Coller Ignite Opening Event
At the beginning of December, we officially launched Coller Ignite:The Entrepreneurship Club at Tel Aviv University’s Coller School of Management, ata special opening event held at the Microsoft Accelerator (We Work, Ibn Gabirol).
Students and alumni from different faculties of Tel Aviv University, who are passionate about entrepreneurship, came to learn about the club and to meet the Coller Ignite community.
After a short networking session, Morag Edry, Vice President of the club, opened the event with a presentation about the club’s vision and its upcoming activities. Additionally, Donna Lev, President of Coller Ignite, made a guest appearance in a video explaining the club’s foundation.
Next, Dr. Iris Ginzburg, Head of the Sofaer Global MBA and the MBA in Management of Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship at the Coller School, took the stage to address entrepreneurship and emerging trends. She spoke about the importance of context in entrepreneurship, which includes elements of technology politics, society, and economics, as well as the ability to predict future scenarios and trends. She gave the example of VR and AR trends and shared some insights about why one is more successful than the other. She also emphasized the correlation between being a successful entrepreneur and belonging to a strong entrepreneurial community.
The keynote speaker at the event was Nimrod Kramer, a 26-year-old entrepreneur who founded an innovative startup with the unusual name The Elegant Monkeys (TEM).
The Elegant Monkeys, an IoT & healthcare startup which enables translation of human emotions into the digital world, recently raised millions of USD from the Japanese enterprise Murata, one of the largest electronics companies in the world.
When Nimrod’s previous social network startup didn’t succeed, he and his co-founders wanted to share what they learned with other young entrepreneurs in order to help them avoid making the same mistakes in their own ventures. Nimrod observed that a common mistake of entrepreneurs is that they tend to fall in love with the solution, instead of the problem. Nimrod suggested that entrepreneurs should focus on the root of the problem before jumping to conclusions about the solution. This problem-oriented thinking helps to develop a solution which actually answers a real problem. The next step is to choose a market who cares about the problem and is willing to pay for the solution.. Nimrod also talked about other mistakes related to a startup’s MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and strategy and the importance of learning from failure, and not just from success.
The lecture was extremely valuable to entrepreneurs who are either at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey or already in the process of growing their venture. Many members of the audience stayed after the lecture to ask Nimrod further questions and were hungry to learn from his experience.
After a successful launch, we invite you to join us for the club’s upcoming activities. Stay tuned :)
