04.02.2022

ACCELERATION AND START-UP FUNDING FUND TO SUPPORT START-UPS

Konstantina Voynova, expert in the Financial Instruments Department of the Fund of funds, Yavor Gochev, Investment Manager at Innovation Capital, and Kamen Bankovski, Investment Manager at Vitosha Venture Partners, talk more about the activities, results and mechanisms of the Fund for Acceleration and initial funding in the podcast "Fund of Funds: Mission Funding" hosted by Zhivka Popatanasova.

The Acceleration and Initial Funding Fund supports entrepreneurship and the growth capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises. It improves the access of young and developing entrepreneurs to financing and the transition of the Bulgarian economy to one based on knowledge, said Konstantina Voynova.

"The projects are financed under the Operational Program for Innovation and Competitiveness with a resource from the European Regional Development Fund, as well as from a national resource," she said.

She added that the resource the organization manages and provides is nearly 71 million euros. The Acceleration and Initial Funding Fund is divided into 3 parts. The first two funds are Innovation Capital and Vitosha Venture Partners. The third fund is called New Vision 3 and it supports companies in a slightly more advanced start-up. The first two funds also support companies that are in the early stages of development, such as pre-seed and acceleration.

"Since its inception, the funds have provided or will provide funding in a very short time to more than 130 companies," she added.

Together with the mobilized private resource, the funds that reach the final recipients are nearly 43 million euros.

The main task of the fund, says Yavor Gochev, is to manage the funds and find the best prospects for companies that will benefit from financial support and develop sustainable businesses that will grow.

"We are talking about venture capital here and we do not rule out the possibility that some of these companies will fail and go bankrupt," he said.

Kamen Bankovski says that when investing in such companies, the funds often try to find out whether a certain business with secured capital will be able to reach the next stage of development quickly enough. This stage can be to achieve sustainability - the company to place products or services on the market well enough to sustain its operations, to develop and continue to grow, or to show good enough indicators to be financed again by another fund.