The Investment Academy Coaching, organized by EBAN took place in Cascais, under the EUREKA !nnoVest Program. The Eureka Venture Forum had already happened in 2015 in Cascais, with the collaboration of DNA Cascais. In this interactive day, 12 selected companies, from Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Denmark had the opportunity to meet and pitch to a panel of experienced international mentors who prepare them for presentations and meetings with Business Angels, venture capitalists and corporate investors.
During Eureka !nnoVest Program, entrepreneurs receive constructive and strategic feedback on their strengths, weaknesses, and objectives of their business’ from international mentors such as Stewart Noakes (EUA) or Marc-Henry de Jong (EN). At the end of the day, the company that got the best evaluation by mentors was DigitArena, that won a passport to compete in Get in The Ring Cascais. DigitArena represents an innovative company that delivers a unique sports arena advert replacement technology which re-populates physical banner content with other advertising content based on geo-localisation.
“Eureka Investment Academy in Cascais was the one of the best organised events for E!nnovest. DNA Cascais and Cascais Business Angel Network have showed once again that Portugal is a great entrepreneurship and investment destination.”, said Ana Barjasic, managing the Eureka !nnovest program on behalf on European Business Angels Network.
The EUREKA !nnoVest Programme (E!nnoVest) is EUREKA’s new investment readiness programme that aims to boost the investment awareness and investment and business readiness amongst the most innovative SMEs, to promote the most promising of them towards the investment community and actively facilitating investment matching with international investors.
The programme is organized by EUREKA in cooperation with European Business Angels Network (EBAN), the European Business and Innovation Centre Network (EBN) and Tech Tour.
For DNA Cascais, hosting these events is crucial to empower the Portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystem. “It is amazing to see the results when you combine a set of great entrepreneurs coming from Eureka with a group of experienced international investors and mentors. It happens magic!“ , said Paulo Andrez, Board Member at DNA Cascais and President Emeritus at EBAN.
About Eureka:
EUREKA is a publicly-funded, intergovernmental network, involving over 40 countries. EUREKA’s aim is to enhance European competitiveness by fostering innovation-driven entrepreneurship in Europe, between small and large industry, research institutes and universities. By doing this, EUREKA concentrates the existing potential of experts, of knowledge, research facilities and financial resources in a more efficient way. EUREKA is constantly proving its value through a wealth of success stories – innovative products, processes and services that have been launched onto the market over the last 30 years, creating additional turnover and jobs for European companies, small and large – and by supporting the internationalization of businesses with innovative ideas.
