And The Winners Are…

9 Teams Will Receive $1.3 Million USD in Funding from æternity Starfleet Incubator

Exciting news coming in from our æternity Starfleet program! During our biggest event of the Incubator for Blockchain startups so far, Demo Day II (14.07), 9 teams managed to secure funding for their projects with a total amount of the investments of $1.3 Million USD.

Nikola Stojanow and Yanislav Malahov opening the Demo Day

The teams battled it out while we were all waiting with baited breath to see who will receive funding. UTU technologies (Mauritius/Kenya), a trust ecosystem for the sharing economy, received $200,000 and AMPNet (Croatia), an integrated hardware and software suite, got $100,000 from æternity Ventures. Both teams impressed the investors attending the event, thus each of them securing another $50,000 from the partner network. But it turned out that wasn’t all!

Jason and Baastian from UTU receiving the great news on stage

After a long suspense, Nikola Stojanow, CEO at æternity Ventures, took the stage to announce that the remaining teams : TraDEXsocial, NOBLE, Tip-me, Ride Safe Africa, YAIR, TRIBE and Data2Honey will also receive funding. $1,000,000 will be distributed among these 7 teams!

All the startups together with æternity and æternity Starfleet teams

Emotions were running high all day and Sofia Tech Park provided a beautiful backdrop for the ceremony as all 10 projects had to pitch their ideas for 7 minutes each. This was followed by 3 minutes of Q&A sessions during which the æternity Blockchain team grilled the startups in order to receive the best impression of their preparedness and motivation. The audience of 150 investors and industry enthusiasts was also involved, actively asking questions and following up on their interest in the startups during the networking breaks. It was a nice surprise that a number of investment funds and angel investors also followed the event online with more than 350 people tuning in on the live-streamed pitches.

Karoline, MD of DSTOQ on stage

One more project was invited to present at the æternity Starfleet Demo Day II- DSTOQ, a government licensed stock exchange allowing investment in real-world assets using cryptocurrencies. DSTOQ was one of the first companies æternity Ventures invested in. This gave a good glimpse of the future for the Starfleet teams of where their hard work and dedication can lead them in a year or less from now.

Emin Mahrt, COO at æternity Blockchain, also took the stage to give an inspiring talk about organizing a startup in the most efficient way while Emil Wagner, tech leader of the æpps team, followed up with an update on the development of the æternity Blockchain. These talks further put into perspective why our work is so vital for our common goal of Blockchain integration worldwide.

Emil Wagner taking over the stage.

Demo Day II was the most anticipated event of the Starfleet program, coming after 5 weeks of intense preparations from the participating teams. During the first part also called Genesis Week, the teams came to Sofia or participated online. It was a week-long bootcamp of lectures and workshops on topics ranging from Token Economics and Business Model Design for Blockchain, to Customer Development, Building an Effective Roadmap, Lean Principles Methodology and many lectures on the technical side of implementing the aeternity Blockchain. The private pitch training sessions held with celebrity lecturer Christoph Sollich “The Pitch Doctor” proved to be of great value during the final event.

Genesis Week was followed by 4 weeks of intense training remotely with our team as the incubator’s organizers. Each project had hour-long sessions three times a week with our startup experts in order to further develop their ideas and fine tune their operational and technical processes. We were thrilled to observe that all 10 startups worked hard to grow their unique ideas and demonstrated significant development in their projects at Demo Day II.

Luka Sucic (æternity) together with Baastian and Jason from team UTU

We, the aeternity Ventures team, are incredibly grateful to all the people who made this journey possible and those who took part in the Starfleet program we devised with the best intentions. The 5 weeks of hard work were an emotional rollercoaster for both our participating teams and us as organizers. Demo Day II topped it all off with the most uplifting ceremony in our field. And of course, this wouldn’t have been possible without the great crowd of enthusiastic people filling up the room with their unique energy, cheering for the best ideas for a brighter future. A very big THANK YOU!

Author: As seen and experienced by our amazing operational associate Yoanna Boncheva.

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