All posts by Banque du Liban Accelerate

How do VCs look for Success Stories?

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To help entrepreneurs get an idea on how VCs look for the next success stories, we approached two VC firms in Lebanon, Berytech and Leap Ventures.

Berytech_Logo

Berytech:
Berytech was established in 2001 and is the oldest firm in Lebanon to provide support to startups. It has since grown through the years to become an ecosystem of 3 incubators, 3 finds, 1 accelerator, and coworking support spaces.

Berytech is an exciting community of entrepreneurs who support each other and grow. They provide business support at the different growth stages of the startup, flexible worry-free hosting services where the startups can plug and play and expand flexibly.

When looking for success stories, Berytech believes that Lebanon is filled with lots of great human talent who are often hidden or worried to go through the risky entrepreneurial path. Berytech is there to help them figure out if the path is right for them and to support them every step of the way in terms of training and coaching.

Check their website to learn more.

Leap Ventures

Leap Ventures:
Leap Ventures was founded in 2014 as a venture capital firm specializing in investments in startups. The firm is based in Beirut and is also located in Dubai. It invests in the MENA region with a focus on Lebanon.

Leap ventures was formed by a team of serial entrepreneurs who have decades of startup experience under their belt. They can support entrepreneurs through funding, strategy training, providing operational resources, marketing expertise, global connections, and more.

To find the next success stories, they leverage their extensive entrepreneurial experience: engaging with promising entrepreneurs, providing fresh views and strategic opportunities, and planning for transformative growth.

Check their website to learn more.

Liz Fleming – South Summit – Madrid

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Liz Fleming

Liz has spent most of her career in the early stage venture capital industry. Starting out as an investment advisor with Enterprise Ireland, a public VC investing €40m per annum into 70+ startups following on as programme manager at HBAN, Ireland´s national business angel network, establishing 7 business angel syndicates across the country with an investment capacity of approx. €20m.

As deputy director for the Venture Lab at IE Business School (ranked No.1 in Europe, 13 worldwide by FT ´13) Liz was responsible for accelerating 50 teams and spinning out on average 10 start ups per year connecting teams to over €15m in capital. As managing director of the Venture Network, a weekly pitch slam event, Liz built a community of over 1200 entrepreneurs with 350+ startups pitching to 50+ investors over 3 years. Liz also launched editions of the Venture Network in 11 cities across Spain and internationally in Bogota, Medellin, Johannesburg, Helsinki, Taipei, & Tel Aviv.

While at IE Liz helped design and implement the Spain Startup Co-investment Fund, a €40m seed fund run in collaboration with Enisa, Spain´s leading government agency for innovation. Liz also sat on the steering committee of the Startup Europe Partnership, a platform for scaling startups in Europe launched by the EU Commission.

Now as VP International for Spain Startup, Liz´s goal is to showcase the talent and innovation coming out of Southern Europe, the Mediterranean, and Latin America at The South Summit, one of Europe’s leading startup conferences. Liz is Spain´s only Kauffman Fellow and was listed as one of Europe’s Top 100 Women in Tech by GirlsInTech, and one of the Top 100 Women in Tech on Twitter by Business Insider.

Sanjay Sabnani – CrowdGather – Los Angeles

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Sanjay

Prior to founding and taking CrowdGather public, Sabnani was an accomplished senior executive at several dynamic public companies in the technology and medical sectors. He has extensive deal making and transactional expertise having been involved in significant equity and debt capital raises. Sabnani is also a former financier and securities principal with extensive capital market relationships.

Sanjay Sabnani has also served as Chairman of the Board for Artwallah and TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Southern California, both non-profits.

He is published in two medical text book chapters as the only non M.D. or PhD contributor, and has authored and received patents based upon his understanding of the GABAa receptor complex and its implication in anxiety, addictive, and eating disorders.

On the rare occasion that he has spare time, Sabnani is focused on writing a book about his theories on the biological underpinnings of anxiety from a systems approach.

Mike Butcher – TechCrunch – World

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Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher (FRSA) is ‘Editor At Large’ of TechCrunch, the biggest breaking news site about the world’s hottest tech companies. Mike has been named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph. As well as being a long-time Writer, Broadcaster and Editor Mike is also co-founder of TechHub (@TechHub), a project to bring European technology entrepreneurs and investors together in a club/office environment. Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and the European edition of The Industry Standard magazine.

Since 1996 he has launched or re-launched numerous media web sites and in 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia’s European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 he was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club. In August 2008 TechCrunch Europe was awarded the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine. In 2009 it was named as one of the Top 10 blogs out of the UK. Also in 2009 he was named one of the Top 10 bloggers on Twitter in the UK. In October 2009 he was named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph. In April 2010 he was in Wired UK’s Top 100 influencer list, again in 2011, in 2012 and in 2014. In April 2010 TechCrunch Europe was shortlisted in the Specialist Digital Publisher category of the prestigious UK-based Association of Online Publishers’ Digital Publishing Awards. In November 2010 he was named as one of London’s most influential people in New Media and “king of dotcom commentators ” by The Evening Standard Newspaper. He has been listed as one of the Top 100 most influential people on Twitter in the UK. He has spoken at the prestigious Monaco Media Forum and Le Web, among many other conferences. Mike is a regular commentator on the technology business, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC, Channel 4 and Bloomberg. Mike has served on the Mayor of London’s Digital Advisory Board, the ‘Smart London’ Board and is London Technology Ambassador for London. Mike’s personal blog is mbites, while he Twitters as @mikebutcher.

Natalia Kiskova – Bluewolf – Czech Republic

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Natalia

Natalia is a Growth Manager at Bluewolf, board member of Aj Ty v IT social organisation and the daughter of the President of Slovakia. Bluewolf is a global consulting agency that builds digital solutions designed to create results. Its main focus is on design, build, and innovation for customer and employee experiences on the Salesforce platform.

Prior to her current role, where Natalia is heading up the office for Bluewolf in Prague, Czech Republic to cover CEE region, her roles have switched at Bluewolf. In the past 5 years while she moved from NYC to London to Prague office covering roles from Consultant to Project Manager. She is very passionate about expanding the knowledge of IT and it’s potential in her home region.

Being the daughter of the first independent President of the Slovak Republic that has had over 80% of popularity vote and strong entrepreneurial background, has shown her that even a small country with socialistic background has potential to be innovative, bring new ideas and create space for talent. Her aim is to motivate and support more individuals from the region to join the startup community and promote the talent and innovation.