Endeavor Startup Showcase @Techsylvania 2022
What do 9 amazing Romanian startups, from MedTech, Fintech, Edutech, Healthtech, and Techsylvania have in common? As it turns out, quite a lot. As early-stage startups with growing traction, they’re all preparing to expand into new markets and attract new investors. They’re also tenacious do-ers, passionate about their industries.
Another thing they have in common: Endeavor. For our first public event in Romania, we decided to go big. Thus, we partnered with Risky Business, a community of founders, angel investors, and mentors, to support 9 promising Romanian tech entrepreneurs to pitch at Techsylvania to relevant investors from all around the world.
Prime Dash, Fagura, Sailo, Vestinda, Ultragreens, Beesers, 121 Tribe, Spark School and MedicAI were selected to join an intense 2-week program that helped them break down and rebuild their pitches, improving strategy and presentation skills along the way. ( Scroll down for a brief description of each startup)
“We felt extremely lucky to get nominated to participate in the Start-up Showcase by Endeavor at Techsylvania. We had a great time alongside fellow entrepreneurs and a stellar team at Risky Business. They all helped us to deliver a good pitch in front of a super-engaged audience. We thank Endeavor Romania again and hope our collaboration will only grow from here.”, said Cristian Pasa, co-founder of Fagura.
“The Showcase gave us the chance to present Prime Dash on one of the most important stages in the tech world. The preparation with the Risky Business team and Endeavor Romania was intense and insightful. They have been 100% involved in helping startups achieve in obtaining the best presentations and materials for each company, with the ultimate goal being to achieve a high-quality event that brought together the Startups with the investment environment. Given the reactions of the investors’ line-up, we believe that the results confirm the importance of this section of the conference event, building connections with many investors that showed interest in continuing the discussions with the startups”, added Catalin Rus, co-founder of Prime Dash.
“We’ve been proud partners with Techsylvania for the past 6 years in creating the most dynamic startup events in our region. The training program before the event is intense, but our entire team takes great pleasure and passion in helping the selected startups to prepare to make the most out of their opportunity in the spotlight. This year was especially special, bringing the new Endeavor Romania into our community as a partner in bringing new opportunities to the Romanian startup and investor community.”, concluded Jennifer Austin of Risky Business.
The ensuing Showcase and Q&A session was attended by VCs including Launchub, Inovo, EQT, Gapminder, Early Games Ventures, Mark Cuban Companies, Meyer Global Management, Coelius Ventures, Catalyst Romania, Automat Ventures, ffVC, Trind Ventures, Seedblink, and Startup Wise Guys. Also joining the panel were angel investors, such as Y-Combinator alumni Razvan Roman, and experienced founders and executives from global companies like Boast.AI and MongoDB. This first edition of the Romanian Startup Showcase made a big impression.
In the words of Karol Lasota, principal at Inovo Venture Partners, a €54m CEE-focused early-stage VC fund: “Techsylvania 2022 was a fantastic event! It was really a refreshing experience when most of the founders I spoke with have tech/eng backgrounds and have this hunger and ambition to build something impactful and global. That’s only another sign that the Romanian ecosystem is developing rapidly, and the startups in the Endeavour showcase were the best examples of that. However, we have a strong tech talent in Eastern Europe, but we have to try to transfer more commercial/product/fundraising-related knowledge to our ecosystem and initiatives like Endeavor, and Risky Business are a great way to start that.”
“The selection of startups was carefully done, the organizers paying attention also to the diversity and inclusion aspects. On the other hand, it was great to see fellow investor colleagues in the room, all of them active and willing to throw a witty question to the startups on stage. Last, we are pleased to have seen that the quality of the pitches was high, which also reflected the pitch prep work done by the organizing team with the startups” added Razvan Suta, Business Development @startupwiseguys.com
The 9 startups were selected based on criteria including both investability of the business and the coachability of the founder. Most of them are early stage – pre-seed or seed. You can browse through their list below:
Prime Dash – a fintech platform that bridges the gap between banks and SMEs with real-time credit
data.
Fagura – A P2P lending platform on a mission to build a community digital bank for the diaspora, allowing expats to transfer money back home and easily invest in local ecosystems instantly.
MedicAI – Online medical imaging collaboration platform that allows seamless collaboration between healthcare providers and their patients.
Sailo – Global marketplace connecting people that want to rent boats with boat owners and charter companies.
121 Tribe – Wellness platform allowing users to engage with sustainable and healthy living experts, offering full-cycle digital programs.
Spark – Spark is on a mission to revolutionize and democratize education by offering a platform for hybrid international High School education. Students anywhere have access to world-class educators and mentors in a flexible environment.
Beesers – An integrated medical homecare services platform supporting patients suffering from permanent or temporary reduced mobility centralizing the full treatment journey, from consultations, in-home investigations, treatment, and monitoring.
Vestinda – An investment hub allowing traders to connect all crypto accounts from multiple exchanges, track their portfolios in a unified dashboard, and build algorithms in a no-code environment to automate investments in only a few minutes.
Ultragreens – The first indoor vertical farm company in CEE, with a fully automated proprietary technology that can be scalable at a global level.
We were thrilled to be a part of making this event happen and witness the progress of the startups through the training, as well as the spontaneous interactions between the founders the event brought together, which provided an excellent peer coaching opportunity. It was refreshing to see so many potential Endeavor candidates willing to work and grow together. As we continue to build our presence and impact in Romania, we are more than delighted to find so many who share our belief that opportunity is not a zero-sum game, and the more we come together to create and share opportunities, the more success we will see.