METRO Xcel (Accelerator) alumni, tsenso test their solution with METRO
tsenso tests their solution in METRO CC in Dussledorf
METRO Accelerator for Retail powered by Techstars will be traveling across Europe during February in order to meet disruptive retail startups. While we will travel to these amazing destinations and coworking spaces, with these blogs I would like to share with you our #CityInADay tour.
8:30 am – Waking up in the bustling center of Prague, I decide to walk to the Node5 offices where we are going to meet the startups today. It’s the first time in Prague for many of us from the team, and the city is beautiful and welcoming.
10:30 am – After a good 45 minutes walk, I arrived at the office where I was warmly weclomed by the team. Boris Minialai, Global Director Retail Franchise at METRO AG joined me a few minutes after. We got a little tour of Node5. The place is huge and quite well put together.
Node5 was founded in 2010 by Lukas Hudecek. It all started with a weekend hackathon. In 2011 they launched an in-house accelerator – the Startup Yard Accelerator operated by Cedric Maloux and his team. Victim of its success, they had to find a place where they could actually host the startups.
And that’s how in 2012, they opened the actual Node5 in Prague 5 area. Today, the place counts 130 active members and can host up to 200 people for events.
11:45 am –Alexander Hafner, our Managing director from Techstars and Sebastian Campos Groth our Program manager arrived at the venue, from Berlin. And that we had little time to quickly get ready for the office hours.
Office hours are one-to-one meeting with Alexander Hafner, our Managing director from Techstars and Sebastian Campos Groth, our Program manager. It is a great opportunity to pitch your startup to professionals and to get to know more about our program, and how you can benefit from it.
If you are interested in participating in Office hours or meetups, find your city and register here.
3:30 pm – We met some very interesting startups today. It was now time to prepare for the last webinar. Since the launch of our Retail Program, Alexander and Sebastian have been conducting deeply insightful webinars to talk about the program. They have been a big success so far and today is the last one.
5:00 pm – The last webinar began. Great intro to the webinar thanks to our little friend from the day: our Star wars robot by Sphero. Sphero was part of Disney Accelerator by Techstars. Today, this connected toy is sold in more than 40 countries in the world.
6:00 pm – The webinar concluded, and we had about 40 online participants. Great turnout! It was now time to go back to the old city center where the restaurant is.
7:30 pm – Arrived at the restaurant scene. We have a big table with 18 people tonight. It’s great to see the engagement of the startup community in Prague.
It is difficult to meet and have a meanigful conversation with everyone but each of the brief chats was thrilling. We are happy to meet Martin Andrle who is organizing the Startup Weekend taking place in Prague after tomorrow. Alexander and Sebastian will be coming back to Prague for the weekend in order to coach the startups that are part of the weekend.
Prague definitely had a fast-moving startup community and we are very glad that we met so many people there. Thanks to all of you for joining us, we had a great time! Follow all the news about our program on Twitter!