- Vestbee partners with top-tier partners for a new initiative to reward the most aspiring startups in CEE – Summer Pitch CEE
- The selected finalists will pitch before partner VCs; all participants will be rewarded with free credits and discounts from partners
- Applications are accepted until June 28th, finalists will be announced on July 10th
Vestbee, CEE’s most renowned platform for matching startups with investors, teams up with Hubspot for Startups and Carta for its Summer Pitch CEE 2024. This is Vestbee’s new initiative to empower 100 carefully selected startups with the opportunity to showcase their ideas, gain exposure, and connect with hundreds of VCs and business angels. CEE startups and scaleups from all verticals are invited to compete for exciting prizes and the opportunity to pitch before the region’s most sought-after investors at the final CEE Summer Pitch. All participants will get exclusive discounts from Hotjar, HubSpot, Notion, Slack, Stripe, and Zendesk.
Eligibility and Roadmap
The initiative is industry agnostic, aimed at early-stage startups from Central and eastern Europe looking to raise Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A rounds.
Startups are to apply here before June 28th. The jury will take their time and announce the finalists on July 10th. They will be welcome to pitch before the partner VCs on July 18th.
Jury
The pool of judges of Vestbee’s CEE Summer Pitch will include:
- Artur Banach, Managing Partner at Movens Capital
- Ewa Chronowska and Marcin Laczynski, Partners at Next Road Ventures
- Adam Hashchyshyn, Principal at Roosh Ventures
- Marcin Hejka, General Partner at OTB Ventures
- Bartek Knichnicki, Managing Partner at SATUS Starter VC
- Paweł Maj, Partner at Warsaw Equity Group
- Roman Nováček, Partner at Presto Ventures
- Andrej Petrus, Investment Manager at ZAKA VC
- Maximilian Schausberger, Managing Director at Elevator Ventures
- Krzysztof Tokarski, Managing Director at PKO VC
- Esat Acar, VP at 500 Emerging Europe
- Azahara Vera Cobos, Head of Scouting at Startup Wise Guys
- Valentin Filip, Managing Partner at Fortech Investments
- Dr Ryan Gong, Chief Investment Director EMEA at Huawei
- Dr Marcus Erken, Founding Partner at Sunfish Partners
- Rumen Iliev, Partner at LAUNCHub Ventures
- Adam Kočík, Managing Partner at J&T Ventures
- Kristjan Laanemaa, Partner at Karma Ventures
- Vital Laptenok, General Partner at Flyer One Ventures
- Eoin McGuinness, Head of Startups CEE, Middle East & Africa at HubSpot
- Marton Medveczky, Associate Partner at Flashpoint VC
- Cristian Munteanu, Managing Partner at Early Game Ventures
- Masayuki Ohta, Partner at ffVC
- Yrjö Ojasaar, Founder and Partner at Change Ventures
- Tomas Pacinda, Partner at Kaya VC
- Mark Palfalvi, Principal at PortfoLion
- Valeri Petrov, Partner at Eleven Ventures
- Dmitrij Sosunov, Partner at FIRSTPICK
- Jakob Stein, Investor at Creandum
- Magdalena Trąba, Senior Investment Manager at Pracuj Ventures
- Harry Uglow, Software Engineer at Atomico
- Konstantin Zapolianski, Senior Investment Director at Zubr Capital
- And more recognized names from the VC space. The complete list of the jury and partners can be found here.
More Details
For more information, please see the Initiative’s page and follow Vestbee’s LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Before applying, please take a few moments and take a look at Vestbee’s free Perfect Pitch Guide.
Kostiantyn is a freelance writer from Crimea but based in Lviv. He loves writing about IT and high tech because those topics are always upbeat and he’s an inherent optimist!