Business Angels Malta’s Johan Zammit judging the AIBC pitching competition.

Congratulations to ENCORE for winning the AIBC pitching competition and to all the other finalists.

Business Angels Malta is looking forward to SIGMA, AIBC & Med-Tech World.

Johan Zammit will be a judge at the startup pitching competition at AIBC Summit. 

He will be in great company with judges W. Scott Stornetta, Belinda Zhou, Efrem Borg, Marianna Tavella, David Orban, host Wesley Ellul, and an amazing cohort of startups.

See you in Malta at SiGMA – World’s Gaming Festival, AIBC Summit, and Med-Tech World.

14th – 18th November

Angelo Dalli with Prof Rudy Aernoudt.

Prof Rudy Aernoudt is the co-founder of EBAN European Business Angels Network. In April 1998, EBAN became the first pan-European network that focused on angel investments and startups.

Prof. Aernoudt is now a senior economist with the EU Commission and European chair of the World Business Angels Investment Forum. The journey from a small network to one encompassing all of Europe has been an exciting one spanning more than two decades, especially as Angel investing is now much more of a mainstream activity.

Angelo Dalli, BAM President and WBAF Senator for Malta at the WBAF Congress of Angel Investors 2022.

Startup Mentoring session tomorrow, giving an AI masterclass to budding entrepreneurs.

BAM’s Angelo Dalli will be at this year’s World Business Angels Investment Forum in Antalya, Turkey.

At the forum, Angelo will speak about AI, his experience as a tech entrepreneur and business angel, and mentoring startups.

BAM had the privilege of running one of the panels at the Pitchora Talks event on 29th July 2022.

Angel Investors Mikko Puhakka, Marcel Cutajar, Stephen Chetcuti Bonavita from Business Angels Malta together with Claire Ciancio, CEO at Greenroads discussed the journey of raising capital.

The main take away was that although there is no raising funds “by the book”, there are still some tips and tricks that both angel investors and startup founder can adopt in making the journey of raising funds smoother for all stakeholders.

Through the same application you submit to Business Angels Malta, you also have the opportunity to directly apply to pitch to other business angel networks worldwide that use our same platform.

Go to your Applications view. Under the list of applications you have already submitted, you should see a list of suggested deal rooms. You can send applications to those suggested deal rooms using your existing Dealum profile. Answer the questions the other network asks in their application form (if those questions differ from ours). For matching questions, answers will be pre-filled.

Suggestions are shown based on the match between the startup’s profile and the investment interests of deal rooms that chose to be visible to startups. Please note suggestions might not appear on the first day you submit your application. It might appear a day later as it takes time for the system to process the startup’s data and find matches.

Johan Zammit had the pleasure to speak on a panel at InvestMT o.b.o Business Angels Malta. 

The event discussed “The Future of Malta’s Equity and Startup Environment” and he had the opportunity to explain the current positive trends with both startups and business angels in Malta.

When asked about what can be done to better support the startup ecosystem in Malta he borrowed a 4 pillar framework used at the Malta Innovation Forum – the Capacity Building Framework. This can be applied to the startup ecosystem too.

Despite the positive trends, here is what more can be done IMO :

1. Training : The quality and number of both startups and investors is growing however, as we have seen from the Shark Tank Malta episodes, the ecosystem still has a lot of work in the areas of startups preparedness (and also investor preparedness) to increase the numbers and the quality on both sides. Training startups & investors is a key reason of why Business Angels Malta exists. 

2. Coordination between all the stakeholders that form part of the startup ecosystem – both public and private. Malta Enterprise StartinMalta, MIMCOL’s Seed Investment Scheme, Basement2Boardroom by Firstbridge, GO Ventures by GO etc etc etc

3. A well defined path a startup can follow through the various chapters of its lifetime – especially those relating to support and funding.  

4. Having global accelerators like the launch of Plug and Play Tech Center.
 
5. Study, promote and build upon existing success stories. The local ecosystem can learn a lot from its recent success stories like Weavr.io and from successful exists like those of Hotjar and Altaro Software.

Johan was in great company on the panel : Andrea Marcello from European Investment Fund (EIF), Herald Bonnici from Malta Government Investments (MGI) and Nick Calamatta from Calamatta Cuschieri Finance Group. The panel was moderated by Matthew Xuereb from Deloitte. 

InventMT was organised by Malta Development Bank with the support of Deloitte. 

Well done Rene Saliba Paul V. Azzopardi Joseph Darmanin Matthew Xuereb