Wolves Summit, the organizer of the biggest annual tech and innovation conference in CEE that gathers over 2000 founders and investors, is launching a new exclusive event format this spring to connect international limited partners (LPs) with fund managers and scaleups across CEE. The Alpha Wolves Summit will take place on the 7th and 8th of April in Warshaw, Poland, and online. During the two-day event, hundreds of scaleup founders, LPs, and regional and international investors will meet to explore funding opportunities.
Alpha Summit will offer possibilities for scaleup owners who have already completed at least the first round of financing, have a developing product, and are now establishing their core competencies and departments to scale up their business.
“This is the first event of this type that we organize. So far, we have mainly conducted meetings of investors and fund managers with startups, but our conferences were also very popular among representatives of scaleups – that is how the idea of creating a separate, more exclusive event aimed only at them was born. We wanted to create a forum for exchanging ideas, a space for networking, and a chance to develop. Moreover, business relationships established during Alpha Wolves or ideas born during the forum would have an indescribable impact on economic development in our region – thriving companies, technologies, and new jobs are a benefit to all residents of Central and Eastern Europe,” Michael Chaffe, CEO of Wolves Summit, comments.
Further down you can find out more about the agenda of the event as well as insights and predictions from Michael Chaffe and two startup investment experts Jonathan Hollis from Mountside Ventures, and Júlia Sohajda from Vespucci Partners about the CEE startup and scaleup market in 2022.
A platform for scaleups and growth-stage investors
The goal of the organizers of Alpha Wolves Summit is to repeat the success that their flagship Wolves Summit conference has enjoyed for several years, growing into one of the most active events for startups and investors in the CEE region. Now, the Alpha Wolves is aimed to become the go-to platform for scaleups and Series A and beyond investors.
During the exclusive forum which will combine presentations and panel discussions, participating scaleups will be offered know-how and networking opportunities, while investors would be able to find innovative and thriving businesses. The first day of Alpha Wolves will be dedicated to founders of scale-ups who want to learn how to further accelerate the development of their business, while the second day is intended for investors, general and limited partners who will learn more about the current trends and opportunities in the European market.
“Nearly 400 business CEOs, representatives of over 200 scaleups, 150 general partners, investment and venture capital funds, and 50 limited partners have already signed up for our event. We expect that this year the number of participants will exceed 1000, which will be a very impressive result considering the fact that Alpha Wolves is a brand new event that will be held for the first time,” Michael Chaffe highlights.
Alpha Wolves will gather representatives from companies and funds such as ACP Partners, BVV, Octopus Investments, Penjana Kapital, Multiple Capital, AXA Venture Partners, and Mouro Capital.
The future of tech in the region
According to Jonathan Hollis, Managing Partner at Mountside Ventures, three main trends that are shaping the CEE tech ecosystem in 2022 can already be distinguished. These are the more diverse funding options that are becoming available for founders, the increased transparency that VC capital might not be for everyone, and lastly, the diversification of the LP base for emerging fund managers.
Julia Sohajda, Managing Partner at Vespucci Partners outlines two important aspects that have become increasingly important in recent years. “I think it’s the overarching trends such as ESG and diversity. These policies are starting to become part of most VCs’ due diligence process. Another one is definitely the role of crypto and blockchain in the VC world and whether that could mean disruption for it,” she comments.
Michael Chaffe refers to the impact of the pandemic on the CEE startup and scale-up market. According to him, paradoxically to the situation, positive effects can be noticed as companies have started to think and act more globally and become more attractive to large investors from outside the CEE region. “International and private investors bring a lot of changes as I mentioned previously. But besides that, we observed – especially during Covid – that the startups/scaleups started to think internationally and instead of serving their local customers they realized that they should set their foot in other countries. This is an obvious choice when we talk about market sizes like we have in Slovakia, Hungary, or Croatia,” Chaffe explains.
** Wolves Summit supports Ukrainian people and founders and is welcoming any startups and scaleups that are currently headquartered in Ukraine to attend Alpha Wolves free of charge. If your company is based in Ukraine, or you know founders who could benefit from the organization’s support, you can reach out to [email protected]. **
