Our partner organization CONNECT San Diego invited Dounia Boujddayn and David Strickrodt from German American Chamber of Commerce California to sit in at one of their popular marketing panels. Such panels offer entrepreneurs and startups the opportunity to present their business ideas to an audience of highly experienced C-level executives, and in return receive marketing, financial and strategic business advice.
CONNECT, which hosted the marketing panel, is an internationally renowned program which links start-up companies with investors. CONNECT was founded in the mid-80s as a part of the University of California San Diego (UCSD). In 2005, CONNECT spun out of UCSD and became an independent foundation.
“Whether a company is looking to spin out or license an innovation, launch a second or third product into a new market or evaluate the commercial potential of a discovery CONNECT has experienced entrepreneurs-in-residence who can assess the innovation and coach the innovators through the process.” – as stated on their website.
At today’s marketing panel the start-up Prenostik, founded in 2012, pitched to the experienced audience of CEOs and CMOs. Patrick Hong, CEO of Prenostik, showcased his innovative product for 10 minutes followed by a Q&A round and discussion with the audience. Prenostik is a cloud based, ‘Big Data’ software that can turn sales and marketing information into actionable knowledge that matters. It establishes relationships between any data via pattern recognition, ranking and forecasting.
The benefits for entrepreneurs and startups like Prenostik became clear very quickly because the advice given by the C-level executives was precise, relevant and based on years of experience.
“It was very interesting to attend the marketing panel at CONNECT. We could see the huge advantage for startups to have the chance to speak at these panels and to get feedback from experts who have already been successful” says David Strickrodt. GACC California would like to thank Ruprecht von Buttlar and Rene Heller for the invitation.
