The event began with coffee and introductions of how the mentoring portion of the event would be conducted. The four startup finalists participating in the Mentor Day presented for 6 minutes followed by 4 minute Q&As from the mentors and selected IBM attendees.

After a lunch break, the mentoring sessions started. The startups were paired up with mentors that best aligned with their industry and areas of interest. They then gave their revised pitches which were rated by our mentors and voted on by the public in an online vote.

The audience then had the pleasure of hearing two great presentations. Jeff Eisen, IBM Chief Architect for Watson Core Technology, discussed some of the current work being done with Watson and the possibilities on the horizon. Rudy Garza, Texas Super Angel and founder and Managing Partner of G-51 Capital, offered his insights and expertise on entrepreneurship.

We were also joined on this Mentor Day by a very promising student company, Predictable Data from the University of Texas at Austin. They help small to medium businesses turn their customer and prospect databases into powerful sales and marketing assets. It’s exciting to see students with this kind of entrepreneurial drive!

At the end of the day, through the audience online voting coupled with the mentors’ scorecards, startup finalist Beyonic was selected to advance to the interview round of an upcoming IBM SmartCamp.

Thank you to the mentors and all the startups who participated, and all our attendees!

Through this new IBM Innovation Center, IBM will help to accelerate growth in East Africa from the ground up with an ecosystem of highly skilled partners. The center will support a growing network of entrepreneurs, academics, developers, and students by providing technology, business resources and a hub where they can come together in person and virtually to work with technology and business experts from around the world.

The Nairobi IBM Innovation Center is the 41st IBM Innovation Center and the first to open in 2013. The 41 IBM Innovation Centers are spread throughout 34 countries around the world.

Beyonic Technologies moves businesses beyond cash by accelerating mobile payments in emerging markets.

Kin Valley provides consulting services and software solutions that help families and the organizations that support them.

Picture It Settled provides predictive analytics for the negotiation of litigated cases. 

Toopher provides security that solves the password problem using the location awareness of your smartphone.

In addition to private mentoring sessions in the first half of the day, the day’s latter half will be open to the public. The public session will consist of revised business pitches from each of the five startups, as well as presentations by venture capitalist Rudy Garza and IBM Watson Architect Jeff Eiesen. Register for the public session here.

Rudy Garza is founder and managing general partner of G-51, and focuses on the development of all portfolio companies, syndication partnerships and deal flow. Through mentoring and serving on portfolio boards, he is instrumental in driving success through defining and guiding the implementation of well-grounded business and marketing strategies. Rudy is an expert at finding and defining business and revenue models, market shaping services, business growth strategies and talent sourcing. Rudy has served as an investor and board member for over 20 companies, selling several to publicly traded firms including SAP, ADP, Prudential, and Cisco Systems among others. He is also an active leader in the venture community, as a longtime member of the NVCA and the Texas Venture Capital Association. You can follow him on Twitter at @TexasSuperAngel.

Jeff Eisen is a Core Chief Architect for Watson and Distinguished Engineer at IBM. He has been with IBM for 18 years and is leading the effort to build a platform to be used for the commercialization of Watson, starting with Healthcare and Financial Services. Prior to joining the Watson team, Jeff was the Chief Architect of Lotus Notes. Jeff holds a Masters Degree from M.I.T. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Construqtive - mobile, voice activated reporting application
CrowdIPR – see how patents, people and organizations are connected, and then sort and visualize the data
3DMetrics - measuring 3D realities “virtually” with sophisticated software methods based on proprietary algorithms
BI Analytics – business intelligence, data warehousing and performance management solutions
Think Share Create - global community of imaginative people who share and develop ideas for new businesses and social enterprises
Liquid Media - interactive design to motion graphics to rich media
AquamaticX – automation and control systems integration and development of interoperable open standards
Decisal - airline planning and scheduling products and solutions
MMVSense – employee engagement via health & wellbeing programmes using sensor technology
Whatsnotinstalled - accurate discovery and system configuration detail software usage and software licensing monitor prepre for software license audits with accurate information

One of the startup participants at the Mentor Day remarked, “IBM putting on an event like Friday’s is extremely valuable for a start up like ours; it creates the environment to network, share challenges and learn from other entrepreneurs and importantly without requiring a registration fee.”

Stay tuned to this blog as we follow more Mentor Days! Next stops: Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; and Tel Aviv, Israel.

CloudPrime - Enables consumers to securely transfer data between applications and devices
Connectem, Inc - Provides relief to communication companies w/unprecedented growth for 1/10^th the cost
FireWhat, Inc - Enables real-time fire emergency crowd sourced info to become syndicated to National Media sources
OnFarm Systems - Delivers insight and understanding of critical agriculture data to make better informed decisions
referralMD - Streamlines communication process between primary care and specialist providers

Connectem, Inc and OnFarm Sytsems were selected as the two companies qualifying for an interview for the SmartCamp Silicon Valley Regional event.

FireWhat, Inc received an Honorable Mention for the importance of their solution in their space. They also received the most votes from the public audience for the most promising company.

The event was valuable to the participating startups and mentors alike. ”I really liked the fact that some of these discussions are now quickly turning into real engagements,” said Alex Fedosseev, CEO and Founder of 1World Online. Alan Chiu, Principal of Xseed Capital and a judge for the Mentor Day said, ”There were some very good companies here today, and I’m very interested in talking further with a couple of them as a potential investor.”

Overall, the day seems to have been a success. “I enjoyed meeting all the other finalists, our new mentor, and various investor, customer, and employee contacts,” said Mari Tangredi, Co-Founder and COO of CloudPrime. “I thought the event was a great mix of companies all trying to innovate along side our partner IBM.”   

Six stellar startups participated in the Mentor Day event:

ConnectedVisits empowers consumers to access convenient and affordable healthcare.
Dreamech, Inc provides platform to connect consumers and their cars to service experts.
Green Status Pro enables efficient management of adherence to standards and regulations.
Head-2-Head Technologies, Inc provides dynamic and granular consumer intelligence.
Mindful Scientific builds diagnostic, monitoring & management solutions for brain health.
Patient Engagement Systems provide platform for physician-patient engagement.

The startups first presented their business pitches in the morning and then again later on in the day after intense mentoring sessions, and the improvement was visible. Robert DeNoble, COO at iHASMD and one of the day’s mentors said, “The value of the mentoring sessions provided immediate results as shown in the significantly improved quality of the company presentations during the afternoon session.”

At the end of the day Mindful Scientific and Patient Engagement Systems were selected as the two companies qualifying for an interview for the SmartCamp Silicon Valley Regional competition.

Cook’n Smile - Provide social platform for innovation on food and sustainable development
E-Maintenance – Provide platform for making more cost-effective maintenance decisions
Kvittar - Transforming paper receipts into a digital form to help you organize
Oricane - A big data startup providing faster solutions that use a fraction of the hardware
Pinstriped – Digital agency with creative solutions for better client performance
TimeZynk - Provides cloud platform for personnel planning, communication & reporting

An excellent team of mentors was also present to give the startups advice on how to improve their business pitches and continue to grow their company. The mentors had a range of expertise in business and technical development and entrepreneurship. 

Not only did the day allow the entrepreneurs to learn from experts, but also from each other. One of the startup participants, Ingemar Petterson, founder of Kvittar, commented, “It has been exciting to work across a network of different Global Entrepreneur members. We have been able to talk about some of the issues that we are dealing with, with experts but also fellow entrepreneurs. The opportunity to bounce off ideas and discuss solutions is something I would not have been without.”

At the end of the day two participants, Kvittar and TimeZynk, were selected to go to the interview stage for an upcoming SmartCamp. Congratulations to those two startups and a big thank you to all who participated!

To lead the startups in the right direction was an incredible mentor team with many years of experience and expertise in business development, technical development and entrepreneurship. Five Global Entrepreneur member companies showcased their solutions in retail and e-commerce, banking security, and healthcare. The ten handpicked mentors came from across academia, industry and the venture capital community in the Nordics along with IBM technical and business leaders.

The startups all gave their business pitches and then underwent intense mentoring sessions in preparation for the final presentations later in the day. One of the startup participants, Kim Bleshøy Nielsen, CEO of Intertisement, said, “The mentoring prepared me for the second presentation and it is very helpful to learn how ‘people from the outside’ interpret your solution and question your way of doing things.”  Ambjørn Christophani, Founder of Pamci, said, “The mentoring has made a huge difference in the development of our business. The mentors recommended us to focus on a new specific market, which we immediately took to heart.” 

It seems as though all the startups really did take the mentors’ advice to heart. One mentor remarked, “the progression throughout the day has been incredible. [It's] a real pleasure to see the [Global Entrepreneur] members’ dedication and the hard work to adapt to input from us, and then improve their presentations for the second round.”

At the close of the event, two startup participants were named winners of the day: Echo IT and Zerved.  These two companies will automatically go to the interview stage of an upcoming SmartCamp event.

Congratulations to these two promising startups, and thank you to the mentors and all those who attended!

The startups will receive intense mentoring from business development experts, tech gurus, investors, and serial entrenpreneurs in the morning session, and later on the public event festivities will start at 6:30 pm. You can register for the public session here.

Connectem Inc.  is a provider of an IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) cloud computing solution for communications companies. Connectem has developed the first packet core platform designed to run in the cloud. The packet core is the computer that processes mobile data traffic moving between mobile handsets, dongles and the internet. This Cloud based packet core from Connectem, as opposed to traditional packet core, can be delivered to carriers for 1/10th the cost.

CloudPrime provides a cloud-based messaging solution as a service which enables customers to securely transfer data between applications and devices. Within minutes, you can connect application interfaces and begin transmitting messages securely without the use of VPNs or needing to modify your network / firewall.

FireWhat Inc now owns Wildlandfire.com, the largest wildfire notification and news media site in the world. The solution provides real time information in a digital format, and will reduce the lag time in notifying the public of critical fire updates in a rapidly changing environment.

OnFarm delivers insight and understanding of critical agriculture data to growers, field staff, and consultants. Growers access OnFarm through an intelligent go anywhere dashboard empowering their entire organization to make better more informed decisions resulting in immediate impact on farm productivity and profitability.

ReferralMD streamlines the communication process between primary care and specialist providers. They offer care providers an affordable way to exchange, manage, and track referrals, authorizations, and progress updates while providing performance measuring tools to track trends, leakage, and participation.