10 angel investors have attended the pitching presentations of preselected startups last week as part of the first match-making event for the newly launched investors’ network in Jordan “Bedaya”.
The entrepreneurs were given 20 minutes to present their project and explain why they were willing to welcome external investors in their company. They were then facing a 20 minutes question time from the business angels who were interested in better understanding their concept, their business development strategy, their market and most importantly, what the money they could invest would be using at.
The Bedaya network has been launched in a special event last May under the patronage of Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan at El Hassan Science City in Amman, Jordan. The launch has attracted over 30 prominent Jordanian investors, business leaders and others representing organizations that cultivate economic growth. The founding institutions of the Bedaya are: the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship, the iPark business incubator and the Arab Science and Technology Foundation. Noteworthy, It has been supported by the European program Medibtikar. As part of the members of the network is Dr. Usama Fayyad – the ex-board member of Yahoo and world class serial entrepreneur- who has emphasized on the necessity of establishing such network, by saying: “This is the right time to establish such network due to the huge need for startup funding in this part of the world”.
The impetus of the creation of Bedaya is to offer national financing vehicles in Jordan for innovative business start-ups as part of the El Hassan Science City’s mandate to foster knowledge-based enterprises with a promising potential for growth. The network will offer investments for early stage start-ups with a focus on science and technology.
The process starts by selecting entrepreneurs who are looking for funding and presenting the most ready ones every two months during pitching sessions to an audience of business angels.
Business angels are private individual willing to investing their own money into high growth potential starting companies. Moreover, business angels do not offer only money to the entrepreneurs. Since these investors are usually successful entrepreneurs themselves, they will bring their experience and personal business network to the companies they invest in, which is an invaluable asset and success guarantee for the entrepreneur.
Before pitching to investors, the entrepreneurs have received special full-day training and coaching by Mr. Nelson Grey, a seasonal expert on business angel investments. He stressed on the importance of designing such infrastructure in Jordan in order to pave the way for a strong knowledge-based economy. ArabCrunch was present during the first day session led by Grey, were he coached entrepreneurs in how to pitch for investors, he mentioned many useful tips that are useful to any entrepreneur looking to get funded:
- Investors invest in entrepreneurs with dedications and guts.
- Entrepreneurs should know what this round of investment will bring them to: more rounds? Or no more rounds and the startup is heading to profitability.
- Investors invest in startups that have unfair competitive advantage.
- Returns should be at least 5 times the investments.
- Before presenting. know who you are presenting to, in order to customize your presentations: to Phd holder make it more technical, to Investors focus on finance and marketing.
- When pitching, pitch the plan not the science behind it.
The next Bedaya pitching session is planned to happen during October. Interested business angel investors and entrepreneurs are welcome to contact the network to participate.
For more information about What Type of Company Do Venture Capitalists you can check this guest post at ArabCrunch by Laila Kassis.
Published by: ArabCrunch (http://arabcrunch.com/)