First Irish Venture Academy hosted in Cork
26 November, 2010
First Irish Venture Academy hosted in Cork
Fast tracks Entrepreneurs for investment
Juliana Garaizar, Sophia Business Angels; Bill Liao, co-founder XING; Gerry Donovan, AxisBIC, Michael O'Connor, AxisBIC and Eoin O'Driscoll, Forfas.
25th Nov 2010 – Today AxisBIC and it’s Business Angel Partnership hosted the first AxisBIC International Entrepreneurship Venture Academy in Cork. The aim of this day long boot camp event was to get 10 start-ups to an investor ready stage quickly with the help of seasoned Angel Investors and successful Entrepreneurs.
10 pre-selected Entrepreneurs from start-up or scaling companies presented to a distinguished audience of successful entrepreneurs and got the opportunity to gain intensive handholding and feedback focussing on their investor readiness. Awards were then awarded on Best Overall Presentation, Most Investible Proposition and Most Improved Pitch.
To date over 60 deals have been completed in Ireland by the Business Angel Partnership resulting in excess of €20million being invested in Irish start-ups.
Participants were also given the opportunity to gain key insights into ‘how it’s done’ via panel sessions delivered by extremely successful entrepreneurs. In the first keynote Q&A session was Bill Liao, a veteran Australian Entrepreneur and co-founder of the social networking service XING and an experienced business coach and environmental diplomat. Commenting on the calibre of presentations from the start-up Entrepreneurs he said “It is great to see so many innovative ideas in one place! It just shows that there is no shortage of entrepreneurs in Ireland. It is also encouraging to see the variety of experts and investors who participated ensuring the companies are delivering the right pitch for potential investors, and it would be great to see these stories being told more widely”
Other experts attending the Venture Academy were Eoin O’Driscoll, Chairman of the Board of Forfás who led a very informative and thought provoking session; Juliana Garaizar who runs the highly successful Sophia Business Angels network in the south of France and Declan Fox, a serial entrepreneur, technologist, digital marketer and business coach.
“The Venture Academy is based on a proven International format in getting start-ups investor ready and addressing the requirements of Angel investors” commented Michael O’Connor, CEO, AxisBIC. He went on to say “There is a vibrant private equity market emerging in Ireland and even though we are in a recession, a small group of high net-worth individuals who have an appetite for risk and have cash are looking for investment. As a result the Business Angel Partnership is on course in Ireland to do over 20 deals this year”