What is YTILI and what it can bring to the table?
In the beginning of spring I received an answer that I am accepted to YTILI Fellowship (http://www.gmfus.org/ytili-fellowship). I was surprised and happy since I don’t usually participate in some kind of competitions or programs. But YTILI is something more than that, so I tried my luck.
Young Transatlantic Innovative Leaders Initiative Fellowship (first launched in 2016) is the flagship program of the Young Transatlantic Innovation Leaders Initiative (YTILI) of the U.S. Department of State and is supported in its implementation by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. The idea is to bring together around 100 European entrepreneurs from about 50 countries to USA and help them build network of European and American contacts and explore USA market.
The program consist of two main parts: 3 week trip to USA and final fellow meeting in Berlin next year (2018).
This time I want to share my experience about 3 week program in USA. The trip was split in two parts — few days orientation in Washington, DC and two weeks in other USA city. Our batch of around 50 people were split between cities like — Boston, Seattle, Austin, Denver, Charlotte, Salt Lake city, Detroit, Washington, DC. I was lucky to go to Austin (Texas), which is great place for startup founders. It is ranked 1st among best suited cities for startup activity (http://fortune.com/2016/08/25/hottest-cities-for-startups/). I will share my thought and tips for Austin later in this post. Let’s keep that chronologically :)
So, once we arrived to the capital, we had an opportunity to meet majority of our batch participants. I should conclude, that I have not seen so many motivated entrepreneurs at the same time in the same space. There were professionals from totally different industries- from CEO of company, which builds cool apps for hotels and CMO of one of the largest taxi apps in Russia or co-founder of interesting software for capturing emotions of fans during ,for example, El Clásico. From the very first moment I understood that I am in the right place.
Next two days we had interesting orientation program to prepare ourselves for the second part of our trip. Networking, pitching, exploring the city and building connections with other Fellows and government representatives are keywords for these few days.
The orientation program for me was like a stretching before the run and I know that the main activities should take place in hot Texas. Few weeks before my trip I have prepared a list of people I want to meet and connect with during my stay in Austin. List included mostly restaurant chain managers, investors and industry experts. Few days before the departure I started to organize meetings and tried to find main startup events during my stay in Austin (thanks to Meetup app and Eventbrite it is easy to do).
In total I had about 50 people in my list and I was able to meet with about 20 of them. For me, main goals of the trip was to receive feedback from potential USA customers on our product and receive feedback from USA based accelerators and VC’s. I also wanted to explore local startup ecosystem, including startup events, co-working spaces, incubators and understand how they are different from what I saw in Europe. Overall, I can say that plan is achieved for about 50–70%, which is good since it was my first USA trip and lack of connections took me more time than I expected to get in touch with the right people. So far it is early to talk about some results, but the trip definitely effected my product and execution plan. Also we received an invitation to participate in New York based accelerator, but declined it since right now it is not the best time for expansion.
First week in Austin can be named “Howdy, Austin” since we together with other YTILI participants who went to Austin (in total we were 4) were actively engaging with everybody — attending meetups, visiting co-working spaces, pitch sessions, etc. It gave me a good understanding of why Austin counts as a perfect place for startups.
In the early morning you can attend Coffee Club meetings (organized every Wednesday morning) — it is short 30–40 min networking event, where people introduce themselves and are looking for partners. Unfortunately, these meetings are usually held in cafeterias outside city center, so it is hard to get there in time.
Almost every evening there is some event for startups in one of 8 Austin co-working spaces (there are maybe more, but I have not explored them). Capital Factory (https://capitalfactory.com/) are the most active co-working space I have ever seen, they also run a Accelerator and an early stage fund. You should follow their activities to not miss opportunities they provide for startups in Austin. Also worth to visit Industrious, Galvanize, WeWork and Tech Ranch (usually Tech Ranch organizes pitching events once a week).
During the weekend we had time to explore the city and I were surprised by the amount of cafeterias, restaurants, foodtracks and other places with super tasty food. You can find dozens of nice places almost on each street nearby city center. The second surprise is how fast Austin is developing, you can see many freshly build skyscrapers and more to come since construction processes are running across the city. The city has much to offer, starting from old hipster-style Paramount Theater, kayaking on the river and ending with perfect running spots nearby parks and the river.
On the second week I concentrate on TOP priorities from my CRM (actually, google doc) to achieve goals of the trip. People and connections from the first week and understanding of what happening in the city, helped me to organize couple of meeting I really wanted to. I met restaurant chain owners and managers, VC’s, Techstars manager and business angels.
If you are looking for business angels, then CTAN (http://centraltexasangelnetwork.com/) is the perfect place. They run open sessions, when you can meet several angels during 1,5 hour meetup. It is very valuable meetings since you get direct feedback on the product and strategy. Worth to mention — CTAN is the most active single-chapter angel group in North America.
You can find around 10 early stage VC funds in Austin, so there is capital for your startup. Most active ones — LiveOak, Capital Factory, ATXseed ventures, NextCoastVentures, S3 Ventures, Nextgen capital, Silverton, Austin Ventures, Mercury fund. Some of these VC’s are more than happy to meet you and provide with the feedback.
People in Austin are nice and friendly, so networking is fun and easy there, however, amount of startups and the status of the city (one of the best cities to launch your startup in USA) makes this place more and more competitive, so you need to be fast and clever to reach your goals :)
I would like to share some notes and recommendations, so future YTILI Fellows can learn something from my experience:
- Start to email and message (Linkedin) people you want to meet at least 3–4 weeks before departure. It takes more time that you think.
- Have a list of activities you want to attend and plan meetings according to these activities. In Austin there are so many events happening, that sometimes they are overlapped.
- Visit local business angels networks, they can get you intro to almost any person if they think you are good.
- Look for connections. Usually you know people, who know people, who know people… this helps to organize meetings much faster, than approaching directly.
- Use Meetup app (https://www.meetup.com/apps/) to discover events you should visit to build your network.
- Always be among first for the baggage claim :) (I had small bad accident on my arrival to DC. Before I took my luggage, someone decided that I need to look for new watches and sunglasses).
- Have fun, nothing happens immediately!
Big thanks to GMF and all YTILI team for such an opportunity!
P.S. Just take a look on a super nice house where we lived together with my Macedonian friend.
P.S.S. All above is my personal opinion only and is not representing the official position of any organization.
