Last Tuesday, on 21st of November 2023, the second Workshop was held at the CEEIARAGON in Zaragoza: «How to make a High Impact presentation», within of the third work package: «Paths towards investment” of the RESOURCE project. ANCES as third party of the project leading the analysis of investor networks and the investors engagement strategy in order to find not only those most related to Circular Economy projects investments, but also those who may be attracted by their other characteristic (social responsibility, RoI, etc.)
Xana Belastegui, from SwanLaab, and Javier Artiach, from CONEXO, who is also part of the Advisory Board of the project, participated as speakers in this second workshop.
SwanLaab is a venture factory that invests in Spanish Agri-Food Startups, providing unique financing and a business creation approach to accelerate success by minimizing and controlling risk. Xana explained not only the characteristics of this sector in Spain, along with the production chains or sectors to which it is associated – Agri-food tech, Food production and transformation, logistics, distribution and retail – but also the investment characteristics of its fund, who enter as main investor or co-investor, with investments of €2M-€6M or €0.5M-€2M. SwanLaab participates in investment stages from Concept testing to Fast Track, passing through the Seed and early seed stages. In addition, objective, time, profile of the target audience or sector.
On the other hand, Javier, from CONEXO, reviewed the main characteristics of Venture Capital, highlighting that unlike other funds, the clients of Venture Capital are not startups, but investors, so one of the main goals is the return on investment and we must influence the presentation of financial information – current state of the company versus its future projection. Javier commented that it is very important to take advantage of the opportunity to present our pitch deck, because these funds rarely offer more than one opportunity to do so, so it is very important to take advantage of this opportunity. He also highlighted that for an investor, not only is the idea itself, or the technology, important… but also the team that manages the startup is very important: “The value of a startup is what its team is capable of defend».
To the workshop, 9 out of the 13 pilots project taking part in RESOURCE attended the workshop: IberSyd – CERFO-, Pensumo – Recicla y Suma-, Bugcle, Green Foundry Castillonroy – Green Foundry-, Smartmoss, Ecohelp EWM, Feltwood, Biogas DT and Cadiuco. 22 participants took part in the workshop, and CEEIARAGON, AITIIP and ANCES member also attended the workshop.
Finally, due to the agenda, only 3 pilots projects met with the investors participating in the workshop – 2 investment networks – Conexo and SwanLaab-, but it was agreed a series of online session to complete the individual workshop with all the participants.
