Startup Scaleup is a 6-month soft-acceleration programme offering entrepreneurs interested in Internet-of-Things (IoT) the practical knowledge and advice needed to build a successful IoT startup. For this, Open Coffee Club Vilnius, together with partners from London (F6s), Dublin (Ryan Academy), Zoetermeer (Crosspring Lab), Madrid (BluSpecs) and Cartagena (Cloud Incubator Hub) has launched partnerships with leaders in IoT & hardware market – corporates and incubators around the World to mentor accelerator’s startups.

Let’s have a quick look at the mentors & Ask-me-anything session participants from the first batch of Startup Scaleup accelerator who will join the Vilnius batch of this year.

Philip Moynagh, Vice President, Internet of Things Group at Intel has agreed to do the first AMA for Startup Scaleup. Philip Moynagh is VP of Internet of Things Group (IOTG) and General Manager of Intel's Quark Solutions Division. Philip's organisation identifies transformation opportunities, translates them into silicon and software architectures and builds real world solutions. Prior to this role, Philip managed multi-Billion-Euro silicon chip fabrication factories in Ireland and the US. 

Dan Marom, co-author of a pioneering book on crowdfunding – “The Crowdfunding Revolution” was the second speaker among series of Ask-me-anything sessions. Since release of the book, Dan has been fortunate to speak passionately about crowdfunding around the globe, teach students, consult entrepreneurs, corporations and policy makers, and hold several board and advisory board memberships. He is advising international organizations such as the World Bank, the European Commission and many other corporates & ventures that are operating in the crowdfunding field. To these roles, Dan brings insights developed through rigorous analysis of data as part of his research work.

One of the keynote speech was given by Vinton G. Cerf – vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He contributes to global policy development and continued spread of the Internet. Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. He has served in executive positions at MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and on the faculty of Stanford University.

Jerry Yang a General Partner of the Hardware Club, used his 15 years experience of shipping hardware products to tell how to make hardware management simpler. If you want to manage hardware products to completion – and scalability – this session was the one you could not miss. Hardware Club invests in the greatest early-stage hardware startups around the world in pre-seed and seed stages. In addition to capital investments, they also bring to our entrepreneurs lots of resources in manufacturing and retailers/distribution. 

Employees are one of the most important assets of a company. Start-ups and fast-growing companies have a lot of trouble attracting and keeping talent – states Don Tobias Jol, Tax Director at Deloitte in Amsterdam. Don spoke about how to compensate your employees. One of the specialities of Don is helping companies setting up employee stock ownership/option plans (ESOP). This compensation tool decreases the monthly salaries but increases employees’ involvement. ESOP’s are widely used in the US in the tech startup scene and are being used more and more in the EU tech startup scene. 

Startup Scaleup also has Grainne Murphy from Analog Devices, George Redpath, Technical Director at IoT Tech & Sensurity, and John O'Connell,  Managing Director at CW Applied Technology lined up for Ask-me-anything sessions in the nearing weeks.

Want to get outreach to Google, Intel and meet many more? Apply here before May 13th.