 Good morning everybody! I see here a lot of startup founders and you've been to all these booths where the corporates are looking forward to work with you, don't you? So now it's the time to think your point of view. How to approach the companies, what to expect and what to ask from them. We have here an experienced startup entrepreneur Anna Lukasova from NIRUS who is currently in accelerator in Berlin. The technology is image recognition technology and the company is growing fast. They have requests now tens of thousands per day so they have been able to do it what all of you want to do and then we have Warwick Hill from Microsoft Berlin reactor and he's running now the Microsoft new reactor co-working space for the later stage companies and we will hear a little bit about like what can happen after the acceleration. So the corporate acceleration is booming, don't you? Don't you see it here as well? Three years ago we didn't have these companies here but they are looking for the fresh ideas and technologies what they can find from their own R&D departments fast enough so they need you. So you are not for them only, you are for each other that you can do the win-win. And now my question to Anna is that you've been now in different phases of your company and how do you see that accelerators can actually serve the company? Yeah, so it depends on the stage of your company but I would definitely, thank you, are you hear me now? Yeah, now it tickets me. So it depends on the state of your company and it depends of you know what kind of human being I use so some people just don't like accelerators but I would definitely have a closer look into it because I was at the beginning of NIRIS I was quite not very clear my opinion about accelerators was not very clear but I'm very happy now that Microsoft approached us and that we are now into it because I see all the advantage and that's a later stage at Accelerator but I recognize that there are very early stage accelerators as well like Pluck-a-Play and Techstars and I would really recommend to have a closer look into it because it's a long term business relationship or it can be if you like to and it can be really really meaningful so it can be really helpful. So basically the early phase accelerators serve new entrepreneurs quite well because they give this kind of like a basic information about how to run the business and this kind of like a training and coaching so if you don't have a previous experience I think you should go for that don't you think? Yeah and even if you do so I was at Boston Consulting for nine years so you would say I was best in presenting but presenting in front of a board is a fully different staff to presenting your company in just three minutes into pitching so it was really helpful for me to do their pitching workshops as well and you know at some some workshops there so sometimes it's really just helpful to try it out and another point of that is like the community of all the founders it's really energizing yourself so you know you are a group of a badge and you feel like a family and you're energizing yourself so it's really a nice feeling it's a slush feeling like what we feel here. Yeah great good then now you enter to this Microsoft accelerator in Berlin and in their page they say that they give you the access to the partners and customers and also help with the technology what was your kind of like target for this autumn what do you want to accomplish from your business wise from your with your company? Yeah so the Microsoft accelerator in Berlin is a later stage accelerator and what we do is B2B software sales to enterprise and that's quite a tricky stuff so you know sales cycles are like 6 to 12 months if it goes well sometimes it's even longer so it's tricky stuff so we wanted to have a partner who is doing exactly that who is doing B2B software sales and Microsoft is doing exactly that all of our customers all of them are Microsoft customers as well so it's a great help for us to just exchange with the key accountant of Microsoft to discuss with them pricing offers how to deal with debt and debt and you know how to like very specific question about how much discount can I give to a company like Daimler if I wanted them to name my name to name like staff powered by NIRS so how much discount is it worth so very specific question which I can discuss with them so you have kind of like received this kind of a support from the accelerator and through that kind of like core business but did you know it beforehand when you went to the interview from the accelerator did you ask about the specific customers or this specific technology challenges you had so I would have prepared even better so I was I was a little bit prepared and I asked questions like about very generic questions about sales but I would what I would have done is really ask the team about let's having a lunch together and I would go through you know my list of top 20 leads and discuss with them so you do you know the key account for Lufthansa at Microsoft and can you really connect me with them guy you know with the guys and if they react like oh yeah yeah I know some guy but yeah we sure we sure can do then you know okay it's it's maybe not happened but if they have a very specific information they can tell you I can connect you with him tomorrow if you want even before you enter the accelerator then you know those are the right guys okay so more concrete questions about your specific needs how about the technology part they also promised support with you with the technology how that how did you test that ideology before entering yeah we've been in the google program before so our technology was already quite quite advanced when we entered the Microsoft accelerator so I would say the biggest part of that was done by google already because it was like yeah it was the early stage part of our company and it was really helpful to discuss the scalability with guys like Google and now we are more secure so we are discussing a very specific machine learning parts with the machine learning guys of Microsoft and some you know parts like how to run Kubernetes on Google on Microsoft Azure and stuff like that so now we have a very very specific questions and okay now I will give you some some some voice for you too because this is I think an interesting part what I've seen in my background also in acceleration and close work with the companies is that how do you then motivate and get these people interested in becoming like ambassadors or really partnering with the companies into acceleration because they are tiny small compared to the big business of the Microsoft so that how do you actually get these people to to come together so we have across about the nine accelerators that we've got around the world and the reactor spaces we have a partnership program called COSEL so the companies that come through and graduate and sit in the alumni program put forward on a series of innovation days and client access days through the COSEL motion so once you've gone through our program you've graduated you've migrated on to our technology and you've started to consume our products you go through certain barriers of consumption and once you go through those barriers you gain more access to more clients and partners so what we do in the London program is we take later stage companies that have a unique perspective on on particular market and we broaden their perspectives by giving them a channel opportunity so most of them come in with direct sales right that's one of their mantras we build a channel partnership model with them as well so that we can take them to 2200 channel partners in the UK and we can then COSEL globally with them so when a Microsoft salesman goes in and talks about Microsoft products they can also talk about you know the company's products as well and it's it's driving consumption of both products that is the key to the program okay so you have a kind of like an upgraded version of the acceleration because the acceleration program is very short typically three months only so you can only kind of like start to start to build the partnership and start to build the business relationship what you mentioned here as well so but kind of like in real world I would call you would choose your business partner so what's what's your advice like before you commit to an accelerator that how to make sure that this is the right partner or right accelerator I want to wear and these are the right people I want to work with yes I would ask us have three questions there the first one would be what's the long-term strategy of the company so you know you do they really have a professional process like just described or is it just a little bit of marketing and innovation because they think they need to do it the second one would be does your product fit today product portfolio and today's strategy because if it fits really well then it it turns out to be like that but if it doesn't fit so well then you know there is no gain for both parties and the third would be to can you do you like the accelerator team and can you get along with them because that's your entry point to the entire company so I would really go out with them I would ask them to to lunch to go out to lunch with them and then just feel the energy and feel whether you get along with them because if this doesn't happen it doesn't make sense for you and then how about your expectation kind of like after the acceleration I think reactor is is I think getting there understanding that it's only beginning of the route but is this what you would expect also as a as a we see we see definitely as a long-term relationship and we consume Azure as hell because we do computer vision so you need a lot of a lot of cloud so we're happy to to maybe being able to enter the one commercial partner program which is the follow-on program earlier than expected and that's exactly what happens there so I'm already now in contact with the key accountants and like you know for all the leads and all the companies all the all the customers I have already and this really very actively discussing with them how we can build our joint business inside that company and that's amazing it's really helpful good yeah great so do you think this is this is what you have been doing so you know your strategy for the next season so you know which companies have the set the strategy where your ideas meet and then you you will be there when the founders approach and you are able to kind of like and you're willing to build the business relationship with the people as well so I think I think the the the part kind of like I think it was very interesting to hear the part where you mentioned about this kind of what happens after the acceleration and I hope we will see similar ideas coming through next year here as well from the other companies as well it it needs to you know an accelerator is is only as good as the legacy that it leaves so if you're in a program for four and a half months what's the legacy if you get business development activity repeatedly through that program great but you know as you drop into our program is a three-year alumni program so every couple of months you get the opportunity to see more clients you get more interact interactivity with the team and you know at the end of the day we're a zero equity program so we're only as good as the business connections that we make for the companies that we support so you've got to be very very particular in how you pick your accelerator and what the benefits the long-term benefits of that will be not just the short term there's a couple of questions from the audience as well and I think we've answered most of the most of the questions here but I think the I think the biggest kind of like the conceptual thing here is that how to make a win win situation I think it requires the alignment and also I think a powerful founders who are kind of like a proud of what they do and kind of like require the answers from the corporations and also the corporations need to have their strategy kind of like aligned with the acceleration yeah yeah exactly so how about then the kind of like what would you think that if if if you would like to innovate with the corporate after the acceleration program you you are speaking a lot about like going to the market maybe through and I'm together sorry with the Microsoft which is which is good I like selling because it's the core but do you see that there's also potential for some co-creation or innovation together with this kind of a partner in the future as well yeah like I mean I founded together with my brother and I'm the CEO of the company and he's the CTO so if he would sit here he would probably talk a lot more about that part but here I think there there are possibilities as well sure so I mean we open to everything and as a startup you need to open yourself and you need to collaborate with other bigger companies and with bigger market players if you want to grow yeah okay thank thank you Anna and thank you Yana thank you for a week thank you so much let's give a big hand for our guests