Tag: Investment

Webit.Festival - a place for minds to meet. Marius Ghenea, the Investment Director of 3TS Capital gave a keynote at last year’s edition about seizing opportunities and avoiding pitfalls in the fast-growing Central & Eastern Europe risk-capital ecosystem. 3TS Capital has been investing in countries in the CEE region for quite some time and Marius, as a serial entrepreneur and angel investor himself has gained deep insight on the specifics of this market. Though being quite underestimated in the years back in time, CEE is slowly but surely getting its footprint in business, tech and innovations. The region has drawn attention not only with unicorns such as Skype, Avast, Transferwise and AeroMobil but also with the emergence of multiple, active and growing startup ecosystems across and around.

CEE sure has its historical, economical and national challenges to overcome

The diversity of this region consists of countries in the EU, countries yet to join the EU, countries with an “on the way” developed startup ecosystem and ones that have yet to work towards the achievement of it. This calls for quite a turbulent, hard to define business environment with ounces of political, ethical and cultural differences ranging for each country. Despite the tiny late development, things are starting to look more and more promising. The IT sector has been rapidly growing, adding to a growing GDP for some of the countries. In the last years, we have seen business association networks popping up in the region. One of the things happening more often now is that a growing number of these national and regional associations have been connecting with large organizations and business angel associations on a European and worldwide level. Webit.Festival gathers exactly the people, entrepreneurs and investors involved in this ecosystem mixed with players in the worldwide scene to create a colorful mix. Check our website for more details of the 2018 upcoming edition.

One hundred startup companies with a total market valuation of more than $2 billion will present their innovative ideas at this year’s Webit.Festival Europe - the most influential event for the digital economy and technology in the region, part of the Webit Global Series of events and Webit Global Community. An international jury of investors will assess their pitches on the dedicated Startup stage. The best five companies will come out on the big stage of Webit and will compete for the grand prize in the Founders Games challenge - a €200 000 seed investment. The selected 100 startups are divided in 3 groups: - Pre-Seed (no investment yet but great ideas and teams) - Pos-Seed (up to €1 million investment) - ScaleUps (above €1 million to 10 million investment) The competition includes 17 startups, that have received big investments in the recent months. The Israeli company PayKey received more than $6.4 million in november. The startup enables payments within any social network, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Twitter and any place you have a keyboard. In May the Hungarian startup SignAll received $1.72M from three investors. The company created the first sign-to-text solution that enables real-time communication for the deaf with mass market appeal. The software automatically process sign language into grammatically correct sentences. Onni Care from Finland has attracted investment for more than $1 million. The company is producing IoT baby monitor devices and a dedicated app, where parents can track day to day and long term development of their child. The Turkish startup Twentify received more than $1 million seed funding. The company provides field operations and data collection to companies by leveraging the power of crowdsourcing. It delivers Bounty, a mobile crowdsourcing platform, allowing a global mobile workforce to deliver fast and cost effective data collection to businesses. Among the members of the Jury you can see names, such as Prof. Shafi Ahmed (Consultant Surgeon and Co-founder of Virtual Medics & Medical Realities), Lisa Latts (Deputy Chief Health Officer for IBM Watson Health), Tanja Kufner (Managing Director, Startupbootcamp Smart Transportation and Energy), Jonas Jacobi (VP, Cloud and Mobile Technology Strategy, IBM), Sohaila Ouffata (Investment Principal BMW i Ventures) and a number of investors and representatives of the largest companies in the world. The startups, that are part of the challenge, were chosen from 2425 applications from across Europe, based on the uniqueness of their ideas, the capacity of their team, the opportunities for growth and their business and marketing approach. You may see a full list of the Europe Top 100 Startups here. This year, Webit.Festival will present to its international audience some of the most interesting Green startups from Northern Europe. They will arrive in Bulgaria with the help of the Innovation Norway program - the most important instrument Norwegian government use for assisting innovation and development of local businesses and industries. On April 25 and 26 the event will gather in Sofia Tech Park 5000+ visitors from over 90 countries. More than 300 speakers will share their invaluable experience from leading global companies will help us adapt to the trends that are going to change our lives fundamentally in the next few years. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

Despite the fears of a slowdown last year, the investment in European startups hit $12 billion mark, which has put 2016 on par with previous year’s record levels. The Old Continent already has prominent hubs for startups and innovation. But right now we can see that the well established centers, such as Berlin, Stockholm and London are stepping aside to an emerging destinations in Central and Eastern Europe. This has led to an increasing volume of smaller investment deals, which helped to offset the decline in larger rounds across the region. In 2016 Europe registered 943 deals between $1m and $10m. Right now, there is also a growing appetite for tech investment among the private equity funds. This year, Webit.Festival will again give promising startups from Europe and around the world the floor to present their ideas in front of top-level investors. The event will be held on 25-26 April in Sofia Tech Park under the patronage of the President of Bulgaria Rumen Radev, the Mayor of Sofia Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. We not only provide free grant for startups to get a free expo table, free festival tickets and opportunity to meet unparalleled selection of top enterprise leaders, but also a chance to win €200 000 seed investment in our Founders Games. With over 93% startup failure overall rate, the selected Webit startups for the Founders Games’s semi-finals in the past 7 years have less than 30% failure rate. Being among the Webit's Founders Games startup list is a statement of the company's credibility, innovation and potential in front of enterprise and investors as well as a great marketing opportunity. During Investments Summit you will get the chance to listen to the Partner Innovation Leader for Europe of IBM Watson Christoph Auer-Welsbach, the Vice President of IBM for Cloud and Mobile Technology Jonas Jacobi, the Global Head of Siemens Technology-to-Business Center Sven Scheuble, the CMO of AngelHack Brian Collins, the Partner at SpeedInvest Michael Schuster, the Partner at Flint Capital Sergey Gribov, the Co-founder & Managing Partner at AVentures Capital Andrey Kolodyuk, the Investment Director of 3TS Capital Partners Marius Ghenea, the Co-lead for Growth Capital & Venturing Services at Deloitte Sriram Prakash, the Investment Director of iTech Capital Alexey Telnov, the Advisor of 8VC Jon Soberg and the Partner at Hummingbird Ventures Pamir Gelenbe. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

Despite fears of Brexit disruption, 2016 was really a roller coaster year for European startups. According to French investment advisors Clipperton, EU startups have collected $12 billion of investments for the year, which is comparable to the record levels of 2015 for investment on the continent. It is still too soon to measure the impact of Britain’s decision on the startup market, but the dynamics of the two-year process of leaving the EU will have to be monitored closely. Experts believe that this year there will be several main engines for startup development in the tech sector. During 2016, big corporations invested lots of money in better predictions with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. In 2017 we can expect a lot smaller companies to take part in the AI revolution. Part of this is due to the fact that many universities started classes to educate students about the possibilities of this exciting new tech. Gartner already identified AI and machine learning as one of the top 10 strategic tech trends, that expands the spectrum of implementations to physical devices, apps and services. With the development of AI there is a lot of room for growth for startups, that specialize in chatbots. Business will look for bots more often than ever to help reduce its spending on customer service. Chatbots will be hot in the years to come, just because there are great way for corporate optimization. More than 85 percent of customer interactions will not include a human being by 2020, and chatbots will be the No. 1 consumer application of AI during the next five years. Another generator of startups is the cybersecurity sector. Insiders say that after every hackaton in the developed world, a new cybersecurity startup pops up to address the problem. This field is full of opportunities for new companies to step in, and we all expect the number of threats online to continue to rise. According to a report by Frost and Sullivan the implementation of blockchain technology can put an end to cyber attack. Until now many thought that blockchain has only the potential to fuel innovation in FinTech sector. European startups are really on the rise with the help of many accelerators and events like Webit.Festival Europe. During this year’s Founders Games an international board and jury of investors and enterprise leaders are selecting semi finalists from over 1500 applications. Five of them will get to the finals and one will win a seed investment. Last year the award was €200 000, but this year the organizers hope it will reach €500 000. With over 93% startup failure overall rate, the selected Webit startups for the Founders Games’s semi-finals in the past 7 years have less than 30% failure rate. Being among the Webit's Founders Games startup list is a statement of the company's credibility, innovation and potential in front of enterprise and investors as well as a great marketing opportunity. Webit gives startups access to a community of over 100 000, including some of the most influential people on 5 continents. The festival consists of 12 parallel summits - a fact that gives the unique opportunity for targeted networking with some of the best in the industry.

Despite of having the lion share of the world’s money, financial markets are among the most conservative fields of business and are usually focusing more on the results than on development and deployment of innovative solutions. But the fast spread of disruptive companies like Robinhood, which allows free stock trading, has made 2016 really amazing for the FinTech industry and led to its moving into the mainstream. Just five years ago FinTech was not something that most people would invest in, but now, it has become one of the hottest industries in the startup world. Why? Just because it gives the chance for a new company to offer services and compete with the big banks. Let’s just think about how easier it has become to make a bank transaction online than it was few years ago. Now every big financial institution is obliged to incorporate online banking in its platform to be competitive on the market. The internet platforms for crowd-funding are just another example of how FinTech has made our lives better and has empowered people to invest in projects on the other side of the globe. This type of technology continues to dramatically change the landscape for several spheres and the process is not going to slow down in the near future. Experts predict that in 2017 we are going to see credit and debit cards becoming more and more useless in the developed world, where cash is quickly giving way to phone financial transactions. The CEO of Vena Solutions Don Mal says that now having a smartphone in your pocket is much more important than your physical wallet. His expectation is that in the next five years the market for contactless cards will double and most of the retailers will accept mobile wallets. Meanwhile the biometric sensors on our phones will work not only for the HealthTech industry, but also for better payment security. In the near future we will see an multistep process for verification, which may include fingerprints, iris scans and facial recognition. Of course the better financial technologies will benefit not only the rich. In fact, they can be even more important for people in developing countries. In Kenya the system, that locals call “mobile money”, allows those without access to bank accounts to deposit, withdraw, and transfer cash with a simple SMS. According to Science Magazine’s study the access to M-PESA, the country’s most popular mobile money system, lifted hundreds of thousands of Kenyans above the poverty line. The network was introduced in the country in 2007 by Kenya’s largest mobile service provider - Safaricom. It is now used by at least one person in 96% of Kenyan households. You can learn more about the newest trends in FinTech and Blockchain sector by attending to Webit.Festival 2017. During the two-day agenda of the festival in Sofia you can listen to top level speakers from all over the world, who will share their experience on topics, such as Marketing & Innovation, Big Data & Cloud, IoE, Digital Transformation, Security & Privacy, Health & Wellbeing and Mobility. Among them will be the Executive VP for Global product strategy of Wirecard Christian Von Hammel-Boten and the venture capital investor and CEO of Novus Ordo Capital Liliana Reasor.

The startup friendly Enterprise event* Webit.Festival Europe just got friendlier!

Here is another BIG € 200'000 reason for the startups to apply for Webit's Founders Games, get a free expo stand, 2 free festival tickets and win € 200'000 seed investment!

Not a startup? Great! Webit is the only enterprise event to join and to explore great business opportunities with 75% C-level executives among the attendees as well as to have a walk among the exhibiting top European startups, get inspired, take advantage from collaborating with innovators or explore talent acquisition opportunities! If you still do not have your ticket - book today! Already registered - see you in Sofia! More about the € 200'000 A group of prominent successful entrepreneurs, investors and business angels have just joined me and together we announce a € 200'000 seed investment for the winner of Webit's Founders Games Challenge. Please share with your network of entrepreneurs that If they are not among the 930+ startups who have already applied - they have 5 days to do it! For all who have applied and were selected for exhibitors and to pitch in front of the jury -  good luck! Their Founders Games just got € 200'000 more challenging and exciting! :) See you in Sofia on 19-20 April @ Webit.Festival Europe! Warm regards!  

Plamen Russev  Chairman, Webit Foundation | Global Webit Series

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. 

Turkey and Middle East are the two most attractive e-commerce markets for new seeding. 1. Hepsiburada.com – owned by Dogan Online together with dozen of other e-commerce websites, part of Dogan Sirketler Grubu Holding AS (DOHOL), Hepsiburada.com keeps its place of the largest ecommerce company in Turkey. Back in 2011, the turkish e-comm landscape faced an annual rise of 57 percent to 500 million TRY turnover, opening the market for more payers and moreover – investors. For the past few years, rumors have been spreading around Hepsiburada.com and its strategy, pointing to an acquisition or huge rounds of funding by global e-commerce giants and investing groups. So far, Dogan Online hasn't sold its most profitable website and according to the shared into the public space by its executives, the largest stake of the received investments are planned to be used for supporting the e-market of Turkey itself by new investments. It seems in 2014, Hepsiburada.com is still a top priority for Dogan Online and its future development strategy. With the time advancing very fast for the digital ecosystem around Bosphorus, the Turkish market is getting even more attractive with a population of 77 million, expanding urban population, internet and mobile and high credit-card penetration. The giants have opened the eyes of other investors with Amazon taking a delicious stake in Ciceksepeti – Turkish e-comm company based in Istanbul that delivers flowers and gifts across the country. Following this funding, Hummingbird Ventures made an investment in CicekSepeti in January 2011. In 2011, another e-comm monster – eBay acquired more than 90% of Turkey’s leading online marketplace GittiGidiyor. The deal follows eBay’s acquisition of a minority stake in the company in 2007 and previously raised capital from iLab Ventures. The fact that Turkey is also attractive to investors looking to use its market, supporting further expansion either into the Middle East or deeper in Central Asia, brings more attention and more funding for Turkish e-commerce startups. Markafoni – already owned by South African media company Naspers. Markafoni was founded in 2008 and was the first Turkish internet company going global (Australia, Ukraine, South Korea, Greece and Poland). With all other brands in the group (Zizigo, Enmoda, Misspera), Markafoni became the biggest Online Fashion company in Turkey and MENA. Back in 2010 the Turkish private shopping club, raised £4.7 million investment from Trayas. Then, in 2011 Naspers valued the Markafoni at $200 million and bought 71% stake. It was one of the biggest foreign commitments to an industry that Deloitte & Touche said could help drive Turkish acquisitions in 2012. A year later Markafoni group bought 75 percent of enmoda.com, founded in 2011 by Doğuş Media Group, who introduced Vogue and GQ magazines to Turkey. Nowadays when Naspers has bought the rest of the shares, Marcafoni's co-founder and CEO Sina Afra left the group in the end of may 2014 and head for new entrepreneurial endeavours. Since 1st of June, e-commerce specialist Ilker Baydar has replaced Afra on the helm of Markafoni group. The pulse of the digital ecosystem in Turkey beats faster with each and every following investment round from local or global VCs and angel investors. And, it is not the Turkish market only, but the surrounding landscape of all the emerging markets across Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa. In fact, Naspers have showed a significant relocation of assets from its African e-businesses to investments like the one in Markafoni in Turkey or the $150 million two-rounds investment in Souq.com – the biggest e-comm player in Middle East. The whole Naspers Group is closely watched by analysts and market observers, so they could predict what could be the trends for further share-buys, except e-commerce. The fashion retail has opened the door for other e-shopping stores and marketplaces, so the digital trade is already profitable for some other industry fields – food delivery, tickets + travel and accommodation. The success story of the US Arbnb has pushed others to go digital in hotel booking and the recent expansion of Foodpanda in Eastern Europe and Middle East is bringing the food orders to next level of customer service and satisfaction. The transportation is also an attractive sector, since Uber and Blablacar took their businesses globally. There is something in common between each and every of the above companies and it is their need for quality investment and marketing resources. This is the major reason to give the beginning of the Webit Ambassadors Foundation - a non-for-profit foundation aiming at helping the entrepreneurial and digital ecosystem by education, creating better business opportunities and providing marketing and business platform of the Global Webit Congress to the best startups from EMEA and Asia for free. Situated in Tukey, on the cross roads between Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia we are confident to to create 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. Applications for the Founders Games are still opened till 15th of July and you could spread the word among your network of entrepreneurs, startups and investors helping them to conquer the world through the Global Webit Congress platform. On 1st and 2nd of October, Istanbul Turkey, Halic Congress Center startups meet investors, over 300 accredited media and the CEOs, CMOs and CTOs of the world's largest and most innovative companies along with the biggest global and regional advertisers. See you all there! For more details: Yanita Karailieva – Head of Business Development GWC yanita@eacad.eu +359 888 606 719