Andrei Pitis

Andrei Pitiș is joining us for the 11th edition of VentureConnect!

Andrei Pitiș is joining us for the 11th edition of VentureConnect on 3rd of June to conduct a debate on the newly enforced business angels law.

Andrei Pitiș is the President of ANIS (Employers Association of the Software and Services Industry), the most active Romanian software association. As the leader of the Association, Andrei supports the idea of a stronger business environment in software industry where both corporations, SMBs and start-ups can coexist and grow.

In 2013, Andrei founded Vector Watch with the purpose of delivering a disruptive product to the global (smart)watches market. Today he is in charge with the technology development of Vector smart-watches and he is also deeply involved in building the strategic global expansion of the company.

 

 

 

Tina

Member of the Seedcamp Advisory Board present at Venture Connect on 3rd June

Entrepreneurs have until 22 May to submit their projects

 

Bucharest, 11th May, 2015: Venture Connect, the leading pitching and networking event in Romania, announces a new speaker invited for the 11th event organized on 3 June in ASE’s Aula Magna, Bucharest. Started in 2010, Venture Connect has welcomed over the last four years more than 400 projects and businesses from the CEE region and the US, with entrepreneurs having benefited from various special mentoring sessions to dedicated meetings with potential investors and business mentors. For the following edition, entrepreneurs can submit their projects until the extended deadline of 22 May 2015 on the event website.

 

For the first time in Romania, Venture Connect welcomes for its upcoming pitching session Tina Baker, co-founder of JAG Shaw Baker and member of the Seedcamp Advisory Board. With over 20 years of experience representing venture capital funds and emerging technology companies  with respect to international financings, exits and commercial transactions, Tina Baker will discuss with Venture Connect’s pitching start-ups and participants key issues regarding “How to make your company attractive to foreign investors

 

Tina Baker is both a US (New York State Bar) and English qualified attorney, and was formerly the chair of Brown Rudnick LLP’s European Emerging Technologies and Venture Capital Practice. She was “Highly Commended” in the category of Best Startup Advisor/Mentor of the Year at the Europas (the European Startup Awards) and is ranked as a leading individual in the 2015 edition of Chambers UK for Private Equity and Venture Capital Investments, the 2014 edition of Legal 500 for Venture Capital and listed in Thomson Reuters’ UK Super Lawyers publication 2013.

 

“In the last couple of years, European start-ups have found their call, with more and more valuable businesses growing each year and a more mature and dynamic ecosystem. This growth is determined by dedicated initiatives such as Venture Connect or Seedcamp which lay the foundations of a healthy and educated entrepreneurial class, while also pushing for a stronger connection with a wider investors’ community, both business-angels and VCs. I look forward to networking and discussing possibilities of growth and development with Romanian companies and share know-how and experience with Venture Connect”, mentioned Tina Baker, co-founder of JAG Shaw Baker and member of the Seedcamp Advisory Board.

 

As with previous sessions, Venture Connect includes two pitching sessions: the first part shall be dedicated to students and early-stage companies in search of seed investment, and the second part shall be dedicated to more mature companies in search of more substantial investments. Over 40 business angels, VCs and business mentors are expected to attend the 3 June session.

 

Entrepreneurs can submit their projects until 22 May on the event website. The entire event agenda as well as the selected pitching projects will be available on 27th May. The 11th edition of Venture Connect will take place in partnership with ASE Startup, the Business Incubator of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies and with the support of Biris Goran law firm. The event organizer is Govnet.

 

Recommended taglines: Venture Connect, entrepreneurs, start-ups, pitching,

Press contact:

 

Alexandra Pahomi – prSTEPS
[email protected] | 0729.003.956

Pitching companies: November 2014

Very glad to present the six pitching companies that entered the stage and presented their businesses. To see live demo from the event, check out our Facebook page.

Getlokal

Getlokal is a user generated review site focusing on places and events. Getlokal serves consumers and businesses via a highly developed web site and mobile Apps. The majority of the content is written by other consumers so people feel confident in trusting the information.

59sec

59sec helps companies to answer leads under 59 seconds, boosting conversion rate. The potential buyer enters on the client’s site and fills up a form. Afterwards, 59sec notifies everybody from the allocated sales team via Push Notifications on mobile devices and visual/sound notifications on desktops.

Avandor

Avandor calculates complex psycho-socio-demographic profiles for anonymous online users based only on the public pages they look at on multiple sites.

Memshare.eu

Memshare is an unified informatic system, created for managing three important aspects of your company: memory, communication and activity level.

Axosuits

Axosuits is an advanced Exoskeleton Suits which help paraplegics walk again. We are providing ease of use through more power and affordability by intelligent design.

Mobuy

Mobuy is a point-of-sale focused mobile marketing channel optimized for large retailers, helping them to connect with shoppers on-location. Mobuy integrates exclusive offers from some of the best brands, stores and restaurants.

A new investment after Venture Connect: FlorideLux

Like all great news in the industry, they come after patiently waiting and delivering well.

For the eight session of VentureConnect, we welcomed in November 2013, one of the most promising online companies in Romania – FlorideLux. A great team, sustainable plans and a strong desire to extend and reinforce their leading position in the online flower market.

Today, FlorideLux announces a new investment by Mediafax Group and BAC Investment Banking after the VentureConnect November session.

“Participating in the VentureConnect November session brought to the attention of investors our intention to develop a new business model and also to continue the strategy began more than 10 years ago. I strongly believe that VentureConnect can support entrepreneurial businesses by opening new doors and opportunities as just in under five minutes you can make a statement of power”, mentioned Marius Dosinescu, CEO and Co-Founder FlorideLux.

The next VentureConnect session is planned on 7th July at Connect Hub. To sign up for the event please visit our page.

Starting with 2013, Venture Connect is organised in partnership with Ziarul Financiar (www.zf.ro).

Venture Connect: 10 pitching companies

Just two weeks from now, on 7th July, at Connect HUB (www.connecthub.rowe welcome you to the ninth edition of VentureConnect. Carrying on the model of the previous editions, the event will have two pitching sessions: a growth session — for more mature companies and one dedicated to early-stage start-ups.

We wish all our pitchers the best of luck.

 

Mondo Taxi

Mondo Taxi is a free smartphone app that allows anyone to order a licensed taxi or hire car in seconds in the following cities: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Melbourne & Sidney, Australia, Stockholm, Sweden.

The app is built on very scalable and advanced technology and is among the best in the industry.  Some of the unique points are: Orders (you send the order to nearby taxis, not to one driver at a time), Choose drivers (the drivers “send offers” for you to choose from, based on time, distance and driver ratings from other users), Interactive (follow the taxi on the map as it approaches you), Messaging (chat with the driver via in-app chat messaging system; Call him from the app if you need to), Pre-booking (order a taxi in advance up to 48 hours (available soon), Card payments (pay for your trip with a debit or credit card, fast and simple (available soon).

 

White Image

White Image is a full-service agency specializing in email marketing. Launched in 2003, White Image helps companies in various fields of activity with the purpose to create relevant messages via email and SMS, giving them tools and tactics of data analytics and marketing automation.

 

Cinema Scheduler 

In just a few seconds, Cinema Scheduler generates daily or weekly film schedules in agreement with all cinema and distributor constraints. Advanced forecasting and scheduling algorithm is a critical input, but Cinema Scheduler’s role doesn’t end there. We work closely with our clients to ensure that what we can learn from their business processes is appropriately merged with our overall strategic development process. Also, Share Dimension provides a Care Plan offering customers the easy way to stay up-to-date with new features and keep their system operational. Share Dimension’s care plan will provide all major and minor software upgrades and will guarantee unlimited expert support as well as access to our knowledge base to keep your system operating efficiently.

 

Smart Bill

Smart Bill is Romania’s no. 1 invoicing software since 2007, serving at the moment around 23000 customers. Smart Bill is available as desktop solution requiring a license key, as well as a cloud solution requiring subscription. As of 2010, the company entered the inventory management solutions market with Smart Bill Inventory Management.

Smart Bill is used to issue about 200.000 documents per month, and to invoice over 1 billion Euros per year. This service manages the entire invoicing process: invoice issue, delivery and storage.

 

Lokko

Lokko is a mobile application which provides courier delivery on the day of the ordering, eliminating a number of indirect costs. Lokko provides a real-time map tracking, proof of delivery signatures and pictures and a rating system to provide the best assessment of the service. The application can be downloaded on iOS and Android.

 

Fitter

Fittter is the perfect solution for fitness studios that would like to offer their customers specialized guidance through a mobile app. All the best-practices from personal trainers, along with the tracking and documenting benefits are now at the fingertips of every fitness enthusiast that trains in the gym. Countless training plans backed by detailed equipment usage guides and personalized profiles make fittter the best companion in the workout studio.

Fittter is a white-label concept marketed as a SaaS (software as a service, cloud-based solution) for workout studios. In exchange of a membership fee (subscription) they get access to the mobile application (iOS & Android) which they easily make available to their clients and to a customized dashboard where they manage the accounts, customer relationship and interactions. No additional hardware or software infrastructure, investment or technical knowledge is necessary.

 

Poketo

Pocketo is a bluetooth and WiFi development board that makes it easy to prototype and develop Internet connected devices without using physical components like sensors, buttons, leds etc. Pocketo comes with a mobile application that emulates all the components you need and also offers all the sensors you have on your smartphone. When you’re done, the physical components fall right into place with your code, no adjustment needed. What you get: a development board that can be controlled over bluetooth and wifi empowered by a mobile application.

 

Rewordly

Rewordly is intellectual tracking to turn your reading and writing online, across all streams, into a single personal library and quantifed digital magazine of you or your team. We allow users to centralize and capitalize on their own content empire, and show what they know, in a sleek and versatile web 2.0 way. For thoughtful and passionate individuals and teams, Rewordly is your knowledge management and humanized branding solution. If Linkedin is what you do, Rewordly is what you know. “

 

Clepsisoft

Clepsisoft is a provider of computer security testing, called Penetration Testing (PenTesting). PenTesting Service is testing a computer infrastructure (servers, software, databases, access policies, security policies, highlighting vulnerabilities) from the perspective of an attacker (so-called “hacker”).

 

Clubbing Tribe

With Clubbing Tribe you can meet the hottest clubbing people and parties anywhere you go in the world based on your favourite Music style on your phone. The is a mobile social app for Club Events&Promotions/Discounts and new Party friends. ClubbingTribe combines Facebook experience and Viber like communication, with no phone calls only messaging, along with a Dating feature functionality.

For more information, please email us at office@ventureconnect. Also, check out the Romanian version of the material on ZF.ro.

Venture Connect: See you on 7thJuly!

 

In order to accommodate the program of all the invited guests, we have postponed the Venture Connect meeting for 7rd July 2014, Connect HUB, Buchaest. We will follow-up with the details in the following days.

Hope to have you join us. Do not worry, we have prepared some very interesting pitchers on our agenda.

The next Venture Connect edition will take place on June 12

The next VentureConnect session is scheduled for June 12, 2014. According to the past editions, the Venture Connect event will include two pitching sessions: the first part is designed for early-stage companies looking for seed investments, the second part is for mature companies that needs a substantial infusion of capital. The event is supported by Ziarul Financiar (www.zf.ro).

The Venture Connect program, launched in 2010, and the Venture Mentoring sessions, started last year, were attended by over 400 companies from Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia, Hungary and United States. Entrepreneurs have benefited from both advice and support in shaping a strong business plan and pitch, as well as they had the opportunity to access an active community of businessmen and potential investors.

“Every year we are looking with more and more confidence at the growing Romanian and East European entrepreneur community. Through the Venture Connect Foundation programs we want to stimulate the business creativity, to break down myths and barriers that Romanian entrepreneurs may encounter and especially we want to facilitate access to important information” says Ana Maria Andronic, co-founder of the Venture Connect program.

Entrepeneurs who want to present their businesses to some of the most important investment funds, accelerators and incubators from Romania and South Eastern Europe can submit their projects until May 30 by filling the form posted on the event website: www.ventureconnect.ro. Following the pattern of the past meetings, the Venture Connect program will include two mentoring sessions designed for improving the presentation structure, the public presentation skills and for preparing a speech.

The Venture Connect program has started in 2010 at the initiative of several important representatives of the Romanian business environment and with the support of the Biriş Goran law firm. So far we have organized eight editions of the event in Romanian cities like Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Timișoara.

This year`s edition of Venture Connect will take place at Hotel Intercontinental, Fortuna Hall.

For more details on how to participate in the Venture Connect sessions, visit our dedicated submission page.

Revolutionary vision processors for Google Tango designed in Timişoara

Our friends from Research Industry gave us the good news and we are glad to share it.

Google announced Project Tango, an Android-based prototype phone and developer kit with advanced 3D sensors out of its Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) hardware skunkworks group.

Using its sensors, the phone doesn’t just track motion, but it can actually build a visual map of rooms using 3D scanning. The company believes the combination of these sensors with advanced computer vision techniques will open up new avenues for indoor navigation and immersive gaming, among many other things.

At the core of Google’s freshly announced experimental Project Tango smartphone platform is a vision processor called the Myriad 1, manufactured by chip startup Movidius, whose R&D facilities are located in Timişoara, Romania.

This just goes to show the creativity and technical talent which Romania has. And not to mention our entrepreneurial spirits!

Venture Connect: 12 great companies pitching on 5 November

Time passed by extremely fast and on November 5th we meet for the eight edition of VentureConnect. The project started in early 2010 and since then, with each new session, we bring more start-ups and mature companies in the investment spotlight, more potential investors and businessmen interested in supporting the start-up community and more young and ambitions entrepreneurs eager to shine on the VentureConnect cinema stage.

The following meeting, on November 5, brings to the table both early stage start-ups as well as more mature companies; all of them businesses which have reached a certain stage of development and are looking for more financial and mentoring boost in order to further develop their activity.

We are very proud to present the final 12 projects, out of a line-up of 54 applying companies:

1.     Fashion Up (www.fashionup.ro)

FashionUp.ro was launched in 2009 and is the first Romanian online mall with over 400 national and international fashion brands with more than 25.000 products: from apparel, accessories, perfumes and decorations, for both men and women.

2. FlorideLux.ro (www.floridelux.ro)

 FlorideLux flower shops, with an experience of more than 10 years on the Romanian market, offers quality products and services, for bouquets and floral arrangements, gift baskets, funeral flowers, business gifts, large floral concepts, professional design for Christmas and other significant events, with delivery anywhere in Romania. From July 2013, FlorideLux group expanded globally, through the affiliation to 1800Flowers.com and joining the largest network of florists worldwide, called Bloomnet, which allows fast delivery of bouquets anywhere in the world.

3. Expressoft (www.expressoft.eu)

Expressoft was estabilished in Romania in 1991, and has since provided software & hardware solutions for businesses on international level, in the hospitality & retail industry: hotels, restaurants, delivery & catering services, pubs, clubs, cafes, pastry shops, retail, beauty & fitness salons, SPA centers.

Expressoft brand is the result of over 20 years of experience in the development of computer applications for business administration.  It has steadily developed its reputation by providing solutions to over 3,000 companies, with over 15,000 licenses sold and installed.

4. GameMatch (gamematch.me)

 Game Match is a free mobile platform that matches players with the right games and developers with their target audience. The first service that puts game quality and accurate player taste in front of everything else. Offering gamers a completely new experience for finding their next favorite title that lies buried under a million other apps.

5. Gloria Food (www.gloriafood.com)

The mission of GloriaFood is to create an amazing experience of online food ordering for all food lovers and makers. We think that should be possible without ripping off restaurants by charging high commission payments on every order. GloriaFood provides an online ordering system integrated across web, mobile and social platforms and we are the first to introduce the freemium business model to the food and restaurant industry.

6. Wallet Buzz (www.walletbuzz.ro)

Mobile marketing platform, unique in Romania, that expands the surface of your store hundreds of times and at the same time maximizes the response rate of smartphone holder clients located near your company.

7. Minutizer (www.minutizer.com)

We bring the payment where real human interaction already happens: on Instant Messaging applications like Skype and soon on ooVoo, Yahoo! Messenger & AIM. We developed a system that allows the customer to pay-per-minute for the time and knowledge provided by a service provider on a video/audio call on Skype. Verticals we target in the beginning: online after school teaching, online psychic reading, online coaching, online guitar lessons and many many other business verticals.

8. Simbound (www.simbound.com)

We at Simbound believe that we can revolutionise e-Marketing education. To date, students from the best universities from around the world have experienced e-Marketing operations in a risk-free, realistic environment using our simulation game system. As a leader in Online Courseware Content Publishing & Edtech services we are looking to expand our reach beyond universities and address a global, fast emerging demographic of online marketing enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, freelancers, self-studying professionals and marketing instructors.  One day Simbound will turn into an efficient e-Commerce ecosystem, a place in which people transfer value in a transparent and easy to follow manner.

9. Hypertalk (www.hypertalk.net)

HyperTalk Systems offers professional video communications tools and services through an innovative web platform that supports web meeting, webinar and online training sessions.

HyperTalk Web Meeting implements modern virtual collaboration mechanisms and provides with video communication, web presence, document/presentation sharing, and annotation tools.

HyperTalk Webinar is an effective environment for managing and delivering multimedia content during special events and wide classes.

Online Training is designed to meet the requirements of individual trainers, training companies and academics, by providing interactive e-learning / training components doubled by video communication capabilities.

HyperTalk collaborative cloud environment provides with flexible solutions, easily to customize and integrate as a service (SaaS) with CMS, CRM LMS, LMCS systems.

10. Omnipaste (www.omnipasteapp.com)

Omnipaste enables multi-screen and cross-platform communication, simple as Copy and Paste. Multiple screens make people feel more efficient because they can act spontaneously and get a sense of accomplishment. Our vision is to blur the line between devices to enable us to use their specialized hardware. We want to give developers the tools necessary to build device interconnected applications using an API, an errors tracking service and a marketplace. We have multiple devices, all connected to the Internet, but they aren’t aware one of each other. For example, a simple and habitual task as Copy from one device and Paste to another is not possible. It’s need more than 8 steps using email, Dropbox or even Evernote. Why? Because we have different operating systems that don’t speak the same language. The experience that you get with two devices isn’t better than the experience that you have with just one device. Moreover, the smartphone has more technology than the entire Apollo 11 mission, but sometimes stays in a drawer.

11. The Small Island (www.insulacelormici.ro)

The Small Island is an educational cross-media project set in the small world of the bugs and aimed at children ages 5 to 9. Targeted platforms are website, touch devices, e-comics, tv. The project is about the exploration of this funny world in which four bugs with human like appearance live, being the leading characters for all the adventures and games. Using different media content, children will learn math and develop specific skills through playing games, will become part of each adventure along with our characters and discover values like friendship and creativity. The 1st stage of the project is the website and there we encourage children to experience math through funny and rewarding activities, by playing different games set in this universe.

12. Jobs Alert (www.jobsalert.ro)

JobsAlert is the platform for recruiting abroad.We facilitate hundreds of employers and recruitment agencies to look for the best candidates for their open jobs  position. Daily, thousands of applicants are using JobsAlert.ro to find a job abroad on a contract base.

 

Pioneers Festival coming close!

For all start-ups out there, this will be one very busy autumn, with lots of pitching opportunities throughout Europe! In Romania as well, we will soon be announcing our autumn cinema show :-)

One very important event for this coming October is Pioneers Festival. Hosted in a beautiful city, Vienna, in a palace, Hofburg Palace, Pioneers will definitely create a buzz in the tech community.

Pioneers Festival is Europe’s premium event for Entrepreneurship & Innovative Future Technologies with 2500 participants, 60 high-class speakers (Google, Singularity University, Apple, Pebble, Stripe etc.), top VCs (click here) and International Media (Wired, TC, Forbes etc.)!

So the most question for today for to all soft and hardware startups – have you already applied for the Pioneers Challenge?

As a startup you can apply for the Pioneers Challenge (Startup Competition), Pioneers Showroom (Exhibition) and the Pioneers 90sec Pitches (Elevator Pitch on stage!).

Take the chance and APPLY NOW, the deadline is 31 August!

Event Dates: 29 (Exclusive Investors Day) + 30-31 October (Festival Days), Vienna/Austria

For more information please visit www.pioneersfestival.com and make sure to ping us at [email protected] for additional questions.