Last week, Tehnopolis hosted Montenegrin startups, mentors, and lecturers who participated in the BootCamp, organized as part of the BoostMeUp pre-acceleration program.
From December 7 to 10, 18 startup teams, out of 38 that applied, worked tirelessly to improve and further develop their ideas, to fight for the opportunity to continue with the program.
Through four-day workshops, meetups, lectures, individual and group work with renowned mentors, the teams were given a unique opportunity to advance all aspects of their idea.
Elvis Pivic, the senior consultant for Agile management and development of digital startup organizations, as well as the founder and CEO of Agilitas, opened the first mentoring session and introduced the Bootcamp participants to the Design Sprint method, which offers a new approach to problem-solving and business idea validation in the short term, while Djuro Stojanovic, CEO of Uhura Solutions spoke about the stages of development of a startup project. Danilo Cupic, legal associate in the company Amplitudo, made sure that the teams get to know the legal framework when it comes to startups, and Marijeta Barjaktarovic Lanzardi, acting director of the Directorate for Digital Economy and Technological Development and Nevena Radovic from the Directorate for Innovation and Technological Development presented incentive measures for innovation and the Register of Innovation Activities.
Darko Ivanovic, the founder of the startup The Badger and the hub Digital Den, worked with startups on the preparation of the pitch by which the teams will present their idea to investors in the future. Djordje Celic from Business Incubator in Novi Sad, Vladimir Nedovic – AI Startup Lab Amsterdam and Nedeljko Milosavljevic from the Center for Technology Transfer of the University of Belgrade, worked with teams on two-day mentoring sessions to develop key aspects of each idea such as business model, market, IPR, technology, and team.
During the camp, the teams also visited the TechLab Technopolis industrial design laboratory, where they will have the opportunity to prototype their hardware solutions, and were introduced to a regional mentoring platform – a network of mentors from the Western Balkans.
The head of the BoostMeUp program, Aleksandar Janicic, points out that the teams exceeded all expectations: “The progress that the teams made in just four days is incredible and we are very proud of the effort and commitment they invested because they approached the camp very seriously and dedicatedly.” In addition to the teams, he praised the mentors who selflessly shared their knowledge, as well as partners who were a great support in the whole process. “We do not doubt that this BoostMeUp generation will achieve great results and that with our support they will succeed in bringing their ideas to commercialization, we hope in the global market as well,” Janicic said.
Some of the camp participants shared their impressions with us.
Dusan Kekovic, a member of the Buttmade startup team, did not hide his satisfaction: “Of all the competitions, we have applied for so far, this is the most interesting, it gathered very innovative ideas, and I think it raised the whole start-up story in Montenegro to a more transparent level.”
According to the eDent team, at BootCamp, they managed to find creative solutions to some of the problems of their product and the characteristics of the software that they need to further develop.
The TempT ° team points out that they especially enjoyed working with mentors who had a lot of good suggestions: “I think this camp is a fantastic opportunity not only for work but also for networking with other startups that have submitted their ideas,” says Milena Djukanovic.
In the coming days, six teams will be selected to be part of the BoostMeUp program, work for five months on developing ideas with mentors, receive six thousand euros, and have the opportunity to present ideas and compete for additional prizes at the final event, which will enable the best teams to present their idea to potential investors in America.
The lead partner of the BoostMeUp program is the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center Tehnopolis, and the partners are the Science and Technology Park of Montenegro, the IT company “Amplitudo” and Crnogorski Telekom. The program is co-financed by the Ministry of Economic Development of Montenegro.
