Invest Horizon Policy Conference

On April 23rd Invest Horizon has organised a policy conference bringing high-level EU officials and organisations representing angels and VC's to discuss the current issues of boosting investment and Europe as well as increasing investment readiness.

















InvestHorizon invited stakeholders to a one-day-conference on new insights on what it takes for entrepreneurs and SMEs to be investor ready with dedicated workshops on new strategies, tools and needs in fields such as access to finance and investor sensitisation, fruitful matchmaking and preparing entrepreneurs to access finance.

The conference consisted of a plenary session in which policy makers presented the latest political developments aiming to support European SMEs so as to be on the path of economic recovery, together with high level experts that enlightened the audience with the latest insights in the field of investment readiness.

The conference also arranged parallel sessions in the form of workshops, where stakeholders were able to exchange best practices, and networking. The workshops aimed at identifying the main characteristics of ecosystems and policy support measures that can stimulate more investments in Europe for entrepreneurs and SMEs. The results of the workshop are expected to feed into the long-
term strategy of the InvestHorizon programme and into developing disruptive schemes and strategies to improve the investment readiness of European entrepreneurs joining the programme and beyond.

About the workshops:

Investment Readiness

Can we agree on a common definition of investment readiness? What are the preconditions to be investor ready and the tools to achieve this status? How can we train entrepreneurs better and prepare
them for what investors are looking for? What type of training and preparation is fruitful and effective? How can the different stakeholders contribute to boosting investment readiness? Are the stakeholders following different – or even contradicting – strategies? What key performance indicators can the stakeholders agree on? What are the different level of investment readiness – is there a common scheme? What do entrepreneurs need to know about equity capital? Are there specificities to take into account for new forms of financing such as crowdfunding?

Investor Sensitisation

What are investors actually looking for? How can InvestHorizon raise awareness on the commercialisation potential of early stage projects? Are investor clubs or core groups for different
sectors a solution? What about investor workshops on deal flows in different sectors? What type of
training – market or sector information, deal flows, networking, legal aspects etc. - would investors
appreciate? What are the particular needs of different investor groups (business angels, VCs, corporate ventures, investment via crowdfunding platforms)? Can we agree on guidelines for successful early stage deals? Which connections are possible with other forms of financing such as crowd investing? How can we tackle the high equity fragmentation in Europe?

Matching

How can we increase the number of (cross-border) investment deals? What are the pre-conditions? How can we better match entrepreneurs and investors in a specific sector? What are the challenges and opportunities of online matching schemes, including crowdfunding? What is the added value of
matching platforms (online and offline)? What does a successful matchmaking process look like, what are the best practices in different sectors? How can we ensure to create a concise and comprehensive ecosystem for long-term and sustainable matching?

To catch-up on the conference, scroll through the twitter feed of the conference!

#ihcon15 Tweets