Meetings and Visits to Leading Companies
Portuguese Entrepreneurs Visit Silicon Valley
On November 1, 2015, thirteen entrepreneurs from Portugal started their challenging journey to Silicon Valley, in the scope of the inRes program. The one-week visit will expose the teams to a highly dense environment of world-leading research groups, and market and industry specialists, in a variety of high-tech areas. The opportunity is given by the CMU Portugal Program, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.
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left to right: Ricardo Soares (addvolt), Rodrigo Pires (addvolt), Frederico Carpinteiro (Adapttech), Pedro Silva (Sceelix), Pedro Santa (Playsktech), Pedro Castro Henriques (Scraim), Luís Lucas Pereira (Playsktech), Francisco de Andrade (Sceelix), Mario Espinoza (Adapttech), David Sobrinho (Xhockware), João Neiva (Xhockware), Gonçalo Mendes (Followprice), César Duarte (Scraim). |
While in Silicon Valley, the 13 entrepreneurs will visit the Carnegie Mellon University-Silicon Valley campus, and will make customer, partner and investor pitches related to their project. The pitches will be made to various experts in the field and the experts will provide feedback to assist in the future development of the companies. Additionally, the Portuguese companies will have individual meetings according with their interests. The main agenda includes visits to Facebook, Twitter, Ricoh Innovations, Uber, Vibrado, and Ford Motor Company, among others.
For eight of the young entrepreneurs, their visit started on September 21, 2015 in Pittsburgh, PA at the main campus of CMU under the inRes initiative. The projects Adapttech, Playsktech, Sceelix, and Scraim have participated in multiple activities including LaunchCMU (having their own booths); the 1st Maker Fair in Pittsburgh (Playsktech team has had its own booth); led a workshop on Project Olympus on an innovative software management platform (Scraim team); led two workshops at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) and at the Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) about a pioneering platform to create scenarios in 3D (Sceelix team); talked with hospital administrators, to physiatrists in Pittsburgh, but also in Maryland (Adapttech team); and attended the Tech 50 Award event. In global, each team had more than 50 meetings.
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The other group composed by the teams – Addvolt, Followprice, Xhockware -, participated on the 2014 edition of inRes. These teams have their projects at a more mature stage of business development, with pilots running, and with the intent of becoming international players on its areas. While in Pittsburgh, last year, the teams magnified their network and made customer development research, that allowed them to introduce significant changes on the way they looked to their project, and even on the way of doing business.
The 13 entrepreneurs are participating on inRes, a very early stage acceleration program for Portuguese entrepreneurs in the area of ICT, promoted by the CMU Portugal Program. inRes provides a training period in Portugal, followed by a seven-week structured immersion period in Pittsburgh, in the U.S., anchored at CMU. The participating teams benefit from the exposure to a highly dense environment of world-leading research groups, and market and industry specialists, in a variety of high-tech areas.
October 2015
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inRes 2015
Launched in 2014 by the CMU Portugal Program, funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese funding agency), inRes is a very early stage acceleration program for Portuguese entrepreneurial teams working in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that push them past their comfort zones, and requires them to work at a steep pace, cope with high levels of uncertainty, and constantly reach out for contacts to further build and validate their business projects. inRes is based on the Lean LaunchPad method. inRes provides a training period in Portugal, followed by a seven-week structured immersion period in Pittsburgh, in the U.S., anchored at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). inRes is organized bu the CMU Portugal Program, in cooperation with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Caixa Capital, Pittsburgh Regional Alliance (PRA), UTEN Portugal, and INESC TEC. inres@cmuportugal.org
