Q: What does EASY represent for Early Stage investors?

The EASY project has been established within the context of the EU Pro-Inno Porgramme to promote early stage investment and to address the specific issues of lack of connectivity in the market place. Most importantly the project will focus on the issue of cross-border investment since, as you may be aware, early stage and seed investors have been reluctant to invest internationally due to the lack of structures to support them. Whilst the VC industry has been more successfully investing on an international basis.

Q: GLE manages London Business Angels Network. Why GLE decided to promote EASY?

GLE Growth Capital which is part of the GLE group has long standing experience in supporting entrepreneurs and early stage investing. We operate London Business Angels which is one of the oldest and most established networks operating in the UK, investing around 6M€ per annum. We have also been operating London Seed Capital for the past 4 years which is a £7M€, one of the first Early Stage seed funds which co-invests alongside our Business Angels. We were aware of the importance of creating connectivity in the early stage investment market and saw the EASY project as a means to stimulate strategic alliances across funding sources. In addition we support the operation of Seraphim, a new 40M€ Enterprise Capital Fund with 15M€ private funding and 30M€ UK government funding. This fund includes a significant number of investors in the US and this has led us to consider the importance of transnational investing and some of the challenges. On the demand side we have been supporting investment readiness for the past 7 years having operated two transnational investment readiness programmes and also more recently a special investment readiness programme working with creative industries businesses. Thus we see the EASY programme as an ideal way to use EU funding to build on our experience and share good practices with similar organisations across Europe and to develop a new sustainable framework for early stage investment.

Q: Why is the co-operation among BAs, seed investors and organizations like GLE important for the KBBs?

Currently we are aware that there are many knowledge based businesses across Europe who have an international focus and are capable of making use of international sources of funds. Many businesses have identified market opportunities in other countries or can see an opportunity for expansion of their business into other countries. These are ideally placed to make use of transnational investment. However in may cases there is a lack of any framework or structure where early stage businesses can access relevant sources of cross–border finance. At the same time investors will not be aware of how they can invest in internationally oriented businesses interested in their country market.

Q: In which way does the transnational dimension give added value to the KBBs?

The EASY project will respond to this challenge by creating the framework for the identification and preparation of investment ready internationally focused knowledge based businesses Through the EASY project we are piloting a new self assessment tool to support the knowledge based business to identify if they are investment ready and if they are sufficiently internationally focused to meet the requirements for transnational investing. We are also organising a programme of cross-border events a cross Europe where selected companies can meet international investors. Our project is also piloting tools to support investing in an international context and especially to support syndication. In this way knowledge based businesses will be able to access sources of international investment to grow their business as well access to new markets and business opportunities.


Q: Why should a BAN or a Seed Fund join the EASY network? Which are the advantages they could gain form it?

At the moment we are not looking to recruit more BANs or seed networks in to the EASY project. Since we have already 17 partners across 11 countries.

Q: EASY put together 17 relevant European Early stage operators. What are the challenges you foresee in managing this network?

With 17 partners across 11 countries, one of the key issues is communication. We need to ensure that all of the partners are able to keep in touch with the progress of the project. We are also concerned that those partners with less experience can gain from the more experienced partners in the project. We are also fortunate in being able to build on the experience and good practice of some of our partners who have taken a lead in progressing key tools and hosting events.

Q: Which is the added value EASY could give to Europe?

The EASY project will build a new dynamic framework for cross-border investing to highlight the benefits of early stage investing and which will enable seed investors and investment ready internationally focused businesses to come together to ensure an increased flow of risk capital to early stage businesses across Europe. By structuring cross-border deals and developing new joint tools we will also be able to provide new tested quality models and tools which should be of benefit to other investors and to encourage other BANs and seed funds to get involved in cross-border investing.