It is still possible to find investments in 2025 but it does require homework. You have to start preparations today if you want to bring investors on board in the next 18 months. Above all, you have to be able to pitch the opportunities and risks of your company, the problem you are solving in a convincing way. Investors are more interested to identify unique opportunities for high returns than in the technology itself, says Youssef Sabbah, Lead Innovation Manager at Tech Tour. Young entrepreneurs are often passionate about their technology and do the opposite.
The broad European 3DOP project has one special component: Workpackage 6 which aims at removing barriers that the participants in the project experience when they want to enter the market or look for investments. Part of this work package is to offer European SMEs, who want to explore the opportunities of 3D printing with one of the solutions developed in the project, the opportunity to do so and to offer them non technical support including support for private financing.
Attracting an investor: focus more on the problem you solve and the potential opportunity for investors, and less on the technology itself
Tech investment community
The 3DOP project aims to take AM technology to the next level and spread it more widely among SMEs by leveraging investments. Tech Tour has been recruited as a partner for this. Tech Tour is Europe’s largest tech investment community and has been bringing together tech entrepreneurs, industry experts and investors for more than 25 years. “We support start-ups and scale-ups with their strategy and with the search for partnerships and funding to grow”. As Lead Innovation Officer at Tech Tour, Youssef Sabbah identifies opportunities and companies, guides companies to get ready for an investors and monitors the projects that are implemented by Tech Tour. “We don’t invest ourselves in companies, but we prepare promising entrepreneurs and bring them together with investors and partners they need for their growth” he emphasizes. Every year more than 3,000 companies register with Tech Tour, of which more than 1,000 are selected and guided to one of the events for the thematic investment programs where they have the opportunity to speak and convince investors, with more than 4,400 one-on-one contacts between scale-ups and participating investors. Youssef Sabbah: “Eighty percent of the companies that participated in our events in the last 7 years found their way to an investor. Almost three-quarters manage to raise money after they participated in a Tech Tour event.”
Focus on problem solving
Youssef Sabbah confirms that 3D printing has been a hype for a while and that investors showed a lot of interest in it. Among the successful contacts that have been established at one of the events are undoubtedly a number of companies that are active in 3D printing. For Tech Tour team, however, 3D printing is not immediately their focus. “We don’t focus on this specific technology, but we see 3D printing primarily as an enabling technology for businesses in different sectors. 3D printing supports production and other processes and as such is often used in many innovations in diverse sectors.” That’s the reason why Tech Tour guides the scale-ups to relevant programs, dedicated to different topics such as Photonics, Hydrogen, Green City, Space, Health and many more but very often these scale-ups make use of 3D printing.
Steps you have to take
The steps you have to take as a scale-up to attract investors do not differ substantially for a scale-up using 3D printing from those in any other sectors. We often see that young entrepreneurs make the same mistakes. They often focus too much on their technology. “Most of the times they are researchers, technicians who spend most of the time they have to speak to an investor on explaining their technology and miss the most important things an investor is expecting to assess the opportunity to make a good return on investment before taking a decision. If you clearly show what problem you solve, how you solve it with a competitive advantage, that there is a big market and that you have the right structure and team and a clear roadmap towards exit, the investor can calculate the opportunities and risks. As crazy as it may sound, an investor steps into a company when he clearly sees the potential for return on his investment and an exit strategy.
The first Open Call in the 3DOP project has been completed, and a second one will follow. The first call generated a number of applications and 4 SMEs have been selected, onboarded and are currently receiving support for private funding. We see that each case is different but all require some work with the mentors in the programme to ensure their business plans, investor strategies and propositions are in place and can be spelled properly to potential investors before they join one of the thematic events that Tech Tour organizes to meet with relevant investors.
European investors are more risk-averse
You often hear that the investment climate for startups and scale-ups in the US or China is much more attractive than in Europe. Youssef Sabbah confirms this. The amount of private capital available in the US is simply greater than in Europe and American investors are less risk-averse than their European counterparts. “The risk aversion in the US and Europe is not the same. In Europe, investors are more cautious. The funds are usually smaller and want to diversify, so the tickets are smaller. In the US, people dare to take more risks.” Nevertheless, Tech Tour’s Lead Innovation Manager thinks that there are quite a few opportunities for European scale-ups. He points to the Draghi report from the end of last year, which called for hundreds of billions of euros to be invested annually in European industry. The massive investments in defense and space that have been announced “Certainly opens opportunities for 3D printing,” says Youssef Sabbah. Of course, the 3D printing industry has to compete with scale-úps from other industries looking for money but he does not think that 3D printing companies have less chances to attract investments. “If you solve a common problem in a unique way and your solution is protected with IP so that no one can compete in the coming years and your market and growth plans are clear, then you can take advantage of this.”
Foto: Mohamed Hassan via Pixabay
