It’s the 5th week of our crowdfunding roadshow, the #EUCrowdShow, and it is busier than ever! 

With five new cities and countries this week, we’ve now been to 24 corners of Europe!

This week we traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria at CowOrKing Space by Puzl; Copenhagen, Denmark at Rocket Labs; Stockholm, Sweden at Coffice; Warsaw, Poland at Techhub; Dublin, Ireland at the Bank of Ireland Conference Facility. The total kilometers is more than 8,700, bringing our total up to more than 31,000 kilometers! That’s nearly the circumference of the earth!

Here are a few things we’ve learned along the way on our journey: 

Bulgaria was impacted by a large increase in venture capital from the European Investment Fund (EIF), with a 21 Million euro investment in two local venture funds in the last few years. Today there are more than 400 Bulgarian startups with an average valuation of $1.8M. Statistics for SMEs have returned to pre-crisis levels, and there are more than 300,000, who employ 76% of all people. There’s a lot of room for improvement for ‘second-chance’ entrepreneurs and we’re sure that Sofia will continue to develop positively! 

According to the World Bank, Denmark is in the top three countries for doing business! It’s a vibrant and prosperous atmosphere, a company can start in just one day. Copenhagen has more than 500 startups, with an average valuation of $3.5 Million. There are more than 200,000 Danish SMEs, accounting for more than 65% of jobs. There’s a focus on cleantech and life sciences, and we enjoyed our conversations with investors and entrepreneurs in all industries! 

Sweden is a world leader in corporate social responsibility (CSR), and most businesses have a social-friendly approach. There are more than 650,000 SMEs, as well as 600 startups with an average valuation of $3.6M. It was particularly interesting to learn about the Swedish concept of ‘lagom’, which means means ‘just right’ or ‘adequate’ and can be used for just about anything, including a work approach. EUCrowdShow had a lagom of attendees!

For the last two days of the week our EUCrowdShow Ambassador, the Chairman of MyMicroInvest, stayed in Brussels to focus on getting investments for our campaigns. Peter De Decker represented MyMicroInvest in his place, presenting alongside BAUNAT in Warsaw and Dublin. Peter has a financial background and presented an in-depth brief of how crowdfunding works. In Poland, there are more than 1.5M SMEs, and for our EUCrowdshow, we had a diverse audience of entrepreneurs and tech-oriented developers. 

We were curious to meet the crowd in Ireland, where the crisis was hard-hitting, but also where there is a high concentration of tech companies. SMEs play a smaller role than in other EU countries, but they are still important in the wholesale and retail trade, as well as information and communication sectors. Our small crowd was highly engaged, and we enjoyed discussing the growth of crowdfunding!

Next week is our final full week! We're in Berlin, Geneva, London, Paris and then our finale in Brussels.