Events

 The NextWomen are running their first European Investment Pitch Evening of 2011 on January 27th. The event, in cooperation with Astia, aims to support women-led businesses prepare and practice their investment pitches with a real panel of investors, including DN Capital, Piton Capital, Octopus ventures, Incito ventures and incubator HackFwd.

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.

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 Keynote 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

There are only 8 Pitching spots available.

Pitching companies must purchase their ticket on the event site, 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.

Investor Panel:

Maria Dramalioti-Taylor, Incito Ventures
A founding member of Incito Ventures, 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 UK, 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.

The venue is in the City of London near bank and St Paul, at our sponsors' office:

Orrick London
107 Cheapside
London EC2V 6DN

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