How and why to become a business angel?
How many solutions to challenges that large enterprises do not perceive in the market do not come to life because start-ups run out of money for their development? And what groundbreaking ideas have changed the structure of the economy because innovative start-ups have managed to obtain sources of funding? Among the successful examples that have grown into large enterprises include Booking, Salesforce, Slack, Tesla, and companies with Slovenian roots such as Zemanta and Eurosender.
Investing in start-ups is by far the riskiest business, but it can also be the most profitable. In exceptional cases, the returns can amount to several thousand times the invested funds. At the same time, investing in start-ups can also represent an opportunity to help a new generation of entrepreneurs and a chance for personal growth and learning.
The first School for investors in start-up enterprises in Slovenia offers useful knowledge, enriched with practical experience of professionals and existing investors. The School for investors helps existing and potential new investors to develop investment competencies that help them identify the right business opportunities and create an adequate investment, which will enable a start-up to advance to the next development phase.
Based on the analysis of best practices, the participants of the School for Investors learn the following:
- recognize the difference between investing in traditional investments (finances, projects) and investing in start-ups,
- how to find and develop an opportunity to invest in start-ups,
- how to recognize talents, identify talents, bearers of entrepreneurial ideas that guide the start-ups and their reactions in critical situations,
- how to carefully review each opportunity both internally (team, product) and externally (market size),
- ways of entering the market, which requires constant adjustment of sales channels and marketing approaches,
- monitoring of the investment by the enterprise’s growth stages until the sale (exit).
How does the School for investors work?
The School of investors programme consists of the following:
- the first stage of education on the topic »Introduction to investing« (3 hours),
- the second stage for interested investors (4 hours) and
- an in-depth review with experts in individual fields (2 hours).
The three-hour »Introduction to investing« will be performed at ten different locations across Slovenia.
The training program is upgraded with individual advice from experts on identified investment opportunities and meetings of existing and future investors to exchange best practices and present the experiences of different venture capital enterprises.