Endeavor Bulgaria announced the ten companies which will enter its 4-months-long “Dare to Scale” acceleration program. The third season of the program is set to start in September. It is organized by the Bulgarian office of the global entrepreneurial network Endeavor, with main partner Postbank and the support of Software Group and the Bulgarian Executive Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises (BSMEPA)
This year, seventeen founders with businesses in the fields of IT and software services, commerce, agriculture, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals will take part in “Dare to Scale”. Around 40% of the entrepreneurs are female, while three of the companies are entirely represented by women.
Momchil Vassilev, Managing Director at Endeavor Bulgaria shared that the team was impressed by the number and quality of the companies that applied this year and that the task of selecting the ten finalists was not easy.
“I am extremely happy for the increasingly noticeable presence of the ladies as leaders of successful entrepreneurial projects both in the program and in the Bulgarian entrepreneurial environment,” Vassilev added.
Ready to accelerate
All ten companies meet the preset criteria – to have an established product or service on the Bulgarian market, a 2020 turnover of at least BGN200K (€100K), and no more than 150 employees.
The program will combine physical events in Sofia and virtual sessions. Entrepreneurs will receive training in four main areas: organizational management, marketing, sales, business planning, and capital raising. Each company will have an individual mentor from the Endeavor network, who will hold regular one-on-one meetings with the founders to support them during the course of the program. Among the mentors are Vassil Terziev, Managing Partner at Eleven Ventures, Lyubomir Minchev, Founder of Telelink, and Atanas Raykov, Biz Dev CEE and CIS Director and CEO at Viber. The culmination of the program is the “Dare to Scale” Demo Day event, during which participants will present their businesses to a jury of established business leaders.
The ten finalists
CHILDISH – A software development company focused on Python solutions. They offer services for complete software development, including design, building and managing special teams. CHILDISH is 50% owned by Give a Book Foundation. Half of the profits of the company will be supporting the initiative Give Time, which connects volunteers with children from foster homes.
Dexycon – The company creates modular mobile business solutions, suitable for both B2B and B2C companies, such as digital business cards. Its goal is to shorten the distance between customers and businesses.
DECIBEL – The engineering company was established in 2012 in Sofia. Today, it is one of the leading manufacturers of sound insulation and acoustic solutions which are offered on 4 continents.
National Archives – offers outsourcing services for end-to-end document and information management, physical organization, storage, scanning and indexing, data entry, and destruction of documentation.
Techno Farm – The company has developed software for precision agriculture. Its solution enables farmers to perform administrative activities, such as filing documents and tracking field boundaries digitally. It also tracks agricultural machines in real-time and collects data about their technical condition.
PARAMIDONNA – The company creates luxurious beachwear. Each collection is themed and is designed with signature prints, handmade details, and trendy colors.
REVERSE – Founded in 2017, REVERSE is a dermatological clinic and medical center that specializes in clinical and aesthetic dermatology. The company has over 10 000 visitors a year.
Rotax BG – The company develops a solution to measure the performance stats of a driver’s vehicle. Created as a standalone device, its RaceBox product relies on a GPS Module and High Precision Accelerometer. It can be used for tracking the acceleration of a vehicle and its laps. The solution can also study one’s driving and display estimates of their lap or drag run time before they have finished.
StorPool – The software company develops a fully-managed data storage solution for enterprises, managed service providers (MSPs), SaaS, hosting and cloud providers. With the solution, users can transform their commodity hardware into a scalable shared-storage system and reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO) several times .
Shkolo.bg – The software solution of the company optimizes the back-end and administrative processes of schools. Its package of services allows teachers to execute online lessons, enter student grades, and keep track of extracurricular activities children participate in. The platform also allows for a direct contact with parents through sending mobile notifications to their smartphones regarding their child’s behavior, academic performance, upcoming events, and others. Shkolo.bg has been largely implemented by elementary schools. Its platform is synchronized with the Ministry of Education and Science’s strategy for facilitating an online grading system in public schools.
