The 'JUP journey' reached its most important moments on September 15, where 6 startups presented their progress in front of 5 investors.
8 startups started the journey in November 2021 with aspirations and determination to develop their ideas. With over 120 hours of mentoring and more than 10 thematic trainings from Swiss EP international and local experts, the teams used the most contemporary approaches to building startups with international impact with 2 main goals:
Testing hypotheses in the real market in order to build a sustainable business,
Preparing yourself and your startup to be investable in front of investors at Demo Day and beyond.
Through a 3-minute presentation, the startups showed the lessons learned, the potential as well as the future plans that could be achieved through the investment of 10 thousand dollars in their companies. The investor panel was composed of successful investors and entrepreneurs in the Albanian ecosystem, such as:
Martin Mata – Co-Executive Director of the Albanian-American Foundation for Development,
Aleksandër Sarapuli – Co-Executive Director of the Albanian-American Foundation for Development,
Elvin Guri – Entrepreneur/Investor,
Dorin Rama – Administrator of Crimson Finance Fund Albania,
Kushtrim Xhakli – Head of Connected Inventions.
Other special guests at this event such as Jakob Modeer - Manager of the Swiss Program for Entrepreneurship in the Western Balkans, representatives of the Ministry of State for the Protection of Entrepreneurship, Erion Nako - Head of SDA Albania by Protik, Dritan Mezini - Founder of DuaPune.com and Shkelzen Marku – Co-founder of Yunus Social Business Balkans, congratulated the entrepreneurs on the progress achieved so far and shared their views on the importance of the JUP Program in the ecosystem.
The panel of investors chose to invest in 3 startups with a check of 10 thousand dollars:
Dora Creative Agency, a creative agency that offers digital marketing services by grouping and creating teams with independent but highly creative individuals, founded by Antonio, Demiri & Orjana Çekrezi,
LikSad e-bikes, offering audio guides for lovers of e-bike exploration as well as those who want to explore Albania on foot, with the independence to control their own journey while being informed about Albania through the dedicated app.
Switch Technologies, a startup that offers physical/hybrid/online coding courses for young people and those who want to reorient their careers towards technology without the need to travel to Tirana and the expenses that arise because of this, founded by Kleo Zane & Klised Rungo.
The other 3 teams will continue to work closely with the JUP team and mentors to reflect and refine their ideas, based on feedback and advice from the investor panel.
JUP Demo Day 2022 was made possible thanks to the support from the Ministry of State for the Protection of Entrepreneurship in the framework of the 'Open call for grant support of startups and startup facilitators'..
