Startups Alliance Demo Day Another InnovX-BCR's Successful Event
In a range of 22 days, we held at least 17 events, all dedicated to the growth of our innovators and investors willing to evolve!?
StartupsAlliance.EU Demo Day is just one of those intense events, this one being the last and it was definitely very passionate about helping and improving the Romanian ecosystem when it comes to technology and innovating this domain especially. The main partner of InnovX-BCR event was Aspen Institute Romania .
There is nothing new when we say that we bring at our events people with expertise, this time having a key-note speech and two panels held by the most professional and educated minds in the field of innovation that can be found!
Bart Callens ,?Head of Strategy BCR and also an energetic person that is very passionate about innovation, held the key-note speech of this Demo Day, firstly addressing the opportunities brought by the challenges that people face day to day. Bart is the first person of this event that mentions making Romania the next Silicon Valley of Europe and describes how digitization was implemented very fast in the banks of Romania with the belief that just two years ago, the process of digitization was delayed here. He is emphasizing on the idea that Romania has a great potential and many people with talent, "sitting on a massive pile of digital talent" and being known as the number one outsourcing country when it comes to I.T. The conclusion that he reaches is that there are needed more investments, acknowledging the meaning of InnovX-BCR that consists of working with startups, to coach to train to be able to then attract more funds into Romania.
The first panel that took place at the InnovX-BCR Startups Alliance Demo Day was dedicated to the Startups Alliance as a whole, its name telling us exactly that: Startups Alliance Panel. It had Stefan Buciuc , CEO la BCR Social Finance and Radu Puchiu , Director - Technology & Society Program Director - Technology & Society Program Aspen Institute Romania and it was moderated by Adrian S. , Editor Business Hi-Tech, Ziarul Financiar .
The subject of the use of technology in humanitarian crisis is leading this panel, Stefan Buciuc telling his story of how he managed to help the people in need from Ukraine using technology. The solution was building an app for the Ukrainians that are coming in Romania to be hired: Jobful, created under the umbrella of the acceleration program. He claims that the process of creating it was quite fast, already having 100 000 unique visitors, more than 3000 jobs and 2000 employers. Their powerful growth was possible through the right platform, the right partners and from joining forces for a good cause.
Radu Puchiu is also mentioning that this situation is not about the profit, but solving a problem that occurs in society and it is a good thing that people gather to do their best. He touches upon the powerful shift of the profit, meaning and impact. In this panel, Radu talks about the future, its uncertainty and how to build on that, rather than be scared and wonder what will happen next, here being the moment in which he agrees with the idea of making Romania the next Silicon Valley of Europe.
The second panel was called ?" InvestorsAlliance.EU Panel?- The rise of CEE Investment Ecosystem", held by Suleiman A , Investment Manager, Elevator Ventures , Antonela Dragomir, CFA , Investment Manager Catalyst Romania , Alexandru Bogdan , CEO RocaX Valentin Filip, Partner Fortech Investments , Ioana David , Managing Director cleverage.vc , moderated by Dana Ciriperu , Deputy Editor in Chief at Ziarul Financiar .
This panel started with Suleiman Arabiat talking about the advantages of investing in Romania when it comes to low costs and great talent, but the most important thing to do is to scale globally and balance the trade-offs while timing them well.
Antonela Dragomir continued the panel with a great insight: "Try to get profitable earlier because revenue is important, to catch the market and also to be on your feet sooner that later because investors may not want to wait too much. Also try to have a product that is a must-to-have rather than a nice-to-have because people are looking more carefully at their budgets in these turbulent times."
Our speakers loved diversity, Alexandru Bogdan telling us that ROCA X invested mostly abroad, besides Romania, and that he is focusing on the growth of their existing startups, on their revenue, their profitability, mentioning for the first time in the panel the "paralysis" of investments. The idea of being connected to your team is continuously emphasized because of the uncertainty of the future. So, as Alexandru Bogdan said, it is important to be aligned with your team in terms of values and the mission that you have for your product and your main purpose.
The importance of investing outside the country is also acknowledged with Ioana David. Cleverage.VC started to look outside of Romania as well, aiming to identify potential targets. They observed that the funding rounds are extending in the past couple of months, making it difficult to access new funds, an issue that most of the investors might feel these days.
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Valentin Filip claims that they are looking for more startups to invest in, while improving on their activity to identify partners and startups in Europe and in the US. It seems that Fortech Investments took a balanced path, looking for collaborating with other investors and also contributing on this perspective.
After the end of these insightful panels, it was the turn of?our 10 innovators?to speak on the stage and pitch their ideas. It's about? Data Privacy Manager , Crave Bespoke Nutrition, Carfix App , NewCar4Future , Axigen Messaging , autowass , Softlead , Movcar , Gekka and Ecap that pitched for 3 minutes and had a 5 minutes Q&A session afterwards.
What is a Demo Day without a jury? Our innovators pitched for 3 minutes in front of a jury with sharp and insightful perspectives, consisting of Suleiman A , Ioana David , Antonela Dragomir, CFA , Alexandru Bogdan , Valentin Filip , Calin Lucian Grigoras , Liviu Munteanu , Anca Gherasim , Marta Branska-Rybicka , Titus Percea , Manuel-Iulian Cazac and Jake Ganey ! Session moderated by Anca Luca and Silviu Florea .
And of course, because the act of giving the prizes to our winners is an important thing for us, we took care of who is going to present the?Acceleration Results!?On the 29th, the 10 startups that pitched on this Demo Day had their results presented by the alumni. Startups Alliance is always united, supporting each other in the process of 12 weeks of acceleration! Session moderated by Oana Macoveiciuc .
??Finqware ?with?Cosmin Cosma
??Synaptiq.io ?with?Remus-Cosmin Stoica
??Skoolvers.ro ?with?Flavian Popescu
??Fibercon with?Virginia Zetu
??KIM ?with?Vicentiu Corbu
???Plant an App ?with?Bogdan Litescu
??Charger.ro ?with?Iulia Doroban?u
The work of the innovators of this round really pays off, as it can be seen from the results of this Demo Day. The prizes were worth above 150 000 Euros. On the first place was Data Privacy Manager , the second place was taken by Axigen Messaging and the third one by Crave Bespoke Nutrition. We congratulate them for being the top 3 winners, receiving also the benefit of going within our program to the United States in 2023! Though, because we like awarding our innovative minds, we also gave some special awards, as it follows:
Another Demo Day with a happy ending!?Offering the best resources and information to innovative minds is just one of the main purposes of Startups Alliance. Their opportunity to make a change is also our opportunity to contribute to the innovative ecosystem, and their scaling is something important for Startups Alliance.
These past few weeks were full of big moments, intense emotions and successful events that ended with more beautiful people that are learning to grow more within our program, our community and the CEE ecosystem! We congratulate all of them for being with us!
If you want to find out all the information that our mentors and speakers are sharing in our events, watch the live from here or apply here to get the full experience of scaling with the opportunities of our program!
Author: Balan Monica-Claudia, Junior Marketing Officer InnovX