AUSTRIA
Oliver Holle, SpeedInvest
[reference id=”316″]
Who were your personal top startups of 2014?
The top startups incluced Crate.io, Flaviar and Hitbox.tv. Crate.io, a tiny startup out of Vorarlberg won TC Disrupt Battlefield in London! Who would have thought? And also Flaviar showed quite some effort. They went to San Francisco and tripled their turnover (read morehere). One of the hottest austrian newcomers and runner up to Twitch.tv is Hitbox.tv. The company was bought by Amazon for one million dollars.
[related_articles ids=”3480,812,3580″]
What important changes and chances are you expecting for 2015?
Looking at SpeedInvest we are expecting a lot of changes and chances as we will launch our second fund (read more here), expand our team and will then be able to fund even more startups in CEE.
What are your investment plans for 2015?
Setting up our new fund and expand our portfolio in various areas, pushing the Austrian ecosystem to next level. Further foster our strong position in the FinTech community. Bridging the gap between Europe and the US with our Silicon Valley Office.
HUNGARY
Éva Réz, Day One Capital
[reference id=”3446″]
Who were your personal top startups of 2014?
2014 was a very promising year for the Hungarian startup scene and I hope that this tendency will strengthen in the near future. From our managed funds I would highlight two teams, who both work on revolutionary technological innovations and also created some synergies within our portfolio: one of them is OptoForce, which develops a three dimensional force sensing technology; the other one is NowTechnologies, that manufactures electric wheelchair control systems and extend the functionality of current wheelchairs on the market.
[related_articles ids=”4275,4373,4418″]
What are your investment plans for 2015?
Crossboarder transactions have become general. Boarders do not mean barrier to fund raising outside the home country, investments in foreign startups, coinvestments with international VCs and exits due to global acquirers or by having an IPO on a foreign stock exchange. I do believe that investors can only be competitive and successful if they are part of this global system. I see this goalachievable by building an international portfolio and collaborate with other market participants world-wide in order to benefit from local market knowledge and the resulting network effects.
What important changes and chances are you expecting for 2015?
I hope that in Hungary and in the CEE region education will get greater emphasis. Educating future entrepreneurs, business angels, institutional investors and corporate ventures is key to create a well-functioning and competitive start-up ecosystem. The growing number of success stories on the Hungarian scene is a good incentive to make further efforts to build a productive and savvy community.
MACEDONIA
Irena Chaushevska, NewMan’s Business accelerator
[reference id=”4070″]
Who were your personal top startups of 2014?
There are many good startups worldwide but I would like to focus on the ones from the region. One great local story is Croatian BellaBeat. They won more than five European competitions before they were spotted by Y Combinator and got 4.3 million dollars to develop their product. The second startup I would like to point out is Spark from our NewMan’s Business accelerator. They are developing a unique payment app with integrated financial management capabilities, combined with an automatic loyalty system, and it is designed to assist young professionals to plan and grow their finances.
[related_articles ids=”4046,1303″]
What are your investment plans for 2015?
In this moment, we have 15 startups in the NewMan’s Business Accelerator portfolio, nine in house in Skopje and six from the region through our online platform. Our activities will mainly be focused on these teams in order to promote them internationally and to secure their seed and series A investments. In 2015 I will be also focus on development of the Macedonian startup ecosystem in order to enable the startups from this region to have global perspectives and to become leaders of the economic growth for the whole region.
What important changes and chances are you expecting for 2015?
Startups are a hot trend and I believe that in 2015 this trend will continue to grow and expand in all parts of the globe. I expect that young people especially from the developing countries will recognise the early entrepreneurship as vehicle to impact and improve their lives, the whole country, a continent, even the world. I’m also looking forward that at least some of the Governments of the smaller European countries will take example from the successful startups and will start to run their countries as smart flexible companies in order to shift the prospects for economic success and improved quality of life for their citizens in their favour.
