This year’s Investor Camp event for business angels and venture capitalists doubled in size, bringing together nearly 20 speakers and 300 investors. Participants came from the USA, Taiwan, Israel and other countries to learn about the growing Lithuanian startup ecosystem and its potential, and to network with investors from Lithuania and other countries.

The Investor Camp was organised by the Innovation Agency’s Startup Lithuania unit, the Lithuanian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (LT VCA) and the Lithuanian Business Angels Association (LitBAN). 

The event doubled in size

“Lithuania’s startup ecosystem is one of the fastest growing in Central and Eastern Europe, with a nearly 17-fold increase in value over the last five years. It is not surprising that a special event for investors has attracted a lot of attention and brought together investors from as many as 14 countries. Among them are representatives from funds that have invested in Lithuanian unicorns Vinted and Nord Security,” said Aušrinė Armonaitė, Minister of the Economy and Innovation.

As she put it, Lithuania has long since entered the next generation economy, where innovation is valued and encouraged: “Today’s startup activity and the attraction of investments from world-famous venture capital funds such as Accel, Insight Partners, Intel Capital and Inventure show that we are gaining attention on the global stage.”

The size of this year’s Investor Camp event demonstrated the growing interest of international venture funds in Lithuanian startups. The programme of the event included not only global trends, but also a look at the Baltic countries – a discussion was held on the prospects and forecasts for the region’s startups in the coming years.

According to Roberta Rudokienė, Head of Startup Lithuania at the Innovation Agency, this year’s event attracted 20 speakers to the stage and almost 300 investors from the Baltics, Denmark, Finland, France, Israel, Luxembourg, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK and the US.

“This is the second time the event has taken place and the number of participants has almost doubled. Last year, we saw a great interest from investors, so this year we tried to accommodate more people. It is very likely that the number of participants increased not only thanks to the opportunity to talk to each other but also due to the topical programme and the biggest startup ecosystem event in Lithuania, Startup Fair, which will take place tomorrow, where investors will have the opportunity to get to know our country’s startups,” said Ms Rudokienė.

Among the speakers – famous faces

Among the speakers at the Investor Camp were such well-known faces of the ecosystem as Arvydas Bložė, Partner at Practica Capital, and Harry Williams, a venture capitalist at Highland Europe in the United Kingdom, who shared the practice of investing in a round of investment in the Lithuanian startup PVcase, which is developing a solar energy software company PVcase.

The event also gave participants the opportunity to get acquainted with the new vision of Tech Zity Vilnius, the largest technology campus in Europe, presented by the leaders of the Lithuanian technology sector, namely, Mantas Mikuckas, co-founder of Vinted, and Darius Žakaitis, founder of Tech Zity. According to them, the 50,000 sqm space of the former Lelija sewing factory in Vilnius’ Naujamiestis district will be transformed into a tech city with co-working and office spaces, event halls, living spaces and other public spaces for the city’s residents and visitors.

We are pleased that the programme of the event allowed us not only to look at topical issues but also to highlight the changes in the Lithuanian entrepreneurial environment. The fact that the names of successful Lithuanian startups are becoming well-known in foreign markets, that ambitious technology infrastructure projects continue to be developed, and that the ecosystem itself is receiving increasing support from the government and the attention of global experts and investors can only mean one thing – we are doing a lot of things well and we need to keep going,” said Greta Mieliauskaitė, Executive Director of the Lithuanian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association.

Partners of Investor Camp include Practica Capital, Sorainen, Iron Wolf Capital, COBALT, Vilnius TechFusion, ISM University of Management and Economics.