Тhis is the blog of the open network EDIT, launched by MOVE.BG. The articles are also available on the official website of MOVE.BG.
The Bulgarian capital city Sofia has been one of the ten cities of Women in Entrepreneurship Roadshow: Access to Finance (WER19), organized by the European Young Innovators Forum. The event, which took place on May 16 and 17, educated successful young ladies about challenges in the VC fundraising process as only a little part of overall venture funding goes to female-founded companies in the European Union, including Bulgaria.
MOVE.BG is one of the partners for Bulgarian activities. The project is sponsored by the US Mission to the European Union and has Amazon Web Services and Startup Europe as strategic partners.
Coworking by MOVE.BG hosted the Bulgarian opening ceremony on May 16. On the second day, the program continued with two special sessions:
- VC Panel on Women Entrepreneurship;
- Transatlantic collaboration: YTILI & GES.
As part of the Bulgarian Roadshow, a special workshop with leading mentors gave insights and guidelines to the participating ladies. One of the mentors was Sasha Bezuhanova, founder and chairwoman of MOVE.BG, and founder of the Bulgarian Center for Women in Technology (BCWT), which organizes international SHE leader conference.
Gergana Daneva, event manager at MOVE.BG, took part in the WER19 in Sofia as one of the 30 high-potential Bulgarian women.
“30 female entrepreneurs have the opportunity to meet, chat, exchange ideas and get to know each other to share their knowledge and emotions about the entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Ms. Daneva said.
“I’m very pleased to be a part of this amazing and vibrant community of talented and hard-working women who serve as great examples.”
What is WER19?
According to the latest PitchBook report, just 9.1% of the continent’s overall venture funding went to female-founded European companies, the WER19 said. Therefore, the roadshow connects 300 high-potential women from ten countries with 30 VCs and top players from the financial ecosystem.
“The short term goal is to connect entrepreneurs with VCs and ecosystem builders and business angels and identify the main challenges women entrepreneurs face when accessing finance through workshops. The long term goal is to produce a report with our findings to present to the European Union with policy recommendations,” European Young Innovators Forum said.
The Women in Entrepreneurship Roadshow: Access to Finance 2019 has two additional goals:
- Identifying the main challenges and barriers in the funding process;
- raising awareness of the issues faced by women when raising VC funding.
MOVE.BG and the startup ecosystem
Last month, MOVE.BG co-organized the first specialized workshop for angel investors in Bulgaria. Moreover, MOVE.BG’s EDIT program conducts the exclusive annual study of the startup ecosystem in Bulgaria called “Innovation Ship.”
The program also organizes a series of specialized webinars that provide key insights for the development of digital businesses.