Good and exciting news. We have launched StockPodium! First in Bulgaria and soon internationally. As it might be obvious our plan for international dominion starts where we live – Bulgaria. It’s not a big market at all but still we can bullet proof our project and also get some valuable feedback from professional designers and microstock users that we know personally. We decided we are going to offer a really good service to our friends designers, bloggers, and journalists in Bulgaria so the Bulgarian version of the site was something we really wanted to add. Our visual similarity technology speaks the language of images, but the text search needed some serious help to work properly in Bulgarian with predominantly English keywords attached to each stock image. Google Translation API came to help us run the text search options, and it works well!
We have over 1 300 000 pictures and counting… The feedback from media, partners, friends, designers and photographers interested in the project is really very positive. Still, we have a long way to go, but hey, it’s a good day and we are excited we really can make a difference and change the way people search for stock images. Long journeys start with a small step
Why don’t you visit www.stockpodium.com and give our service a try? What about some nice Christmas pictures for the postcards you decided to send to your business partners?
This Fiday StockPodium took part in an event called How Ideas Envolve, organized by Neveq, Bulgarian Network of Business Angels, VirtSOI Living Lab, Digital Spaces Living Lab and Microsoft. The goal of the event was to showcase the evolution of a business idea – from its idea stage, mock up, planning, technology and finding funds to its market realization. The conference part was accompanied by a small digital expo where some Bulgarian startup companies were presented using video and gesture recognition displays (provided by AttentiveDisplays) as well as organization that support start up and innovation business in Bulgaria – StartUP, BBAN, NEVEQ. On separate displays the attendants were able to see presentations of the members of the Bulgarian Living labs – Favit, MaYoMo, TriDe, EcoSpace to mention some.
Speakers and moderators of the sessions were representatives with VC background, proven entrepreneurs, investors and innovation specialists.
It’s getting more interesting and exciting to start a business in Bulgaria. At least there are more events that aim at raising awareness on the entrepreneurship.
Here you can see the product presentation of StockPodium:
It’s been really great experience to take part in NOVATech 2009 Business Plan Competition in Tel Aviv, Israel. We didn’t get through to the finals in Berkeley, CA but got so much input and positive feedback for our product.
The trip itself was an adventure. We didn’t know till the end if all of us are going to make it. Thanks to Bulgaria Air and SuperHosting.bg we got to Tel Aviv. Monday was mentoring day. The mentors gave a lot of feedback and also ideas how to improve our presentation. So we had to work hard till late night to adjust the presentation and do some more rehearsals.
The competition day was Tuesday in Tel Aviv University. Our presentation went smooth and we had plenty of time for questions from the jury. It was really inspiring to see and listen to the presentations of other teams. We had couple of breaks so we got the chance to talk to some people and make friends. It was day full of emotions and hope to win. We didn’t but as Mark Haris said all teams are winners somehow. To be honest, that might be true as we gained some experience and lots of new contacts.
We were very much amazed by the entrepreneur ecosystem in Tel Aviv – so much to do and so much to give and get. History too! Wednesday we managed to see Jerusalem and Dead See.
It’s been really intense two months since we won the 1st prize for NOVATech 2009 Competition in Sofia, Bulgaria. In specially dedicated fundraising website we asked for your support. So many people helped us to make out trip to Tel Aviv for the second round happen.
In this post we just want to say Thank you for the support, encouragement, positive feedback. Thanks for your time and money you invested in us. Without you this trip would not be possible.
We’ve produces several video tutorials to illustrate how StockPodium works.
Searching for pictures using visual similarity is something that most of the people that visit our site are not familiar with. With the following videos we want to show how the tools we’ve implemented can really shorten the time you spent on finding the picture you need:
How to use an image from the results and find visually similar results.
We’ve been working really hard these days to make the new improved version of StockPodium public. But we really need to get out of Sofia and relax a bit. Georgi and Chris sponteniously decided to spend a Sunday out so we end up going to Karlovo, Chris’s birth town. It’s been really refreshing and inspiring. There’s so much you can learn from a day in the nature. It’s vital part of our work by the way – so many beautiful pictures that we are going to distribute via StockPodium’s platform….
We just submitted our application for Seedcamp Week in London this September. We have to wait now for the review and evaluation process that will take couple of days. We’ve put a lot of efforts but we know it’s worth it! September 2 is the day Seedcamp organizers are planning to let the teams know if they’ve been selected for interview. We will be really looking for good news on that particular day as we have already bought our airplane tickets and arranged our stay in London for the interview day – September 9 (we were moved by faith )
Seedcamp philosophy is to help European entrepreneurs jump start their ideas. The help can be money but more than that mentoring and creating ecosystem where you can learn form other’s experience. With over 400 mentors at hand, Seedcamp and specially their flagship event Seedcamp Week provide awesome opportunity to directly find smart-money investors, to bullet proof your project and to enrich your network with lots of interesting people from various business backgrounds. Who knows, they may later become your potential partners, advisers, and friends. As you see, Seedcamp Week is the perfect place to be specially in times of financial turbulence.
Georgi has already been at Mini-Seedcamp this year. He got back from the event really excited bust also challenged. Georgi was impressed how only few hours of communication with the mentors and the other participants can bring a lot of insight that you can use to further develop your product.
If we manage to go through the selection process we believe that Seedcamp and London start-up ecosystem will help our efforts to make a major step in positioning and marketing our project. So let’s see
It’s been amazing week for all of us at StockPodium. After winning the NOVAtech national round we’ve been really challenged to dream big and put all our efforts for the success of the project. The media coverage followed and we’ve been interviewed by several mainstream national newspapers. Here some links (sorry, it’s all in Bulgarian as that’s what people of Bulgaria mostly speak )
Breaking news! StockPodium got 1st place at the national round of NOVAtech 2009 competition.
The competition in this year’s NOVAtech event was tough. 11 Bulgarian teams took place in the 4th edition of NOVAtech after thorough selection from a jury of five – representatives from BIMT, NEVEQ Investment Fund, GRAMMA NET IS, BBAN and CrediBul. The business ideas have been evaluated based on the following criteria – technology innovation, applicability, competitive power, business model, market potential to mention some.
StockPodium’s presentation was in the late afternoon. It was a bit challenging as the jury and the public have been exposed to some really interesting presentations. Some might have been tired, so we had to catch their attention again. We’ve got 15 minutes for that, and I think we’ve managed to communicate our passion and excitement for StockPodium with everybody in the room. The Jury had interesting questions to ask and that was great sign we are on the right track.
We were convinced StockPodium was one of the best project presented at the event. Getting the 1st place wasn’t expected but was much appreciated. We are really trilled we are going to Tel Aviv to compete on the semifinals together with Greenergy Consulting team, that was given 2nd place.
We’ve put a lot of efforts to prepare for the competition and getting to the semifinals was such a reward. We have to work a little bit to polish our business plan and presentation to make really good impression in Tel Aviv.
It’s party time now, but we will be posting very soon on our progress and hope you will hear good news from Israel in October too!
Here you can see some pictures from the competition:
We are very excited about an upcoming event – NOVAtech business plan national round competition that will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria on July 20. The event is run by Bulgarian Institute for Management and Technology (BIMT) in cooperation with Intel Education initiative and is part of the worldwide competition IBTEC (Intel Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge). IBTEC is a joint project of Intel and Berkeley, University of California aiming to give students, alumni and local entrepreneurs the opportunity to work together to turn innovative ideas into successful businesses. The competition involves teams from several countries from the CEE region: Bulgaria, Israel, Hungary, Poland Romania, Slovakia, Turkey, Czech Republic, Greece and Serbia.
The participating teams, selected after executive summary review are going to present their business ideas live in front of a jury of business representatives. Two team will have a chance to continue and present their projects on the semifinals, that will take place in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 11.
We are getting ready for our presentation now and hope we will make it to the semifinals. We need your support so if you have some time to spare, come and see us present StockPodium.
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