• Vestbee gathers a list of partners to reward CEE’s most promising startups across various industries
• Exciting prizes of up to EUR 1M of investment await winners, but all applicants will be rewarded
• Participants are to apply until April 14th, winners will be announced on May 5th

Vestbee, CEE’s leading matchmaking platform for startups, announces another CEE Startup Challenge. The Challenge welcomes startups from across a variety of industries to compete for valuable prizes and investors’ attention. The main prize of this challenge will be a round of investment of up to EUR 1M from Next Road Ventures, but no participant will go empty-handed.

Eligibility

The current Challenge targets startups looking to raise seed, pre-series A, series A and beyond. This time, the challenge focuses on the following verticals:

• AI, Analytics, and Big Data, 
• Business & ICT
• Fintech & Insurtech
• Healthcare & Wellbeing
• Industry 4.0 & Proptech
• Planet & Sustainability
• Smart Cities & Home

Startups are to apply here before April 14th. The jury will take their time and announce 10 finalists on May 5th. The final pitching will take place on May 10th.

Prizes

Vestbee gathered an extensive list of partners for the challenge. They all contribute to a huge selections of prizes, including:

• 120 hours of free IT consultations for the winner, 40 hours for Top 10, and 10 hours for all applicants from Avisto Eastern Europe
• up to USD 25K of startup credits for Top 3 finalists and up to USD 10K for all participants from AWS
• 6 free months for the winner and 3 free months for all applicants from beautiful.ai
• 500,000 email verifications for Top 3, 100,000 for Top 10, and 25,000 + 20% off for all participants from Bouncer
• one-year premium access for the winner, 6 free months for Top 3, and one free month for all applicants from Brand24
• free consultations and workshops for Top 3 and 5% off on grant writing services for the winner from Cresco
• 12 free months of basic plan or 90% off for premium plan for selected teams from customer.io
• free media coverage for Top 3 from ITKeyMedia
• USD 3K of credits for annual business plan from Loom
• Free media coverage for the winner and 35% off for all participants from MamStartup
• participation in Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub program for selected teams
• USD 50K on the Mixpanel Growth Plan for all applicants from Mixpanel
• a round of investment of up to EUR 1M from Next Road Ventures
• USD 1K of credits for all participants from Notion
• up to EUR 100K infrastructure credits for all participants, participation in OVHcloud Startup Program and marketing + technical support from OVHcloud
• EUR 30K of credits for Top 3 finalists and EUR 15K for all participants from Stripe
• free year of Business Plan for the winner, 6 free months for Top 10, and 3 free months for all applicants from TrustMate
• 1-on-1 onboarding for TOP 10 and 6 months free for all participants from Zendesk

Additionally, the top 10 finalists will pitch live before an elite gathering of VCs and accelerators during the biggest conference for the startup ecosystem in CEE on May 10th.

Jury

The challenge’s esteemed jury will apply their expertise to determine the ultimate winners. The roster of judges will include:

• Ewa Chronowska and Marcin Laczynski, Partners at Next Road Ventures
• Michał Bajda and Szymon Kwiatkowski, Business Creation Managers at EIT InnoEnergy Central Europe
• Gregory Leschenko, Chief Investment Director at Huawei
• Jan Habermann, Partner at Credo Ventures
• Maximilian Schausberger, Managing Director at Elevator Ventures
• Daniel Tomov, Founding Partner at Eleven Ventures
• Kasparas Jurgelionis, Managing Partner at Iron Wolf Capital
• Michał Rokosz, Partner at Inovo Venture Partners
• Claudia Czigony, Investment Manager at Impact Ventures
• Jan Hauser, Business Creation Manager at EIT Urban Mobility
• Helmuts Lejnieks, Chairman of the Board at Latvian Business Angels Network
• And more

The full list of the jury and partners is available here.

More Details

For more information, candidates are welcome to visit the Challenge’s page, follow Vestbee’s LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to stay up to date, and – of course, hurry to apply before April 14th. In case you doubt your pitching abilities, there’s still time to read Vestbee’s free Perfect Pitch Guide.