The international investment group Flashpoint has announced its 3rd annual SummerSaaS Conference for venture capital firms and tech startups with founders from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), Israel, Finland and the Baltics. And they are inviting you to pitch your startup there.
The Conference is scheduled to take place online on June 9th 2022.
With offices across Europe, including London, Budapest, Warsaw, Riga, Nicosia and Tel-Aviv, Flashpoint currently manages six venture funds – four VC funds, a Venture Debt Fund, and a Secondary Fund. It’s recognised as one of the most active investors in its core geography, and, at the end of 2021, its active portfolio comprised 40 technology companies, comprised of founders from Central and Eastern Europe, Baltics, Finland and Israel.
In 2021 alone Flashpoint funds invested in 23 new companies and made 11 follow-on investments into the existing portfolio companies for a total of US$93 million. SummerSaaS serves the purpose to replenish the funnel and is giving the best startups an opportunity to pitch not only to the Fund’s Partners but also to other leading VCs of the region.
The Pitch Competition
For the third year in a row, the competition selects the most promising startups and provides a rare opportunity to pitch in front of hundreds of leading Seed and Series A investors.
Last year, the jury included such pan-European names as Sequoia Europe, Tiger Global, Prosus Ventures, SpeedInvest, Earlybird, Cherry Ventures, Runa Capital, 500 Startups, OTB, Hoxton Ventures. This is in addition to Geo-focused VCs from Israel (Viola Growth, NFX, State of Mind Ventures, Grove Ventures, Vertex Israel, Cornerstone VC), Eastern Europe (Day One Ventures, Credo Ventures, Launchub, Early Game Ventures, Lighthouse, Reflex Capital, Vitosha Venture Partners, BrightCap Ventures, FilRouge Ventures, South Central Ventures, Venture Friends, Market One Capital, Inovo Ventures, Innovation Nest Ventures, Portfolion, 3VC), Baltic (Change VC, Tera VC, Baring Vostok Capital Partners, Redseed, Impulse VC, Genesis, IIDF) and Finland (Icebreaker, Vendep, Maki VC) – quite the lineup!
Interested? SaaS startup founders can submit their online pitches via the SummerSaas registration page. To be eligible, those applying must have a monthly recurring revenue between $10k and $100k, and/or raised between $0.3m and $3m.
The Pitch Competition will focus on six tracks:
- Vertical SaaS: including the likes of construction, real estate and logistics.
- Horizontal SaaS: including productivity, sales, HR and support
- Developer Tools: including R&D productivity, product analytics and DevOps
- Fintech
- New Economy: such as the gig economy and Web3
- Tech startups operating in Ukraine
The Process
After reviewing the applications, Flashpoint will identify the top 25 startups to pitch to a VC jury of leading European and Global VC – one winner from each track will reach the final.
The remaining 5 startups will then present before a Grand Finale VC Jury and battle it out for the winning title.
In addition, there will be a Startup Alley for the startups selected from the applications.
The Prize Package
Flashpoint has gathered a generous prize package, including:
- 10k+ Amazon Web Services credits
- Hubspot discounts
- A complete Inbound Marketing Course from Hubspot’s top experts (worth 5k+)
- A complete recruiting solution from Comeet
- An individual coaching session from the Flashpoint Investment Team, that will help with the positioning, pitching and intros that are most relevant.
Alongside the hotly-awaited Pitch Competition, the Conference will feature VC panel discussions on trending topics and corporate panels with the region’s leading technology companies.
What’s more, this year, Flashpoint has introduced a new pitch track for tech startups operating in Ukraine. The winners of this specially-organised track will get a monetary prize.
Anton Fedorov, Partner at Flashpoint Venture Capital, said: “We are excited to kick off this year’s SummerSaaS competition. We expect participants to show great enthusiasm this year, as they did last year. More than 250 venture capitalists, 60 angel investors, and 440 entrepreneurs participated in SummerSaas 2021. This is a unique opportunity for founders to present to a diverse group of venture capitalists from Emerging Europe & Israel and to boost visibility.”
