Your business on speed

After seven years in the Internet marketing business, Vít Horký saw a discrepancy between the mass-communications strategy of most large corporations and the personal dialogue sought by their customers online. In the hopes of filling this gap, Horký and two of his partners came up with the idea for Brand Embassy, a business that would train "brand ambassadors" to engage with customers on the Internet.

But a good idea only gets one so far, and without investment, advising and discipline, many startup companies never make it past the planning phase. Enter Startup Yard, a three-month Czech business acceleration program working with its first round of hungry young entrepreneurs, including the newly launched Brand Embassy.

Along with seven other novel tech-based business concepts ranging from social networking sites to automated optician services, Brand Embassy is hunkering down until the end of November to polish its business model and find its market with the help of free office space, daily mentoring from some of the biggest names in the local business community, opportunities to network with potential investors and the option of 6,000 euros in startup capital. In exchange, Startup Yard becomes part owner in the projects chosen, taking on a 5 percent to 10 percent stake in the companies.

A self-described "failure expert," Startup Yard co-founder Lukáš Hudeček and his partner Petr Ocásek are serial entrepreneurs, having already founded several companies themselves, many of which focused on startup business support.

"I've always been an entrepreneur," Hudeček said. "With Startup Yard, I found myself in a position where I can start things again and again, and it's like a drug - it's an adrenaline thing."

A former senior engineer at Skype, Hudeček said the risk of failure for tech startups is high, but entrepreneurs have to learn from their mistakes, one of the skills he hopes he and his team of mentors can pass along to the participants in the business accelerator over the next few months.

"I had several businesses, from online sales to serious manufacturing, and during that time, I learned to recognize which steps lead straight to hell, but also how not to collapse completely when you're on that path," Hudeček said.

In addition to lessons on how to fail successfully, mentors with extensive backgrounds in online media, financing and marketing, among other fields, help the startups refine their business plans with the advantage of the mentors' experience. Mentors include Ivan Pilný, former general manager of Microsoft Czech Republic; Martin Kasa, co-founder of the successful online shop Kasa.cz; and David Beška, former new media director at Sanoma Media.

Beška said one of the biggest hurdles new businesses in the CEE region face is the compulsion to copy "Western ideas" that don't bring anything new to the market and that don't take the needs of customers in this region into consideration.

"The biggest challenge is to become aware of customer needs," Beška said. "If you know your customers and their expectations, if your project will solve their problem, you can be a winner in this game."

Beška said he tries to offer the participants in the accelerator something beyond the general information about running a business they can glean from conferences and seminars, by working with them as a team to offer private feedback on concrete issues with their business plan.

Horký said in addition to benefiting from the council of the best mentors in the country, he and his team at Brand Embassy joined the accelerator simply to "be accelerated ... to get the work done faster."

Just weeks after their official launch, Brand Embassy already has a network of trained brand ambassadors throughout the Czech Republic and Slovakia and four major clients. Horký said his company's approach is unique in Europe in that his ambassadors are well-versed in the industry of the clients they represent and communicate on discussion forums with full disclosure by identifying themselves as brand ambassadors. He and his team hope this model will allow them to keep building on the momentum they've had so far to one day become a global company.

Startup Yard will begin accepting applications for the next accelerator session early next year.

Emily Thompson can be reached at
ethompson@praguepost.com