Harlem meets Haarlem, establishing the relationship with New York

Haarlemvalley has successfully established multiple relationships within the Harlem community thanks to Silicon Harlem, the borough president of Manhattan Gale Brewer and our deputy mayor of Haarlem Joyce Langenacker.

Program Haarlem meets Harlem

Together with Joyce Langenacker and Ellen van der Vossen from the city council Haarlem, the Haarlemvalley community travelled to New York. A bike tour through Harlem showed us the successes of social programs; Harlem is currently a well-developed district in New York. John Henry from cofound Harlem gave the Dutch startups who travelled with us the do’s and don’ts of a great pitch in preparation of the Haarlem meets Harlem pitch event.

At the tech center; the Urban Future Lab, Tim Kreukniet of EV Box and other sustainable energy solutions from the Netherlands explained how to break into the U.S. market and how to do business in New York as a Dutchman. Marc van der Aart and Stella Bronwasser, oud Haarlemmers and entrepreneurs from Rolling Orange Bike Tours, explained the process of setting up and selling a business in New York. Haarlemvalley made a connection for Dutch startups who would like to test their services in the U.S. market. Adriaan Grijns from the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce explained how to set a subsidiary for startup companies including a force of sales agents.

In Harlem we have met successful Dutch American entrepreneurs such as Hugo van Dijk and members of the Haarlem meet Harlem NYC investor panel: Eric Boonstra (Evoswitch), Doug Binette (GP Ventures), Jeroen de Vries (Nieuw Amsterdam Advisors), Varelie Croes (The Liv Group). Startups who pitched at the event were Dutch and American; Angela Darris from The C Suite Coach (US), Aviram Siboni from Multisense (NL), Erik Mendelson from Record Gramm (US), Rose Wilson from The ‘U’ with me (US), Yusuf Ghaznavi from Ticketzdeal (NL)and Tim de Kraker from Bardoggy (NL)! Visit Silicon Harlem for the presentation stream at http://www.siliconharlem.net/

Relationship in the future and results

The big winner of the event is Record Gramm: Erik Mendelson, together with Shawn Mims (multiplatinum music recording artist) gave a top notch performance! Evoswitch datacenters offered Record Gramm database solutions for their app and a location for their office in the Europe mainland. As a result Record Gramm considers to establish a subsidiary in Haarlem.

The Dutch startup Bardoggy, received a phone call from a U.S. launching customer enabling him to start a pilot in New York with more than 6000 bars! When he received the phone call Joyce Langenacker, deputy mayor of Haarlem was with him in the car and witnessed the thrill of being a startup entrepreneur.
Thanks to the amazing efforts of Clayton Banks (event-hero from Silicon Harlem), Haarlem and Harlem embraced the relationship between the two sister cities in the areas of startups, investors and music startups and investors. Next year, Silicon Harlem will visit Haarlem. The U.S. startup Record Gramm will pitch at our main finals in November (NL). Stay tuned! #haarlemvalley #4harlem

Participants 2016

Multiple disciplines of from the Haarlem community joined the mission. Jacqueline van de Sande and Linda Troost of the newly to establish University of Haarlem joined the delegation in order to see and feel the needs of startup entrepreneurs in the academical field.

EvoSwitch schenkt Haarlemvalley ruimte

Launch Startup Noord-Holland / Flevoland

Startup Noord-Holland / Flevoland

For two years, Haarlemvalley has organized ‘Present Your Startup’, a very successful program and event in Haarlem. Startups in the pre-seed and seed stage of their development together raised almost 1 million dollar in two years live on stage in cash, and afterwards even more.

Present Your Startup is an initiative of Valerie Vallenduuk, an attorney-partner at Vallenduuk Advocaten but mainly an entrepreneur. She is founder of platform inloopspreekuuradvocaat.nl (75 law offices as a client) and was until December 2015 Managing Director of Vallenduuk Advocaten but decided in January 2016 to focus on the Present Your Startup foundation. That turned out to be a great decision, because after Valerie and her business partner Melissa Oosterbroek presented their project plan Startup Noord-Holland / Flevoland to the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (in Dutch: de MRA) last January, they received in February a big amount to duplicate the Haarlemvalley concept in the whole of Noord-Holland and Flevoland.

In the next few months, the Present Your Startup startup program and events will be organized in the regions Haarlemmermeer/Schiphol, Zaanstreek, Gooi & Vecht & Haarlem. The winners of the different regional pre-pitching days will be pitching at the semi-finals in Amsterdam en the 7 best startups will eventually be given the opportunity to pitch at the big final Pitch evening in November at the Lichtfabriek, a beautiful corporate & cultural events venue in Haarlem. For a more detailed agenda of our different regional programs: see www.presentyourstartup2016.nl (Dutch).

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But that is not all! On Tuesday May 31st, Haarlem and Harlem will meet each other at an event in New York! 6 Dutch and American startups will be given the opportunity to pitch for an audience of Dutch and American investors and experts to raise funds, expand their network and to target more (potential) customers. The Dutch Municipal executive councilor of Economics of the city of Haarlem Joyce Langenacker will open the event in a theater in Harlem and a delegation of the city of New York will be invited. After the Pitch event, investors will get the chance to choose their preference upon which a match will be made. Investors and Startups will then be invited to join the Limousine-tour during which they can talk while driving along 5th Avenue on their way to the Netherlands Club in Midtown where the day will be concluded with a nice dinner. See for more information: http://www.haarlemvalley.com/newyork .

Do you happen to know an investor or startup who would like to join us? Let us know!

Startup programme 2016 & New office Haarlemvalley

Haarlemvalley’s office has already moved in November from the Grote Houtstraat 5 to the headoffice of the Rabobank Haarlem, Dreef 40.  But we didn’t made a lot of noise about our new office because we focused on the Finals. But we are very proud and pleased with this location with lots of potential.

We will start an incubator at our new office in January 2016. With 7 startups we have started this format to help them grow to the next level. We have already made agreements with some investors to join us on a weekly basis. We also have made an agreement with technical partner 4BIS innovations who will be responsible for our tech meetups and technical support of our startups.

Incubate your startup is step 6 of the Haarlemvalley cyclus. In 2016 we begin all over with the cyclus  at step 1. To the left you see our Haarlemvalley cyclus we created.

Our first Meet your Startup is on the 29th of January in the Lichtfabriek. Please join us!

1,4 milion invested in Haarlemvalley startups in one night

Wednesday November 25th, 2015, at the yearly event Present Your Startup – organized by Haarlemvalley – live funding exceeded the first edition in 2014 by fourfold! A room full of investors pledged their money in front of a live audience of 300 people. The jury of Haarlemvalley elected the winner of the evening: Zivver. Zivver won thanks to his great performance and legal opportunity for data leaking. He won the jury prize of EUR 15.000. ZIVVER will start the conversation with Volta Ventures about a possibility of funding for 1 million euro. The interaction with the audience was there indeed. Green Battery received funding of EUR 160k at the finals, enabling him to buy bigger battery systems and gain more market share in the Netherlands.
The public award winner is Chattable, with most votes on the website of Haarlemvalley. He won a price of EUR 10.000. He received a total funding of EUR 110k for his social dining application for international corporates. More funding was pledged, Digitale Nazorg received EUR 50k and Bardoggy will continue the search for another investor to match the 100k promised by a Haarlemvalley investor. Cloudgames received also a funding of 100K.
Present Your Startup, Haarlemvalley´s contest, offers a platform for innovative start-ups with need for a relatively small investment to conquer the national and international market. Besides the jury award winner and the public award winner, all the finalists are winners. Each of them received services credit from Microsoft for an amount of EUR 150.000. In total Microsoft invests more than 1 million dollar in the Haarlemvalley finalists. This funding gives them a head start to their competitors.

The finalist of this year are:

• Bardoggy, Advertising platform for hospitality companies
• CloudGames, Games Platform with HTML5 games
• Tom Kabinet, Secondhand books platform
• Digital Nazorg, Online services for bereaved
• GreenBattery, Battery with green energy for festivals and more
• Zivver, Send and receive important documents protected
• Chattable, App for social dining

Haarlemvalley wants to make Haarlem a capital investment city. As the suburb of Amsterdam, Haarlemvalley focuses on small investments with great impact. In 2016 Haarlemvalley starts with an incubator for the finalists of Haarlemvalley, to bring them to the next level of entrepreneurship and make these start-ups an international success. Present Your Startup 2015 provided all 7 startups with funding with a total amount in cash of EUR 420.000.