As the Pioneers business unit dedicated to identifying and investing in the most promising tech startups out there, we’re always happy when we see one of the companies we’ve picked out early in their lifecycle raise follow-on funding rounds from corporate and financial investors, or when they pick up awards. And our startups have had plenty to celebrate in this regard over the past 12 months.
As for awards, Parkbob was honoured at Pioneers Asia in Tokyo, Timeular was named Austrian Startup of the Year and both Byrd and ThingThing were successful at the Pioneers Festival, being finalists in the Post Startup Challenge and the Pioneers 500 Challenge respectively. ThingThing even launched a new feature on the big stage at Pioneers Festival
Activities
At our own Pioneers Festival in Vienna in May, our portfolio of startups had the chance to network in our novel ‘dealmaker bar’ booth. There they met with a steady stream of investors, corporates and media — not to mention the Prime Minister of Austria! They also enjoyed a networking breakfast and a reception with our partners at Speedinvest.
Then there was the Pioneers Ventures Portfolio Retreat, which we hosted the day before Pioneers Festival. Pioneers co-founder Andreas Tschas was on hand to welcome the young companies to the family, after which they listened to some terrific speakers. Packpin.com co-founder Vytis Radvila gave a ‘How to Manage Developers’ talk, while our own Fadi Haddad delivered insights on ‘How to Build a Scalable Sales Machine’. The startups also enjoyed a fireside chat with Buffer founder Leo Widrich, followed by a wine or three in the magnificent surroundings of the vineyards just outside Vienna.
Silicon Valley trip
We do a lot of hands-on work with the startups in which we believe, for example when we took seven of our portfolio firms to Silicon Valley for an immersive two-week trip to the U.S. innovation hotbed. The tour in September included ‘friendly pitching’ and feedback sessions with top-tier VC’s like NEA and Binary Capital, as well as with accelerators of similar status, such as YCombinator and 500startups.
Other highlights of the American trip included, besides others, an amazing private dinner with Andrew Chen, Head of Growth at Uber, two productive days at TechCrunch Disrupt, a meeting with Fitbit designer Gadi Amit and an insightful session with Eric Migicovski, who founded Pebble on the back of one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever seen. This last encounter was especially valuable to our portfolio company Timeular, as their CEO Manuel Bruschi recalls:
“Both Eric and Gadi spent time with us and gave us valuable feedback on our product and helpful inputs for our crowdfunding campaign”.
They went on to raise more than 300.000 EUR on Kickstarter a couple of weeks later.
We do a lot of hands-on work with the startups in which we believe, for example when we took seven of our portfolio firms to Silicon Valley for an immersive two-week trip to the U.S. innovation hotbed. The tour in September included ‘friendly pitching’ and feedback sessions with top-tier VC’s like NEA and Binary Capital, as well as with accelerators of similar status, such as YCombinator and 500startups.
Other highlights of the American trip included, besides others, an amazing private dinner with Andrew Chen, Head of Growth at Uber, two productive days at TechCrunch Disrupt, a meeting with Fitbit designer Gadi Amit and an insightful session with Eric Migicovski, who founded Pebble on the back of one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever seen. This last encounter was especially valuable to our portfolio company Timeular, as their CEO Manuel Bruschi recalls:
“Both Eric and Gadi spent time with us and gave us valuable feedback on our product and helpful inputs for our crowdfunding campaign”.
They went on to raise more than 300.000 EUR on Kickstarter a couple of weeks later.
The last words go to Parkbob CEO Christian Adelsberger, who we asked to review his year with us:
“Parkbob has made tremendous progress this year. On the international front, this was radically fired by Pioneers Asia in Tokyo as well as the joint Silicon Valley visit. It’s priceless for a start-up in our stage to get high-quality introductions to decision makers of the big international players. We build on these meetings to convert them to customers next year.”
Outlook
It goes without saying that we intend to build on all of this in 2017, helping the most promising startups take their first steps on the pathway to success through investment and hands-on support.
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