3 BIH Alumni Share Why You Should Join The Growth Acceleration Program
Bulgaria Innovation Hub was founded 3 years ago with the mission to help Bulgarian entrepreneurs with their efforts to scale their businesses on an international level, specifically in the USA. It gathered the efforts of successful entrepreneurs and community leaders - Pavlina Yanakieva, Bogomil Balkansky, Vassil Terziev, and Ivan Dimov. Since 2019, BIH’s accelerator program has helped 40 companies. Most of them were eager to learn the specifics of the US market from industry experts. Iva Gumishka, Founder and CEO of Humans in the Loop, Boyan Ivanov, Co-founder and CEO of StorPool Storage, and Stefan Ivanov, Co-founder and CRO of AMPECO, share what were the most important parts of the program.
Thinking bigger
One of the key takeaways from the participation in the program for both Boyan and Stefan is the way BIH mentors challenged them to think bigger and provoke them to strive for more. This mindset is usually very typical for the States, but in the Balkans, it’s quite unusual.
“Some of the mentors were very provocative and they challenged our own assumptions. This had a tremendous impact on the way we started to think about ourselves and the company. An example to show that is when one of the mentors told us, if you have a plan to grow the company in the next year, 10-fold it for me. And asked how we can make it 10 times bigger. This seemed unrealistic for us, so it made us take a very different approach in the way we think,” Boyan Ivanov shares.
It was a similar situation for AMPECO. “The big “aha” moment in the program for us was when one of the mentors challenged us to think why and how we would raise 10x and what we were aiming for. We had to figure out how to do it smartly, and use the finances effectively. Later, this made us more ambitious and helped us when we were closing our funding round, and we managed to reach the target and raise more,” Stefan Ivanov says.
For Iva, the biggest mindset change was in the networking and introduction process. “In the past, I’ve considered introducing someone to another person very transactional. I thought it was unfair for people that don’t come from the same circles. But after the first lecture from Pavlina, when she explained the whole concept of these introductions, I realized what people are willing to do even for an outsider, and are ready to offer a helping hand,” Iva Gumnishka highlights.
Scaling the processes and fundraising
StorPool Storage, a company that has been on the market for over a decade and is transitioning from a startup to a scaleup, succeeded to get to the next level with the help of the program. “During our participation, we got excellent advice on how to scale the operations of the business. This includes organizational structure, operational excellence, and scaling the systems and processes in the company,” Boyan explains.
“For us, it was very useful to understand how investors are thinking and how we should be thinking about the whole fundraising process. At the same time, AMPECO was getting good traction and a good amount of customers, so we thought it was a good moment to scale. So we were looking for advice on the best practices for doing so, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls people have fallen into in the past,” Stefan shares.
The focus on fundraising and building relationships with investors was very helpful for Iva Gumnishka. “When we started the program, we were exactly at the stage of preparing our pitch deck, preparing materials for investors, and also our pitch. So, this focus of the program was enormously relevant and beneficial for us. All of the drills we did and going through them, improving, and iterating, were very helpful for us. Through them we were able to get to the next level,” Iva says.
The possibility for Bulgaria Innovation Hub to achieve these milestones is achieved with the support of America for Bulgaria Foundation (ABF) - an independent, nonpartisan, and nonpolitical American grant-making foundation working in partnership with Bulgarians to strengthen the country’s private sector and related democratic institutions. For more information, please visit: https://us4bg.org/