Watch the trailer video:

Munich, the third-largest city in Germany, ranks fourth in the world on the Mercer Quality and Life survey. In 2014, it was named THE TOP TECH CITY by the European Commission (followed by London and Paris). It’s definitely a place to be.

How to apply? We are on f6s.com! Find us here: http://bit.ly/1Effr8Y

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook to get the latest info.

#‎WayraCall‬

We might have been the youngest of the 14 Academies scattered around Europe and Latin America, but it didn’t stop us from thinking BIG. Since launching in 2013 and in just 22 months, Wayra CEE startups have gone on to raise over close to €2.2 million and are collectively valued at €12.44, creating close to 70 full time PAYE jobs. We received 418 applications (in total) but only 16 made it through.

Sixteen projects, with first cohort having 7 startups and second cohort having 9 startups, joined the one and only #WayraFamily and got the opportunity to utilize Telefónica’s global network of best mentors, partners and experts. The possibilities were endless, the mission was achievable. The cold truth is 90% of tech startups fail.  Only time will tell how many success stories are we going to hear.

We weren’t just strangers sharing the same office – we were family. There was always somebody to give you constructive feedback. There was always somebody to test your app. There was always somebody working long hours with you. There was always somebody with a spare charger. There was always somebody who had the important contact you needed or knew the amazing person you wanted to meet.  There was always somebody to cheer you up when times were hard… or get you a drink when they got better.

Over the two years, we hosted many entrepreneurs and speakers from all around the world who were teaching about success, hard work, and failure. Big names such as Jeff Burton (ex-Electronic Arts), Jan Rezab (Socialbakers), Laura Voglino (IBM), Jordan Schlipf (Future Centric), David Bizer (Talent Fountain), Steve Koenig (CEA), Peter Podolinsky (Facebook, Client Partner), Stefan Siegel (Not just a label), Whitney Sales, David Booth, Yann Girard, Erich Comor (Airbank) were among those who accepted our invitation. If we wrote about every inspiring person that passed through our door, this list could go on forever…

We also co-organized many interesting events* that attracted 3000+ people. We talked about technology and business, but we also covered many different topics from science and education, to fashion and trends. We had a lot to offer and that’s why Wayra fastly became one of the key players in Prague’s startup ecosystem bringing new opportunities and fresh perspective.

*Czechitas, WebExpo, Prague Entrepreneurs Meetup, iCollege, GrowJob, Pioneers Unplugged, Prague Product Management Meetup, Think Big, Aspen Institute, Czech Invest, Czech ICT Alliance, University of New York in Prague, Global Entrepreneurship Week, CEO Collaboration Forum, Mercedes-Benz Prague Fashion Weekend or NetClub

Because of the great work of the Czech team in Wayra CEE, most of the startups are ready to sell their solutions on the market and potentially succeed. What’s next? Since the beginning of April, the whole portfolio of Wayra CEE startups is going to be handled by Wayra Munich, the nearest Academy.

About Wayra

Wayra is part of the Telefónica Open Future initiative, which gathers together all the external innovation and Venture Capital investment vehicles of Telefónica Group. Open Future has analysed more than 30,000 digital projects and manages a portfolio of more than 500 startups. Open Future investment funds add up to more than € 300 million for supporting and investing in digital projects throughout the world.

The event runs as a part of the series called ‘Let it Rip’. An interesting mix of fantastic teams, serial entrepreneurs and engaged audience promises a great opportunity to network and discuss the latest trends and gossips.

If you want to be there, don’t forget to register here.

Keynote Speakers: Learn from JouleX, Cisco and Raspberry Pi

Jack Lang is a serial entrepreneur, business angel and co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, an ultra-low cost computer designed to help teach kids programming. As of October 2014, about 3.8m boards have been sold. Raspberry Pie enables people of all ages to explore computing, and to learn how to program in languages like Scratch and Python. Jack is intrigued by Wayra and our startup mission, which is why he is pleased to join us and share his incredible experience.

Josef Brunner is an investor and founder of JouleX that was acquired by Cisco for $ 107m in 2013. JouleX is a leading innovator in sustainable energy management for the enterprise. Josef is a keen supporter of Wayra startups and has been instrumental in selecting our next cohort of technology entrepreneurs. Josef has a proven track record and we are delighted to hear more about his journey.

Wayra CEE: These 6 teams are already getting ready for Munich:

Ingenio

Mapinout

Orderlord

Staffino

Telemedi.co

UpTAXI

Investors, Startups and Telefónica family: Join us for an inspirational evening!

1. Total amount of investment: 190 000 EUR
2. Team members (before Wayra/after): 3/10-15
3. Number of users: 2870
4. Biggest achievement since joining Wayra: active operation on four markets (SK,CZ,IE,ZA)
5. Success: Winner of Startup Awards Slovakia
6. Our 2015 goal: 700 paying customers by the end of 2015
7. Most important value: experience, culture, knowledge
8. Most interesting person I met in Wayra: Katka Pljaskovova
9. Press article I am especially proud of: Prime time news in major TV-Markiza, Joj, RTVS, most popular daily newspaper and plenty of online coverage.
10. What Wayra brought to my company: Supportive environment, interesting ideas

1. Total amount of investment: 60 000 EUR
2. Team members (before Wayra/after): 2/2
3. Number of users: 1 B2B pilot
4. Biggest achievement since joining Wayra: We’ve completed the Contextual Graph API we set to do when we joined and complemented it with our own POS (Part of speech tagger).
5. Success: Winner of Startup Rally Vienna
6. Our 2015 goal: Securing our first, big enterprise client in parallel to raising our seed investment round.
7. Most important value: Curiosity
8. Most interesting person I met in Wayra: Net Jacobsson, Jordan Schlipf
9. Press article I am especially proud of: This article on Inventures: http://inventures.eu/venture/ingenio
10. What Wayra brought to my company: Opportunities – Wayra has been extremely supportive in connecting us with the right people for our business and using the Wayra name opened us many doors around Europe.

1. Total amount of investment: 240 000 EUR
2. Team members (before Wayra/after): 3/6
3. Number of users: 3
4. Biggest achievement since joining Wayra: paying customers
5. Biggest goal: To become No. 1 in US market
6. Most important value: hard work
7. Most interesting person I met in Wayra: Jordan Schlipf
8. What Wayra brought to my company: Contacts, biz dev., we are working better as a team

1. Total amount of investment: 200 000 EUR
2. Team members (before Wayra/after): 2/5
3. Number of users: 1,000 – 2,000
4. Biggest achievement since joining Wayra: We are live!
5. Biggest goal: Land an investor / major paying client before we leave Wayra.
6. Most important value: Collaboration
7. Most interesting person I met in Wayra: Ondrej Fryc
8. What Wayra brought to my company: Super office space, interesting conferences, a E600k valuation, event tickets, … and a massive amount of support.

1. Total amount of investment: 120 000 EUR
2. Team members (before Wayra/after): 4/ 8
3. Number of users: 12
4. Biggest achievement since joining Wayra: Attracting a significant investment offer
5. Biggest goal: Expand our reach abroad and build partner network there.
6. Most important value: Teamwork
7. Most interesting person I met in Wayra: Too many to choose just one, really.
8. Press article I’am especially proud of: article in Forbes (October 2014)
9. What Wayra brought to my company: Sense of co-working, contact with “outside world”, more involvement in other things than just everybody´s narrow field of work.

1. Total amount of investment: 139 000 EUR
2. Team members (before Wayra/after): 2/10
3. Number of users: 1000
4. Biggest achievement since joining Wayra: Receiving new investment
5. Biggest goal: to be number one service connecting patients with doctors
6. Most important value: diversity
7. Most interesting person I met in Wayra: Luis Malvido
8. Press article I am especially proud of: We were the Startup of the Week on Wired! 
   
9. What Wayra brought to my company: Connections, credibility, self-development

1. Total amount of investment: 60 000 EUR
2. Team members (before Wayra/after): 5/9
3. Number of users: 1000
4. Biggest achievement since joining Wayra: We’re already having paying customers
5. Success: We had very successful launch – over 100 guests.
6. Biggest goal: Break even at the end of 2015 – 10k EUR/month revenue
7. Most important value: Collaboration
8. Most interesting person I met in Wayra: Paul Dubsky (upTaxi)
9. Press article I’am especially proud of: byznys.ihned.cz
10. What Wayra brought to my company: Good comments for our business, interesting location to make business in, EVENTS!

1. Total amount of investment: 280 000 EUR
2. Team members (before Wayra/after): 6/6
3. Number of users: 18000
4. Biggest achievement since joining Wayra: cooperation with Rovio
5. Success: Winner of Startup Sauna and Tech Travel Award
6. Biggest goal: to get the next round investment
7. Most important value: determination
8. Most interesting person I met in Wayra: Jordan Schlipf
9. Press article I am especially proud of: This article that was printed in the biggest daily paper newspaper in Poland.
10. What Wayra brought to my company: We have been able to structure our thinking a lot, tested a few hypothesis. Wayra has been extremely helpful in promoting our achievements. Thanks to the networking we were able to reach some agreements with new partners and present our ideas to many others. Also the workshops brought were extremely useful, really on the highest level possible.

1. Total amount of investment: 40 000 EUR
2. Team members (before Wayra/after): 1/3
3. Number of users: 700
4. Biggest achievement since joining Wayra: Paying customers
5. Biggest goal: Get an investment
6. Most important value: Transparency
7. Most interesting person I met in Wayra: Michal Truban
8. What Wayra brought to my company: Entrepreneurial experience, new angle of view on our business and “This is just a game” by Evzen Cekota

Czech ICT Incubator
Application deadline: 31.12.2014
Maximum of 9 teams will be selected. They will be placed in the Runway Incubator for one or two members of the team for 3-4 months, mentoring, and also free conference passes.

For more info visit www.czechict.cz/inkubator

RUNWAY

What is cool about Runway?

We are located in the same building as Twitter. Unlike other accelerators, we focus on speed. Others are more like a real-estate. We help companies to go faster and we are connecting them with their first employees, customers, and experts. We work a lot on the culture and community of the place because that’s more important than anything else.

What qualities you look in entrepreneurs?

It is more about personality, the size of your idea and scalability.

What are the main criteria to join the program?

We don’t care about technology. It is entirely about the team and scalability. Good team is no assholes. They want to share their knowledge, time, and networks. If you are able to share with others, we will share with you. Also moving fast as possible. There are other entrepreneurs in Germany and China – and they are really good in copying. They force you to go global much faster.

KI-WI DIGITAL: Silicon Valley Experience

Kiwi Digital was founded in 2008 and moved to SF in 2012 as a member of the Czech Accelerator Program. Since then, they’ve made a lot of mistakes. “We weren’t ready to go there. We didn’t know what is an “elevator pitch” or how to network with people,” says

Mistakes:

we were scared of networking

unrealistic ideas about the cost of living in SV ( financial underestimation)

czenglish (they didn’t take us seriously)

we were full of empty words, lack of numbers (SCALE!)

sale > help

we didn’t delegate our Czech agenda

How to be successful:

pretend you are an American company (website, telephone number)

focus on presenting numbers/references (mainly the ones from US)

network, compete and pitch everywhere

follow-up and LinkedIn after the networking

be ready to change everything

CORINTH: Our experience from Silicon Valley

There are three basic motivations why people do startups:

1. they want to make a difference
2. they want to earn money
3. they want to be cool and have more sex

All the options are valid. But in SV it is mainly about the first group.

We absolutely changed our thinking:

Before: The goal is to generate revenue.

After: The goal is to THINK BIG! (big business with a big number of users and big revenue)

Notes:

It’s hard to scale business from Central Europe. On the other, staying in the Bay Area is not easy and the situation is getting worse. It’s hard to find accommodation and if you are not sitting on a good funding, the first three weeks you will spend just thinking about surviving.

Use the opportunity if you know somebody in the area who can help you.

In Silicon Valley, you are just one from thousands people that came there – and nobody cares about you. Every presence in incubator or partnership increases your attractivity. Every time we meet somebody in SV, our presence in Runway is something that makes people interested.

Change is not about doing things differently. It is about the change of your thinking and attitude. The best is to visit Silicon Valley as soon as possible.

Focus on scalability and partnerships.

In the Czech Republic, our thinking is excessively sophisticated and complicated. You have to create a product that is understandable to everyone. Even to idiots.

I got into startups because I hated working for a corporate company. With one of my colleagues, we were thinking about doing something we would enjoy. We created MPV and waited for freedback. We had the classic pair of founders (CEO & CTO) and we found a designer. We started quickly developing something the market was asking for. It took us 20 months to build a product we were happy about. When we were in SF, we didn’t understand the purpose of “networking”. But you really have to go everywhere and ask for feedback. It will move you forward more than when you pay for that.

CZECH ICT ALLIANCE: Michal Zalesak

Michal is an executive director in Czech ICT Alliance and he has been working in the IT industry since 2000. Nowadays, he is one of the most active supporters of the Czech startup community.

Czech ICT Alliance was founded in 2005 and it is not a state organization. The main goal is to support startups in the Czech Republic (regional incubators, startup events, foreigner mentors) and abroad (through TechCrunch Disrupt, CeBit, IT SA, startup missions).

Why move your startup to another country?

great opportunity to move forward

focus

Any success story?

JIC told us they had a team from India. It is called Hansure. They won StarCube and got into Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in Israel. Now they are sitting in Tel Aviv and they raised money from Microsoft and BD.

What are the criteria?

We don’t care about the age of the company — but we want to see it’s moving forward.

CZECH INVEST: Karel Kucera

We had 52 companies in the Czech Accelerator and we’re planning to continue with the program. We don’t want to be the only one, first one nor best one – we want to collaborate with others.

Our goals are:

Support business environment

Attract new investors

Create a communication channel to connect startups with second parties

Unity makes strength.

If we are going to have a great presence in US building a good name for Czech startups, there is a better possibility key players will extend their branches and business in the Czech Republic. That would help the whole economy. We’re in touch with other incubators and we want to help also in other fields (Precise Mechanical Engineering).

“If you are working for a state company, you are paid for not making mistakes. If you are an entrepreneur, you are paid for making them.”

ROCKAWAY: Jakub Havrlant

Why Rockaway decided to join the Czech incubator?

It fits our strategy to focus more on startups. And it is global, not local (globalization is extremely powerful).

How do you choose startups you want to support?

We divide startups into two groups:

1. strategic division: startups that are proved economically. We call them “milk businesses” and it is mainly e-commerce. We usually buy the majority of the company and we control it.

2. portfolio division: technology projects with global potential. We prefer engineers with a sense of product. We own minority of the company and our main contribution is in money. We also help with the business side and we have our own team of excellent entrepreneurs that are ready to help.

There is no segment we would prefer more than the others. But lately, we tend to focus on B2B cloud solutions, visual-analytics startups and e-commerce platforms. We’re trying to avoid global consumer business.

What are the main evaluating criteria?

Product and technology

Team

Idea and vision must fit together.

The size of the market

What are the main differences between the Czech Republic and Silicon Valley?

Silicon Valley is like Disneyland. There are many opportunities but also a lot of hype and bullshit. But if you are focused on technology – it’s your place to be. It will help you with development, funding and also a potential exit.

What is the difference between a good and a bad startup teaser?

Good teaser is easy and clear. It looks good and it has only one page.

SEZNAM: Marek Novy

In 2014, Seznam invested CZK 10 million into two Czech companies and a few smaller startups. These investments weren’t publicly announced. Seznam is planning another investment until the end of 2014 to a selected company. At this moment, this collaboration is still confidential and it will be announced in spring 2015. Seznam wants to bring the experience into the Czech market. To partnered startups, it offers money, media coverage, business network, technical know-how, and consultations.

Criteria:

team

product

scalability

If you were working in your previous job with a specific technology and you are trying to sell it now – that’s not a product.  Many people don’t know what the word “product” really means and they are coming to us with a service. Seznam is interested mainly in ideas that can be connected to what the company already has (sreality, sauto…). It is also focused mainly on the Czech market.

Keep in your mind:

Our brain is not built for guessing “the right” price of a product. We need at least two options to be able to decide which one is more favourable. Vendors have to simplify the decision process through variety of offers. If you have only one product to sell, customers will look for different products so they can compare them. If you don’t have more products, you can show the price of your competition. And the customer will decide by himself. Discount is the heroine of marketing because the addiction starts right after the first experience. Long-term use of the “discount” strategy has irreversible effects because it destroys the value of the product and also the margins of the whole industry. Discount is the most expensive tool how to motivate customer. The company gives up cash. It should be used only as a “reward” for desired customer behaviour. The reward should be cheap for you but also attractive for your customer.

The “exchange” principle: ask the customer for a profitable behaviour and give him an active reward

When you give people something with a discount or for free, they do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. Imagine you bought two bottles:

• first with a discount

• second for a full price

Which one will you take with you to a party? They are both the same. Most of the people will take the first one because the discount destroyed its value and they probably want to keep “the better one” only for themselves.

The extreme example is “Deal of the day” websites. Vaclav has a friend who once bought a car wash with a big discount on one of the websites — and he said he will never pay the full price again. “Deal of the day” websites destroy the value of the product if it’s used immoderately and repeatedly.

World’s largest discount?

Which discount/price looks more favourable?

1. 20-50% discount or 50% discount? (the discount is guaranteed, at least 20%)

2. 50% from 10 EUR or 5 EUR?

3. 10% discount or 20 EUR discount from 200 EUR?

4. You get a discount of 100 CZK or you will save 100 CZK.

5. Buy one and you will get 1 for free or 50% on two products?

6. 3 days of 20% discount or 30% today, 20% tomorrow and 10% the third day. (Time limited discount makes the offer more urgent and the customer doesn’t want to lose out money.)

Rule of 100: If the price is lower than 100 – communicate the discount in percents %. If the price is higher – it is better to communicate in numbers.

10 sins when giving out discounts

discount instead of raising value

discount that is not an award for a “wanted customer behaviour”

discount is too big

discount is too difficult

discount is blanket

lacking rules where is applicable

lacking the process evaluation

offering discount where is no needed

copying the competition’s discount models

Pricing strategy that work

1. Define your “wanted customer behaviour”
2. Set the optimum amount of the discount
3. Establish rules for granting discounts

Notes:

• On the idea: ’It came extremely naturally and easily. We talked about homesale funding. And suddenly in 2008, the market was shutting down. It was extremely natural to have a solution to all these problems that came on the table. The hardest part was to make the decision. We virtually had to stand behind the idea and believe the concept. It was a mission of my team and we knew we were so many times close to the end.’
• I am not afraid of failing – it is the most thriving feeling just to accept it and say you will be fine.
• If customers don’t know what they are paying for – there is no trust. Don’t hide anything.
• Two types of strategy: 1) Samsung — all the segments, different products 2) Apple — one product (Airbank went this way).
• Key target: Customers that like to save their time, they are working mostly online, cautious for value for money, pleasant service, they care about experience. ‘We didn’t want to be private bankers for posh people.’
• Typical customer came to try the product but wasn’t ready for a divorce with the previous service. He tried it twice or three times. 70% customers that opened a new account, came to our bank driven fully by the experience they got. When they see how simple it is to work with us, it doesn’t make any sense to stay with the old bank.
• 70% of customers who get loans with us, do get loans based only on the internet banking propositions.
• Fly high: You have to build something people will laugh at. Then you are probably onto something really big. Push for this moment. You have to see it from all sides. Successful business comes from vision and obstacles. Smoke a lot. Just get high.
• Don’t trust your instincts: I’ve been so sure among so many things that I would bet my annual salary that I am right – and I was completely wrong.
• The development cycle is long. We had to develop a routine - we learnt how to quickly prototype and we tested everything to craziness. Otherwise, we would burn twice as much money.
• We were testing with real users. We engaged customers – starting with friends or volunteers. We let them touch it and they gave us feedback.
• Hypothesis is not our main thing. We do some quantitative or qualitative research before.
• On giving bonus stuff in banking: I’ve been pushing this idea for long. Some of you may remember ING. This company gave 150 000 mobile phones to people who opened an account. I was pushing my company to do something like that, but my team said no, mainly because  ‘it undermines the brand’. We do core proposition.
• Initially, we thought we will be appealing to younger users and that it would be 90% of you clientele. But we are all over the spectrum – from retired people, managers to young students. There is one connection between these groups – they are very active. These people if not happy with their current banking, they make a step to change. That’s the only cross all over them. They weren’t only bitching, but they did something about it.
• New payment methods and standards in banking are going to be pushed by big companies.
• We mixed loyalty with right people. We managed the product people to sit every week with developers and we reduced the process of testing and giving back to rebuild.
• We started the bank with something that was very non-native – building a bank where customers are happy with the value, service, quality and value propositions. That would undoubtedly make the bank profitable. But in early stages, we didn’t have a prove it will ever happen. It didn’t limit me, but we were very often on fire.
• If you go for the customer value and build something that will be appreciated – you will find a way to make revenue and succeed.
• We were dead twice. Two times shareholders told me it was enough.
• It wasn’t a startup. Cash-flow was never an issue. That was the beauty of what I did.

Airbank name: We really wanted something that “is elegantly simple, that flies, and it is light”. The whole concept of air went really well with it. We had about more than 200 variations of words at the beginning. We looked at all of them. Basically everything is registered and you can hardly find something that is not trademarked. Favourite name that wasn’t chosen: Oxybank.

On the black in the logo: Black was a design consideration. It allows us to play with it creatively. We tested plenty colours and we decided the combo of green – it is the one that works in every situation. At one point, I had to make a decision.

Future: The key mission of mine is to get to Indonesia or China. We’ve developed concept for both markets and localised the product. We can only be a minority shareholder. Problem: We want to build our bank, but we need a partner that is going to have majority.

What is the process of hiring people?
There are two levels:
People for sales that really serves to customers: experienced with a service (hotel, receptions, apparel stores (Zara), fast food…) They are natural to customer – the opposite of bank employees. We don’t do interview, but we play games. Let them interact and be creative. Watch who takes the leadership, who sits back and engages others. We look for the people that make you happy. We don’t care about technical skills. We don’t have to tea
Management: We go instinctively. We don’t accept people with negative referrals. Positive referrals are just a filter for another step. Then is interview where we do review, history, knowledge.

Factors for expansion:
a) the size of market
b) margin (is the country rich enough to generate revenue?)
c) infrastructure (has to be an online country, heavily penetrated)
d) home credit already present (double brand strategy)

Countries to expand:
a) Indonesia (all the factors are just right)
b) China ( we just have to be there)
c) Canada, South Africa, Mexico, Latin America)

Why not US?
- culture
- large structure of banks and state regulations
- we wouldn’t go for a state bank and it’s hard to build a federal bank

We are looking for another way how to enter US market but with another structure and brand (we have a team there).

We had the opportunity to spend a valuable evening with the IBM Cloud specialists in the CEE area: David Holliday, David Enc and Petr Lestina. We talked not only about the IBM cloud services but also about the potential partnership with Czech startups. “It is hard to find an offer like this. The trouble is that funding itself won’t make you successful, it only goes so far. Eventually, you need much more,” explained Petr, Head of Startup Program for CZ/SVK who also joined us for the evening and explained all the perks that come with IBM.

So what are the entry requirements for the IBM program?

• Your startup has to be less than 2 years old.

• It has to cooperate with an accelerator.

• In the Czech Republic, the eligible accelerators are: South Moravian Innovation Centre, StartupYard and Wayra CEE

“As we already mentioned, funding is not really helping you. At IBM, we can give you the technical expertise. Just raise your hand and we will help you with the procedure. The only requirements are being less than 2 years old and willing to use our cloud services. If I say it is easy, then it is really easy,” continued Petr.

“We really appreciate their great support department. IBM helped us to design the service and it works. When you usually work with many providers – you find only half of the information. We’ve chosen IBM because it is a sign of quality and it is a reliable partner. It has also a high level of compliance and SLA,” said Damian Brhel from Brand Embassy, one of the startups that is already using IBM. He also added there is nothing else he would be asking for from IBM. “We got full set up and I don’t see any space in this. The infrastructure is designed by ourselves. What we see and what is good is that you can get and install some storage that is designed for a specific purpose – and they have many of these extensions.”

“In the past we had a different provider and once we signed the contract with IBM, the question was how are we going to migrate. We had to come up with a path and strategy.”

IBM Cloud Services

1. SoftLayer

Cloud is not a commodity. And no matter what you call it, computing doesn’t come out of the sky. It comes from physical hardware inside brick and mortar facilities connected by hundreds of miles of networking cable. And no two clouds are built the same way. SoftLayer gives you the highest performing cloud infrastructure available. One platform that takes data centers around the world that are full of the widest range of cloud computing options, and then integrates and automates everything. Find more here.

Petr Lestina is an IT architect and his role covers not only understanding but also convincing customers that IBM platform is the right way to go. At this moment, he is actively working on couple of projects.

“For the startups it is absolutely crucial to start with the minimal investment what the technology which is I would say common denominator for most of the IT solutions. Cloud means no upfront investment. That’s from mine point of view the absolutely crucial prerequisite for starting any kind of business – not only in the IT.”

Benefits:

1. No upfront investment
2. Cloud provides availability of most of the services immediately, 7/24
3. The cloud environment is ready for you – not only for the infrastructure – but also for the platform and software in range of minutes or hours.

“It has many unique values from technical to sales point of view. One of the most important is the data centres. IBM is exploring this field very actively and has many centres around the world. I would like to also mention that software allows you to provide physical service. If you have a customer in Europe and later your customer goes to US or Asia, you might also need to relocate your server. The service offers the capability to relocate using the internal network without additional charges. You can simply move your workload with your customer.”

“There is no limit in terms of which software you prefer to use. You can bring the licence, open-source or commercial software, but it is your responsibility to have your correct licence.”

The future of cloud services: “Most of the cloud providers offer infrastructural part. Where we are today is the infrastructure as a service. The future of cloud is to move from the infrastructure to platform and software as a service. Most of the applications and systems we operate today on premise, will be in the future operated as a cloud-based services. The benefit is that you don’t have to buy the licenses or the infrastructure required to operate certain operations and systems. You will be able to rent it or use it for free in certain situation and it allows you to grow fast your business whatever area you operate.”

The SoftLayer Advantage in 3 minutes

2. IBM Bluemix

Bluemix is an open-standards, cloud-based platform for building, managing, and running apps of all types (PaaS) developed by IBM. It supports programming languages Java, Node.js, Ruby and can be extended to support other languages such as PHP, Python or Scala. Capabilities include mobile back-end development, and application monitoring, as well as features from ecosystem partners and open source. It was released in June 2014 and at the time of the announcement, Bluemix was one of the largest Cloud Foundry deployments in the world. Find more here or get your free trial here.

How can entrepreneurs take advantage of the cloud service?

David Holliday: “It is good timing because this week we just announced here in the Czech Republic the IBM Global Entrepreneur Cloud Startups Program. It brings together a couple of things:

1. Cloud credits: Up to $120 000 per year of infrastructure and platform as a service credits to really help lower the barriers to entry
2. We’re helping connect startups to enterprise clients as part of this initiative as well.”

“It’s a platform that consists of many building blocks – many services built on top of it. Bluemix platform is the key for the startups that can use it as a quick platform to build their applications,” says David Enc.

How can Wayra startups take advantage of this platform? 

D: “One of the things we’ve chosen to do — there are two kind of levels to the support we are putting in place. For a lot of startups, they can get access to up to $1000 per month. But because of the importance that we place on our relationship with Wayra here in the Czech Republic, the top tier of funding – so up to 10 000 dollars per month – is only available to a selected number of accelerators that we work with like Wayra. Why is that? That’s because we know the work that you are doing as Wayra is you are helping to kind of pre-qualify somebody’s companies for us and that’s incredibly valuable to IBM.”

IBM Bluemix – experience

“For a student, you can easily learn new technologies. You don’t need to care about configuration or databases. All you need to know is how to create an app and Bluemix provides you with the packages of prepared services to help you start. “

Why to go for IBM Bluemix?

• strong community and great support

• no need to care about environment, you just use it

• focus on hybrid cloud (hottest trend)

• no need to use databases in your app

• you can use mobile data as your mobile cash

• you are able to quickly command all the changes

Any advice for startups to make use of the cloud?

David Holliday: “I think today, what we are increasingly saying is that startups are “born on the cloud”. They don’t know anything else apart from developing and creating their business on the cloud. And there is a couple of reasons why they are doing that:

1. It gives them the speed to market
2. It gives them the flexibility – they don’t have to pay significant junks of money up front to invest in the infrastructure they need to provide their services

My advice: Get started, give it a go, apply for the IBM program and let’s see what happens!

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