350 venture capitalists, angel investors, and accelerators are attending the Investors Day on May 27, 2015. A day prior to Pioneers Festival, the Investors Day is an entire day dedicated to the Top 50 startups of the Pioneers Challenge – to pitch, showcase, and connect with investors!
The Top 50 startups will pitch and showcase their products to a panel of expert judges. Find out all about the Pioneers Startup Challenge here.
After having presented the first 5 VCs who will be judging the startups at Investors Day, let us now introduce the second group of judges that you should get to know:
Scott Sage – DFJ Esprit
Location: London, UK
Twitter: @scott_sage
Linkedin: scottsage
Scott is a Partner based in London at DFJ Esprit, a multi-stage VC firm with over $1 billion in capital committed. He spent the past 7 years working in the startup industry. Before joining DFJ Esprit in 2010 he worked in research, marketing, business development and finance roles at Dashboard Ventures, UBS Investment Bank, BVCA and Smarkets. He invests into consumer and enterprise software companies and currently works with Lyst, SportPursuit, Campanja, TrustPilot, Conversocial and Datahug. Scott also co-founded CityMeetsTech in London and is a graduate of Texas Tech University.
What he’s looking for:
Consumer Internet, Enterprise Software, Mobile, SaaS, E-Commerce, Big Data, Marketplaces, Digital Health
Lyuben Belov – Launchub
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
Twitter: @lyuben
Linkedin: lyuben-belov
Lyuben co-founded Net Info in late 1998 and lead it as CEO until 2007 to reach the #1 position on the Bulgarian internet media market with brands Gyuvetch and ABV.bg.
Currently he is running LAUNCHub – a EUR 9.1 million accelerator and seed fund focused on investing in startups from SEE region in the "digital domain": consumer internet, e-commerce, digital media, mobile. They love cloud, SAAS, social and are aiming to help young and upcoming entrepreneurs disrupt industries! The ones that Lyuben specifically wants to see revolutionised are: banking, entertainment, education among others.
What he’s looking for:
Consumer Internet, Enterprise Software, Cloud Computing, Storage, Virtualization, Image Recognition, Digital Media, Developer Tools, Entertainment, Health, and Wellness, Personal Health.
Andrej Kiska – Credo Ventures
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Twitter: @credoventures
Linkedin: Andrej Kiska
Andrej is a startup investor at Credo Ventures. Credo Ventures is a venture capital company focused on early stage investments in Central Europe (Geography: Austria, Central Europe, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia) with a strong industry focus on IT, Internet & Health.
He is responsible for sourcing and evaluation of potential investments and is actively involved in supporting existing portfolio companies on fundraising, growth and exit activities.
What he’s looking for:
Clean Technology Consumer Internet Enterprise Software Mobile Health Care
Min-Sung Sean Kim – XL Health
Location: Berlin, Germany
Twitter: @minsungseankim
Linkedin: min-sung-sean-kim
Min-Sung is a Partner at XLHEALTH, a Berlin-based Venture Capital fund specialized on Digital Health investments. XLHEALTH current portfolio includes mySugr, Neuronation and Harimata. Before joining the XLHEALTH team, he founded and sold his first business and conducted seed investments with Lakeside-Ventures. Min-Sung studied in Seoul, St. Gallen, and Cambridge (MA).
What he’s looking for:
Digital health, medtech, healthcare
Timo Tirkkonen – Inventure
Location: Finland
Twitter: @zige30
Linkedin: Timo Tirkkonen
Timo is Partner at Inventure – a leading early-stage venture capital company in the Nordics. Timo focuses on the investment strategy and portfolio value creation and is actively involved in crafting the product and partnership strategies of Inventure’s portfolio companies.
He is managing the investments in Beneq, WOT, Rightware, Merus Power, and Valon. Before, Timo acted as a private investor with Innocap Oy. He started his career in the telecom sector with Nokia and Sonera.
What he’s looking for:
Technology, software, next generation digital services
