Episode 161: Nurturing a Successful Startup Accelerator with Paolo Lombardi, Founder of Techpeaks

In this episode of Product Thinking, Paolo Lombardi joins Melissa Perri to explore founding the TechPeaks startup accelerator—they discuss the unique aspects of the program, including its focus on attracting international entrepreneurs and promoting collaboration, and the importance of planning and preparation.

Paolo has over 24 years experience in digital innovation. He is the Director of Artificial Intelligence Innovation at Taylor & Francis, has co-founded two AI startups, and created the startup accelerator Techpeaks. At Techpeaks, he directly deployed over 4 million euros to early stage startups.

Paolo has authored 30 scientific papers on artificial intelligence, computer vision, and context-adaptive systems, organized and managed several dozen hackathons, idea challenges, competitions, and coached over 200 startups in digital, AI, foodtech, energy, and robotics. He is the co-author of Startup Program Design: A Practical Guide for Creating Accelerators and Incubators at Any Organization.

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You’ll hear them talk about:

12:17 - Melissa, who participated in the accelerator in 2013, describes it as a transformative experience and highlights the program's unique approach as a "People accelerator." By attracting international entrepreneurs, Techpeaks fostered collaboration among individuals with diverse skills and backgrounds. This approach aimed to import an international perspective while connecting with the local university and research community. Paolo said that Techpeaks were happy to accept people that didn’t have a business idea, but could work well collaboratively.
25:41 - Paolo emphasizes the cultural diversity within the Techpeaks program and the learning experiences that arose from working with people from different backgrounds. She shares an example of a cultural clash between an Italian woman and a Russian participant, highlighting the importance of understanding different communication styles.
48:54 - Paolo says that the issue with corporate accelerators is that they are often not comfortable with taking risks, or quick decisions that imply risk. Although they might contain talented managers or workers, often they can’t gauge risk quickly enough to be able to control it. He says that in corporate environments, this awareness of risk is not common, but for startups “in the wild” this is an intuition.

58:49 - Techpeaks encouraged the use of lean startup techniques, which allowed participants to iterate and pivot their ideas quickly. This approach fostered a culture of experimentation and learning. Paolo recommends starting with a small programme that lasts for a weekend, or two or three weeks, with a very narrow niche value proposition—this will test your ability to deliver on that.

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Previous guests include: Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web Services

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