EU elections, Eurovision...it seems fitting to stick to the theme this month and give a few highlights from AngelNews’ trip to Milan earlier this month for the flagship, grand finale of international investment advisory firm U-Start’s conference. I’m going to stretch the geographical boundaries slightly though, otherwise this article might be a little hypocritical – in the words of U-Start's CEO, Stefano Giudotti, “Talent is everywhere” and perhaps we need to be looking further afield than Europe, Silicon Valley and the like, for the future Instagram or Candy Crush Saga! For the VCs and angels amongst you, how many of you have invested in an African start-up, or delved into the Latin American entrepreneurial landscape to find the next big thing? If not, why not? The underlying theme from this conference would suggest that we could be missing a trick if we don’t familiarise ourselves with these emerging geographies as there hides a huge amount of untapped talent and underestimated technologies.

U-Start, by its own admission is a start up itself, but with grand plans – to find “The World’s Best Start-up” and to connect those most promising start-ups in emerging markets with a network of international investors, made up of family offices, high net-worth individuals, early stage investors, venture capitalists and corporate ventures. U-Start has bases in Southern and Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America with the Finale in Milan being a culmination of a year long search across these economies. It showcased the top 19 start-ups from these often over-looked and underrepresented geographies to compete for the title of World’s Best Start-up and lots of other benefits alongside.

U-Start gets people on the ground in each economy, and immerses itself in the area and the culture so that they can find out their strengths and needs, and with an estimated 700m new users in these emerging markets, it is a powerful place to be to support and hone the potential. The U-Start representatives in each area are aware of external investors being both unsure of the abilities and opportunities of these less publicised locations, but also not having the resources and ability to go out and recce the area themselves – U-Start aims to bring the best to the fore.

The Winner:

Of the 19 finalists, the winner was announced at the end of the conference as Over, a South African venture:

Over - A mobile app enabling people to overlay their digital photos with text, artwork and icons to share more compelling stories.

Click the logo to find out more information.

The 4 other regional finalists included:

European Winner

Italist – a marketplace for Italian fashion multibrand boutqiues, new talents and luxury artisans.

Russian Winner

Linguademia – specialists in encouraging a new approach to foreign language learning through gaming

South American Winner:

LoveMondays – an online platform which sets out to empower job seekers to find their perfect job, via free access to reviews of companies, all of which are contributed anonymously by employees of those companies

South African (runner up):

wiGroup – pioneers of mobile transaction solutions that enable consumers to transact in a swift and secure manner, using their mobile phone.

Although the basic premise of the conference was to showcase the emerging talent to an international audience of investors – there was a running theme with many of the people AngelNews interviewed, that it wasn’t only about investment; they look at the fuller picture, the mentoring and training of these companies. The Conference was also the platform for U-start to announce their new partnership with Onyx Consulting, who are experts in organisational assessment and business growth modelling. Having a chat with Eeswaran Navaratnam, Director of Onyx Consulting, he explained that The “Onyx Boost” programme is designed to support start-ups throughout their full growth cycle, and face the challenges at each step – thus creating a much more stable company for investors to invest in. It rang lots of bells with the challenges we see every day at Pitching4Management, stating that 90% of start-ups fail, with 70% of those start-ups failing due to management issues, not competition or market forces. The Boost programme is designed to give these start-ups a level of consulting they would otherwise not be able to afford.

This “fuller picture” outlook was also touched on by the sponsors of the event, ENEL – the second largest energy company in Europe, whose corporate venturing arm has got some exciting companies to keep an eye on. Speaking to project manager, Luciano Tommassi, he explains how ENEL Lab’s incubator has earmarked €15m over the next three years to find and support (by much more than just financial means) the most game-changing Cleantech start-ups – they aren’t looking for capital gain, but the innovative technology. By the end of the 2 year incubation period ENEL will have invested €650k into the finalists, and Luciano was very clear that, if by the end of the incubator period a company was clearly on a winning path, their support would not end there, with the potential to be incorporated into the ENEL world. Cleantech is an increasingly popular sector for innovation, but recalling a recent conversation with an advocate of Cleantech at a different conference, it is still not attracting enough investment from VCs and angels – so is CVC the way forward for Cleantech perhaps? 

Having a final word with CEO of U-Start, Stefano, I asked what was next for U-Start and I was pleased to hear that once the current economies they work in have been consolidated, the intention is to expand into Mexico which is the entry point for Latin America, and then Asia... I think to be able to crown the “Worlds Best Start-up” then that is what they should work towards! As investors and VCs, maybe this is one to keep an eye on, to make sure we aren’t too late to the party for the next big things in Latin America, Africa and even closer to home in Italy – the home of U-Start - where there, in the words of Venture Capital firm P101’s Managing Partner, Andrea di Camillo, “isn’t just political issues, good food and gondola’s; we actually have companies!”.