Tag: Founders Games

FOUNDERS meet FUNDERS at WEBIT.FEST’16 This year WEBIT.FESTIVAL welcomes startups from more than 40 countries, pre-seed and post-seed and startups with series A and B of investments. All of them come to Sofia to take the challenge of Founders Games 2016. Before we ring the bell of WEBIT.FESTIVAL on April 19th, you can still apply here by April 5th to join the competing startups at Founders Games’16.   Every idea is a million dollar-idea, depending on your targets, ambitions and mostly - hard work. Starbucks is just a coffee shop, Uber - just another way to travel in the city, Airbnb rents your mattress for a couple of nights, Amazon was an online book store, Spotify - another radio service, Facebook - an university messaging network, Twitter - a wall for 140 letters… Everything is just an idea, before you grow it to a successful business.  Some great examples of the "fixed and growth mindsets" theory  you can find in this piece of Brain Pickings and the article of Salman Khan The Learning Myth: Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart . The difference between the two mindset concepts gives the organic meaning of an entrepreneur's mind state.   See the list of investors joining the Investors Day in Sofia Tech Park:

• Brian Norton from Ridge Road Partners, a VC fund that invests in private and public companies across developing and developed markets globally.

• Matthias Ummenhofer, Founding Partner of Mojo Capital manages the European Digital Opportunities Fund that integrates investments in European Venture Capital funds, secondaries, co-investments and direct investments in startups.

• Runa Capital’s Dmitry Chikhachev and Alexander Vidiborsky join the festival on April 19th. The fund provides early-stage funding for cloud computing services, hosted services, virtualization tools, complex software, and IT solutions for fintech, education, healthcare, and public services. The company is now on the run to raise $200 million for Runa Capital II, focusing on investments in USA, the European Union, Israel and Eastern Europe.

• Cem Sertoglu from EarlyBird Investments, a venture capital firm that invests across multiple stages,  ranging from early-stage to expansionary and growth stages with investment sizes between €200k and €20M. The fund manages around US$1 billion, as the firm is one of the largest European venture and growth capital investors and the largest outside of the UK, with offices in Berlin, Munich and Istanbul. The VC's Healthcare Tech Fund is oriented towards funding innovative medical technology companies, while the Earlybird Digital East Fund is focused on providing early stage equity capital to high-potential technology companies in Turkey and Central & Eastern Europe. The key interest areas of the fund are Consumer Internet, Enterprise Software and Tech-Enabled Services.

• Ondrej Bartos is co-founder and partner at Credo Ventures. He seeks entrepreneurs in Central and Eastern Europe who have a vision that extends beyond our regional borders to create global companies.Credo’s team of investors focuses on early stage companies in CEE across the information technology, internet, mobile and healthcare markets. In April 2015, Credo’s second fund, Credo Stage 2, was founded while raising €34M in the first closing.

• Paul Dowling Co-founder & CEO of Dreamstake and Co-founder of HoxTech Angels, who is working with the 1,000 plus early-stage startups on the platform to obtain funding from VCs and angel investors.

• Gleb Davidyuk Managing Partner of iTech Capital, with a portfolio of equity injections up to US$10 million per deal in IT companies operating in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and USA. The average deal size is US$5 million.

• Maciek Sadowski Founder & CEO of Startup Hub Poland. He manages StartVenture@Poland - a seed fund for technological projects at the early stages of development, which invests up to €50K in one round. The fund operates in  strategic partnership with Giza Polish Ventures – a Polish-Israeli venture capital fund.

• Bartek Gola Managing Partner, SpeedUp Group, which includes a number of venture funds investing in enterprises in an early stage of development (seed, pre-revenue, early growth). Depending on individual needs, potential for growth and project maturity, SpeedUp invests from $30K up to $2M.

• Alexander Turkot Founder and Managing Partner of Maxfield Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in global seed, early  and growth stage technology companies. Maxfield Capital is currently considering investment opportunities in Europe, USA and Israel.

• Marcin Hejka is a vice president at Intel Capital and managing director for Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Intel Corporation. He is responsible for leading Intel Capital’s investment activity in the region, which also encompasses Russia. Intel Capital has invested nearly US$11.6 billion in over 1,400 companies in 57 countries. The VC fund has 26 offices around the world. Countries include Belgium, Brazil, China, India,Germany, Ireland, Japan, Israel, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, USA.

The rest of the investors and accelerators joining WEBIT.FEST’16 include Hub:raum, Startupbootcamp, H-farm Italy, Starburst, Techstars, Speedinvest, Seedinvest, Seedcamp and others. Tickets prices increase with 30% from April 1st, so hurry up and book your access to the festival. 

Bakhrom Ibragimov started his career as technology investment banker with CSFB/DLJ and Cowen & Co. He was also leading investments in European and the US technology companies with Virgin Green Fund as a Founding Principal and TLcom Capital as Investment Director. Bakhrom also was Internet Finance Director and Associate Director of Planning and Analysis in Virgin Media. Bakhrom holds two Master degrees on academic scholarships from the London School of Economics and Cambridge University, and an honors Bachelor degree from Tashkent State Technical University in Uzbekistan. Today we're talking with him about the startup success, investments and the startup ecosystem in CEE region.  Bakhrom  Ibragimov is one of the top investors you can meet this year at CEEDS by Webit, who are not afraid to invest - do you dare to become a startup superstar?  CEEDS: What is one sign of a potentially successful start up? B.I. A team deeply passionate about a product that makes a difference to a large market. CEEDS: How can you evaluate startup ecosystem in CEE region? What about in 5 years from now? B.I. I am very excited about it, a lot more activity needs to happen and is going to happen as more very smart people in the CEE commit themselves to entrepreneurship. CEEDS: Which do you prefer - small investment in a very early stage startup or large investment but later? Why? B.I. We do not invest in seed companies. We invest from Series A to growth stage. This is the stage where we can help companies more. CEEDS: Is an investment in a startup more than just money? B.I. It is. As an investor, you first of all commit to the founder vision and play your role in supporting the founder going after it. CEEDS: Have you ever regretted an investment you had made? B.I. You have unsuccessful investments, otherwise impossible to invest in the tech space. As an investor, I believe it is important to recognise what founders you can help achieve their goals and what founders you cannot help achieve their goals. You can have regrets about your personal assessment of the founder/vision match. Sometimes the vision (product – market match) is not adequate, sometimes the match between the founder and the vision is not adequate. You do not regret investments, you can regret your assessment of the ingredients. CEEDS: You say you invest in changing lives. How do you recognize that one startup will change lives? B.I. You see how many people the product addresses, what difference it makes for those people and assess in detail the initial market feedback. CEEDS: Whom you will recommend to attend CEEDS’15 by Webit? B.I. Companies looking for partners.

Only two days left for the second round of the A – Selection (Audience Selection) at the Founders Games. Who are the TOP 3 challengers in the categories Hardware, Health and Infrastructure at the Founders Games? The best startups deserve to get free access to the Global Webit Congress and boost their business by receiving unparalleled networking with Investors, tech companies, biggest global advertisers and top reporters from major media. Here are the top three startups that are receiving most votes in the Categories Hardware, Health and Infrastructure:

Founders Games: Hardware

Ichanical from United Arab Emirates - They build "Junkbot"- A robotic kit which enables students to build robots from junk like water bottles, waste CD s,cardboards etc. It is an awesome platform to strengthen STEM knowledge and increase environmental awareness. Quad-S from Egypt - is developing Secure-Plus to protect internet users sensitive data from spywares attacks. SecurePlus-SP- is a credit-card size device fits in your wallet, Connected to your computer via USB Bluetooth, to protect everything you type in your web browser against hacking attacks (key strokes, key jacking and memory sniffing). Key.vi from Slovakia - Android door entry system supported by NFC technology.

Founders Games: Health

Faselty from Egypt - comes to utilize ICT to raise awareness among community members about the importance of blood donation and entice blood donors. Uberhealth from India - a cloud and mobile-based platform enabling people living away from parents to manage all aspects of elderly healthcare – scheduling appointments, diagnosis and healthcare monitoring, online consultation for second opinion, transportation, maintaining health records and billing. Spopal from Bulgaria - takes off your head the irritating process of organizing a sport event or find partners to play with.

Founders Games: Infrastructure

Storpool from Bulgaria - develops software-only storage solution that allows service providers, enterprises or other Cloud builders to run data storage on inexpensive standard servers, instead of expensive and inefficient storage arrays. BusPooling from Egypt - crowd-sourced Bus transportation service in Cairo. IT provides transportation for daily commuters (i.e. employees or students) between home and work university for a monthly subscription fee Segments Media & Accelerator from Austria - offers a 360* degree service for startups. There are hundreds of other fine startups participating in 16 categories at the Founders Games. Have you seen them yet? Choose your favorite startup and give it your support by voting now!

The challenge between the startups participating in the Founders Games is heating up. With just a few days left for the final of the second round A - Selection (Audience Selection) the startups, need your support. The best startups deserve to get a free access to the Global Webit Congress and boost their business by receiving unparalleled networking with Investors, tech companies, biggest global advertisers and top reporters from major media. Here are the top three startups that are receiving most votes in the Categories Advertising, Biotech and Digital Commerce

Founders Games: Advertising

1. Monitor Backlinks from Romania - helps online businesses protect themselves from negative Search Engine Optimization effects and even helps them to achieve better rankings in Google 2. BuzzBase from Macedonia - Social seeding platform that boosts content and rewards people for their shares and created buzz. 3. Sencebence from Turkey - Crowdsourced insight and influence platform that brings the crowds and brands together

Founders Games: Digital Commerce

1. Retargeting from Romania - Javascript based SAAS designed to monitor visitors’ actions on an e-commerce website and create individual profiles used in personalized communication onsite by live messages and interactions and offsite by e-mail and SMS. 2. Microweber from Bulgaria - Microweber is an open source content management system (CMS) of a new generation. It comes with a built-in ecommerce solution so users can also create an online shop aside from a website or a blog. 3. Market360 from Poland - first digital bank for 360-degree product images.

Founders Games: Digital Entertainment

1. SHABLOL from Jordan - the #1 safe Arabic web portal and social network for kids, which offers them a complete world of internet resources to create, share, learn and have fun. 2. Persassistant from Turkey - Ask Persie: What-to-wear will give daily inspirations based on your pics uploaded. The suggestions are personalized, uses expert systems and augmented reality. 3. ib3 media from Bulgaria - creating Capo TV - a web-based drag-and-drop tool for building fully-functional high-end custom Smart TV applications and widgets running on all manufacturers. There are hundreds of other fine startups participating in 16 categories of Founders Games Challenge. Have you seen them yet? Choose your favorite startup and give it your support by voting. Your VOTE counts!

Did you know that the Global Webit Congress is the largest digital and tech annual conference held in Turkey and probably one of the biggest in the World? The premier event that startups should not miss. According to the prestigious Startupbootcamp.org #Webit is one of the Top 12 Startup Conferences in Europe. Thank you  @Sophia & @Peter for including #Webit in this list and we look forward to see you at the Global Webit Congress. The Global Webit Congress can boast of more than 10,000 attendees coming form 110 different countries. Over 200 speakers and 300 accredited media will be in Istanbul on 1-2 October. During the two-day agenda of the GWC takes place the Founders Games, which is the most startup friendly digital and tech industry event. The Webit Ambassadors Foundations commits over €1 million to startups providing 200 of them with free expo stands, tickets and media advertising budgets together with global partners such as IBM, Blackberry, Qualcomm, Softlayer, BBC, MTG, ProSieben, ITP and many more. At the Global Webit Congress, meet 400 investors, thousands of startups and the superstar founders and most innovative technology companies In addition, the Foundation focuses on ways to improve the life of the people in Africa through education and technology. Now is the time to buy your Early Bird Webit ticket and save 300 Euro.

To succeed at the early stage startups need wide exposure, solid contacts, a chance to meet potential investors and a marketing budget to promote their idea. You have a great idea, a wonderful product, a strong team, the market and timing is right but you need exposure. A chance to pitch your idea at potential investors and customers. You need to market at scale and a dedicated marketing budget for the seeding stage. Does your startup need all this? Then the Founders Games at the Global Webit Congress is exactly for you. The Global Webit Congress created the 1 Million EUR Marketing Grant for startups to give them a special market advantage and to boost the business and the opportunities to success. That is right! 1 Million EUR marketing budget for startups. The founders of the Global Webit Conference have allocated 1 million Eur for up to 200 startups from EMEA and Asia. Apply and get your free expo stand at the Global Webit Congress, over 600 free Webit tickets worth over 2000 Euro each and advertising budgets in some of the major EMEA media. Build contacts; meet potential partners and clients. Promote your startup in front of the CEOs, CMOs and CTOs of the world largest and most innovative companies. That is what the Founder Games at the Global Webit Congress is all about. A chance to pitch your idea to the world. Hurry up; the application window is closing soon. Apply for the Founders Games.