Bruno Vandegehuchte
Investor Relations & VC Program Manager
Scale-Ups.eu
Founded in 2018, Scale-Ups.eu is a Brussels-based accelerator that helps connect Europe’s most promising technology companies with a global network of investors through a series of high-profile events. Working exclusively with established businesses that have more than €3 million in annual recurring revenue, the group co-presented one of the biggest Benelux tech summits, the SuperNova Festival, in Antwerp in 2018.
It takes skill and access to a robust database of reliable private market data to successfully bring together that many high-profile scaleups as well as VC and corporate investors from around the world. That’s why Scale-Ups.eu leverages PitchBook’s comprehensive capital market data to identify growing technology companies across Europe, enlist them as member scaleups and find the right investors to connect them with.
- To connect with high-growth tech companies across Europe
- To find international investors for its member scaleups
“PitchBook is a big win for us. It gives us keen insight into the financials of private companies across Europe and allows us to quickly look at how they’re doing compared to their competitors.”
– Bruno Vandegehuchte
Connecting with high-growth tech companies across Europe
By tapping into PitchBook’s database of more than 1.9 million private companies, Scale-Ups.eu can quickly discover businesses within its target region and industry verticals—high-growth technology companies in Europe, specifically—and reach out to them directly to build their membership base.
Using the platform’s Advanced Search feature, Scale-Ups.eu can then rapidly identify the most promising companies to invite to their next event, all based on the attributes that matter most to them—including pre- and post-money valuations, growth rates, total capital raised and other key revenue figures that demonstrate each scaleup’s growth potential.
According to Bruno Vandegehuchte, Investor Relations & VC Program Manager at Scale-Ups.eu, “PitchBook gives us keen insight into the financials of private companies across Europe and allows us to quickly look at how they’re doing compared to their competitors.”
This allows Scale-Ups.eu to also conduct due diligence on all its prospective member scaleups before pitching them to investors.
“When we tell investors that we are only working with companies doing over €3 million in product revenue annually,” Vandegehuchte says, “PitchBook allows us to make those claims with confidence. Comparing the median performance metrics PitchBook provides for each company on the platform is particularly valuable to us because it shows us at a glance how each company is performing in their respective sectors.”
The detailed contact information the platform provides also allows Scale-Ups.eu to reach out to the founders of each company directly once they’ve been vetted.
“PitchBook helps us attract international VCs and corporate investors by allowing us to easily identify the most likely prospects based on their investment focus and the type of companies they’ve invested in previously.”
– Bruno Vandegehuchte
Finding international investors for member scaleups
Leading up to its 2018 SuperNova Festival, Scale-Ups.eu leveraged PitchBook’s granular data on more than 280,000 investors around the world to quickly find and connect with the ones whose interests aligned the most with its member companies. By using the platform’s Investors Search feature, Scale-Ups.eu was able to access detailed information on what deals each prospective investor had done previously to make sure their interests aligned and could analyse the performance of those investors’ past funds to ensure they invited only the top-performing ones.
This strategy enabled Scale-Ups.eu to find, pitch and successfully attract more than 200 late-stage VC investors to the event. Member scaleups were able to meet with 10-20 senior- or principal- level, decision-makers from different investment firms around the world each day of the three-day festival, and more than 75% of the VCs who attended reported they had investment leads and second meetings set up with companies they had met with.
“Thanks to PitchBook,” Vandegehuchte says, “we have very clear insight into which investors have backed certain scaleups in our target regions in the past. This allows us to proactively pitch them and build really personalised invitations for each one. For example, by using PitchBook, if we know a VC is interested in fintech, then we can tell them quickly—and without a doubt—how many fintech companies will attend a particular event.”
By using email addresses and phone numbers for each investor available through the platform, Scale-Ups.eu can reach out immediately to connect with investors they haven’t worked with before.
The organisation now plans to continue using PitchBook to help it expand its global networking efforts and accelerate growth for its member scaleups even further.
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