New venture capital funds for business acceleration established

UAB Investicijų ir Verslo Garantijos (Invega) and the team of Startup Wise Guys have signed an agreement on the establishment of two venture capital funds. A pre-seed venture capital fund, Wise Guys Pre-seed Fund I, managed by the team will provide training and knowledge of business development to start-ups and invest in them later, while a seed fund, Wise Guys Seed Fund, will co-invest in young companies at an early stage.

These two funds will participate in implementing of the financial instrument Accelerator Fund of the Ministry of Economy and Innovation.

The size of Wise Guys Pre-seed Fund I is EUR 4.8 million. The Fund will implement accelerator programmes and invest in companies being organised in Lithuania. During subsequent investments, the companies will be able to develop their activities also in other European Union states, provided that in any case the benefit from each subsequent investment would flow to Lithuania.

The estimated size of Wise Guys Seed Fund I is EUR 2.9 million, of which EUR 2.02 million is public sector funds and the remaining part includes the money of the Startup Wise Guys team and private investors.

‘The implementation of the venture capital instrument Accelerator Fund is aimed at promoting the establishment of enterprises and increasing business productivity. The main goal of these newly-organised accelerator funds is to promote the Lithuanian venture capital market, facilitate access to long-term funding in the form of equity and quasi-equity financing for micro- and small enterprises in Lithuania and provide accelerator programmes that will help new entrepreneurs to develop ideas and solve funding, business administration, legal, human resource and other issues’, says Kęstutis Motiejūnas, Chief Executive Officer of Invega.

The Startup Wise Guys accelerator will seek to invest in at least 45 B2B start-ups that have a prototype or generate income. Investments will be made in several stages: from the early EUR 30 000 investment to the subsequent EUR 250 000 investment. At the same time the start-ups will participate in a three-month accelerator programme. The programmes will focus on specific sectors, such as software as a service (SaaS) and deep tech.

‘A team being accelerated gains all required knowledge: we work on product development and management, sales and marketing strategy and devote much attention to the practice of negotiating and presentation skills. We do all this by engaging some most successful entrepreneurs and business professionals’, claims Dmitrij Sosunov, a partner at Startup Wise Guys Lietuva. “Participation in our accelerator allows start-ups to learn how to move more quickly and focus on speed, as in the start-up world the ability to take quick decisions, adapt, abandon inadequate initiatives and change the business direction are they key to success’.

Jonė Vaitulevičiūtė, a partner at Startup Wise Guys Lietuva, claims that in the regions seed start-ups too often disappear before the final testing of the product, which all depends on the lack of seed capital. ‘We are happy about an accelerator fund appearing in the market. The fund not only will seek to ensure seed funding for start-ups, but it will also prepare them for larger venture capital investments’, says J. Vaitulevičiūtė with pleasure.

The first programme will start already on 1 April of this year, and start-ups are invited for the first selection and meeting with the Startup Wise Guys team on 13 February at 18.00 p.m. at the start-up centre Rise Vilnius.

About Startup Wise Guys

The Startup Wise Guys team is comprised of three members: Jonė Vaitulevičiūtė, Cristobal Alonso and Dmitrij Sosunov. This venture capital fund managed by them has operated actively and been an international business-to-business acceleration leader for seven years already. The purpose of the Startup Wise Guys team is to ensure that a start-up, on completing the accelerator programme, is ready to develop business and attract further investments from business angels and venture capital funds. The implementation of 13 accelerator programmes will result in investments in more than 120 start-ups from 40 world country, part of which are already generating monthly income of more than EUR 100 000 and have attracted total investments of over EUR 27 million. Among such well-known start-ups are |Vital Fields, RebelRoam, Welltrado, ZityCity and Razzby.

About the venture capital instrument Accelerator Fund

The Accelerator Fund is implemented through the fund of funds Business Financing Fund that is financed from the European Regional Development Fund. The manager of the fund of funds is Invega and its founders include the Ministry of Economy and Innovation, the Ministry of Finance and Invega. The Business Finance Fund is financed from the EU funds under the Operational Programme for the EU Funds’ Investments in 2014–2020 in Lithuania.

Invega implements and manages various financial instruments designed to promote business from the EU funds, the national budget or finances that have already been used once and returned to the national or other funds. For more information go to http://www.invega.lt.