“A startup founder usually has a skill in the area where [they] want to develop a solution, whether it’s a product or an IT solution,” explains Patrizia Luchetta, who will join the Making a Company Investible panel at tomorrow’s .
“But then comes the famous fundraising effort. And that takes… other skills.”
How can an entrepreneur make their company investible? Are incubators really all they’re cracked up to be? These questions and others will be tackled at the event, hosted by the Luxembourg Business Angel Network (LBAN).
According to Luchetta--whose expertise comes from a wide range of board positions, project coordination roles and a now-concluded tenure with the economy ministry--startups can indeed benefit from incubators, if the fit is a good one, but equally vital is the ecosystem in which the company is operating.
Building ecosystems
“You need to look at which strengths you have already in the country, and which strengths you can build on,” comments Luchetta, whose eight-year stint at the economy ministry was spent developing Luxembourg’s biotech/healthtech ecosystem.
In biotech, a local strength happens to be that the grand duchy has just one health system, which makes tracking patient data on a national scale simple (assuming data legislation permits it). Nevertheless, this isn’t the place for pharma companies, says Luchetta. “Pure” biotech companies, i.e. ones working on a medical product rather than a digital health solution, would struggle to find funding in the grand duchy. “We don’t have enough people that are knowledgeable in that area,” says Luchetta.
Fintech, on the other hand, is on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Asked which fields besides finance have vibrant ecosystems, Luchetta mentions logistics and, perhaps less obviously, engineering.
Two examples from these disciplines (respectively) could also suggest ways in which pharmaceutical ecosystem is being organically expanded. First, Japanese pharma company JCR the construction of its European logistics platform in the grand duchy. And second, as Luchetta points out, medtech companies like B Medical Systems and Rotarex have drawn on local engineering expertise that has matured in the steel industry.
“When it comes to the circular economy and sustainability,” she adds, “engineering is actually a very important area in that space--to design or redesign products. That’s a strength that Luxembourg definitely has.”
Incubators: the right fit
Asked what she is most keen to see at the summit, Luchetta mentions the keynote speech by Uli Grabenwarter of the European Investment Fund. “My questions will be about the key metrics for them [regarding startups and incubators who receive funding],” she comments.
“Sometimes a good intent has consequences that are unintended,” she explains, adding that, in her experience, she has not always been certain that incubators or accelerators had their startups’ success at heart. “We [she and a friend who has a startup] often had the feeling that the driving force for the incubator offering the programme was to show how many startups they had,” she says, stressing that she didn’t have any numbers to confirm this sense.
The Early-stage Investment Summit starts at 10am on 8 December. Find more information on .