The cosy Le Seppl restaurant provided a very relaxed environment for the startup - investor interactions, bringing it away from the usual stressful pitch and closer to a chat between friends. Connecting ideas with capital, the founders of Silicon Capital brought together 15 top entrepreneurs and investors in an innovative way to help support both sides of the startup community.

Before the official start, the young entrepreneurs and investors had the opportunity to find out about each other and prepare for the coming discussion. Eager to start, both startups and investors gladly dug into the information booklet provided by the organisers.

The 10 ABC startups were searching for a total investment of around 3 million Euro, while together with the other 7 startups, the amount sought exceeded 14 million. Bearing in mind the tiny restaurant, the capital concentration was huge, and there was a strong feeling that some from this batch of startups might get their investment even before Demo Day.

The founder of Silicon Luxembourg - hosts of the event, Charles - Louis Machuron strongly stressed the importance of collaboration and connecting the region: "A year ago, I was introduced to the Luxembourg Slovenian Business Club and we met a couple of times to discuss how to connect the two startup ecosystems, because the Slovenian ecosystem is quite close to ours, as we have almost the same number of incubators, accelerators and startups, and we have exactly the same set of issues, facing exactly the same problems. Our strengths and weaknesses in general don't collide, so we decided to connect the two countries, to offer to Slovenian startups the mix and match event with Luxembourg investors".

The initiator of the event LSBC also attended it: the director of the club Nataša Zajec and CEO Iztok Petek: "Our goal is success and planned breakthrough of Slovenian startups to the global markets through partnerships with partners from Luxembourg and Benelux. The event provided an equal dialogue between the Luxembourg investors and the most successful Slovenian start-ups, which brings us one big step closer to that goal. We are planning to do similar actions and events again in the near future."

Seventeen startups were selected out of the 60 that applied for the event, and 10 were from ABC's current and previous batches Styliff, VisMedic, Pointme, Kripto, Moj Budget, Mogy, Dentem, App Ray, Homey, Nervteh. In addition, ABC had the opportunity to bring 5 other Slovenian startups, further connecting the ecosystem. 15 Key investors from Luxembourg, such as Expon Capital, Mangrove Capital, Nyuko Funding and Xavier Buck came with a strong wish to get to know the Slovenian ecosystem, and invest. The relaxed evening transformed into a "speed dating" event, which presented the opportunity for each startup to spend 5 minutes one on one with each investor.

Before the official start, ABC had the opportunity to be visit Lux Future Lab, an incubator founded by a major bank to help grow companies - which it does very successfully. In its current portfolio, there are companies the incubator helped grow from one person to sixty. The Luxembourg branch of the Luther law firm, held a presentation, explaining their special offers tailored to startups needs and the perks of being headquartered in Luxembourg. The teams of Lux Future Lab and ABC Accelerator found one more common point - the pride of being international, both taking care of the ecosystems also outside of their country.

ABC was very impressed with the whole concept of the event, and hopes to continue to cooperate in the future: "One very rarely sees an event where startups have an opportunity to talk with investors on level grounds - the interaction is usually one-sided - startups try hard to come to investors, who are seemingly uninterested. However, when one ensures real pre-selection, the atmosphere changes, and also the investor side becomes eager to talk." - Jakob Gajšek, Co-founder, Head of Venture Relations.

As far as startups are concerned, LSBC and ABC as partners are pleased that the Silicon Luxembourg organised this opportunity to talk to investors from a different environment. Things are looking particularly good for the cryptocurrency space, which it is on the rise for the last two years.

Miha Pulko, CEO and founder of Krip.to, the company providing instant transfer, automated trading, and arbitrage between different cryptocurrency exchanges: "I would say that our trip to Luxembourg to meet the investors was quite productive - most of them understood our company's vision very well and was accepted with a lot of enthusiasm - we've created many successful first contacts. Now it's the time to check them out and see where they take us.