EBAN is the pan-European representative for the early stage investor community gathering over 150 member organizations in more than 50 countries today and fuels Europe’s growth through the creation of wealth and jobs.
The EBAN Annual Congress is Europe’s largest and most international business angel event organized by EBAN in cooperation with its members. This year’s Annual Congress took place online on 16-18th of June 2021 and welcomed more than 400 Business Leaders; Early Stage Investors; Business Angels; VCs; Entrepreneurs; Accelerators; Corporates; Policy Makers Seed Funds and startups for their Annual Congress. The focus was on “how business angel investors can support the EU on accelerating the innovation cycle and overcome the many challenges our society faces in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis”.
Each year EBAN – European Business Angels Network recognizes their best performing members during their Annual Awards Ceremony. The award winners for 2021 are the standouts of 2020, representing the Angel Investors and Entrepreneurs who have made exceptional efforts during the pandemic period, taking this opportunity to innovate.
DanBAN has proudly received the EBAN Annual Award 2020 as “Best Performing EBAN Member”:
At the pandemics outset, DanBAN successfully worked with Danish politicians to implement measures to protect the investment flow to the early-stage market, resulting in several new financing products.
Over the last year, 73% of all DanBAN members made one or more investments and membership increased by 57%.
Through investments and loans, DanBAN members provided startups and early stage companies with more than 90 mill€ in financing in 2020!
An award we are very honored to receive. We are grateful to EBAN – European Business Angels Network, its partners and sponsors, and to the awards jury for recognizing our work.
Chairman Jesper Jarlbæk received the award online:
“On behalf of DanBAN, I am so very honored to accept this award. I am especially happy because this is the third time that DanBAN has received this award. The last time was in 2016. A huge number of positive developments have happened since then. On almost all metrics we have doubled or trebled since then. 2020 was an exceptional year. Everyone was affected by the Covid-19 crisis.
Our DanBAN team responded swiftly and magnificently. In record time we went 100 % digital. Digital pitch events with a tailored format (more often, fewer pitches). We reached out to the Government and we were successful in getting them to establish CoVID-19 products, such as 3 to 1 loan to equity matching.
So rather than a decline, our investment level increased dramatically. It was up by 44% compared to 2019, from 34 mill € to 49 mill. €. A further 43 mill. € was provided in loans to our portfolio companies by Vækstfonden under the 3:1 matching scheme. So, in total, DanBAN provided close to 100 mill. € in a single year to Danish start-ups and the dreaded downturn in investment activity in the startup sector never happened.
During the last 1½ years we have signed up 12 domestic and foreign venture funds as partners and we have entered agreement with the two largest banks to run their angel programs. Last but not least, we created a new position as CEO of DanBAN, ran a comprehensive recruiting process, and finally hired Michael Hansen from June 2020. It has been great getting Michael on board. With him we will both maintain our momentum and continue to pursue the goal of becoming THE central player in the Danish Start-up scene. Now I give the floor to Michael”
CEO Michael Hansen received the award online:
“Thank you, Jesper. I am also very honored and humbled to accept this award. Especially humble, because I was selected amongst many good candidates for the role as CEO of Danish Business Angels and humble because I now am in front leading the 300 members of Danish Business Angels, we are still growing in numbers as we speak.
My fire, what gets me up in the morning, my ambition is to matchmake as many startups with funding from our Business Angels, to make sure that as many startups as possible get funded to achieve their goals of becoming the next unicorn. The better I perform in my job, the more startups get funded – that’s my fire.
Besides that, I will continue focusing on the education of all our angels, keep growing our network in numbers in angels and partners, and continue growing all our great performance metrics.
Lastly, I need to send a special thanks to my team: they work hard, they are the best and without them, we could not have achieved all of our great results.
Once again, thank you so much for this award”
Congratulations to ChairmanJesper Jarlbæk, CEO Michael Hansen, the DanBAN Board Members, DanBAN Business Angels, DanBAN Team, and partners for the great achievement. This award would not have been possible without all of you.
