Tag Archives: Startups

Q&A with Stephane Gatchev

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Q&A with Stephane Gantchev

Stephane Gantchev
Partner, LAUNCHub
Sofia, Bulgaria

Stephane Gantchev is Partner at LAUNCHub, a 9M Seed Venture Capital Fund, based in Sofia, Bulgaria supporting the most promising entrepreneurs and digital startups in the South Eastern Europe. With 40+ investments over the last 2 years LAUNCHub is one of the most active early stage funds in that region. Prior to Launchub, Stephane started his career in France, initially in the largest IT service provider company Atos Origin, moving later to Orange (France Telecom) where he was heading the Innovation program for Orange France Mobile entity, discovering and trialing start-up in the mobile/telecom space. Stephane has been very active in the Bulgarian startup and entrepreneur ecosystem contributing to its growth, involved and co-founded/co-organized various events, among them the local chapter of SiliconDrinkabout. More recently he co-organized DigitalK 2014, one of the largest digital conferences in the region

What is it that you’re looking for when funding startups?

At LaunchHub we invest in the pre-seed and seed stages, so companies that are in the very early phases of their development. What matters to us at this stage are the founders. Of course we require an initial version of the product/service, trial or sales reports with early customers, but what’s more important to us in this phase is what we think about the founders: how successful they are (previous startups, businesses), how knowledgeable they in the space they are in, how connected to the industry, etc. It is very important to have a rounded team. We always invest in teams, never in a single founder, with complementary skills and areas of competence for each co-founder. In our region (south-eastern Europe), except maybe in Greece, the majority of the teams are formed by talented engineers, but sometimes they lack the business/sales aspect, so a team with such co-founder has an advantage.

What advice can you give to new entrepreneurs who are just starting out and preparing to approach investors?

Do your homework. Spend time investigating who is the right investor for you depending on the industry, geography and startup stage/progress. Learn if the investor you are talking to is actively investing in companies right now or is in a ‘zombie’ or other transit stage (raising a new fund, not having enough cash left in the current fund, which means they’re investing very carefully or keeping the money for the existing portfolio). Learn who are the ‘cool’ VCs that you can approach, what is the best moment and way to talk to each one of them (networking event, twitter, conference, party, etc.) Don’t do cold emailing because this rarely works. Don’t rely on ‘agents’ that promise to introduce you to investors in exchange of money or shares. Find the right people to introduce you to each investor. Don’t cry if you receive a ‘no'; there will be many VCs who will reject you for many reasons. Have in mind that a ‘no’ often means ‘not now’.

 How many of the startups you’ve invested in have failed? What did you learn from that?

We are kind of a ‘startup fund’, which means we exist actively after less than 2 years. We also learn and make mistakes. We’ve had a few failed startups, but we account for this and it doesn’t affect the overall performance of the fund a lot. In these situations, we would have already had a very small bet on those team. In all cases, we have a ‘to-avoid-list’, which is the checkbox list we use when we meet new teams. Some of the items on this list include: single founders (potentially people that can’t gather people around them and/or work in a team); accelerator hoppers (teams that already went to 1 or 2 incubation/acceleration programs in Europe without knowing what’s the clear goal/benefit); and professional pitchers (people that go on every possible pitching contest and spend time at events/conference instead of developing their product and talking to customers).

 

Q&A with Henri Asseily

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Henri Asseily
Managing Partner, Leap Ventures
Lebanon

What is it that you’re looking for when funding startups?

We first look for a strong team encompassing vision, technology, marketing and management. The team must show operational expertise. Second, the market size must be substantial. And finally, the idea must not be bad. And that’s in order of importance.

What advice can you give to new entrepreneurs who are just starting out and preparing to approach investors?

Approach unknown investors only after building a prototype that demonstrates feasibility, operational strength, and knowledge of the space. The key point is that you’re unknown, you’ve never done this before, so you have to have an answer to the question: are you the one who can do it?

How many of the startups you’ve invested in have failed? What did you learn from that?

I’ve started and/or invested in many more startups that have failed than have succeeded, and that’s normal. I started 2 companies that failed even after raising good money, and I’ve invested in enough startups that failed that it’d be hard for me to remember them all. What I learned is that a strong team that has drive, dedication, knowledge of the environment and the technical skills will have the most chance to succeed. If the team is stellar, it will find a problem to solve, a willing market, and the solution to make it big.

What are the limitations of the Lebanese ecosystem? How can Lebanon up its startup game?

The Lebanon ecosystem is short on strong talent, and has an initiated investor community. Both need to be fostered and grown to international standards. We’ve gone a long way in a few short years, and there’s still a bumpy and hard road ahead, but we can make it happen. All the actors are pushing forward in the same direction, and I have high confidence we can get our community to have a big impact in our economy soon.

Q&A With Nicolas Sehnaoui

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Nicolas Sehnaoui
Former Minister of Telecom
Beirut, Lebanon

Nicolas Sehnaoui was the Minister of Telecommunications of Lebanon from June 2011 to February 2014. After taking office, Sehnaoui successfully transformed Lebanon’s telecommunications infrastructure. Under his leadership, the Ministry upgraded antiquated copper backbone to fiber optics, replaced ancient EDGE cellular networks with 3G across the country and 50 Mbit/s 4G LTE in greater Beirut, and increased Lebanon’s international bandwidth tenfold, all while reducing internet & mobile costs by up to 80%. Later Sehnaoui turned his attention to Lebanon’s knowledge economy, more specifically its digital economy, by creating Beirut Angels, Lebanon’s first tech startup angel network, and actively supporting the creation of Banque du Liban Circular 331. He is now leading Lebanon’s Digital Roadmap Steering Committee to ensure its successful implementation. All these efforts where measured and confirmed by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union that ranked Lebanon 1st in progress out of 157 countries in the 2012 ICT Development Index Report.

What kind of policies or regulatory frameworks Lebanon needs to work on in order to facilitate investments? Is there anything that’s currently being done in this regard?

The new IDAL decree was extensively worked on during the previous government and is ready for approval by the Council of Ministers. It includes many improvements and additional incentives to the current regulation and will surely boost foreign and local investments. More specifically there is a special clause that will encourage investment in Lebanon Digital Cities and companies by significantly decreasing the investment requirements for such companies and allowing startups to benefit from the tax breaks and other incentives offered by IDAL.

What are the advantages of the Lebanese ecosystem? On the other hand, what does the country have to do to up its startup game?

Advantages: Young. Dynamic. Extremely creative. Benefits from the Lebanese expatriates network around the world. ICT is 9% of Lebanon’s GDP. Big investment in telecom infrastructure in the last 3 years. FO backbone, 3G nationwide and 4G on the coast. 400 million dollars available for startups in the form of equity through the circular 331. Lebanon ranked 1st worldwide by the ITU in 2012 on the progress made in ICT.

What needs to be done: Deploy Fiber To The Home and 4G. Adopt sector strategic vision (document prepared by Booz and Co for the Ministry of Telecom and sent to the Council of Ministers in 2013). Adopt electronic signature law and media law. Adapt educational curriculum in schools and universities especially in programming. Launch Media cities.

Stephane Gantchev – LAUNCHub – Bulgaria

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Stephane Gantchev
Partner, LAUNCHub
Sofia, Bulgaria

After 15 years in the IT and Telecom sector, Stephane Gantchev has shifted towards venture capitalism by becoming Partner of LAUNCHub. It is a seed fund that supports promising entrepreneurs and digital startups from Southern to Eastern Europe, and has invested over 3.5 million Euro in 47 startups from 9 countries since 2012.

Investments made by the company can go up to 200,000 Euro and are injected in innovative businesses across the tech sector.  The startups that LAUNCHub invests in need to have a final product, a good understanding of their market, and some initial traction. LAUNCHub also provides the businesses with services besides investment, such as mentoring and coaching, as well as access to a network of experts, tech vendors and investors.

LAUNCHub has added 120 founders to their portfolio and attracted over 4 million Euros of co-investment funding for the businesses.  As a result, when a startup joins them, they gain knowledge and skills from experts, the ability to grow their business through sound advice and build on successful investments. LAUNCHub provides young companies with the momentum they need to grow and flourish into successful businesses.

From working in the technology industry to enabling its future game-changers, Stephane Gantchev has positioned himself as true visionary and reference in his field. He has taken his involvement even further by recently giving his first angel investment to FlippTV, an app that lets users stream videos from their phones to their TV.