Business Angel School Guest Speakers
Many professional VCs, Superangels and other investment ecosystem players have been joining the Business Angel Leaders program as guest speakers.
Rita Sakus is the Board Member at Lithuanian Business Angel Network.
Martynas Kandzeras is the Board Member at Lithuanian Business Angel Network.
Martynas Kandzeras is a Board Member and a Co-founder of the Lithuanian Business Angel Network (LitBAN), an entrepreneur with 18+ years of experience, an active angel investor mainly focused on HR/ED Tech. Being a Partnership Associate Professor at Vilnius University, Martynas teaches Venture Financing and leads Experiential Entrepreneurship Projects on the MBA program.
Cristina Toncu is the Co-founder at Techcelerator.
Wim Derkinderen is the Founding Investor at Pitchdrive.
Petr Šíma is the Partner at Depo Ventures. Still as a university student I co-founded an investment fund that took part in the privatization process in former Czechoslovakia. Shortly after I founded a consulting firm where I focused on corporate finance and M&A. The firm grew up to a significant local firm in the SME’s segment. I also represented the firm in international association and for many years was a member of the board of the association.
After 25 years in consulting I launched DEPO Ventures where we are building a strong CEE venture house. Focus is on seed, pre-seed and angel investments. Angels are missing in Europe in general and CEE especially, we are working hard to find and educate future angel investors. I was recently appointed to board of EBAN – European Business Angel Network.
Karolina is an innovation lawyer and business strategist founder of the entrepreneurial law firm - KassaiLaw, advising startups and entrepreneurs for a decade in the newest, most innovative tech areas.
With her integrated business and law approach tailored to startups and deep understanding of technology-related markets, Karola and KassaiLaw help build bridges between strategic management decisions and their legal manifestations. Karolina has worked with hundreds of teams worldwide.
She has witnessed many success stories such as difficulties and challenges that projects face during their business life cycle s and is a keen contributor to the startup ecosystem as a mentor for more than ten years.
Triin Linamagi is the Venture Partner at The Venture Collective.
Stanislav Ivanov is a Founding Partner at Tera Ventures and currently sits on the board of Cleveron, Monese, Jobbatical, Scoro, Brainbase, Snackable and others. Stanislav has been investing in technology startups for more than 10 years and his track record includes some of the most remarkable high-tech companies that came out of Estonia. He is also a mentor at various incubators and accelerators.
Prior to founding Tera Ventures, he was with IBM for 6 years and has a background from telecom and information technology industries, having led teams involved in innovative projects such as bringing early mobile services to the market in late 1990s.
Gytenis is the initiator and one of the founders of LitBAN. Had also managed LitBAN for over a year and since May 2019 together with 70V invested in over 35 early stage companies. 70V’s revenue acceleration program has helped many of the portfolio companies surpass 1mEUR in ARR and more. One portfolio company has had a successful exit within 18 months from our initial investment.
Andris leads Change Ventures, a seed fund based in the Baltic States that invests in Baltic founders worldwide. Change Ventures has backed some of the leading startups in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, including Veriff, Interactio, Nordigen, Giraffe360, Aerones and Planet42. As a venture partner at Creandum, he began his investing career and helped set up the first Startup Wise Guys accelerator program in Estonia. Before venture, Andris served as CMO at Livebookings, which was later acquired for $110M. Andris has co-founded several startups, including his share of failures. He joined his first startup, AeroScout, as VP of Marketing and Business Development. AeroScout was acquired by Stanley Black & Decker for $240M. Andris holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, following which he worked as a strategy consultant for Bain & Company in Boston. Andris co-founded the non-profit foundation TechHub Riga, Latvia’s leading organization supporting the startup ecosystem. He was also co-founder of the Latvian Startup Association and the Latvian Business Angel Network. He was awarded the Human Development Award by the President for his contribution to the nation's future. Andris holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and completed his bachelor’s degree in London at City University.
Chair of the Board at FiBAN.
Reima Linnanvirta is Chair of the Board at FinBAN. Reima is also an entrepreneur, angel investor, board professional, and startup mentor with extensive experience growing a B2B business from zero to hero. Reima's previous experience includes building a successful business in law and business consulting, advising startups, growth companies, and multinational enterprises in international business and mergers & acquisition and financial and legal management & administration.
Kasper is an investment manager at Superhero Capital and in charge of deal-flow for the fund. Growing up on three different continents, he's not the typical, quiet Finn. On the contrary, he loves helping portfolio companies with communication and finding 'the why.'
Moaz is a mission-driven technologist and strategist, solving for the future of jobs, medicine, and accessible technologies, and the role of Robotics and AI. He is the founder and managing partner of mvmt ventures @mvmtvc, a former advisor for SoftBank Robotics, a Consumer Technology Association (CTA) member of Ai, Health, and Robotics workgroup, and Martin Luther King Jr. Community Healthcare dream council.
Over the last decade, Moaz dedicated his life to entrepreneurship and early-stage founders. He is an advisor and mentors to Simplifyber, DNABlock, and several early-stage startups and programs, including Fast Track by First Round Capital, Yellow (accelerator) by Snap Inc., Founder Institute, Founders Boost (pre-accelerator), and LA Mayor (Garcetti's) Entrepreneurship Program for underserved-youth (embarcLA).
Before that, Moaz led the investment, strategy, and launch of HTC and many other global brands, including Skype, BullGuard, Sonim, Neo, Sygic, and SouthWing for Dangaard (Nordic Capital), and the investment and enterprise strategy of companies, like Palm, Samsung Mobile, and Sony (Ericsson) Xperia on behalf of Microsoft.
Linda is an early stage deep tech software investor at Karma Ventures, based in Tallinn Estonia. She has a background in building global deep tech teams from working at Sheffield Haworth's Technology team in London. She started her career as a creative editor at Ekspressmeedia. Her experience spans satellite and rocket companies to high-performance computing as well as healthtech to ERP, and currently focuses on everything ESG related - HR, sustainability, efficiency improvement, agtech, healthcare and other.
Andreas is one of the co-founders of EUVC where he acts as podcast host and Europe’s LP hypeman. He runs content & marketing for EUVC where he works tirelessly to champion and connect the European VC ecosystem.
David is one of the co-founders of EUVC where he acts as podcast host and Europe's LP syndicate lead. He runs deal making for EUVC where he works tirelessly to champion VCs by bringing together vested communities around them.
Rebecka brings widespread experience from the Nordic tech scene having spent eight years in venture capital. She’s invested in over a dozen companies, for example in high-growth companies such as Truecaller, DbVis, Occtoo, TrusTrace Funnel and most recently in Jobbatical. She started her career at Ernst & Young and then spent a few years on the operational side as CFO and interim CEO. Today she is responsible for Estonia at Inventure and quite often visits Tallinn.
Kaari is an investor at Estonian-based early-stage VC Superangel where she looks for ambitious founders who have the potential to build industry-defining companies, such as Bolt, Veriff, Starship. She does not come from a traditional corporate / finance background that is likely for a VC investor. Instead, she's worked as an operator in a small health-tech startup Triumf Health building scalable mental health services for children and did product marketing for a category-defining SaaS startup KOOS in Estonia. After having worked in or along startups for several years, she moved into an investment role in Superangel where she looks to deploy up to 1M€ per an impactful technology startups.
Triin Hertmann is the co-founder and COO/CFO of Grünfin (sustainable investment platform). She has more than 20 years of experience in technology and fintech being an early employee of Skype and second employee of Wise building up the payment and financial processes. She's an active angel investor with 25+ investments and with a keen focus on impact start-ups and female founders. Recently she was awarded as Wise Wallet (Investor of the Year) by Estonian start-up community.
Lisa Mallner is an advisor in GreenBuild and UrbanTech for the Consulate General of Denmark in New York, where she focuses on bringing sustainability to the built environment. She is also an organizer of NY Climate Tech, a community organization supporting the climate tech ecosystem. She has had a global career working to advance technology and innovation development across the Nordics, US, and Asia.
Leveraging over 15 years as an operator, founder, VC, and tech journalist, Ana is now investing in the angel and venture partner capacity in tech startups across Europe focusing on B2B SaaS, cleantech, and healthtech. She worked with a number of tech venture builders, accelerators, VC funds, and tech conference organizers on 3 continents in a variety of capacities and has been an influential connector between the wider startup community and the world of VC and media. Active in the startup ecosystem Europe-wide and beyond, Ana shares her experience as a mentor, Ivy League-trained performance coach, and a business strategy advisor worldwide, with a special focus on the Baltics & Nordics, as well as Central Eastern Europe, where she hails from (Polish, based out of Prague, CR).
Kate is General Partner of W Fund and CEO of Switch (formerly Women 2.0), a global ecosystem shaping our global innovation economy into one built and run by a truly representative set of founders, capital allocators and ecosystem builders. The two decade combination of her operational experience in startups and her deep expertise on and central commitment to gender and representation in the ecosystem has positioned her as a expert and leader on the creation and development of a more equitable future for our innovation economy. Kate has keynoted, spoken at and been featured in 100s of places, including SXSW, Collision Conference, Fast Company, Fifteen Seconds, UNLEASH, Microsoft, IBM, MSNBC, Techcrunch, IBT, the BBC and Al Jazeera.