Harlem meets Haarlem, startups plukken vruchten van historische connectie

Haarlemvalley heeft de relatie gelegd met de startup community in Harlem mede dankzij tech hub Silicon Harlem, de burgemeester van Manhattan Gale Brewer en de Haarlemse wethouder Economische Zaken Joyce Langenacker. 

De Haarlemse startup community is tijdens het laatste weekend van mei samen met wethouder economische zaken Joyce Langenacker afgereisd naar New York. Er was een divers programma georganiseerd met een mooie fietstocht door het ontwikkelde Harlem, pitchtraining van fondsbeheerder John Henry, een bezoek aan techcenter the Urban Future Lab, een ontmoeting met succesvolle Nederlandse ondernemers die zich hebben gevestigd in de Verenigde Staten en als hoogtepunt en reden van de reis: een pitch evenement georganiseerd door Haarlemvalley in samenwerking met lokale tech hub Silicon Harlem.

International Pitchfest Haarlem2Harlem 2016

Haarlemvalley, bekend van het live pitch evenement Present Your Startup waar startups op het podium jaarlijks gemiddeld 400.000 euro aan funding ophalen, heeft drie Nederlandse startups nu een Amerikaans podium geboden. Een enthousiast publiek van ruim 150 personen bekeek in het authentieke theater MIST Harlem de pitches van de meegereisde 3 Nederlandse startups Multisense, Bardoggy en Ticketzdeal en 3 Amerikaanse startups bestaande uit The C-Suite Coach, the ‘U’ with me en RecordGramm. Het gehele evenement werd via een livestream uitgezonden, waarmee deze Amerikaanse startups een Nederlands podium werd geboden. Het investeerderspanel bestaande uit Eric Boonstra (CEO Evoswitch), Doug Binette (founder DB Ventures), Jeroen de Vries (Nieuw Amsterdam Advisors), Varelie Croes (co-founder ATECH) en Melissa Oosterbroek (Haarlemvalley Capital) riep uiteindelijk Record Gramm uit tot winnaar van het pitch event.

Resultaten van het internationale evenement

Record Gramm, de startup van Shawn Mims, (multiplatium music recording artiest) en Erik Mendelson won de eerste Haarlem2Harlem pitch wedstrijd. Record Gramm biedt een makkelijke manier voor artiesten om een muziek te maken middels een app. Door de sterke muziekcultuur in Haarlem en de prijs van Evoswitch voor het gebruik van een kantoorruimte ter waarde van 10.000 euro, overwegen de Amerikaanse ondernemers nu om een eerste vestiging te openen in Europa. De Nederlandse startup Bardoggy heeft naar aanleiding van het evenement succesvol de relatie met Amerika gelegd. Bardoggy is de gesprekken gestart met een launching customer voor een implementatie van de horeca app bij 6000 bars in New York.
Dit najaar zal Record Gramm op het podium pitchen tijdens de grote finale van Present Your Startup 2016 en volgend jaar komt Silicon Harlem naar Haarlem voor een vervolg op het succesvolle evenement afgelopen week in New York!

Bekijk hier het persbericht in PDF

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).

---

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!