East meets West at ‘Startup Bridge’ ICT Innovation networking event
Date: 24/07/23
Startups from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine met with representatives of the innovation ecosystem in France and the Eastern Partnership (EaP) at the event ‘Startup Bridge: East meets West’. EU4Digital Facility organised the ICT Innovation networking event in partnership with Expertise France. Held in Paris on 16 June 2023, the event was hosted by Wilco — an innovation accelerator dedicated to creating value for both startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The ‘Startup Bridge’ welcomed more than 30 representatives of EaP startups as well as EaP and French ecosystem builders and investors. During the event, startups had an opportunity to introduce their value propositions, exchange experiences and get a better understanding of the EU markets and expectations of venture investors.
The representatives of EU innovation investors and ecosystems that expressed interest in meeting Eastern partner countries’ startups included: Crosspring, Heritage Holdings, Omnes Capital, Techmind, Bpifrance – EuroQuity, Kerys.co, Schoolab, Agoranov Incubator and Wilco Accelerator. Many registered organisations specifically support Ukraine in reconstruction of its innovation ecosystem: La French Tech Kyiv/ CCI France-Ukraine, Ukraine-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, Ensemble Ukraine, and Business France Ukraine.
Before and during the event, senior ICT Innovation expert Jesus Lozano shared tips and tricks for startups to successfully pitch to investors. EU4Digital Team Leader Arturas Piliponis invited the participants to explore and exploit the powerful tools of the EaP Startups ecosystem platform that was launched by EU4Digital Facility in 2022 in partnership with Dealroom. This platform helps in seeing the whole palette of startups investment opportunities and mapping particular ecosystem landscapes.
About ICT Innovation events
The EU4Digital ICT Innovation stream organises networking events to facilitate the establishment of communities and networks in the EaP region. The events build bilateral and multilateral bridges between EaP organisations and EU stakeholders to enable deeper understanding of relevant EU best practices by stakeholders in the EaP region, as well as the transfer of those practices to Eastern partner countries via joint activities and projects. The events target topic-specific audiences, selected from ministerial level representatives and agencies, associations and networks of relevant policy areas, ICT infrastructure organisations as well as other ICT innovation ecosystem actors.
We use cookies on this site to improve your website experience, to enhance site navigation and analyse site usage. By clicking “Accept all cookies” you consent to our use of cookies.
You can find out more about which cookies we are using or adjust your cookie settings in the Cookies policy.
Functionality Cookies
Functionality cookies, which are essential to the functioning of the website. These cookies also which help us measure the website’s performance and improve your experience, as well as remembering any settings you might have selected.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
Advertising/targeting cookies
Advertising/targeting cookies, which we use to track user activity and sessions so that we can deliver a more personalized service, and (in the case of advertising cookies) which are set by the third parties with whom we execute advertising campaigns and allow us to provide advertisements relevant to you. These are optional cookies and users can choose to opt out at any moment.