On 19-20 April, Budapest hosted the 2018 Startup Safary which attracted more than 3,000 participants. Not only Startups, tech companies, VCs, accelerators, incubators, but also professionals looking for new opportunities and students enthusiastic about entrepreneurship attended this exhibition.
The participants could join 311 programs organized around the city. This was a great opportunity to discover the co-working spaces, labs, startup offices in Budapest and to learn more about the latest trends, aspects to consider before starting a startup and how to deal with the workload.
Europa Media attended the Safary both days to promote its H2020 START2ACT project. We delivered a presentation, giving tips on how easily young SMEs and startups could reduce costs and increase energy efficiency through behavioural change measures in their offices. Participants received our energy saving stickers and functional thermometers, which come in handy in terms of changing behaviour, adapting temperatures and saving on energy. This session was the first of a series on energy conscious mentoring for startups, organized within the START2ACT project.
Moreover, this edition of Startup Safary was organised in Budapest, a growing startup hub. Located in Central and Eastern Europe, this startup event is of particular interest to Europa Media as the coordinator of the MY-GATEWAY project and our partners.
MY-GATEWAY, an EU-funded project under Horizon 2020, is a Startup Europe initiative which aims to strengthen the capacities of high-tech startups and innovative SMEs in the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovenia, and more generally in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, to become better connected, gain higher market exposure and to facilitate access to funding opportunities and talent. This year, MY-GATEWAY team attended the event as participants; however, for the next edition, MY-GATEWAY plans to actively contribute to Startup Safary by showcasing its results on how the CEE ecosystems can become strong contenders to their western counterparts.
Startup Safary Budapest was also the first startup event that two of our colleagues attended. Iasmina and Caroline tell us more about their experience.
Iasmina:
“This year’s Startup
Safary edition left me with numerous useful tips and new connections, all while having a personalized experience around Budapest. Given the customized schedule, I could choose the conferences relevant to both my professional and personal development.
My main takeaways from this edition:
- When travelling, do not forget the “human contact” and how beneficial connecting with locals could be: you might get more in return than what you paid for.
- Networking: in a room full of strangers, imagine everybody is your friend and let prejudices go away!
- If you want to create new, authentic, long-lasting connections, you shall see networking as creating relationships, bearing in mind that it is based on value-sharing and giving.”
Caroline:
“Startup Safary was an engaging experience; the event covered a broad range of topics, the speakers and their different ways of transmitting the information such as team works, oral exercises, and interactive presentations, were stimulating. Travelling around the city to attend the different conferences was challenging, however, it gave me the opportunity to discover several co-working spaces. Overall, the startup community was as I pictured it, international, cosmopolitan, curious and open-minded.”
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