don’t know if it’s because WayraDE looked so much like WayraUK or simply because everyone was so welcoming there but I simply felt like at home as soon as we arrived at the Academy.
Tanja, the Academy Director, pictured above came and welcomed us with a huge smile.
We were also very happy to see, Simon Devonshire, the Director of Wayra Europe, Christine Sturm, the WayraDE Academy Deputy Director as well as Gonzalo Martin-Villa, the CEO of Wayra Global. (all pictured below)
Pitching session
After a welcoming speech, the 8 WayraDE teams pitched their business to a crowd of investors and media, who were given the opportunity to ask questions after each pitch.
Surprisingly (not) the atmosphere was very similar to the atmosphere during the Wayra UK DemoDay, which took place in London in January 2013: a mixture of excitement and stress.
As a member of the audience, one may not appreciate how much work the teams put into preparing their pitches, making sure to say as much as possible about their businesses in 5 minutes, with one goal in mind: invite investors to invest!
To give you an idea of what took place at WayraUK a few weeks before the actual DemoDay, which we could call ‘the D-Day’ really, the fantastic WayraUK team had organised a series of workshops leading up to the D-Day whereby many industry experts came to the Academy to offer us tips and feedback on our pitches. There were times where I can honestly say Rahul and I felt a bit overwhelmed and tired of ‘rehearsing’. However, looking at how each and every team was able to successfully deliver their pitch on the D-Day, I can now appreciate the level of preparation, effort and passion put into this event.
One of the things, which I found phenomenal, was the fact that all teams pitched in English. And as a non-English native speaker, let me tell you: this is quite a challenge. They all did such a great job!
After the pitching session
Once the pitching session was over, I was asked the following question: How do you think the pitching teams feel right now? Having had the chance to pitch Taskhub at several occasions, I’d say that although the pitch is of course important, the discussions that may take place afterwards are as important!
And it was certainly around lunchtime - when everyone was kindly invited to have something to eat- that a few interesting conversations took place between the teams, the investors and the journalists.
Sharing our journey at WayraUK
As proud Alumni of WayraUK, we feel our journey at Wayra has been amazing and it is always a pleasure to share it with anyone interested in the digital startups.
After lunch, Gonzalo Martin-Villa invited Rahul and me on stage to share our Wayra experience with the audience.
Here are the few points we touched upon:
Being able to raise some investment and get an office space in Central London is great. But the value of our incubation comes mostly from the amount of people we met whilst residing at Wayra.
Coming up with an idea that can change the world is cool. Transforming that idea into a business is another story!
During our stay at Wayra, we were able to launch Taskhub, but also learn about marketing strategies, find a great lawyer, figure out how to deal with our accounting and raise further investment from Telefonica. What a journey!
Wayra was one of the best things that could happen to us!
Merci beaucoup Wayra!
Aurore, co-founder of Taskhub.co.uk
@aurorehochard