Acquiring an investor is a breakthrough event for most startups. Also in our case, cooperation with SpeedUp Group gives us enormous energy, not only that converted into the financial side of our project. The potential, knowledge and experience behind our Business Partner cannot be valued. We thank the SpeedUp Group for your trust.
Obtaining financing for the implementation of a business idea is a process that requires patience and consistency. Work and commitment are obvious and equally important ingredients for success. Many doors will never be opened, many e-mails will remain unanswered, after many competitions in which they will take part, the description will remain the participant, not the winner. We had all this and many times on this path it would have been possible to give up and not get to the next stage. Just as many marathon runners face a “wall” at the end of the distance, so many startups bounce off a wall of unhappiness, distrust, or other problems at some point that make a great idea go to waste. By nature, startups should be brave people and treat obtaining financing as another challenge in their professional life. Just like solving engineering, programming or formal tasks, the search for an investor requires an action plan and experience. And this is often won by losing. Of course, let’s not forget about the luck and chance that accompany every entrepreneur. We were lucky that people from SpeedUp Group appeared on our way. We helped him by taking part in competitions, and after one of them, the jury decided that he would give us a chance and a financial award that would allow us to prepare a prototype of the first device.
We completed the task and proved that we are a team that can achieve the set goals. This was one of the arguments mentioned by Tomasz Czapliński, Managing Partner SpeedUp Group, arguing the legitimacy of the investment. – (…) before the investment, we implemented the PoP project – as part of it, the team received a grant of PLN 50,000 from us, which allowed us to verify the assumptions and establish the first cooperation with recognizable brands.
The process, which then lasted several months, was full of meetings, discussions, formalities, negotiations, Excel sheets, questions and answers. COVID was neither disturbing nor helping. We processed most of the things on-line and finalized by meeting and agreeing on the next steps. When signing the investment agreement, we felt great emotions before opening a new road. Everything that has happened so far stays with us as a huge baggage of experiences, which we are sure will help in the next stages. And the fact that there will also be “walls” is quite certain. Well, every startup founder should be ready to overcome them.
SpeedUp Venture Capital Group is a group of funds created by people for years supporting the development of technology companies and involved in the development of the VC environment in CEE. The Group invests in founders of companies at early stages of development (seed – Series A). SpeedUp Group cooperates with companies with an investment horizon of 3 to 8 years, investing amounts in the range of 50,000 to 4 million Euro. The area of interest are companies and entrepreneurs from Europe, mainly CEE, creating solutions in the following areas: consumer internet, fintech, martech, adtech, electromobility, industry 4.0, medtech, IoT and hardware. We are interested in technologies such as Machine Learning, Picture Recognition and Artificial Intelligence
