On 25-26 November, 300 business angels, innovators, researchers, entrepreneurs, and policy-makers came together in Brussels for the first edition of the European Angel Investment Summit, an event that emphasized the potential in collaboration for solving major challenges like tech transfer, climate change, gender inequality, and scaling up of startups.
The Summit was the beginning of a new dialogue – presenting perspectives from investors and entrepreneurs – the risk takers who make innovation possible – to the EU. Speeches, panel discussions and workshops at the event were organised with an eye on furthering innovation and collaboration, while keeping inclusion and sustainability in mind.
By bringing fresh ideas and an entrepreneurial mindset to the heart of the EU, we hope to make even more progress on topics such as how to bring more innovations to the market, how to address key societal and environmental issues, how to bring public and private investors closer together, how to enable our startups to scale up in EU, and finally how to create a pan-European market for innovators, entrepreneurs and investors. We look forward to coming back next year to continue the dialogue.
As always, networking was a big part of the Summit with an elegant VIP Reception at the Magritte Museum, as well as a matchmaking app powered by the EIPP that resulted in over 300 meetings and plenty of lasting connections.
EBAN would like to thank its co-organisers the European Investment Project Portal (EIPP), the European Commission DG GROW and DG ECFIN, and the Enterprise Europe Network, without whom it would not have been possible to hold the Summit. Thanks also to all of our other partners who collaborated with us to make EAIS a standout success.
In addition, we would like to thank the 70 speakers and mentors who volunteered their time to share their knowledge and expertise with the participants of EAIS. Special thanks goes to the keynote speakers: Selma Prodanovic, Founder & CEO of 1MillionStartups and EBAN Board Member; Marco Landi, President at The Digital Box, Former COO and President of Apple Computer; Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, President of the European Research Council; Kerstin Jorna, Deputy Director General, European Commission DG Economic and Financial Affairs; and Pier Luigi Gilibert, Chief Executive of the European Investment Fund.
The event also underlined the crucial role played by collaboration between different actors in the public and private spheres. We would like to thank Iris Capital for their workshop on angels and VCs collaborating, and Nasdaq for their session on how to IPO, as well as Climate KIC for leading the Environment and Climate Forum, Business Region Goteborg for having supported the event.
Thanks to 1MillionStartups, who collaborated with us with EAIS featuring a signing of the Global Entrepreneurship Declaration, to signal EBAN’s commitment to driving more investment toward social enterprises.
Last but not least, we would like to thank all Summit attendees for joining us at the event – with 35% of EAIS participants being women and more than 40 countries being represented, EAIS offered diverse and international perspectives from all around the world.
As making connections is essential to collaboration – particularly so with entrepreneurs and investors, the Summit featured pitches from 38 startups representing 15 countries and broken down into four categories – Tech for Good, Deep Tech and Science, Environment and Health. 11 additional companies from the MENA region participated in EAIS as part of EBAN’s THE NEXT SOCIETY project.
EBAN was delighted to announce special prizes for the companies that participated in EAIS. The Amazon Web Services AWS Activate program gave a prize of $10,000 in AWS Promotional Credits, and Nasdaq will give 5-6 of the companies the opportunity to participate in a high profile pitching competition with the winner getting fantastic visibility from exposure on the Nasdaq Marketsite Tower on Times Square New York.
Join us again for EAIS 2020 in Brussels and at the EBAN Annual Congress in Cork!
We hope to see everyone at our next event – the 2020 EBAN Annual Congress taking place in Cork, Ireland on June 10th-12th. Tickets for the Congress are already on sale – so save the date and register now!
The 2020 edition of the European Angel Investment Summit is also already in the works – coming to Brussels again next autumn! Let’s continue the great dialogues that were started this year, stay tuned for more details!