LATVIA – INVESTMENTS
In order to facilitate the development of early-stage start-ups and increase the chances of obtaining investment support from business angels and venture capital funds, have been organised five fundraising trainings and additional investment sessions. In order to reach the largest possible audience of investors, angel investors and capital investors from Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Sweden were also invited to the business idea presentations.
Start-ups play an important role in the development of a modern and innovative economy, and in order to ensure this, it is necessary to realise that the growth process of such companies is both risky and full of challenges and difficult decisions. The experience and industry-specific knowledge that an investor can provide makes the difficult path to success much easier for a start-up.
The availability of cooperation partners and various business contacts accumulated by the investor over many years can also play a decisive role. As we have seen in the investment sessions, the advice and recommendations of business angels and venture fund representatives are listened to and valued by startups sometimes even more than the cash investment.
Investor interest was high, with an average of 20 investors participating in business idea presentations at each session. We are pleased that we were also able to attract the attention of regionally recognised venture capital funds and received valuable feedback from Tidal Wave VC, Butterfly VC, which is the leading seed stage investment fund in Nordic countries, as well as Trind Ventures and pre-seed stage investor in the Baltic States technology company investment fund Firstpick.
Scalable start-ups need working capital for fast growth and implementation of strategic goals, so it is equally important to increase knowledge and understanding of its usefulness for economic development, which we implemented in workshops as well as business idea presentations and networking events, which brought together 36 promising start-up creators and experienced investors with the opportunity to invest in their rapid growth.
After thoroughly assessing the potential of each start-up applying for the programme, the following promising start-ups were selected to participate: Mylome, White Digital, Sepsiscan, Veyond, Bonex, Cafolt.com, Viangoo, Reffy.io, 1Pet, Tutumapp, Metalang, Distantrace. , Enzymity, Bonbaloo, Sapropel Organics, Squad Robotics, AIMY, Mechcore Arena, Space4Parking, ITSM Delivery, Vitakon, My3D.Cloud, Wendo App, Collaticol, Videxplor, Pixout, Xobbit, Chat&Charge, Abillio, CopyMonkey, Cellbox Labs, Twistoo, Overly, Exponential Technologies, CleverPoint, Refundor . These ambitious companies create innovative value-added services and products and represent engineering, artificial intelligence and machine learning, research and development, biotechnology, financial technology, recruitment and other fields.
As part of this project, the course of investment sessions and the content of training programmes for master classes, as well as the attraction of local and foreign investors were carried out in cooperation with the Latvijas Business Angels Network – LatBAN.
The project is financed by ERDF support (European Regional Development Fund) and «the Growth and Employment Operational Programme» 1.2.1., specific support target «Increasing private sector investment in R&D» 1.2.1.2., within the project «Support for Improving Technology Transfer System», «Technology Transfer Programme» (project identification number 1.2.1.2/16/I/001).
Data source: liaa.gov.lv
