@ Stanford: Accelerators + Bootcamps in Estonia & Poland

In Stanford's eighth and final Winter Quarter session of 'European Entrepreneurship & Innovation Thought Leaders', we present startup bootcamp, hack-a-thon and accelerator founders from Estonia and Poland. We will discuss how Europe's emerging entrepreneurship ecosystem is being grown, shaped and educated by these important grassroots 'startup creation and mentoring engines'. Our returning government partner Enterprise Estonia will also give a brief overview of the rapidly maturing Estonian innovation and tech sectors, and its key industry, university and government innovation institutions.

We are pleased to have GammaRebels as our first presenter from Poland in this European Entrepreneurship speaker series. A surprise guest visitor from Minsk will also provide a mini-snapshot of the emerging startup scene in Belarus.

Open to the Public at No Charge.

Time: 4:15 - 5:30pm
Location: Hewlett 201 Auditorium, Engineering School Campus
Website: http://me421.stanford.edu

Directions/Map:http://www.europeanentrepreneursatstanford.com/aboutME421/mapDirections.php

SPEAKERS:

• Ragnar Sass - Founder, Garage48 & Pipedrive (EE)

Ragnar Sass is a serial startup entrepreneur and co-founder of startup bootcamp Garage48 and Pipedrive, a simple CRM software company. Ragnar has organized more than 20 hack-a-thons in Eastern Europe and West and East Africa. These events are organized by the Garage48 Foundation, a non-profit organization promoting startups and entrepreneurship. In the Garage48 weekend event series, people can turn their ideas into working web and mobile prototypes in just 48 hours. Over 10 startups have been created out of Garage48, successfully raising funds or developing popular products. His latest startup Pipedrive was founded in 2010. In the following year the company was chosen by startup accelerator Angelpad and in 2012 the company was nominated as "Best Baltic Startup". Today this simple but powerful CRM tool is helping 15,000+ salesmen from 87 countries to manage their sales pipeline.

• Krzysztof Kowalczyk - Founder & Managing Partner, HardGamma | GammaRebels (PL)

Krzysztof "Chris" Kowalczyk is Founder and Managing Partner of HardGamma Ventures (2010), an early stage fund based in Warsaw, Poland. As a part of HardGamma he founded the GammaRebels accelerator (2011). Both fund and the accelerator were recognized as ‘Highly Commended’ in the Europas 2011 Awards. His investments include mobile lab Appvetica, cloud collaboration integrator BusyFlow, coding skills tester Codility, iOS/MacOS lab Macoscope, e-commerce analytics Manubia and independent fashion e-commerce platform SHWRM.com. Chris helped SHWRM recently to close a series A ($1.5Mn) round with Burda International. Chris is deeply involved in the European startup ecosystem, being a referrer with HackFwd and a mentor with Seedcamp (UK), IBM SmartCamp, Springboard (UK), StartupBootcamp, StartupHighway (Lithuania) and StartupSauna (Finland). In 2007 he co-founded the leading polish startup meetup scene ‘Aula Polska’ and in 2011 he organized the first Startup Weekend in Poland.

• Estonia Overview - Andrus Viirg, Director, Enterprise Estonia Silicon Valley (EE)

• Belarus Snapshot - Tania Marinich, CEO & Co-Founder, BEL.BIZ, Minsk (BY)

JOIN US ONLINE:

Facebook Fan Page: https://www.facebook.com/europeanentrepreneursatstanford

LinkedIn Group (10K+): http://www.linkedin.com/groups/European-Entrepreneurship-Innovation-Stanford-Silicon-1573967/about?trk=anet_ug_grppro

Twitter: http://twitter.com/europreneurs

Google+ Group: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/105382283122975616891

Meetup Group: https://www.meetup.com/European-Entrepreneurship-Innovation-Stanford/

EUROPEAN GOVERNMENT PARTNERS (2013):

Invest Northern Ireland: http://www.investni.com/

VINNOVA (Sweden's Innovation Agency): http://www.vinnova.se/en/

Enterprise Estonia - Silicon Valley: http://www.investinestonia.com/enterprise-estonia/

Sponsored by the Stanford Center for Design Research (cdr.stanford.edu)