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Neulogy Ventures launches two new funds
rennies Posted On April 30, 2014


Neulogy Ventures, the first capital fund management company to be based in Slovakia, held an event on 29 April to announce their launch of two new funds. Both new funds focus on startups in the earlier stages of development. However, the two are geared towards providing different types of financing for early-stage tech companies in Slovakia.

The first, a seed fund, has been exclusively backed by the European Investment Fund. The second, a venture capital fund, is somewhat larger and backed by both the EIF as well as 33 private investors. Among these private investors are numerous financially successful Slovak entrepreneurs, company founders, high-level executives and angel investors.

New seeds and ventures

The smaller seed fund is intended to provide funding to companies in the very early stages of their development. These are typically intended to be companies that are in the proof-of-concept, pre-revenue stage. The larger venture capital fund “is focusing on companies with [their] first users or customers and some revenue, or established local players looking to expand to new markets,” explained investment manager Michaela Jacova.

To be eligible for funding investment with one of Neulogy’s two new funds, startup companies must themselves be based in Slovakia, either through their establishment or in their operations. They must also currently be active in research and development. As additional criteria, both of the new funds are seeking ambitious businesses that display scalability and have “significant technology components, regardless of industry sector,” according to Jacova.

The two new funds together have, in total, just over 23 million euros worth of assets under management.

Investing in the future

Neulogy Ventures is a member of the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, and the first Slovakian company of its kind to run fully regulated seed and venture capital funds in line with the industry’s highest standards. Jacova reports that the management company is already at work on their next round of investments, which will be the business’ focus over the course of the next two to three years. “We will be doing follow-on investments up until the end of 2016,” she added.

Outside of the two newly launched funds, Neulogy Ventures provides seed and venture financing for startups at both early- and later-stage developmental levels, with a focus primarily on innovative players in the fields of information and communication technology, new energy and medical diagnostics.


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A Day for Cheque Writing
minan Posted On March 18, 2013


“I would like to ask you to take out your checks, put them on the table, put out your pens, because what you’re going to see in a while is going to push you to write some very big numbers.” This is how Stanislav Sirakov, partner at LAUNCHub – a 9M seed and acceleration fund in Bulgaria, addressed the participating investors at the start of the accelerator’s first Investors Day on 14 March. (Watch the full opening speech here). With Bulgarian startups gradually making international headlines (i.e. iMediaShare – recently featured in the Amazon app store), it appears to be almost a necessary step to bring together the startup and investment communities from the country and beyond. Discovering how both sides can work together might potentially not only grow the CEE scene, but also highlight Bulgaria’s position on the startup map. 

The event kicked off with a pitching session, in which all 13 participating startups took the floor to present their projects. About 2/3 of the teams belonged to LAUNCHub’s fall accelerator batch, Sirakov told inventures.eu, and the others were some of their earlier investees “able to attract bigger seed rounds – between 200,000 and 400,000 euros.” (A list of LAUNCHub’s investees can be found here). Perhaps, the highlight of the Investors Day, however, were the 1-on-1 discussions that startups had with theinvestors, some of whom were so involved that “we had to move and prolong the whole event into our office space,” said Sirakov.

What seems to have contributed to the dynamics of the event was the diversity on the investors panel. Represented were Europe-wide investment players such as Intel Capital, 3TS, and Early Bird, some regional ones like Slovenia-based RSG Capital, as well as another 40+ business angels. Sirakov explained the motivation behind that variety: “It is always interesting to see different points of view and different attitudes to different industries.”

The Investors Day, however, appears to have been more than just a mere networking event, as some preliminary results are already in place. “One of the pitching teams received a couple of offers and an invitation to travel to Turkey, Romania and the UK in the next week to negotiate a Series A round,” said Sirakov. In addition, another 4 or 5 startups entered serious talks with angel investors.

At the end of the day, however, one thing seems to have left a lasting impression: “The investors realize that there are a lot of interesting stories emerging in this part of Europe.”

For more insight into the Bulgarian startup scene, do follow this link.


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The WTFs of a Business Angel #7: Drafting that Excel sheet
michaels Posted On January 28, 2013


When we started SpeedInvest about 18 months ago, we were a startup ourselves. A very well funded startup, but still, we were a team of people who had some experience in building companies and no experience in building a Business Angel fund. We are still learning an awful lot, because you can profit from other people’s wisdom, but there is no way around doing things yourself, making mistakes, trying again and again, learning from what you’ve seen so far. That is the spirit that we like to keep, a positive and pro-founder type of attitude, because the truth is: we love what we are doing. It is fun and exciting to meet visionary people, who have drive and enthusiasm to change whatever tiny bit of their world, step by step. However, there are those rare events where we sit across the table in our office and are having a facepalm moment. When one of us gets an email from a startup or reads a piece of news about our industry that just makes you go “WTF?”. For your reading pleasure, but also to offer you the opportunity to learn, we open up our treasure chest of awkward moments and give you our top WTFs, of course with all due respect to those contributing to them.

The WTFs of a Business Angel #7: Drafting that Excel sheet

It is a commonplace these days that most Angel investors will never ask you for a full-fledged business plan or any other document detailing the world you live, breathe and thrive in until 2027. Detailing the plan of world domination in utmost clarity almost always serves as self-motivation, rather than as guideline for growing your business. BUT, there are these moments in a process that eventually leads to investment, where the numbers make all the difference. Not that 30-page Word document, as said, but that two-page Excel file with all the necessary metrics. 

We need metrics. For some simple reasons: we need to see where you are going with this, how big it is and most importantly, to identify also for us, the important value drivers of the business model. I personally always feel a little childish excitement when a founder sends over their super-secret Excel sheet to share the calculations they have been pondering over the last months. I like this moment. Over the time, I got the impression that there are mainly two types of sheets: one super simple approach that misses most of the important parameters and has been done in an hour or two. The other is the super sophisticated approach, an overly detailed sheet that uses 30 columns, 5 sheets and lots of assumptions to build a business case.

This might be necessary for some business models that are truly complex in their nature, but for most, calculating inflation rates until 2017 makes no difference in your EBIT, turnover or valuation at all. For some reason I haven’t figured out yet, most of the templates that are offered, are the latter. Screw that. Really. If I have to print your sheet that spans a couple of pages only to see your basic assumptions, you are modeling too much. After all, these are just assumptions, a mental model that can communicate what is possible, not what will happen. 

You and we, we need these models. Because they are a basis for a discussion, because they set the scene, because we can challenge each other based on those assumptions. The best discussions we had with founders were based on a reasonably complex Excel file with their business model on a page, where we would playaround together, model in cases and data points, getting a feeling for the business we are looking at. Your spreadsheet is nothing that generates revenue or clients, or hires good employees. But it is your view of the world you will be living, breathing and thriving in the next couple of years.

 



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The WTFs of a Business Angel: #6 RTFW
michaels Posted On January 18, 2013


When we started SpeedInvest about 18 months ago, we were a startup ourselves. A very well funded startup, but still, we were a team of people who had some experience in building companies and no experience in building a Business Angel fund. We are still learning an awful lot, because you can profit from other people’s wisdom, but there is no way around doing things yourself, making mistakes, trying again and again, learning from what you’ve seen so far. That is the spirit that we like to keep, a positive and pro-founder type of attitude, because the truth is: we love what we are doing. It is fun and exciting to meet visionary people, who have drive and enthusiasm to change whatever tiny bit of their world, step by step. However, there are those rare events where we sit across the table in our office and are having a facepalm moment. When one of us gets an email from a startup or reads a piece of news about our industry that just makes you go “WTF?”. For your reading pleasure, but also to offer you the opportunity to learn, we open up our treasure chest of awkward moments and give you our top WTFs, of course with all due respect to those contributing to them.

The WTFs of a Business Angel: #6 RTFW

Yes, we sometimes get supermotivated founders with crazy valuation expectations presenting us bullshit metrics. All bearable. Because: many people do this the first time, including us, and there is no other way of learning than putting yourself out there, trying and failing. But there are things, that even the first time founder in his/her first week could do, to increase the likelihood of not wasting your and our precious time: read the f***ing website.

There are the strange cases, where people call and want us to create a personal investment strategy for them, as we “must be into investments” due to our name. Yes, right, but – ahem – not that type of investments. There are clear cases, where people pitch us their investment fund, looking for “up to 100 million” asking us for a “ticket of 7 – 10 million” – from a fund of 10 million euros in total. There are edge cases, where people pitch us their powerpoint deck (yes, common in the US) although we are very clear on that on our website.

It is not that we don’t like you reaching out to us or that we are misanthropic or anything, it just makes no sense! And taking this whole notion to another level: carefully reading the information available about the investor you are pitching (Interviews! Website! Facebook Page!) gives you a head start in any conversation, because you might be able to understand how that particular investor works! We are all humans, we like if people talk about stuff we can relate to, so by exposing all kinds of stuff on different media, we give you opportunity to find a piece that could trigger a conversation between you and us.

And frankly: we wrote all that stuff on our website so that someone reads it, so please, do. End of rant.


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