Last year I entered the StartupBus Europe competition, starting in Copenhagen and driving to Paris, forming a company in just over 72 hours. It was one of the best learning experiences I had in my life. Let me explain why:
StartupBus is changing the entrepreneurial world, from the moment you get selected on board and you start riding you the bus you will meet people who compete under extremely hard conditions and with a lot of pressure.
Together with these people, you will experience an overwhelming team spirit and passion for an idea that most of your team member did not have a day before. This team spirit, this pressure is entrepreneurship at its core.
While riding the bus you are also creating a very good personal network. With a network, a startup can be miles ahead of its competitors, because as everyone involved with any startup will know, a startup almost always has limited resources.
StartupBus will help you create this network. Of course it is an event but moreover, it is a competition that bonds people for their lifetime.
As a small kid, you think everything possible, you had an idea and you just made it happen because you believed you could. As you became older things seem to be more difficult. Failure made you second guess yourself and eventually, you stopped taking risks. But getting out of your comfort zone is just what can make life so much more interesting.
Why am I telling you all this?
Well, this coming October I’m co-organising one of the buses driving through Europe.
Taking one of the more daring routes we will drive 2400km in 72 hours. Stopping at major startup hotspots like Rockstart in Amsterdam, Startplatz in Cologne, the office of SoundCloud in Berlin, the local awesomeness in Prague etc. and ending up in Vienna at Pioneers Festival.
If you think you are up to the challenge now is your time to start applying, start believing in yourself again and your unlimited powers. Start meeting the most talented people in Europe and get that creativity flowing. Let me promise you, you will not for a second feel wrongly about making this decision.
Oh and if you are still doubting, take a look at the stories shared at Quora: What do people think of StartupBus.