A total of over 150 applications from 20 countries were received. The program will include 100 participants, nearly 40 of whom will be from Latvia.
“We are pleased with the strong interest from both participants and investors for the second year – it is a strong signal that such programs are needed,” says Raimonds Kulbergs, founder of BADideas.fund.
The investment school offers interactive webinars and individual workshops. The program concludes with individual discussions with investors.
In addition to lectures and individual workshops, the school will engage four mentors – startup founders who have attracted investments, to share their experiences. At the end of the program, participants will meet with specially selected investors in individual meetings to present their ideas and start discussions about real investment.
As last year, the program will be led by two experienced instructors who have worked in both startup and investor environments, including Silicon Valley companies – Diana Lāce-Davidova, COO of Whimsical, and Suhas Ghante, partner at Svethos.
Thanks to strategic support from the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia and the European Union’s Cohesion Policy program Strengthening Research and Innovation Capacity and the Introduction of Advanced Technologies in Enterprises, the program of the support event Support for the Improvement of the Technology Transfer System is available free of charge.
Second time in a row
Following a successful pilot project in 2023, the Fundraising School is running for the second time. Last year, more than 80 participants presented their ideas to investors at the end of the program. These discussions involved representatives from over 20 funds managing a total of more than 700 million euros in investment capital. Participants in the Fundraising School raised over 3.5 million euros in total.
“From time to time, we see that excellent companies struggle to attract investments because their applications lack answers to key questions posed by investors, such as why this is the right team to win the market, how rapidly the market is growing, or how exactly the investment will help achieve the company’s goals. Even after the investment frenzy of the pandemic, investors remain strict with their requirements and demand rapid growth with balanced costs. Thanks to our community of 200 investors, we can borrow the best practices from Silicon Valley and share them with our region,” says Kulbergs.
The name of the fund, BADideas.fund, was not chosen by chance. Every startup founder, including the fund’s participants, has heard that their idea is worthless.
“Even all unicorn founders initially heard that their idea was terrible. That’s why we decided not to be shy and call ourselves BADideas.fund. We are not afraid to invest in seemingly bad ideas because we invest in the team, not just the idea it develops. A good team will achieve great things, but the idea will likely change at least five times along the way,” says Kulbergs.
A few years ago, he sold his startup Funderful. Since then, Kulbergs has been involved in several projects – both as a founder and as an advisor to other founders. “I have helped quite many startups with advice. Angel investing seemed like the next logical step, but I was a bit hesitant to invest individually,” he says.
After talking with other founders and high-level executives, Kulbergs found that the mindset was similar – many are eager to invest but prefer to do so with others. “Many would start investing with small amounts, but for startups, such individual investments don’t help much. However, pooling this capital together creates something powerful. Moreover, it’s not just financial but also intellectual. Ten minutes of feedback from an experienced founder is invaluable. It may even be more valuable than the specific amount of money,” says Kulbergs.
