Romania’s Techcelerator assists high-tech startups in SEE to attract seed investment
Techcelerator, the most active accelerator for technology startups in Romania, announced the second edition of the Investment Readiness Program. The acceleration program runs in partnership with SeedBlink and aims to assist tech startups to attract seed investments of up to €1 million.
„Attracting seed investments is an important and complex stage, which raises clear challenges in terms of the international growth and development of startups. (We) have designed the Investment Readiness Program, aiming to prepare entrepreneurs and make the investment rounds an exciting process for them to understand well and help them grow. They will learn from investors and other successful founders, with whom they will interact directly. We remain a strategic partner for tech startups, for which we develop communities, consolidate ecosystems and generate valuable business and development opportunities,” says Cristian Dascălu, Co-Founder Techcelerator & Partner GapMinder BV.
European investment platform SeedBlink opens a branch in Bulgaria
Investment Readiness Program #2
The 2nd edition of the Investment Readiness Program is tailored for technology startups in Romania and Southeast Europe, which are getting ready to raise a round of seed investments within the next 1-6 months. To be eligible, startups must be mature, they must provide tech products, already have a product launched on the market, and have traction, stable partnerships, and customers. They must have a strong team and the ability to scale internationally. 15 startups would be accepted into the program.
The program will have 8 sessions and will run from June 6 to June 27, 2022. It will include one-on-one workshops and sessions on developing and refining the fundraising process, frameworks for validating company valuation, and alignment with the mindset and process of international venture capital investors.
Startups will receive direct advice from the Techcelerator team, regional & international VC investors, the regional online investment platform SeedBlink, as well as from our portfolio of successful founders who have already raised a number of rounds of funding.
>>> Apply here until May 31st, 2022. <<<
Techcelerator`s Investment Readiness Program will end with a private pitching event attended by the most active partners from local and international investment funds. Following this event, the best-performing startup will receive an investment award of up to €500,000, led by Techcelerator and the program investment partners, with a co/investment participation through the SeedBlink platform.
“Entrepreneurs often face the challenge of refining their business model, estimating the amount of capital needed, or underestimating the underlying power of appropriate valuation. That’s where Investment Readiness comes in, an accelerator focused on supporting tech entrepreneurs to raise ambitious seed investments and understand in advance what the triggers are for raising the appropriate funding, how much time it will take to prepare investment documents, raise and close the funding,” says Andrei Dudoiu, Managing Director at SeedBlink.
And, in order to support the needs of founders in the best way possible, the Investment Readiness Program provides a curriculum tailored to each startup, practical workshops, and individual mentoring sessions. The design of the program makes it possible for startups to work on preparing their documentation for listing or fundraising (fundraising pitch deck, executive summary, investment memo, budgets, and financial forecasts, business cases, pricing strategy, risk management), together with professionals from the investor community.
The program includes the following 2 modules:
- “Company Valuation” – a module where startups will get access to venture capital experts with whom they will evaluate the company, and the perspective of the investors present
- “Startup Legal & VC Investments”, developed with our legal partners, where the startups will get access to lawyers with M&A experience and expertise in preparing investment documents and strategies specific to VC investments
„The Central Eastern Europe tech sector is growing quickly and has emerged as one of the most important areas of focus for European investors. Techcelerator provides strong support for the local tech ecosystem – we look forward to meeting the new cohort of founders who are looking at building the next global success story”, say Kamil Mieczakowski and Radu Bozga of Notion Capital.
Who is behind the acceleration program?
Besides Techcelerator, the program has been supported by investment partners such as SeedBlink, an online investment platform, the GapMinder BV fund, and the VC regional investor community.
Techcelerator is the first accelerator in Romania to allocate funds for the development of high-tech companies in the acceleration and post-acceleration phases. The focus is on growing industries such as FinTech, B2B SaaS, eHealth, PropTech, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation.
As of today, Techcelerator has successfully supported over 90 startups. In the four years since its launch, the companies in the Techcelerator portfolio have benefited from a total investment of over €15 million from the investment rounds attracted so far.
The strategic support of Google contributes also to the accelerator. The Investment Readiness program is supported by Google for Startups and Google Romania, from whom the finalists will receive mentoring, resources to accelerate startups as well as $200,000 in Googe Cloud credits.
