WIDE Pitching and Funding conference

WIDE hosted an interesting crowd, most participants were early-stage tech entrepreneurs and a few investors also joined the day.

The first part of the day focused on Pitching. After an introduction to the art of pitching by Philip Grother of Test my Pitch, the main key elements of a successful pitch were reviewed and then put into practice for the elevator pitch. Six participants dared to share their project and received instant feedback on their message.

Fonny Bunjamin, co-founder of Vestis Labs and recent graduate of the Fit4Start programme showed us the pitch deck that she used and shared her current experience raising funds.

In the afternoon, WIDE's founder Marina Andrieu shared 10 lessons learned about fundraising in the last 10 years.

Then, Elodie Trojanowski from BeAngels presented an insightful overview of Be Angels and the Business Angels investing science in Luxembourg and Belgium. Who are the BAs and what are they looking for?

The conference was joined by a few members of LBAN (Luxembourg Business Angels Network) members, and one of their members presented the LBAN and shared his experience as a local BA.

Lily Wang, VC at Expon Capital for 4 years, presented her firm and clarified what the role of VC is and what it’s expected. She showed the different levels of maturity of companies they have previously invested in.

The main takeaways from the conference were that there is not one best way or perfect criteria to fit in to get funding. All speakers agreed that investors invest in teams and not ideas and that dealing with investors at an early stage is key to being able to go to the next level, in particular after raising your FFF round (Friends, Family and Fans).

The Pitching and Funding conference must be the first pitching event to achieve perfect gender balance in the audience and even have a majority of women on stage (presenters and pitchers).

Thanks to this conference WIDE emphasized the importance of preparing the next generation of founders in Luxembourg and especially educating them on the reality of fundraising. Too many projects started the wrong way in the past because equity was not shared properly at the very beginning. We also found out that in Luxembourg BA and VCs worked together for seed rounds. This can only be learned from experience and that was the clear goal of the conference.

In 2022, we still had no example of a woman raising a seed round in Luxembourg!