The October 3rd 2008 EASY Central Europe Investment Marketplace to be held in Prague offers 30 early-stage companies from Europe’s key emerging market (an area sometimes referred to as “CEE”) the opportunity to present their projects to an audience of more than 100 angel investors. All 30 entrepreneurs will be able to exhibit their projects in the form of stands, and selected 15 of these will make 5-minute Power Point presentations to the audience.

The companies will be selected on the basis of the following criteria: 

• Based in Central & Eastern Europe
• Innovative product and demonstrable high growth potential
• Seeking between €100k and €1M
• Clear international market focus and international investment objectives
• Operating in one of these five sectors: Medical Technologies, ICT, Media, Design, Clean Technologies
• Fluent English (the event’s language)

EASY stands for “Early Stage Investors Action” and since April 2007 it has held six events for entrepreneurs and angel investors. At these events, 850 investors from 25 countries and 95 selected entrepreneurs from 25 countries have participated. 13 deals have been closed, with a total volume of €15.5M, while 5 additional deals are in the ‘heads of terms’ stage, with a value of €4M. For more information, visit www.earlystageinvestors.org.

How to apply:

Step 1: Register through this site as an entrepreneur applicant—it’s quick and easy.

Step 2: Fill in the one-page Executive Summary form downloadable here and send to info@aia.cz by September 12th, 2008.

Central & Eastern Europe entrepreneurial success stories include:

Systinet (Czech Republic) – a leading provider of web services infrastructure software, founded by Czech entrepreneur Roman Staněk in 2000 and developed thanks to a €2.3M VC investment, sold in 2006 to Mercury Interactive for €84M.
iWiW (Hungary) – a social networking web service founded by Hungarian entrepreneur Zsolt Várady in 2002 and developed thanks to a business angel investment estimated at ≈€400k, sold in 2006 to T-Online for nearly €4M.
MojPosao (Croatia) – an innovative job portal founded in 2000 and financed by business angels with ≈€1.3M, sold in 2007 to the Daily Mail group for €6.8M.

You can download the entrepreneur PDF flyer with the agenda here.

The EASY project is supported by the EU Pro Inno programme.