QUTechnopark at Startup İstanbul
Last week a team from QU Technopark has participated in Startup Istanbul Conference and got an amazing tour in almost new Turkish ecosystem.
On 30th of September there has been the most crowded and leading startup conference in Eurasia which is known as Startup Istanbul. The conference is famous with its rich content of startup ideas coming from all over the world. Collecting the most successful startups, bringing them in front of highly-experienced juries to be judged and get trained to the final day was the main stream of the conference. In the first two days of 28th and 29th of September startups were given a chance to pitch in front of different juries that are experienced in their related fields for lots of years.
During these two days a more important part of the day was huge amount of time taken for networking. As an observer, I myself would like to point out the importance of networking and mentorship from this amazing experience. The importance of networking is hidden in its being very knowledge, practice and experience oriented. Everyone was sharing his/her own story with a bunch of guys which were giving their own comments and when you add up all these talks you end up having the most out of day! I personally think this is the true experience we need to bring to our newly-built ecosystem. Most of the guys in our system take the importance of networking and especially mentorship for granted. But what I saw in most of the pitches some of the quite successful startups wanted not Money but Mentorship!
In summary Startup Istanbul and other its kind of tech-conferences are highly recommended to the local startups to participate to get insight about the other living ecosystems. Only by transferring the knowledge and sharing the experience, a successful ecosystem can be built and sustained!