It’s a match! A bond between City Governments and Venture capital.
Six European city governments are helping their most promising scaleups in accessing venture capital investments. This support is part of the Dealmaking Day Initiative and it will bring game-changing solutions to international markets.
Fact: Cities are booming, and so is urban tech!
Aware of the need to tackle the challenges that arise from this phenomenon called urbanization, SCALE Cities together with the Unknown Group, launched a disruptive initiative to connect city governments, venture capitalists and scaleups that are stimulating innovation in 4 major domains: mobility, waste, food, and energy.
On the 22nd of March 2022, this program called the Dealmaking Day brought together six of our SCALE Cities – Amsterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Madrid, Porto and Vienna. All selected five of their most promising scaleups to foster connections with venture capitalists and to support the expansion of those businesses to new markets.
Above all, the initiative is seen as a great opportunity to catalyze the active role city leaders can play to help their scaleups access funding and connect with relevant investors. This is most crucial at a time when access to capital is an issue preventing growth.
At the end of the day it’s win-win for all. Just think about it. As we speak, the selected scaleups in all six ecosystems are developing sustainable products and services; all to make cities smarter, healthier and safer. And city leaders are embracing the opportunity by enabling those innovative companies.
Again: this is only possible if we strengthen the links between founders, city leaders and VC’s. Pitch coaching and personalized matchmaking with 3 or 4 investors are the biggest pillars of the program. And, after one dealmaking day between all 30 scaleups and venture capitalists to kick off Series A Funding Rounds, the feedback speaks for itself.
According to Bas Beekman, Director or StartupAmsterdam, “the dealmaking day is our first concrete step in the direction of working together practically as SCALE Cities, fulfilling our aim of collaborating interactively rather than competing. It is essential to learn from each other and stay connected amongst different European cities as that will assist in scaling our local companies and to the development of our cities. We hope and believe that more initiatives like this will follow.
The SCALE Cities started as a peer-to-peer learning network, and it’s remarkable to see it evolving into an initiative of 15 cities, out of which six cities come together to bring 30 different scaleups closer with investors. This is crucial in the process of scaleups’ investment journey and in seeing how they can provide solutions to significant metropolitan challenges.”
“We will take 4 follow-on meetings with the 4 companies we met at Dealmaking Day”, a partner from Urban Impact Invest said.
It is now clear: the Dealmaking Day was a unique experiment and it successfully proved city governments can facilitate venture capital investments to scale urban tech. But we want to go deeper now. We want more cities to be part of this global solution. We’re counting on you too. Hit the SCALE button and let your ecosystem grow with us.
