Artigo extraído da EASY newsletter nº7 sobre a comunidade EASY – Early Stage Investors for High Growth Businesses, organização à qual, através da Gesventure pertenço.
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During the life of the EASY Project it has become clear that many more organizations than the original founder partners have seen value in the initiative. Every partner that has hosted an EASY event has engaged with many other organizations interested in fostering an entrepreneurial culture and associated investment within their own citizenry. |
Amongst the dozens of organizations that have supported EASY are local government bodies and innovation agencies, private sector businesses engaged with entrepreneurs and venture capital associations. Global corporates have also identified the opportunity with Oracle supporting the EASY Event in London and Microsoft supporting the Central European Investment Marketplace. The benefit of their involvement has been immense – providing real advice and support to the businesses on their entrepreneurial journey which will help to create the companies of tomorrow and strong economic growth for individual member states and the EU as a whole.
Sometimes it is the apparently small things that have made a big difference to the long term outcomes of the event – one such example is the many networking receptions that have been sponsored by host cities where EASY events have been held. These networking sessions are the glue that binds the investors together as they can use the opportunity to build friendship and trust in advance of syndicating an investment. It also helps the investors to meet the entrepreneurs in a more informal environment and have a more relaxed conversation about how they hope to build their business.
Of course the big things matter too and perhaps the most important of all is the fact that through the wider EASY family over 100 entrepreneurs have had the opportunity to expand their business internationally and drive towards exponential growth.
So what is in it for the organizations that have supported EASY? Well, they have the opportunity to show that innovation and entrepreneurial activity is rife across the EU from Helsinki to Lisbon and to build long term relationships with a range of international investors with the potential to leverage this network for generations to come. It is certain that the long term benefits of the EASY project will be far larger and more long lasting than the original partners will have conceived. Indeed at Andrea di Anselmo of Meta Group who first conceived the idea of EASY said:
“EASY has provided us with an unique opportunity to get to know in depth a number of key actors of the early stage market in Europe and to expose our start-ups to an international environment. We established the basis for joint future activities including the creation of a European fund for cross border investments. EASY allowed us also to better know and increase our level of participation within EBAN and get better knowledge of the European scene for early stage investments.”
