saragoestoiran-blog

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3 days at Startup Turkey

This post first appeared on the blog of Avatech, the accelerator I am currently working with. It reflects my experience at Startup Turkey, an annual conference on Entrepreneurship in Antalya/Turkey.

"During the last few weeks I spent some time attending conferences. After Seedstars in Geneva and the Iran Web Festival in Tehran I had the great opportunity to attend Startup Turkey in Antalya for the last few days. Compared to Seedstars World it was a conference mainly focused on startups from Turkey. While the participants where mainly from Turkey the organizers invited speakers and experts from all over the world. The program consisted of a startup competition and two days filled with speakers ranging from Mike Butcher (TechCrunch) to Kalina King (former GeneralAssemb.ly), Sean Percival (500Startups) and Fadi Ghandour (Aramex).

My highlight of the first day was a huge Speed Networking Session. Roughly 200 people participated and within just one hour you had the chance to briefly meet 60 new people. At first I wasn’t sure if this would be so valuable as the time limit made anything more than briefly exchanging names, ideas and business cards impossible. But looking back it was a great experience. I managed to talk to 60 people, got their contacts and can reconnect with them after the conference. And more important: This session pretty much set the tone for the whole conference: Don’t be shy to approach people, share your ideas and don’t be shy to ask for introductions.

The second day was all about speakers. The team of CCC Ventures was responsible for the Afternoon Session called “StartupADDventures” and presented an impressive group of speakers who gave short talks on a huge variety of topics relevant for startups. Kalina King was speaking about “Hacking Startup Education”, Mike Butcher shared insights on how to get your news to the newspapers, Kaushal Choksi was speaking about “What makes an investor tick”. All of the content was highly practical and useful for startups of any stage.

Highlight of the second Conference day were the Final Pitches of the “Startup Turkey Challenge”. Winner was the team from Netsparker.

What I really liked about the conference was the consequent focus on creating value for the participants. Speakers and activities were carefully selected, the panels practical and all other sessions were created in a way to accelerate interactions between the participants so everyone had tons of chances to network and get connected.

Thank you to Burak Büyükdemir and his team from Etohum for organizing a truly inspiring conference."

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to fly.....

...you need to take the risk of falling. Without jumping from the cliff you will never fly. Some people keep telling me that I am taking to much risks, jumping right into things without considering the risks enough. They are right. I normally avoid thinking of the risks. I mostly refuse to think about if this would be good for my career, my resume and my pension plan. Jumping right into projects I am not thinking about how much hours of sleep i will get, how much hours I will work. Sometimes this leads to crazy situations with less than three hours of sleep for some days in a row, crazy travel schedules, times where I barely manage to see my friends and spend time at home. Sometimes people tell me I am sacrificing myself to much for others. 

Looking back I see that exactly these "stupid", "impulsive", "not-thought-through" decisions lead to some of the most amazing experiences in my life. 

Joining AIESEC, organising and coordination a Leadership Development Seminar for more than 100 people, travelling to Iran, becoming trainer and conference manager. 

I joined Sandbox as a Community Manager even though my plans for that year were the complete opposite. During my time there I met some amazingly inspiring people who were and are my role models. I don't know what I would have done without their constant inspiration to live my dream.

I had two of the most amazing years of my life with STARTPLATZ. I agreed to join the team after roughly 1,5 hours of talking. 4 days later I had my first workday.

And last but not least.I would have never ended up here in Iran without taking some risks. 

....taking the risks, being comfortable with uncertainy lead to the most amazing learnings, experiences and most valuable friendships I could have ever imagined. 

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Marketing Wisdom by Seth Godin

See the original here

The circus is coming to town

Too often, we wait. We wait to get the gig, or to make the complex sale, or to find the approval we seek. Then we decide it's time to get to work and put on our show.

The circus doesn't work that way. They don't wait to be called. They show up. They show up and sell tickets.

When you transform the order of things, the power shifts. "The circus is going to be here tomorrow, are you going?" That's a very different question than, "are you willing to go out on a limb and book the circus? If you are, we'll come to town..."

People respond to forward motion. Auctions are always more exciting than "price available on request."

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Things I love about Iran

This is an incomplete and growing list of things I love about Tehran and Iran. No particular order.

The mountains right north of Tehran

Driving up the whole way from Enquelab to Tajrish in a bus on a friday afternoon

Iranian Sweets (Shirini)

Hibye and Tiny cookies

I even like the traffic. My daily way up to the office by taxi gives me time to think and get ready for the day

The Taxi system that practically allows everyone to be a Taxidriver 

Laleh Park

The "Roof of Tehran" where you have a fantastic view

The idea of living in a city with 12.000.000+ people

Having a bakery right around the corner of my home

Even in winter you do not have to get up in the dark

Traditional Tea glasses

Getting lost in the Bazaar

Lavashak

Ash (the best soup ever)

that this country is challenging my assumtions every single day

.....

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"Ask yourself what you could do to make the biggest difference in the world. And then challenge your answers."

This is my favourite sentence from a blogpost I read this week. Written by Ben Winkler it asks "How to honor Aaron Swartz's life?"

As the title says, it is the question how to honour the life of one of his best friends who committed suicide two years ago. 

There are many different answers to this questions but he comes up with one advice: "...what I and others concluded was that the best way we could honor Aaron’s life and death was in the way we lived our own lives." 

In Ben Winklers case this can be divided into five guiding points:

1. Stay curious

2. Don’t accept things as they are, or assume they’re that way for a good reason.

3. Become good at something. And then use it to make a difference.

4. Ask yourself what you could do to make the biggest difference in the world. And then challenge your answers.

5. Stay alive.

The most important one for me: "Ask yourself what you could do to make the biggest difference in the world. And then challenge your answers." Never stop challenging. Never stop thinking. Never stop moving forward. As Ben Winkler says: "Even if it doesn’t make life easy, it makes it meaningful."

Read the blogpost! There is nothing more to add. I see it as a guide for me, how to live my life. Nobody promised this to be easy. But I am 100% sure that it is worth it.

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Our Startups at Avatech

So what is this all about? At Avatech we are supporting Startups with Mentors, a great office space in the middle of Tehran, workshops and all the support they need in order to focus on making their startup happen. About a month ago we've selected the first ever batch of Startups to join our Accelerator program after they went through a eight week pre- acceleration phase. They are eleven teams covering a wide range of topics, reaching from Project Management, Sharing Economy to Online Education, a PR Platform and E-Commerce solutions for artists. It is amazing to see how all of those teams developed during the last three months and I am really excited to see how they will move forward in the next months till Demoday in March where they will pitch to Investors who are ready to invest in Startups.  You want to learn more about the selected teams? Check them out here.

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Blogs I read #1: Wait but Why

I thought I gonna share some blogs I read now and then. Things that inspired and inspire me and that I like getting into my inbox.

So here we go with number one. I have actually no idea how I first found them but I really like what they are writing.

#1: Wait but Why?

...because they have wonderful long blogposts, funny drawings and a great variety of topics they are posting about (friendship, ISIS, Iraq, life, ....). I actually started reading it when they started writing about a trip of one of the guys that took him to some very different countries (Russia, Greenland, Nigeria, Japan and Iraq) around the world.

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Women Entrepreneurs In Iran 2014

Iran Business Forum, another blog writing about Business in Iran just published a post about Women and Entrepreneurship in Iran. They were talking to Nazanin Daneshvar, founder of Takhfifan (a group buying website) and to Reyhaneh and Bahareh Vahidian, founders of the "Wise Up Community" a regular meetup of people interested in Entrepreneurship.

Nazanin Daneshvar also got featured on Washington Post recently alongside some more iranian entrepreneurs.

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My two worlds. 3.901.62 km, 5.5 hrs in an airplane. Two completely and complexly different worlds. But I am still the same. Switching realities.  

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Iran’s premier business accelerator program has announced that one of its first batch of startups is now in full swing...

Avatech and especially one of our teams from the first batch got featured in Financial Tribune of Iran. 2nate is Irans first donation platform that helps Charities and NGOs to raise money for their projects. We at Avatech also had a campaign on 2nate to raise money for our Startup Library.

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Home and Home

I am just getting ready to return to Tehran after I've spent two weeks in Germany to meet family and friends and celebrate christmas and New Year here. It was a great time, I met lots of people, spent some lazy time with my parents, read a lot and enjoyed being back to a country where I know the language and can read everything. Actually this was quite disturbing the first few days. I understood everything, could read all the advertisements and was back to the place where I spent most of the last 10 years. A place where every corner is filled with memories and stories. Now it is time to get back. With a backpack full of Lebkuchen, Spekulatius, chocolate and books. I am looking forward to get back to work tomorrow, see all the people I've spent the last five months with, drink persian tea, get back to crazy taxi driving mode, kebap and rice. And hopefully I am getting started with learning proper persian soon as well. :)

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Let's get started

If everything works out I will be working in Tehran, starting July 22nd. I will help building up the first startup accelerator in Tehran and I am absolutely excited to get started. It feels like helping to build up something completely new and that is what excites me the most. A friend of mine recently made presentation at an conference about Iran in this presentation included the following video, highlighting the current developments in the local startup scene in Iran.

At the moment I spend most of my time reading about startup accelerators (Techstars and Y Combinator), about how to build startup ecosystems and everything that crosses my way and helps me to further understand startup communities and everything that is needed to make them successful. During the last two years I learned a lot while helping to build up STARTPLATZ in Cologne/Germany and I am so much looking forward to get started. 

With this blog I will try to share my experiences, daily stories, startup stories and everything that will cross my path on my journey in Iran.