On the 22nd of October Bulgaria’s first startup studio, BattlePass, launched officially. Our bold aspiration is to be the bridge between the local startups and venture capitalists not only here, in Bulgaria, but in the entire region.
Startup studios resemble accelerators in the way they help new ventures take off. The main distinction, however, is that they don’t just advise entrepreneurs for a couple of weeks or months. Instead, they take the role of co-founders, investing time, energy, know-how, and sometimes money into the projects they really believe in - a process that may even take years. This has a huge impact on the startups’ overall success rate as some startup studios have even reported that they achieve exits from 1 out of 2 projects (compared to the traditional VC’s 1 out of 10). Part of the reason for these tremendous results is that all of the major stakeholders are usually granted equity which further incentivizes them to strive for the startups’ long-term success.
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The event was attended by some of the biggest VCs in the country, as well as some of the outstanding peopleBattlePass has partnered with - Martin Kadinov, Danail Koev, Bilyana Dimitrova, Krasimir Stoev, Ivan Iliev, Martin Markov, all of whom are well-known in the Bulgarian startup space. Our mutual goal is to strengthen the local ecosystem by introducing the missing element that would be the bridge between founders, service providers, and investors. Currently, our team is working with 8 ventures from various industries (both from Bulgaria and abroad) and is advising several others. We are also about to open a second branch of the startup studio in Greece and we plan to expand to Romania and Serbia in the near future where we intend to replicate this business model.
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The official launch took place in our HQ, the modern co-working space Work&Share. We were thrilled to have almost fifty entrepreneurs, developers, investors, and experts in a variety of fields attend it. The program included two presentations, one about BattlePass itself (delivered by Peter Lozanov) and the other one about the rise of eSports (delivered by TDB Play’s managing partner Martin Kadinov), as well as two casual panel-discussions. In the first one Bilyana Dimitrova, Danail Koev, and Ivan Iliev discussed the reasons they decided to collaborate with BattlePass and how they can help startups avoid the most common pitfalls. The second panel included some of the startup founders who are being guided by the our team - Ralitza Ivanova (Vitesse Running), Plamen Dechev (Stream Edge), and Yonko Minev (Pleggi). The three presented the projects they’re working on and shared with the audience the reasons for them to come to us.
The program was followed by cocktails, snacks, and networking which allowed everyone to get to know each other better. Naturally, we had taken all the necessary precautionary measures in regards to COVID-19 and everyone was provided with disinfectants, as well as free masks, making sure all the guests feel safe and secure.
