As we already revealed in our previous post, this year’s Blockchers contest, the Blockathon Week took place from 15-19th June. The best 12 groups chosen by the jury advanced to the implementation phase which was opened on 25th June.

We are happy to announce that some really outstanding startups were chosen this year again,  and we are looking forward to a very exciting five months. We are all working tirelessly in our Blockchers consortium to make sure that all groups will do their best and we are aiming to help them succeed.

How is this going to be achieved? Let’s see what services our startups have been offered so far:

First step: coaching session for the selected 18 teams:

In the period of preparing for the pitch contest (between 03. and 15. June 2020.), all the 18 startups took part in an individual coaching session where they received personalized advice from professionals on how to perfect their pitches.

In this program, we invited four professionals with great experience in the fields of  business development and startup support  to coach the groups:

Kornél Kalocsai is the president of the Blockchain Hungary Association, a blockchain evangelist and startupper. He managed several Hungarian and international projects, including a large number of R&D and infrastructure development projects. In the Blockchers project, during the previous call for proposals, he was a member of the pitch competition jury.

Adèle Yaroulina has a 10 years experiences in business development, sales, strategic partnerships and project management within private & public sectors. She has acquired significant knowledge of digital innovation and is fascinated by the impact of new technologies on business activities. She is convinced that a cohesive European startup ecosystem is the key to empowerment and scaling up.

Nikoletta Csanyi and Emőke Lőrincz: Nikoletta started her career managing large scale transformation projects in investment banking, followed by a boutique consulting firm, and eventually moving onto her independent consulting practice. Equipped with experience from large to entrepreneurial organizational structures, she means business. She believes both in quantitative & qualitative results. With a strong business background, she brings organization, efficiency and process to the table while her creative design mindset and experience with branding & social media allows her to help businesses create meaningful and impactful narratives to their products & services. She believes that businesses have to stand out but also stand for something.

In recent years she consulted luxury lifestyle brands but she also specializes in working with blockchain startups such as Atomyze, Crypto Valley Association, Crypto World Zug, etc. Emoke Lorincz: Following various roles and functions in corporate finance, Emi’s professional background has ranged from aircraft financing to commodity trading. Since 2017 her focus has been directed towards the ever evolving world of start-ups in digital and crypto assets. Bringing a wealth of work experience from the traditional markets and the field of cryptocurrencies, she enjoys combining these two worlds to help companies benefit from both. Dedicated to increasing the usage of cryptocurrencies, Emi is engaged in rolling-out the enterprise-grade solution of the tech company Ledger while serving on the board of the the Crypto Valley Association and on the council of the Bancor Foundation.

Ivan Ivanka is the founder and CEO of Ivanka Group, a holding firm that manages companies aimed at helping executives of startups and SMEs increase their revenues by up to 800%.

He is a business management consultant, innovation speaker, and startup advocate and his clients include: Forbes 30 under 30 CEOs; Fortune 500 C-level executives; TED and TEDx speakers; a former unit director of the European Union; investments managers and directors in CEE VC firms. Ivan has kickstarted the now leading private innovation hotspot in Budapest as a business developer. He has been also a featured mentor, coach, and jury member in many European competitions and hackathons. Along with his ecosystem building activities, he has also personally invested in several startups the past years that have market-changing potential mainly in the fields of fintech, blockchain, AI, martech, proptech.

Our groups were coached by these experts to get ready for our June Blockathon Week.

Second step: mentoring session for the selected 12 teams:

The 12 groups advancing on Blockathon are facing an even greater challenge in the next 5 months since the next phase is all about implementation. We will be providing all the help for this too of course: 6 groups will be mentored by Zabala Innovation Consulting and the other 6 startups by Innomine Group. The closing event and final contest  will take place in mid December 2020.

ZABALA and Innomine will be scheduling regular,  bi-weekly coaching sessions in order  to track everyone’s progress. The groups will be able to discuss their problems and difficulties which we are dedicated to help solving.

Other very useful services that the 12 groups are offered:
  • Alastria offers continuously several possibilites to attend international events in the startup world, like Start up OLÉ on the 9-11th September 2020 in Spain; and they are organizing match-makings with different investors with the aim to get international visibility for all the teams.
  • Frankfurt School of Business Blockchain Center offers very professional and useful on-line courses in the field of Blockchain/DLT in different levels with the aim to provide knowledge and support for the teams in the technical side.

The work has just begun but we are certain that with our help all of you will be able to reach your goals and we will be able to mentor innovative projects from all phases from ideas to reality!