Gemini Solutions group, together with Gemini Foundry Inc, organizes the third edition of the Foundry Conferences, on September 23rd 2014, in Bucharest, having Romain Lavault as a special guest, partner in Partech Ventures. This edition of the event brings to Bucharest a new important investor for the Romanian startups, while during the previous editions we had the opportunity to see Nicolas El Baze, Partech Ventures partner and Romain Niccoli, co-founder and CTO Criteo, one of the most important European startups.
For those who are interested, the access is based on an invitation, and in order to obtain it, I invite you to visit the Gemini Solutions Foundry site, www.gemsfoundry.com. The event will take place on the 34th floor of the Sky Tower, in Bucharest, on September 23rd at 16:30.
Romain Lavault, the special guest of the conference, is general partner and head of seed/early stage fund in Partech, Paris. Partech Ventures is one of the most powerful investment companies on the markets of the United States and Europe. Founded in 1982, Partech now has offices in San Francisco, Paris and Berlin, disposing of funds of over 650 million $ which are mainly destined to business ideas in the IT domain. Along the years, the company offered support to dozens of business initiatives, which have become real successful stories. According to the latest TechCrunch article on Partech, the latest investment fund created, Partech VI, contains a ventures fund of 175 million $ and 40 million $ allotted to a seed fund. Therefore, during the following years, we are expecting 8 - 12 seed type investments to be carried out annually, having an average value of 500.000 $. The entrepreneurs attending the event will also have the opportunity to present their business ideas during an interactive pitching session. Thus, in the second part of the conference, the most interesting projects of the registered participants will be revealed.
Theo Nissim, CEO of the Gemini Solutions group has communicated his vision on this initiative to us:
We started Gemini Foundry to bridge between young Romania entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley, its investors, mentors and advisors for many fields of activity - legal, finance, marketing, etc. The Gemini Group has an extensive ecosystem that includes thought leaders and luminaries in these areas. Our vision is that we can create disruption and succeed by mentoring and accelerating Romanian startups and connecting them with the appropriate business partners and members of our ecosystem.
What we are looking for are startups that can be scalable globally, that foster change and disrupt. We will help them get ready for investment, and establish the infrastructure that will allow them to reincorporate in Silicon Valley, while keeping their engineering teams in Romania. We are especially interested in areas like mobile, Internet of Things, big data, social, ecommerce and payments and much more. I am looking forward to proving this model and help Romanian entrepreneurs succeed at the global scale.
In order to support the entrepreneurs of the IT environment in Romania, Gemini Foundry Inc, an incubator specially dedicated to startups in Romania, organizes a series of conferences whose special guests are foreign entrepreneurs and investors who are active in powerful competitive companies at the international level.
Moreover, Gemini Foundry offers for free office spaces ready to be used, help in business management, technical mentorship, financial and legal advice, but also connections to investments funds of the Silicon Valley, to the teams accepted to the incubation program. These connections are carried out in a personalized manner by the teams who will present their idea as well as the progress made within the incubation program.