my paper-napkin-pitch story
me paper-napkin-pitching the uncubed berlin audience
i saw this berlin uncubed startup confenrence by wakefield on linkedin one quiet night and thought right away it would be a nice excuse to take part and make my first research visit to berlin, since i decided to move there. i have always been interested in the startup scene and berlin is now definitely the new prodigy in europe.
so, i bought the ticket, booked a flight and went to the conference. even told doransky, a friend, about it, who decided to join that very day, although it was not sure that he would show up at the conference. indeed, the conference turned out to be a really cool one with lots of interesting and funny people, startup enthusiasts, reps from soundcloud, groupon, billpay, dawanda, 6wunderkind, etc. as well as actual founders from tech open, surf berlin, demifi, to the organizer wakefield.
a video of the event by startuberlin
interestings thing started happening in the afternoon, when doransky did arrive and after some beers and having talked to brian from wakefield, we decided to enter the paper napkin pitch with our revolutionary startup ideas. cannot remember how many people actually entered, nevertheless, three of us were chosen to the final pitch: doransky, myself, and a third guy, who did not show up. so, it was the two of us, a one minute pitch straight to the audience.
dorasnky went first and presented his idea of the "happiness machine", basically a mobile application to help people achieve happiness through habit internalization and self-confirmation. applause followed. then right came i with my slightly more complex idea of turning each and everyone's life into an endless (documentary) movie with a smartphone and a set of well-rounded and easily applicable tools. i called it "documentary of your lives". enough said. intrestingly, the audience liked my idea at least as much as the happiness machine.
conference host and wakefield media founder, tarek pertew decided that we both won. as the napkin pitch sponsorship remained blank, we won lifetime attendeeship to all uncubed events, which is pretty cool, isn't it?
this is what it felt like winning
well, i must admit i spent the entire next day at görlitzer park trying to actually specificate my idea and i ended up admitting that it would not really work, unless...