In view of the unprecedented scenario and surrounded by uncertainty, Bright Pixel, Samaipata and Kibo Ventures have gathered more than 20 investors from Southern Europe in an online pitching session open to any startup that wants to make its project known. Applications for interested entrepreneurs are open until May 13 via this link.
The 15 selected startups will be announced on May 15th and will have to prepare their pitch to appear at the event, scheduled for the 20th of the same month. The best companies in the B2B, B2C and healthcare categories will receive up to 10,000 euros per month for an entire year in free cloud computing services, in addition to support from IBM Cloud and AWS Activate, partners in the initiative; marketing and analytics credits from Google and three months of free office space in Lisbon, provided by Bright Pixel. The program also aims to foster a network of successful founders in the Southern European ecosystem.
“We believe that the business ecosystem has the potential to survive this crisis, as it is part of its nature to grow in adverse times. There are countless projects that are at an ideal stage to prosper and we want to help them take that step. For this purpose, we have gathered a great group of investors, with complementary investment areas, which allows us to create opportunities for more startups”, explains Marcos Azeredo, from Bright Pixel’s investment team.
For David Alonso, an analyst at Samaipata, “this event is not about seeking funding from any specific investor, but about getting all Venture Capital funds involved in the same project and helping the key players in the ecosystem, the founders. All the investors are still looking for incredible founders and what we have in mind is to allow for more direct communication. Spain, Portugal and Italy now have the right ingredients to be the fastest growing start-up ecosystem in Europe for the next decade. Although the pace of investment has slowed, “money is still flowing, large companies are emerging, the talent pool is expanding and governments and various stakeholders in the ecosystem are setting the right incentives to encourage innovation,” he adds.