Seznam Opens Part of Its Full Text Search Technology for StartupYard 2014

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Today is a great day for the future startups of StartupYard 2014!

Seznam.cz has decided to open part of its full text search technology to the teams that apply for the 2014 round, to help them with their large data projects that need extracted data from the Internet.

Seznam.cz started as a one-man band and during the past 17 years has become a major Czech influential technological company and a media house in one, which is preventing Google from gaining the majority or monopoly on the Czech market. Seznam.cz full text search technology is based on Hadoop and Hbase. The 2014 StartupYard teams will have access to a test cluster of up to 100 million documents from the Internet. All of them pre-crawled and sorted into entities such as domains, webservers and URLs. Each of these entities contains its own attributes for fast analysis and sorting of each web page in the cluster.

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“We have made a basic analysis for each webpage in the cluster so the teams know its content as a derivate with many parameters such as the language used and meta-descriptions. All of the documents in the cluster are regularly updated and more parameters and content can be added if the teams need and request them,” 

Marek Nový, Head of Business Development at Seznam.cz

Good news comes in pairs. Today StartupYard is accepting applications for our April 2014 round. This round will focus exclusively on teams working in Data, Search and Analytics.

Teams will receive free accommodations in Prague, free lunch and one payed return flight from anywhere in Europe.

We will be setting our sights on the best teams in these areas from all over Europe; selecting only 6 from 10 finalists for its 3 month, English-language only Acceleration Program. The comprehensive program will cover all aspects of creating and growing a business, from legal and accounting, to hiring, code review and company culture, with access to 90 specialised mentors, media trainers, a professional native English copywriter and blogger, and perks worth €250,000.

Prague attracts many data companies, so we felt it would be to the benefit of our upcoming class if we specialised. We have a very clear objective: to attract the most ambitious projects from all across Europe in the fields of Data, Search or Analytics. To achieve that, we have put together a package we hope no entrepreneur in Europe could refuse.

The application closes at the end of January. Please help us spread the news by sharing this article!

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StartupYard Appoints Cedric Maloux As New Director

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We are very happy to announce that Cedric Maloux is joining StartupYard as its new Director. He will be running the acceleration program in Prague and oversee daily operations. Cedric has been managing Internet startups for more than 17 years.

We started our acceleration program 2 years ago and invested in 22 technology companies till now. “Going forward, we plan to do things differently. We will focus on a different vertical sector every year. This year we have chosen to hunt for projects related to Data, Search and Analytics,” says Cedric Maloux. “Our home market is in the Czech Republic which is well-known for great data, search and analytics companies. By specialising our program, we also want to attract entrepreneurs across Europe and offer them a unique 3 months acceleration package.”

Born in Paris, Cedric is a life-long entrepreneur. He founded his first internet company, a French community and news portal in 1996 which he sold in 2000 and since then has been managing startups during the good and bad times of the internet economy. He is best known as the founder of AllPeers, a Czech company which attracted numerous accolades and awards 6 years ago, as well as investment from Index Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners. He’s the former CEO at Geewa where he transformed the Czech casual games company into an international success with Pool Live Tour on Facebook played by tens of millions of people every month. He first started working with StartupYard as one of the program’s mentors in 2011.

Welcome on board Cedric!

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And the Winner Is… Demo Day

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It was a crazy Monday. June 3rd. A part of Prague was flooded, we had to decide for go or no go for Demo Day on Tuesday. We did it and 200 attendees prepared a great evening to our 6 teams and judges. Thank you.

And the Winner Is

The crowd voted for the best pitch and the People’s Choice went to AirCharts.co. 2 team members will be attending Pioneers Festival in Vienna.

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The judges – Peter Fabian, Amit Paunikar, Michael Schuster and Michal Truban – had a tough time to choose the best team … Hlidacky.cz, because: “”Hlidacky.cz provides a clear solution with the most potential of success given incremental direction and guidance and investment. The business model has been proven in other markets. They did really good job of explaining the problem and its nuances (parents/friends not always available, trustworthy service – an absolute must). And for obvious desire to succeed which became apparent during Q&A (“we tried this, did not work, so we tried something else” – profiles => video profiles => friends) – they’re working on the product layer by layer.” 2 team members will be exhibiting at Startup Alley and attending TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin.

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All stuff from Demo Day (video, presentations, photos) is available at www.demoday.cz.

News of the Week, May 16

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What’s going on at StartupYard

We are in full swing! Works.io and Travelatus launched their public beta. Startitup has passed the mark of 1100 users and started monetizing. Yummy’s biggest deal so far has been 300 orders for Barcamp Prague. Hlidacky.cz got into the final selection round of Wayra Czech Republic. Some of us presented at Pioneers Unplugged Prague. Thanks to Brave New Media, one of our seminars turned into a rather real thing. In preparation for our D-Day, we have regular pitch sessions with our amazing mentors.

What’s going in the region

StartupDigest for CZ events
23-24/5 Shift (Split, HR)
2-4/6 hy! (Berlin, D)
3-4/6 DEMO Europe (Moscow, RU)
4-5/6 Webinale (Berlin, D)
13-16/6 Startup Island (Hvar, HR)
24-25/6 bitspiration (Krakow, PL)

News of the Week, April 23

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What’s up at StartupYard and Central Europe.

News of the Week

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StartupYard alumnus Brand Embassy is the only Czech based company chosen as a 2013 Red Herring Top 100 Europe! Do you want to find out how to build reliable cloud applications? We are hosting an event with Netflix Director of Cloud Solutions next Tuesday. There are only a few tickets left…

What’s going on at StartupYard

We all have brought our companies to the user testing stage! StartitUp threw their first webinar with Ash Maurya. After having seen over 70 mentors, we are in the midst of business skills seminars and workshops, some of which are open to public. Spring finally arrived to Prague and we gladly moved our regular beer gatherings into the open air.

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What’s going in the region 

StartupDigest for CZ events
upcoming Startup Live events
26/4 International Startups Meetup (Bratislava, SK)
13-14/5 EBAN Annual Congress and Awards (Vienna, AT)
14/5 Heureka (Berlin, D)
16/5 Capital On Stage (Berlin, D)
23-24/5 Shift (Split, HR)
31/5-2/6 Webinale Connect (Berlin, D)
3-4/6 DEMO Europe (Moscow, RU)
3-5/6 Webinale (Berlin, D)
13-16/6 Startup Island (Hvar, HR)
24-25/6 bitspiration (Krakow, PL)

You can subscribe to our mailing list for more news

Welcome 6 New Teams for 2013 Spring Program

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It’s been long. A long selection process, 6 weeks. But we’re proud now to announce 6 amazing teams. We accepted applications from 12 countries and selected 6 startups from 5 countries. The third cohort begins their 6-month acceleration program on March 11 in Prague.

Who are our StartupYard Spring 2013 heroes?

Hlidacky.cz
We help parents meet the most reliable babysitters. Hlidacky.cz operates in the Czech Republic now.
Co-founders: David Hrachovy, Petr Sigut and Vaclav Kuna (Czech Republic)
Web: www.hlidacky.cz

HowDoI Tutorials
Interactive tool for website owners to create tutorials and guides in a few minutes.
Co-founders: Lukas Haraga, Jiri Otahal and Michal Pustka (Czech Republic)

 

Web: www.howdoitutorials.com

StartitUp
Step-By-Step Startup Guide with action items that will help entrepreneurs get their startup from idea, to product, to traction, and to funding.
Co-founders: Edward Liu and Yitao Sun (USA)
Web: www.startitup.co

Travelatus
Event travel made easy. It helps visitors of concerts, festivals and conferences to plan their trips.
Co-founders: Valentin Dombrovsky, Vitaliy Korobkin and Denis Volkov (Russia)
Web: www.travelatus.com

works.io
The essential career tool for professional fine artists, keep portfolios and CVs up-to-date with ease.
Co-founders: Abe Han and Patrick Urwyler (Canada, Switzerland)
Web: www.works.io

Yummy Food Delivery
How to eat healthy at your desk. Its focus is B2B delivery.
Co-founders: Kristina Sediva and Tomas Netrval (Czech Republic)
Facebook page Yummy Food Delivery

Recruiting has begun

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Startups In Big Companies

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This is an invitation for our event next Monday. And a short remark on startups and corporations.

On Monday, October 8th, we hold a meet-up for entrepreneurs with guys from Seznam.cz (Czech internet #1 company, 1000 employees in a few months). It’s about their experience with product management, UX, launch, marketing, PR, …

Some people have asked me why Seznam and startups? What can entrepreneurs learn from corporate guys? I’m sure this is a big mistake of many geeks. I like these words from Saul Klein who worked in corporations and has become one of best investors, a great motive WHY: ‘You learn a lot about scale, you learn a lot about process. Any small company really, hopefully, aspires to be a very, very big company and having worked inside some of those big companies, I’ve a sense for what a small company looks like when it grows up.’ (Read the whole interview by Ivo Spiegel for Kernel.)

This is why it’s really worth coming (if you’re in Prague).

Final Countdown to Demo Day

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Just a couple of days and StartupYard 2012 teams will show at Demo Day what they have accomplished during last 3 months. Busy 3 months.

The Demo Day will be a celebration of entrepreneurship and we’re looking forward to see many people from Europe, US, or Canada who will arrive to enjoy the evening. A special thanks to all of our judges who will fly over the ocean or arrive from European countries, 6 judges, 5 nations:

If you wanna meet some of these guys one-to-one we’re going to hold a pub summit 🙂 on Monday from 7 pm, just add your name to a list.

P.S.: And don’t forget the Demo Day night will be long. Afterparty follows from 10pm in Jet Set. 🙂