The NextWomen are running their first Pitch Evening with Investors of 2011 on January 27th. The event, done in cooperation with Astia and sponsored by Orrick, aims to support women-led businesses prepare and practice their investment pitches with a real panel of investors, while running initial screening of high growth entrepreneurs for the Astia Programme 2011 running in March.

The Pitch Evenings are highly appreciated events organized since the start of The NextWomen end of 2008 at the request of our readers, and it provides an excellent networking opportunity with the possibility to make lasting business connections.

"It was such an experience to participate in TheNextWomen! The feedback from the panel was invaluable, the people met most intriguing, and the whole experience exhilarating. Thank you for making the event such a blast! I truly enjoyed every minute of it, but can only imagine how much work it took to make it happen so smoothly." Heikki Haldre, Fits.me

The event will give women founders with little or no experience in fundraising a first review of their business plan by experts and investors from the Astia Board, and initial practice of their pitch in a friendly environment, gaining first-hand insights and feedback from experienced investors from the judging panel, including DN Capital, Piton Capital, HackFwd, Octopus Ventures and Incito Ventures.

Up to 8 women-led startups will have an afternoon workshop to prepare for the evening pitches. Up to 20 guests will further join the event at 6pm.

The winner will be awarded a free entry in the Astia European Entrepreneur Programme 2011 in London.

The agenda is as follows:

• 3-6pm Workshop for pitching startups
• 6-6:15pm Guests arrival and registration
• 6:15-6:30pm Entrepreneur Keynotes by Polly Gowers of EveryClick
• 6:30-6:45pm Investor Keynote by Andrin Bachmann of Piton Capital
• 6:45-7pm Networking Break with drinks and canapés
• 7-8:30pm Funding Pitches
• 8:30-8:45pm Networking Break with drinks and canapés
• 8:45-9pm Winner announcement and closing

Venue:
Orrick London,

107 Cheapside

London EC2V 6DN
Investor Panel:
Maria Dramalioti-Taylor, Incito Ventures
A founding member of Incito Ventures and Astia Europe Board member, Maria focuses on female-led startups in enterprise applications, mobile, digital advertising, e-commerce, social media and cleantech. She co-founded Protos Capital, was the R&D-award winning CEO of CipherGrid, investor in the VC-backed Pervasic (exited) and mentor of startups like Improve Digital, anywhere.me & Stingray. A Senior Manager at Andersen and Ernst & Young, Maria started her career in the UK on a CBI scholarship with Thames Water plc where she trained as an engineer. She is an Advisory Board member of PoCKeT fund and Astia Europe, a mentor and Champion of The Prince's Trust Creative Businesses & The Young Enterprise, founder of the Arsakeion Alumni UK Charter and sponsor of a microloan foundation in India. Maria completed the PE & VC exec. course at Harvard, has an MBA from Cranfield, an M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London and a Dipl. Ing. from the National Technical University of Athens.
Andrin Bachmann, Piton Capital
Andrin is an entrepreneur and investor in the Internet, media, technology, telecoms and renewable energy sectors. He recently set up Piton Capital, which is investing in online businesses with network effects. Its portfolio companies include bullionvault, dawanda, jameslist and fotocommunity. He was a co-founder of Glocalnet, which became Sweden's 3rd largest consumer telecom service provider and was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange before being acquired by Telenor. He was a partner at M/C Venture Partners, one of the leading private equity investors in the US telecom services space. Andrin was also one of two principals establishing an investment company that became qxl Ricardo PLC's largest shareholder in 2005. He holds an MSc degree in Computer Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).

Christina Chen, DN Capital
Christina is an investor at DN Capital where she covers digital media and software investments in Europe. DN Capital, with offices in London and Palo Alto, is a growth capital and early stage investment fund. Prior to DN Capital, Christina had a career in investment banking at Deutsche Bank and HSBC, where she was involved in M&A and financing transactions for large technology and media companies. Christina was trained as computer scientist in University of Cambridge.

Luke Hakes, Octopus Ventures
Luke is an Investment Manager in the Ventures team at Octopus Investments.  The team manages over £250m of UK focussed Venture Capital funding and has made over 25 new investments into early stage and growth businesses in sums ranging from £250k to £2m over the last year.  Over the last two years Luke has lead investments into nine businesses and currently represents Octopus on the board of five portfolio companies, largely in the semiconductor and green Energy spaces.  After starting his career as a research scientist Luke moved into Management Consultancy and latterly Finance.  He holds a BSc in Biochemistry and Biotechnology, an MSc in Bioinformatics and a PhD in Computational Genetics.

Mikko Järvenpää - HackFwd

Mikko is Marketing and Innovation expert at HackFwd, helping identify the most promising startups for investment with his expert angle. He has been immersed in the online industry for over a decade. In 2003, Mikko joined Google in Mountain View and moved to the product marketing team in London in 2004, where he specialised in scalable marketing, marketing partnerships and emerging markets. After leaving Google in 2007, he has worked closely with selected European startups and consulted large organisations from banking to media on innovation projects and marketing. Mikko holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BBA from the Helsinki School of Economics.

There are only 8 Pitching spots available.
Pitching companies must purchase their ticket on the event site or below, which entitles them to:

• Tickets for two founders or team members to the event,
• A first review of their business plan via email by one of the Astia Board Members
• A workshop on the evening of the event to help them prepare for the evening pitch,
• The opportunity to pitch to the judging panel and compete for a free entry into the Astia Doing It Right Programme in March 2011

There are 20 guest tickets available for people who want to watch the pitches and network with fellow entrepreneurs, Astia advisory board members and the panel of investors.

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To apply for Astia European Entrepreneur Programme 2011 in London click here.
If you have any further questions regarding the Pitching event on January 27th please contact our COO Joana Picq on jo[at]thenextwomen.com

Here are some of The NextWomen past Pitching Events:

• Darwinian Business - Survival of the Fittest
• Pitchpreneurs Approaching the Gold Mine