GapMinder VC

FintechOS from #GapMinderPortfolio plans to recruit sales specialists for Western Europe and software development experts in Romania.   The move comes after the company attracted a 60 million USD round this year and is part of its plan to strengthen its position globally and reach break-even in 2024.   Read more in the following article: https://lnkd.in/dvpsEcCD

What are our plans by the end of the year? We aim to finalize three to four transactions by the end of this year and are in discussions with multiple companies in Romania, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.   These deals are part of the goal of GapMinder Fund II, a fund launched by GapMinder VC in February this year, to develop a portfolio of 20-25 companies, mainly seed and late-seed stage startups.   "This year, we have seen companies that were at a pre-production stage, but we expect them to evolve quickly and soon become mature enough to attract investment in the area where we operate. Certainly, some of the companies we have seen in the last few months will confirm, attract clients and most likely become interesting for us," says Cosmin Ochisor, our partner.   Find out more about us at https://gapminder.vc/ #GapMinder #VCFund

Cosmin Ochisor, our partner, joins the Venture Accel Kickoff by MyidEA that takes place on October 24. He's part of the panel "How to Raise Early Stage Investment" alongside Andrei Pitis (Startup Investor, Founder & CEO @ Genezio), Sergiu Negut (FintechOS / cleverage.vc), Dan Calugareanu (partner Early Game Ventures. Eric Bartha (Head of Financial Services @ SeedBlink) is the moderator. If you want to be there, you can register here: https://lnkd.in/dJDfXBEM You'll have the opportunity to meet promising startups, top investors, and experienced mentors in a relaxed setting, perfect for valuable discussions and connections. #CosminOchisor #GapMinder #VentureAccel

Dan Lupu - Venture Partner Earlybird Venture Capital, Early Stage Investor and the one who discovered UiPath, spoke at Breakfast with Founders, an event organized by GapMinder VC and Creandum, about some of the mistakes entrepreneurs make:   ✅ Given the nature of investing in technology, I have seen more failures than successes. Usually, investors tell you what to do, but they tell you what not to do in the global market or starting companies. Sometimes, this might help people more than telling them what to do.   ✅ I think that one of the mistakes is that startups get pushed to expand to the mythical US market. Sometimes, investors go for that for the right or the wrong reasons, and many times for the wrong reasons. And I saw it happening over and over. US expansion can be outsourced to a third party without personal involvement from the existing team and, more importantly, from the leadership and the founders. Founders like to travel to the US but want to avoid living in the US. When they get there, they meet some brilliant US salespersons, and after they recruit the sales guys, the founders find out that these guys need to meet their quota. If you start doing the math, you realize that you must pay 100 people, and only 60% meet 80% of the quota. Your commitment and spending on the US market need to be clarified. You end up with a considerable cost base in a no-return situation. Because you need to meet your numbers to get additional funding, which is the death trap. Many get to go there.   ✅ Another mistake I've seen is that many companies from the region come with a very technical team. CEO, CTO - everybody is technical.   And especially if you get some funding, the investors will push for revenues. All of a sudden, you start thinking about hiring a CRO. Usually, you get access to people from a different region who speak the language better than you and who have more life experience, and you end up paying them a lot of money. You pay them much money and look at them as if they were a God—the God of the building market. And there's zero supervision and zero questioning about plans. Six months down the road, you realize that the plan didn't make sense, there was no supervision, so there was no reward, and the company ended up in a challenging situation.   #EarlyBird #DanLupu

DRUID AI from #GapMinderPortfolio is thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with Zaky ITS, a subsidiary of Taawun Al Khair.   As the Regional Partner for DRUID AI, Zaky ITS will introduce their platform to businesses across the region, empowering them with superior customer experiences and improved operational efficiency.   #DRUIDAI #Chatbots

Rayscape from #GapMinderPortfolio has been named a semifinalist for Best New Radiology Vendor at the 2024 AuntMinnie.com Awards! 🎉   The AuntMinnie Awards are among the most prestigious honors in the medical imaging industry, recognizing the best and brightest in the field. This nomination reflects the team's hard work, innovation, and dedication to advancing radiology technology.   We’re eagerly awaiting the finalist announcement in mid-October!  

Bogdan Ripa, co-founder and chief product officer at Genezio from #GapMinderPortfolio, spoke at Breakfast with Founders about the selection of his team and also about some very important aspects and data of the sales strategy.   He spoke from the perspective of a professional with about 25 years of experience in product development at companies like Interakt (acquired by Adobe), VectorWatch (acquired by Fitbit (now part of Google)), UiPath and Genezio.   Here are some of his key quotes:   ‣ If you want to expand in the US, if you don't speak native English, you lose 10 IQ points with potential partners. People in the US have a very different way of presenting and selling themselves. Just listening to them, you fall in love with them. But then you start working with them. So, over the years, I've learned to trust the more introverted people.   ‣ When I recruit people, I look at their intelligence, their curiosity, and whether they want to achieve something. It's a mistake to look at people and think they're good because they've been in big, successful companies. I'm interested in what those people in those teams did to be successful.   ‣ I've met many salespeople over the years. In some cases, I've wondered how you can call yourself a salesman if you don't make enough money to cover your expenses. It may be that you're unlucky or that there is a problem with the product, but I've never understood that. ‣ From a product point of view, you have to look at a couple of things:   • Conversion rate - you have to look at how many customers are interested in the product, how many use it, and how many stay after a certain period because otherwise, you invest a lot of money in marketing, you hire people, and if customers leave, that's money lost. So that stickiness is very important.   • Net promoter score- this is a concept that a lot of people don't know what it means. This concept relies on asking customers if they would recommend the product, and this score is measured on a scale of 1 to 10. If the score is very low, you will have to spend much money on marketing and sales to attract more customers. On the other hand, the best customers are those brought in by other customers. The customers who refer you further are the best leads, sales team, and sales strategy.   #FoundersBreakfast #GapMinder #Genezio #BogdanRipa

We are so excited to share this news about Veridion from #GapMinderPortfolio 🎉 Veridion becomes Experian’s strategic data partner to transform commercial insurance underwriting processes. Powered by Veridion, Experian’s new ‘Hazard Tags’ will allow insurers to get a complete, comprehensive profile of five million UK businesses. By using advanced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques to analyse billions of internet pages almost instantly, the solution identifies any changes to business activity, risk exposure, and products and services, enabling accurate premiums and coverage to be calculated. 👉 David Gallihawk, Chief Product Officer, Business Information, Experian UK&I, said: “Artificial intelligence and machine learning is transforming the world of work in countless ways, and the financial services sector is no different. Traditional SIC codes may not accurately reflect mixed business operations, for example breweries that also function as bars and restaurants or construction firms that handle hazardous material like asbestos. That’s the issue that Hazard Tags solve. Read more in the following article. --- ✅ Experian is a global data and technology company, powering opportunities for people and businesses around the world. As a FTSE 100 Index company listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN), they have a team of 22,500 people across 32 countries. ✅ Veridion is building a single source of truth for company data using our advanced AI techniques to understand multiple data sources at scale. Veridion’s Database currently stands at 123M company profiles from all around the world, with over 80 detailed data points ranging from business data, classifications to product level data, with over 700M products and services, all updated weekly.

Andrei Pitis, cofounder and CEO of Genezio - from #GapMinderPortfolio, talked about how the coding industry will be transformed by AI during his How To Web presentation. Here are some takeaways: • Coding is such an intense process that it sets your mind very logically, while in the business area, not everything is logical. • Artificial Intelligence has lowered the barriers of entering the field of coding. Before people were afraid of programming. As time has passed, the barriers to learning coding have lowered. For example, a person who a few years ago was running a startup and didn't know how to code can now do coding. The barriers have shrunk and more people will be in this field. • Many juniors will be working on more difficult tasks. There will be more software development, not less. Genezio is a startup launched in 2023 to create tools to help developers automate app creation and this year raised a $2 million pre-seed round led by GapMinder VC. #Genezio #AndreiPitis #HowToWeb

"This year, we have interacted with a lot of companies that are riding the wave of Generative AI, and these are also the most interesting ones. We are in talks with startups from Romania, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia and especially Croatia - a country where we have strong networking. We've seen quite a lot of startups from Croatia, including cybersecurity, content marketing, but also some very good marketplace startups. So we are aiming to close three to four deals by the end of the year," says Cosmin Ochisor, our partner.   Among the tech startups feeling the strongest influence of Generative AI are those developing Software as a Service (SaaS) products, especially in the enterprise segment.   "The SaaS area is a very competitive market, where the use of AI I believe will have a decisive impact, in the sense that products can be greatly improved in terms of UI customization, process automation or the knowledge base side. Also, the development time for these features will shorten significantly because programmers will deliver faster with AI. From this perspective, I believe that businesses that will not adopt these new technologies are likely to become irrelevant both because they will not be as efficient, but also because the products on offer will simply be uncompetitive", mentions Cosmin.