2nd Access to Risk Finance: Funding SME Innovation

//Full photo album of our event available in our Flickr account!//

The 2nd Access to Risk Finance event took place in Istanbul on July 19th, 2017. It was a full day event with experts and key speakers coming from Turkey in H2020 project, TUBITAK, International Development Ireland (IDI), European Investment Bank (EIB), TSKB, Borsa Istanbul, ACT Venture Partners and Diffusion Capital Partners.

Aims and Objectives

The aim of this event was to increase awareness of both Financial Intermediaries (VC’s, Business Angel Networks, Banks etc.) and SMEs for new financial instruments available, including but not limited to SME related H2020 initiatives of the European Agency for SMEs (EASME) and InnovFIN tools from European Investment Bank. TSKB opportunities as well as Borsa Istanbul initiatives will be presented along with alternative funding tools and opportunities (Venture Capitals, Startup Accelerators) in the “innovation ecosystem”.

The objective is to provide a good understanding of alternative methods of funding, particularly appropriate for SMEs and stress the importance of having an overall, innovation strategy and funding plan. A special session is dedicated to understanding the early stages funding process and making a company more “investable” or “fundable”. Furthermore, we would like to bring together the startup ecosystem with innovative SMEs looking for funding.

Pitching Session

During the event a pitching session took place. During this session, 3 companies successful in their bids in Horizon 2020 SME Instrument grants, pitched their ideas and our key speakers and experts provided valuable feedback and useful advice on how to improve pitching and presentation skills.

Presentations & Workshop

Below you can find the agenda of the event as well as all presentations. During the last session participants worked on a case study given by our experts and took the place of an investor. The case study with comments and the feedback from our participants can also be downloaded.