Why you should attend Techsylvania next year
June 18th, 2018

TroopTravel just came back from participating in a startup event called Techsylvania. Let us share our experience and tell you why you should attend Techsylvania 2019 edition if you are a startup.

If you follow our blog, you may know that we like to share our experience in building a startup. One of our most read posts is actually our list of Top Startup Conferences. When you are a startup, you have to make decisions about which startup conferences you would like to participate in. In the end, every participation means cost and time spent which are both limited resources. Thus, finding the best startup conferences to participate in is sometimes a difficult task.

The leading Technology Event in Eastern Europe

Today, we want to share our experience about participating at Techsylvania and why we are recommending you to join the 2019 edition. Techsylvania is a tech event in Cluj the capital of the Transylvania region in Romania. It is a beautiful city which actually has been named by Lonely Planet as the top region to visit in 2016. This fact should already be enough to put it on your travel list. Apart of being a beautiful city, Cluj is as well the Technology Center in Romania. Techcrunch named it as the Silicon Valley of Transylvania.

5 years ago, a team of Romanian entrepreneurs and supporters started to host a conference focusing on how to build technology conferences. Techsylvania was born. Since then, the event grew from 380 attendees in 2014 to 2,000 participants in 2018. The event brings three key elements together:

  • High-level Speakers: Founders and high-level experts of global technology companies are sharing their insights in building successful companies.
  • Top-notch Investors: Angel and institutional investors from all over the world are coming together to hunt for the next unicorns
  • Promising Startups: Up to 15 startups are invited to pitch their business to investors and learn from the experts on how to build their companies.

Why you should attend Techsylvania, THE event to go to if you are an early-stage startup

TroopTravel participated in the 2018 edition of Techsylvania. You may know that we are a startup based in Spain with operations in South Africa. So should we attend Techsylvania which calls itself the leading tech event in Eastern Europe?

Our initial decision of applying for the Avalanche Startup Competition at Techsylvania was based on the high caliber of speakers and investors coming together as well as the low cost for participation (only travel had to be covered by us). We participated in other startup events and we have seen costs of up to 5,000 EUR only for participation (without travel cost) per startup. This is quite an amount if you are a bootstrapped.

Only later we realized that the low-cost has been only a small part of the value proposition. The key value has been the support and treatment we have received as a startup. Being an early-stage startup normally means that you are the last in line. You have to fight to be able to talk to investors and/or speakers at conferences and in general there is little tangible or personalized support offered.

At Techsylvania, our experience has been completely different. When you are selected as one of the 15 startups to participate in the competition, you are treated as a VIP. Weeks before the competition, the Avalanche Team reaches out to you to connect you to leading entrepreneurs to work on your pitch. They recommend you to come a week earlier to Cluj to work with an amazing team from Risky Business on making the most out of your presentation. This is a key argument why you should attend Techsylvania next year if you are an early-stage startup.

All of the 2017 startup participants raised funds after the event, which might be another good reason why you should attend Techsylvania in 2019. I have no doubts that this is mainly because of the intensive training and support you receive before the event.

TroopTravel wins the Avalanche Techsylvania Startup Competition

The last days before the pitching competition, we have improved our presentation massively based on the feedback received by the Avalanche team. On Monday last week we pitched to a group of about 8 investors from all over the world and we managed to go to the finals together with 5 other startups from different countries in Europe.

On Tuesday, the finalist startups pitched on the main stage in front of up to 2,000 guests to a group of 5 international investors and TroopTravel managed to evolve as the winner of the Avalanche Techsylvania Startup Competition. Another milestone for us as a young startup.

In addition to the price of an organized trip to Silicon Valley to meet investors sponsored by Arobs Software the real value coming out of this event was the boot-camp training on investors’ pitching as well as the contacts to investors we made during the preparation of our pitch. The team of Risky Business was continuously introducing investors to all the participating startups and all of them, including ourselves, had first investors’ meeting during the event.

And all this and more is why you should attend Techsylvania next year!

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