What challenges do entrepreneurs face when raising Series A, and how can InvestHorizon help?

Entrepreneurs are a unique set of brilliant people, who bring remarkable and unimaginable innovations into the market, making our lives and that of the planet better. But being an entrepreneur is also likely one of the hardest and loneliest positions that one can have.  

Entrepreneurs often underestimate the amount of capital needed and end up raising too little money. They also underestimate the time needed to raise and close the funding.   

This is where InvestHorizon comes in, an Accelerator focusing on supporting deep tech entrepreneurs and their current (seed) investors to raise ambitious Series A investment. But how is InvestHorizon different from other initiatives? It has five key differentiating factors:

1. Cohorts are selected (who have previous seed funding) based on their ambition and potential for Series A fundraising into pan-European sector-specialised Trust Groups operating mostly online
2. Current or supporting investors of the deep tech companies actively support the Trust Group programmes
3. The investment strategic proposition is reviewed and addressed through effective collaboration in the Trust Group online sessions  
4. The investor syndicate formation is strengthened and accelerated with the mutual exchange of contacts and introductions
5. The InvestHorizon expert team has a collective experience of many years in successfully supporting SMEs in fund raising with their blue-chip network of investors

InvestHorizon enables deep tech entrepreneurs to think big and beyond their current development stage, further connecting them with the partners and investors that have the capacity to finance their ambition and be competitive

Who are the people behind this project?

Tech Tour brings together every year over 1000 deep tech SMEs, and over 500 active investors through its online community and events. The sectoral, investor type and geographical outreach of Tech Tour in unique. This strong and close connection with investors provides a sense of what they are looking for and why, and effectively allows Tech Tour to facilitate connections amongst investors and entrepreneurs.

Teresa Cunha is a Strategic Advisor at Tech Tour. As programme coordinator of InvestHorizon she brings with her 18 years of experience in venture capital. She has a PhD in Biochemical Engineering and an MBA in Management and has worked as a scientist within a large corporate, launched the European business branch of a US-based start-up, and has successfully raised venture capital funding alongside VC investors. She understands both investor and entrepreneur needs and can address and reconcile their concerns and interests.

She and her team bring these assets to the InvestHorizon Accelerator. As programme coordinator, they not only feel the responsibility for delivering value, but also to make sure to identify companies that can benefit most from the Accelerator, and to further ensure that the Tech Tour investor network is fully aware of InvestHorizon deal flow matching their investment interests.

What impact can we expect from InvestHorizon?

The current InvestHorizon programme is the second iteration of an InvestHorizon initiative which ran from 2015-2017, and that was also led by Tech Tour. The first edition supported over 2000 innovative SMEs and over €120 million was raised by 33 of the participating companies. The graphs below give an indication of the impact received, and Tech Tour hopes to do even better in the second iteration.