About the Program
For Nordic, Baltic and CEE angels only.
Women Investing In Tech is a very special to our hearts program. It's an advanced practical angel investing course, aiming at women who already invest or looking to begin their angel journey as we continue to expand a diverse presence in the venture ecosystem in Europe and beyond.
This yearly program is traditionally free of charge, with participants selected based on the questionnaire – while looking for the most synergy during each cohort. The guest speaker list includes super angels, angels, BAN leads and VCs from EU, UK and USA.
Program goals:
- Get practical experience in startup evaluation
- Build your personal angel investment strategy and exit scenarios
- Learn how to structure your investments from legal perspective
- Join an extensive network of investors and startups right away
- Enjoy special investment conditions while investing via Baltic Sandbox syndicates
Program results
Participants will be able to:
- Evaluate startups using several methods
- Build personal investment strategies and exit scenarios
- Apply a decision-making framework to investments
- Negotiate financial terms with startups depending on the stage of investing
- Understand the legal side of investing, with a syndicate, in co-investing and in leading the deal
- Avoid most common mistakes in the first steps of angel investing
- Build own early network of founders and investors
About this week:
Introductory week aims to outline a systemic view of venture investing, angel's role in it, opportunities for angel investing in EU & Baltics, and some startup evaluation frameworks. This week will help narrow down practical questions over personal strategies in angel investing and manage expectations on venture capital.
Day 1. Introduction to angel investments
An eagle eye overview of Pan-European venture ecosystem, key players and how to work with them, role and profile of angels, significant gaps and opportunities for angel investing, changes happening over covid time, (eventually) required competence / experience to be a successful angel.
Day 2. Startup evaluation framework
We will go through several approaches to startup assessment and evaluation, to be applied over the next 4 weeks hands-on.What is a startup and what is not? How to read a deck? Which evaluation frameworks could apply for different stages of investing? What metrics mean and how to read them? Lessons learned from typical startup and investor mistakes.
About this week:
This week's dive is going to be all about startup assessment and evaluation: good and bad decks, early and later stages, different industries, different metrics, a variety of deal structures. We will also have a field trip to a startup fair to apply what we have already discussed in practice.
Day 1. Advanced startup valuations
How to assess the deal, and how to assess if the deal is right for you? Assessment and valuation is a skillset, that needs to be trained in practice, the more the better.
Day 2. Online pitch and evaluation session
Let's test our framework and see how it works in practice. We will listen to startup pitches, discuss them, and narrow down practical questions over your next steps as an angel.
About this week:
This week aims to provide guidance on how to create a repeatable and coherent investment decision-making framework that works for you over time, identify what is working and not in relations with founders, and manage expectations over a learning curve of an angel investor. Matching your risk profile, liquidity expectations, personal preferences, experience strengths, access to dealflow and network to specific investment strategies where you can hit founder-product-market-investor fit easier.
Day 1. Let's use the evaluation frameworks
An open feedback and Q&A session to focus on your questions after a live pitch event. Explaining your own assessments, sharing peer-to-peer insights and questions, listening to experienced angels and VCs evaluating companies will provide a bigger view on frameworks, process, and skillset. It will also help you refine your angel profile and strategy.
Day 2. Building your angel profile and startup relations
Understanding the role of investor, areas of responsibilities, typical investor and founder mistakes in decision-making (who is in charge of what). Understanding investment risks, expected time horizons, and how your role and impact may change or evolve over the time. What's your reasons to invest in startups? What's your personal skillset and aligned investment strategy? How can you find startups? How startups are going to find you? What's your appetite for risks and available liquidity to invest? What's your time horizon for exit? What's your network and where can you find great ideas to invest in? Who you partner with for investments and exits?
About this week:
This week is going to be about due diligence - and of two distinct types of investment strategies for angels: follow and lead. Previous workshops have given you a glimpse over what the work of an angel investor typically consists of, and what of that workload you would prefer to do yourself, join forces or outsource. Through the next two workshops we will dive deep into step-by-step work process to help you fine-tune your preferences, interests, and investment approach.
Day 1. Due Diligence for startups and investors
We are going to dive into the intricacies of due diligence for startups - and for other invesors. What's the red flags to check in a team and on a cap table? What's the potential implications of previous investments conditions? What's the reasonable check-list to go through in pre-seed, seed or later stages - and what is the difference?
Day 2. How to lead and syndicate deals
Key syndicate features, how to find and join them, responsibilities of a backing angel, expected workload and decision-making. One of the options of an easier entry point into angel investing while learning and building up your own network. Responsibilities and expected workload of a lead angel (in a syndicate or simply bringing other investors together), pipeline and paperwork, co-investment network, portfolio management.
About this week:
Getting to a program close, we will briefly cover all topics of previous weeks, concentrating on your personal learnings, findings, insights, practical questions, and next steps.Practice, practice, practice: analysing markets, networking with founders and other investors, going to pitches or receiving them, making your own assessments even if on paper, – and eventually investing your money over what you consider a reasonable assessment, even if (or especially) it will turn out to be a mistake over time.
Day 1. Round table with angels and VCs
How to train yourself to become and be a better investment decision-maker? What were your biggest learnings over time? What do you consider your investment failures / misses? How long did it take to define, outline and polish your repeatable investment decision-making process?
Day 2. Wrap-up of the program and reflection session
Your personal and group learnings, insights, surprises, perspectives. Feedback for the program.
Free of charge, selected participants
Application deadline - October 20th, 2023
Business Angel School Speakers
Many professional VCs, Superangels and other investment ecosystem players have been joining the Business Angel Leaders program as guest speakers.
Sandra is a Founding Partner at Baltic Sandbox Accelerator and a GP at Baltic Sandbox Ventures – a VC that supports early-stage Deep Tech and Life Science startups in Northern Europe. For the past several years, Sandra has been actively engaged in lecturing activities, working with students and business managers / corporate innovators in "Innovation and Investment Academy" by BMI, ISM University of Management and Economics, Vilnius University Business School, etc. She also co-founded "Business Angel School" – a set of educational programs for the EU business angels. Over 150 angels graduated from the programs, alumni invested over €3M in startups and won "Angel of the Year" nominations in different countries.
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.
Erin Gainer-Grigaliūnė is a global leader and strategist in women's health pharmaceuticals, having served as CEO of HRA Pharma for 7 years and then Chair of the Board for 4 years, culminating in a trade sale in 2022. She currently advises life sciences companies and investors, serves as an independent director for public and private companies, and aims to accelerate innovation as a business angel and impact investor.
A graduate from Rice University and John Hopkins School of Public Health, Erin has a PhD in epidemiology from Paris-Sud University and a Global Executive MBA from INSEAD.
