The organisers of the national final are Swedbank in collaboration with the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LTRK), the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA), the Latvian Startup Association Startin.LV, and TechChill.
The aim of the Entrepreneurship World Cup is to increase the competitiveness of businesses from various countries, including Latvia, in the global market, as well as to strengthen entrepreneurs’ belief in their business ideas, grow faster and gain international experience.
Five businesses in national final
By the January 19, any business which is registered in Latvia and is no older than 10 years is invited to submit an application in English through the competition’s website which you can find here.
Once the application deadline has passed, the registered applications will be evaluated by a global jury.
In the second round, representatives from the Latvian national jury will give their judgements, and the businesses who will present their business ideas in the Latvian national final will be announced in February. The main evaluation criteria are the product, its potential, the predictability of the business model, and the team. Five Latvian businesses will compete in the national final in March 2024.
The winner of the Latvian national final will then compete with the world’s top 100 businesses for a spot in the global final in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and a chance at the 1 million USD prize fund, as well as a great deal of publicity.
Third time lucky?
85 businesses took part in the first Entrepreneurship World Cup national selection in 2021. Five of these took part in the Latvian national final: Batwatex, Finchecker, Fravia, HyMet.eu and Swimbe. National selection winner HyMet.eu reached the world top 25 from a competition of hundreds of thousands of businesses, reported Labs of Latvia.
Last year, five businesses took part in the Latvian final: Longenesis, My3D.Cloud, Naco Technologies, OX Drive and Uniscopia Group. Digital health startup Longenesis took the crown, and later made it into the global final, reported Labs of Latvia.
“Winning the Latvian national final opened up our business to new experiences and many useful contacts, helping us to continue developing our business idea with a new global perspective in mind,” said Sergejs Jakimovs, Longenesis co-founder.
In last year’s Entrepreneurship World Cup, hosted in Riyadh, the business represented Latvia as one of the 25 best businesses. He wants to embolden Latvian entrepreneurs to be brave and grab hold of this global opportunity. “It is these kinds of events which allow us to grow the most among genuine competitors, and receive support and advice from experienced mentors, investors and others operating in the global business environment,” said Jakimovs.
Nor was it the only award scooped by Logenesis recently. The company's Emil Syundyukov was named by the European Commission as one of the continent's young entrepreneurs to watch.
