StartupBus arrives to LeWeb

Among the many startup related things this year, the StartupBus is one that’s really cool. A week ago I wrote about this program which I saw the first time during SXSW this year. The bus arrived 2 days ago and since then their buspreneurs have been running all around the place. I couldn’t miss the chance to talk to them (Thanks to Arne!) so I did a couple of interviews with the teams.

The first person was Saskia Videler (Dutch living in Belgium), one of the members of the winning team of the program. She used to work at a social media company but left it to focus on content marketing and quality content related ventures. Currently she cofounded a short story platform.

Me: So why did you decided to join StartupBus?
Saskia: Why not? I’m always looking for adventures so I felt this could be a cool one. I wanted to learn about startups so this was a great place to start with.

Me: Why not attend one of the European accelerators?
Saskia: Oh, yeah I want to do that too. I’m quite new to startup events but I definitely would love to. Actually thanks to StartupBus we can fastrack our project at Seedcamp, so we’re definitely thinking about it.

Me: What are the top experiences you got out of the program?
Saskia: It’s been an incredible experience. It’s amazing the help I’ve gotten from the StartupBus community. I’ve learn so many things, not only for our project but related to my other external and personal projects. The collaboration environment is superb. It’s highly recommendable.

Me: So what did you build during the StartupBus experience?
Saskia: We built a travel website called Wander that allows you to build your personal travel guide by aggregating ideas, information, maps and suggestions from your friends into the ultimate guide you download to your phone for offline checking.

I also got to talk to Vincent Kranenburg, another of the buspreneurs. Vincent teamed up with two other partners (Sandra and Imran) and launched Locafoo, a mobile app that combines Foursquare checkins with Pokemon. Yeah I know, it sounds very crazy, but to be honest, it’s a really cool idea. It’s a casual game where you fight other users, in Pokemon fashion, but the weapons you use are obtained through Foursquare checkins.

Vincent joined the StartupBus because his good friend Gokhan Arli told him about it, which, by the way, is another of the participants. I guess word of mouth is very powerful too. For Vincent, accelerator programs also offer a similar experience where you literally have no chance to “getting of the bus” (wish he was right but sadly some teams always end up quitting). Nevertheless, for Vincent the experience has also been amazing, he’s met amazing people and made many new friends on the bus.

All in all, I think it’s an amazing initiative, one that, as far as the European organizer, Arne Hulstein, told me, it’s bond to be repeated next year on a massive scale! I for once, will be helping them out too 😛 Now you know, next year, get ready for an invasion of startups on wheels!!

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