Women/Business/Angels founders and all Hungarian and international partners participated at the event. Apart from the main organizing partners mentioned above the intellectual power came from the partners:
CEE Business Angels (CEEBAN), and Business Professional Women Budapest (BPW), Vállalatvezetők Üzleti Közössége (MVÜK) representing 400 CEOs and Hungarian Economic Association.
Some examples from the speakers
Ambassador of Finland to Hungary, Markku Virri stressed that he was pleased with the invitation to the workshop. „ We are looking forward to finding ways to cooperate with Women/Business/Angels in Budapest. We hope to be able to contribute to this very important, growing sector also in 2019,”- said the ambassador.
Emilia Mamajova founder of Espira Investment in the Czech Republic inspired the audience with her personal motivations as an investor. She explained why she chose education as the found’s first investment. She gave a positive example, what it means to have a female investors, highlighting the importance of a “gender lense” for venture capital investments. Espira’s EUR 50 million fund’s first investment was in an education company with a very young man as a founder. Besides the founder, his assistant was responsible for several areas of the management. By the end of the closing of the investment she promoted to the COO of the company from an assistant. An external point of view was needed for this promotion to happen. Mrs Mamajova stressed the importance of women in the decision making of the economy.
“There is no gender in professionalism,”- said Eszter Szabó, the founding president of the Women / Business / Angels Association. “However, with the greater role of women in investing, we activate a previously hidden financial and knowledge capital. As a side effect we create a stronger, more collaborative culture in the innovation ecosystem here. Women need to believe that their contribution is necessary for international competitiveness in Central- and Easter Europe”- she added.
All participants agreed that business angel investment happens if the idea is original and the founder has self-confidence to execute, while on the investor’s side trust in the founder is crucial. The second most common reason why a start up fails is the lack of capital, but if they do not start, we all lose. First of all we are building the next generation of businesses for a better economic future. “
Andrea Dintser and Imre Hild talked about the lesson learned from the association’s 14 monthly pilot training sessions so far as well as the next phrase of the training.
An all female business success stories panel was moderated by Péter Szalay, Managing Director of IBM Hungary (COO), a member of the Advisory Board of the Women / Business / Angels. This panel scored the highest based on the feedback form after the workshop. Participants were: Virág Réti, founder and managing director of Capsolutely, Nóra Szeles, founder and leader of the Capital Portal, and Antónia Imre is the strategic advisor to the Invendor Innovatiton Academy. They shared results, national and international experiences in building a business.
