StartupYard Demo Day 2015, in Tweets and Pics

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The Big Day

For the StartupYard team, this day has been 8 long months in the making. For StartupYard’s teams, in most cases, it’s been years of hard work.

Last night, before an audience of nearly 200 local investors, professionals, startupers, and members of the media, StartupYard’s 6 startups premiered to rave reviews.

Of course, our mentors were never without their opinions.


After 3 months of gruelling work with mentors, advisors and workshop runners, and 2 weeks of sheer panic and excitement as they formulated and rehearsed their pitches, our 6 startups exceeded our expectations for this Demo Day in every way.

The Startups

Here are a few shots of the teams warming up before the event:

The Community

Last night, we were reminded once again of what makes Demo Day so important.  Over 40 of our active mentors were present, and many commented on the incredible progress the startups had made in just 3 months. Mergim Cahani, of Gjirafa (a 2014 member of Startupyard), was in attendance with some exciting news of his own. We hope to share that with you soon on this blog.

The Event

Not only is Demo Day a chance for a great startup with a worthwhile idea to get noticed, and funded, both locally and internationally, but it is also the moment when our startups become “real.” The moment when they transform from something that few people have heard of our thought about, to something on the market and in the air, interesting, dangerous, even possibly inevitable.

Following opening remarks from our Director Cedric Maloux, Michael Jackson, of Mangrove Capital Partners, the VC fund, delivered an amazing keynote address, which aligned perfectly with our own mission:

 

Then it was time for our 6 startups to take the stage. They blew us away.

The Pitches

It’s a thrill to share that experience with our Startups, and to take a moment to see how far they’ve all come from those first meetings way back in January, when they pitched us the barest seeds of amazing ideas.

The conversation and discussion reached well into the night, with many of the guests staying to talk with startups until the small hours.

What’s Next

StartupYard can take a nap today. But it won’t last long. In addition to hosting Prague’s biggest ever open-data hackathon in just 2 weeks, we’ll be opening applications for StartupYard 2016, kicking off in January of next year, within the next week.