I CampinasTECH Meetup Boosting Angel Investments in Brazil

As we have announced before, last Thursday happened the I Campinas TECH Meetup – Investments. For the very first time in Brazil, an event was designed (and executed) to promote the one-to-one contact between investors and entrepreneurs with investments purpose and the results are being amazing.

The event was opened with the main sponsors and supporters of this initiative: José Mario de Martino, representing FEEC (Electrical and Computer Engineer School of Unicamp), Roberto Lotufo, director of Inova Unicamp (the Innovation Agency of the university), Fernando Matt representing IVP (Inova Ventures Partners) and Eduardo Gurgel, representing the Secretary of Commerce, Industry, Services and Tourism of Campinas City. The role of the Campinas entrepreneurial ecosystem and the upcoming initiatives such as the entrepreneurship subject in the university and a big event being planned for November in Campinas were the highlights.

Just after the opening, the Panel “How I was invested” took place and amused most of attendees. Aline Marcolino (co-founder of tryoop!), Fabricio Bloisi (founder and CEO of Movile and Director of Unicamp Ventures and IVP) and Reinaldo Normand (CEO of 2Mundos) shared their experience and the behind the scenes stories while raising fund. With totally complementary experiences, it was definitely a great opportunity for entrepreneurs that were about to start pitching the present investors. The main objective of being straight to the point, sharing the experiences that would be valuable in a very pragmatic way was totally fulfilled. It is totally worth to be watched.

After all those lesson learned and how to approach an investor sharing, it was show time! All the entrepreneurs looking for investments had the opportunity to pitch most of the present investors.

Cassio Spina (São Paulo Anjos), Edson Rigonatti (Astella Investments), Felipe Matos (Criatec), Fernando Campos (Gávea Angel), Fernando Matt (and several others of IVP) and Márcio Santos Filho (Inseed) were there just to listen to the pitches (3 minutes) and provide valuable feedbacks (up to 2 minutes) for the startups. Unfortunately, Marcelo Cazado of Floripa Angels could not arrive because of a flight cancelling.

The innovation was about the design of this dynamics. Each investor submitted the business type they are more interested investing on and all the entrepreneurs looking for investments submitted their businesses description, stage of business and investments.

Even considering the limited number of spots (initially 100), the first match gave us nearly 50 pitches per investor and the waiting list was full of very promising entrepreneurs, not considered in this number. Amazing for the very first event with this format in the country and not happening in any capital city!

To maximize the chances of everybody we have matched at least 2 or 3 investors/entrepreneur at a higher priority (number 1) and 2 investors under a lower priority (number 2). Each investor had a color and each badge of the attendees eligible for pitching had round stickers with the correspondent colors and numbers. Almost all the 1 and 2’s were attended, as each investor had a volunteer to control the time and his own line. Even though, each investor was assigned with almost 30 startups considering priorities 1 and 2.

Prioritizing the number 1 assignments, the number 2s could happen just after the higher priority line until a deadline. Except by IVP that attended almost 40 startups (8-10 partners attending), each investor could attend something between 14-20 startups.

Several companies (maybe most of them) have never tried to pitch any investor before and at the first attempt had the chance to do it 3-5 times in a row, listening to amazing feedbacks for their businesses and pitches.

After this pitch wave, we picked up the best pitches according to the investors and B2Trip, ConnectUse and Bondix could present their pitches for the whole audience.

Waiting in the very close lines and around the coffee break space we could see a lot of high quality networking (something that the Brazilians are not so used to do spontaneously yet).

Several adjustments to do in the next edition, but we are sure this is the right way to add value to the Brazilian ecosystem. We are pretty sure that we will hear about very nice deals started in this first edition.