Emilia Capital is sponsoring WordCamp Europe 2023. We sponsor because we love WordPress and WordCamp Europe is our favorite event of the year.
But, we would also love to meet our next big investment opportunity at WordCamp Europe! So… are you seeking investment for your startup? Do you want to take your business to the next level? And would you like to collaborate with us? Here is your chance!
Apply for a pitch-spot in our booth
Emilia Capital will have a booth at WordCamp Europe. We’re going to invite people (you!!) to pitch their product, service or company to us in our booth. You’ll have 10 minutes to pitch your idea (we’ll be very strict with the time) and we’ll ask you some questions afterwards (another 10 minutes). After that, we’ll give you a ‘YES: let’s talk numbers’ or a ‘NO: this is not for us’.
How does our booth-pitching idea work?
Let me talk you through the process! If you want to apply for a booth-pitch, you fill out our pitch-form before May 11th. We’ll review the pitches and invite the best ones for a booth-pitch on June 9 and June 10th. We’ll let you know before May 17th whether or not we’re inviting you to our booth for a real-life pitch!
About a week before the start of WordCamp Europe, we’ll publish an overview of all of our booth-pitches on our website. The pitches will be public, we hope a lot of people will come and listen to all of the booth-pitches. Perhaps, we’re not interested in investing in your product, but someone else will be. And, you’ll have a chance to promote your product or your idea!
If we give you a ‘YES: let’s talk numbers’, we’ll probably schedule a follow-up conversation during WordCamp Europe. We usually decide quickly and we are planning to leave Athens with a couple of new awesome investments! So, you’ll get a definite GO or NO-GO before the end of WCEU.
Why we are investing in the WordPress Community
We really hope to meet some cool new WordPress startups in Athens. As you probably know, we sold Yoast in 2021. The Yoast business became large (and successful), but we really missed the startup phase. This was actually a big reason for wanting to sell Yoast: we just love that first start-up phase of companies (and Yoast outgrew that). We like to move fast, we get excited when working with passionate entrepreneurs and we love growing businesses. Next to that, we genuinely LOVE WordPress and we want to keep investing in and giving back to WordPress.
Our investment philosophy
Our love for WordPress is rather obvious. In the last few years, we’ve already invested in a number of WordPress companies. Next to that, we also made some other investments. All of our investments are in tech companies or in companies with a strong online presence. That just makes sense because of our own background, we can help those companies excel. Next to that: each investment aligns with at least one of our three core values:
- We are open-source fanatics and want to invest in open-source software solutions. In WordPress, that also means we ask companies we invest in to respect the GPL, the WordPress guidelines and understanding the importance of the WordPress community. Some of our WordPress related investments are Atarim, Equalize Digital, Extendify, Castos and previously Strattic.
- We are passionate about sustainability and want to invest in companies that provide sustainable solutions. We would like to expand our investment portfolio with products and solutions that help make the world a better (and a greener) place. We’re really excited about our investment in Peerby, a platform that helps people share tools and utilities with their neighbors.
- We want to encourage female entrepreneurship, so we seek investment opportunities in companies that are founded by women. Marieke experienced how difficult it can be to be a female entrepreneur in the tech industry. We want to help more female founded companies flourish. We’re really proud of our investment in Equalize Digital, but also in Stieglitz and Nina Care.
Questions?
Don’t be afraid to ask! We’re on Twitter, or email us through our contact form.
