Kill The “Elevator Pitch” To Promote Entrepreneurship

Last week FACE Entrepreneurship presented a contest for ICT entrepreneurs at the Wayra Offices in Madrid. The aim is to “kill the elevator pitch, promote learning through personalized mentoring sessions and demystify the figure of investors”, as the Contest Coordinator Ricardo de Rada explained.

Does Mentorship Have Any Value?

The value of mentorship was assessed during the presentation. Juan Ignacio explained that, when Cabify was in its initial stages, mentorship was a great tool to get perspective. “Mentors gave us the capacity to see the project as something more global, to look at the possible further steps, not only at the ones we had to take the day after.”

Meanwhile, Vincent agreed with the benefits of having mentors, stating that “fear is linked to the unknown, and this is linked at the same time to the lack of knowledge, preparation and experience, Thus, mentors can add a lot of value clearing up the doubts and guiding entrepreneurs.”

According to René, the mentors’ value is not only related to their experience, but also to their contact networks. “You need to know how and know who. It is a great advantage that mentors may help you to be received by the right people.”

The Prize: Personalized mentoring and a whole day with investors

All EU residents with an ICT idea or project of less than 5 years can apply for FACE Entrepreneurship’s contest by filling the form available here before June 19th, at 23:59 (CET).

The applications will be evaluated by a mentorship board that will select 25 semifinalists based on criteria such as innovation, feasibility and scalability.

The semifinalist will enjoy three personalized sessions with mentors preselected depending on each project’s dicipline. During more than two months, they will develop the ideas and projects to turn them into a business plan. By mid-September, a board with investors and members from FACE Entrepreneurship will assess the proposals and select three winners to be announced on June 19th.

These three winners will get an all-paid trip to Madrid where they will enjoy a last mentorship session in person and a whole face-to-face working day with investors.

Fighting The Fear Of Failure That Restrains European Development

Europe is the region with the hightest rate of fear of failure in the world, reason for which lots of great ideas have not been developed yet. 39.1% of the adults with entrepreneurial intentions argue that they would be deterred of starting up because of fear of failure. This makes it essential to boost entrepreneurship by working through key aspects such as risk aversion, resilience and the current concept of failure.

FACE Entrepreneurship is a project funded by the European Commission and led by Grupo Secuoya with the support of Microsoft Bizspark and Telefonica Open Future. Its aim is to boost ICT entrepreneurship among young Europeans by tackling the emotional side of starting up, confronting the most frequent fears entrepreneurs have to face and sharing the experience of successful and experienced ones.

In order to achieve that, FACE Entrepreneurship offers a wide range of benefits and resources to promote entrepreneurship and alter the current concept of failure: networking events, panels, workshop, more than a 100 multimedia interviews with top of the line entrepreneurs, direct tips about what investors value the most and are looking for, resources for starting up a business and prize-winning contests.

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