Petya Lipeva, Puzl Coworking

Exclusive Interview: Puzl’s Petya Lipeva on the Bulgarian Tech Space

On April 11-12 2017, StartupYard will be visiting Sofia to meet with Deep Tech startups, and offer two workshops – one on turning an AI idea into a global business, and the other on storytelling for Deep Tech startups.

Before our next official visit, which is to be StartupYard’s third in beautiful Sofia, I talked to Petya Lipeva, Chief Navigator of CowOrKing by Puzl, one of Sofia’s hottest tech startup spaces, about the tech scene in Sofia, how it’s changed in recent years, and what we can expect in the near future from Bulgarian startups. Here is what she had to say:

Hi Petya, first why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself, and your path to becoming Chief Navigator at Puzl?

Hey StartupYard-ers! My name is Petya and I’m the Chief Navigator at Puzl CowOrKing – a coworking space for IT professionals and IT startups in Sofia, Bulgaria. I joined the team a month after they opened the first space.

My background is in PR and marketing for a Bulgarian tech company in the CG industry. For a few years I was traveling the world and I needed to settle down, so I tried to do some freelancing work. However, being a freelancer is quite a lonely experience for a person that is used to working with big crowds.

I was considering relocating to France or Italy when I found out that two guys opened a new shared space in Sofia and they were looking for a person to run the space. I met the team for a lunch and this was the most random job interview that I ever had. It was a couple of days before the start of a big CG conference that I was organizing and my phone was ringing all the time. Meanwhile we were speaking about anything but my role in the team. It’s amazing how you click immediately when you find your people!

Petya Lipeva, Coworking by Puzl

What makes Puzl CowOrKing, aside from any other workspace in Sofia, a special place?

First of all Puzl CowOrKing is the first industry focused coworking space in Sofia. We created the space to help IT companies and professionals to grow and develop together. The amazing industrial design is complemented with different areas to foster efficiency, collaboration, and creativity both for companies and individuals.

We started with one space in October 2015 and a few months later in May 2016 we opened a new floor that we created specially for early-stage startups. In the beginning of April 2017, we’re opening another floor with 10 dedicated offices for small startup companies. The idea is to have different areas so a team could start with some desks in the area for the early stage startups and move across the different zones as the team grows and develops.

Do you have some success stories from your own alumni you’d like to highlight?

Yes, we do have quite a lot of success stories! I’d say that the whole community of 250 professionals is one amazing success story.

We have quite a lot of starting companies that are funded by different funds and accelerators. We have a few examples of individuals who are starting alone and growing a team of 10 people. My best success stories however are the collaboration stories – I love seeing how companies and professionals in the space start working together and find it valuable to exchange experience and resources.

StartupYard is about to make our 4th visit in as many years to Sofia. What would you say have been the most profound changes about the city and the tech ecosystem there in the past decade? What can we expect when we visit next month?

I would say that about 10 years ago in Bulgaria only a few people had heard the word ‘startup’  and the entrepreneurship ecosystem basically didn’t exist. However a decade is quite a long period and the ecosystem is thriving now.

Last year Forbes Magazine named  Sofia  one of the top 10 destinations for starting a business. Only three years after the first venture capital funds Launchub and Eleven started; they have already about 200 start-up companies in their portfolio. Recently we also witnessed one of the largest exits in the region, with a value of 262.5 million USD after acquisition of Telerik by Progress Software.

Quite a lot of organizations are working on organizing entrepreneurship events and trainings and the country is definitely showing a great progress and could show a thriving and interesting tech ecosystem.

What are, in your view, the biggest strengths of Bulgarian tech people, engineers, and thinkers?

I’ve noticed that the engineers in Bulgaria have amazing tech skills – they are talented, dedicated and passionate about their projects. They are real problem-solvers and quite interesting people – there are some quiet ones, loud ones, crazy ones, real inventors, thinkers, and players.

To you, which have been the most interesting and inspiring successes in tech to come out of Sofia or Bulgaria in the last few years?

The most inspiring success to come out of Sofia is Chaos Group – the company that develops the rendering plugin for 3D computer graphics software applications – V-Ray. Chaos Group founder Vladimir Koylazov received an Academy Plaque at the 2017 Academy Awards. The award, presented by the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, recognizes V-Ray’s role in bringing realistic CGI to the big screen.

Another great success is the above mentioned largest exits in the region by Telerik. We have quite a lot of interesting starting tech companies and I’m sure that we’ll see many more great stories in the upcoming years!

What kinds of things do you think we can expect from Bulgarian startups in the near future?

I’d say that we’ll see many exciting products and services coming from the Bulgarian startups and I’m sure that we’ll see many teams growing worldwide. I’m sure that soon enough I’ll be saying proudly “he/she used to work in Puzl CowOrKing”.

Bulgaria is a relatively small economy. Does this force Bulgarian startups to think bigger? Does it have a negative impact on startups looking for their first customers and their first investor?

Yes, Bulgaria is a small economy but it’s a great floor for product testing before going outside the boundaries. The small economy is definitely pushing the startups to grow bigger and to find bigger markets. However, I don’t think it has impact on finding customers and investors, as nowadays we’re all easily connected and because of the thriving ecosystem in the region. It’s easy to access many resources outside the country.

How would you rate the local and state government’s involvement in the tech ecosystem? What are they doing right, and what are they doing wrong?

The local and the state government is not much involved in the tech ecosystem although they are trying a lot. It takes time – the administration in Bulgaria is quite slow in picking up new trends and the tech ecosystem is still something that they don’t completely understand and relate to what’s happening in a starting company. I think the administration needs to attract a new generation of people in order to start helping out the tech ecosystem.

KB & StartupYard Hackathon Produces 11 Projects, 3 Big Winners

This past weekend, over 50 developers, founders, idea makers, and designers got together at StartupYard’s homebase, Node5, and hacked for 48 hours (actually only 47 hours – we lost an hour to daylight savings), using data provided to attendees by Komercni Banka (KB), for our first ever joint Fintech Hackathon. The Hackathon focused on the swiftly approaching Open Data mandate for European banks, PSD2. KB provided anonymized customer usage data, of the type that the PSD2 standards are most likely to require that banks make publically available via API.

Winners were those who provided feasible projects that might have the highest impact on KB, or any bank’s ability to provide better customer experience in a rapidly changing landscape, contributing to “The Bank of the Future, Wherever You Are.” 

11 Projects

In total, the hackathon produced or advanced 11 projects in Fintech, ranging from VR, to personal finance applications. Attendees were also mentored by nearly a dozen experienced mentors from StartupYard, KB, and the fintech industry. In attendance were KB’s Deputy Director of IT, David Svejda, KB’s Head of Innovation Monika Drobna, and of course KB’s CEO Albert Le Dirac’h.

Reception of the results from the KB team were overwhelmingly positive, and in addition to the 3 official prize winners, 3 teams from the 11 were also invited to apply to the next round of acceleration at StartupYard, Batch 8. 

3 Big Winners

The weekend saw 3 outstanding teams walk away with prizes of 10,000 CZK, 6,000 CZK, and 4,000 CZK per team member. In addition, the winning team will get the chance to pitch the KB board of directors personally this week, and will have a chance to join C-level executives from KB for a private lunch. Here are the winners:

1st Prize: Paystory

Billed as “Payment History 2.0,” paystory showed off a prototype of a data platform that will help banks and their customers get fine-grained details from merchants and online retailers about their transactions, including keeping track of warrantees, receipts, invoices, and product information.

2nd Prize: Blocknify

Comprised of members of two StartupYard alumni (Personal Finance Manager BudgetBakers and Investment Intelligence Platform Decissio), Blocknify promises to make verifying the authenticity of a contract as simple as scanning it with your smartphone. With a combination of public blockchain and QR codes, Blocknify allows signatories of important contracts to feel secure in the knowledge that they are always signing exactly what they’ve agreed to.

3rd Prize: SDK Finance

SDK Finance an existing fintech company, took 3rd place for its use of data provided by KB to create an open API platform for PSD2, the standard by which all European banks will, starting in 2018, be required to allow 3rd party platforms to access certain transactional and account information.

 

Special Prize: VRTheBest

Though the team was not selected as cash winners, KB designated a Special Prize for the members of by far the most speculative and futuristic team to participate in the hackathon: VRTheBest. VRTheBest, in just 47 hours, mocked up an entire virtual bank branch, and a handful of very futuristic tools, inside a 3D environment using an Oculus Rift developer kit. Though the project was considered to be reaching too far into the future to merit a win, KB chose to single out the team for their outstanding work, and stunning presentation.

 

Bulgarian Tech Ecosystem

StartupYard Visits Puzl CowOrKing in Sofia, April 11-12, to meet Deep Tech startups

We’re excited to announce that on the 11th and 12 of April, StartupYard visits Sofia, Bulgaria, to meet with Deep Tech startups, entrepreneurs, and others with ideas for businesses built around AI, AR/VR, cryptology, blockchain, IoT, and related technologies.

Our visit will be at Puzl CowOrKing, one of Sofia’s most exciting startup workspaces.

This is the first of 5 visits to Central European capitals this spring, with an eye to attract brand new startups to StartupYard Batch 8.

 

DEEP TECH FOCUS

The focus of StartupYard Batch 8 will be “Deep Tech.”

Deep Tech means companies working on technologies and products that are unique, difficult to replicate, or are exploring areas of innovation where the barrier to entry remains high, and the problems scientifically complex and difficult, such as Robots, AI, IoT, VR/AR, and Cryptography.

Today, the barrier to entry for globally scalable startups is lower than ever. However, there are still tremendously complex problems left to solve. In years past, our focus on the Data Economy has shown us that there is a growing need for novel approaches to the way people work, communicate, do business, participate in the economy, and understand the world around them.

Deep Tech solutions seek to develop never-before-possible opportunities to profoundly alter the way everyone, not just the tech industry, works, thinks, and sees the future. Deep Tech companies work at the edges of possibility for emerging technologies, and so have the potential to disrupt and change whole industries overnight.

 

 

Taking the time to apply costs you only a bit of your time, and is the first step in the StartupYard selection committee and investors getting to know you and your team. There is no risk in applying, so why not start today?

StartupYard “Training Days”

April 11th and 12th in Sofia will be StartupYard’s first visit to one of 5 cities, including Budapest, Bucharest, Vilnius, Krakow, and Sofia. Unlike a typical roadshow, where an accelerator gathers early-stage startups to show off their pitches, StartupYard will instead offer workshops for Deep Tech engineers and idea makers in these different cities, about how to turn a high tech concept into a real business.

These “training days” will include a series of workshops and open hours with the StartupYard management team (myself, and our CEO Cedric Maloux).

Workshops

From AI to a Real Global Business- April 11th at 16:00, Puzl CowOrKing

cedric maloux startupyard

StartupYard Managing Director Cedric Maloux

Do you have a Deep Tech idea that could potentially become a tech startup? This is your ideal chance to find out what it takes. StartupYard CEO Cedric Maloux will walk attendees through the process of turning AI and other Deep Tech startups into thriving businesses, from proving their concepts with real-live pilot customers, to signing their first paying clients, and gaining venture investment.

This workshop will go into detail about how StartupYard has guided startups like TeskaLabs, Neuron Soundware, and Rossum, from idea phase, to seed investments and onto the market.

 

 

Deep Tech Positioning- April 12th, 10:00, Puzl CowOrKing

StartupYard Community Manager Lloyd Waldo

In this workshop, StartupYard’s head of communication and community Lloyd Waldo (that’s me), will show would-be entrepreneurs how early stage startups in Deep Tech can use practical storytelling skills to convince the earliest stakeholders (including cofounders, investors, customers, and employees), of the power of a new idea, by transforming it from dry description and speculation into a compelling narrative, that puts you in control of the conversation.

This workshop will include hands-on strategies for positioning that will provide entrepreneurs with the toolset necessary to construct a persuasive and powerful story about themselves, and their vision of the future.

 

 

Open Hours, April 12th, Puzl CowOrKing

Do you have a Deep Tech idea and a great team that you think is worthy of funding and acceleration at StartupYard? Are you ready to take the next step and run your own Deep Tech company? Now is your chance to meet the StartupYard management team, and tell us something about it.