The iGaming Entrepreneur Conference, a first of its kind, is taking place in London on November 9th, 2015. Anyone working in our industry has undoubtedly noticed the heightened attention placed on start-ups and innovation at conferences – this event will connect those start-ups with investors looking for deals.
“What we have found in the last couple of years as regulations developed in the online gaming space, there’s a lot of money from outside the industry – venture capital money, angel investor networks, private equity- that really want to get into this iGaming space”, conference organizer Michael Caselli told CalvinAyre.com.
“Previous to two years ago, I think the regulatory uncertainty was keeping a lot of that money out, but now they’re coming in and they’re looking for projects and they really don’t know where to find the deal flow”, Caselli said.
On November 9th there will be approximately 20 start-ups and 50 investors live on-site, all anxious to make some new connections.
“Its kind of like an old school venture capital fair in the dotcom era”, said Caselli. “The investors will have had a small executive summary from each one of the projects so they can pre-determine which ones they want to see first and sort of prioritize. But there’s also the networking aspect, so the projects can go and approach investors and vice versa if they see anything interesting on the day”.
However, the facilitation of introductions between the two parties will go beyond just the conference. Caselli and his team will mail out the prospectuses of the start-ups to another 100 investors who have all demonstrated interest in the online gambling industry.
The iGaming Entrepreneur Conference will also offer several tracks of sessions, one dedicated to start-ups and the other to investors.
“We actually have a few tracks for start-ups that are learning to pitch, we’re giving them some education on how to do that and looking at the regulatory side of raising money. Also for investors who aren’t currently in this space that want to learn more about investing in this space, we’re looking at the size of the opportunity in this space and we’re also looking at the regulatory certainties and uncertainties and which jurisdictions to invest in from their behalf”, Caselli shared.
After attending EiG a few weeks ago, the surge in iGaming industry innovation is apparent and the time is ripe for finding new investment.
“I think anyone that’s got a new start-up idea in the iGaming space definitely has to come along, it’s a one of a kind event and it was started because I had so much investor interest coming to me looking for projects in this space, so I know these guys are hungry looking for deals”, Caselli said.
