Startup World Cup Winner THENEO has a Chance to Earn $1 Million in Silicon Valley
Ten top startups of Georgia participated in the Startup World Cup national competition, which was held in Batumi.
The international jury awarded the first prize and the opportunity to travel to the global semi-finals in Silicon Valley to the company Theneo, which works on creating high-quality, interactive API documentation. The winner of the competition will pitch in front of more than 100 potential investors and compete with other startups from around the world to win the grand prize, which means an investment of 1,000,000 USD.
Startup World Cup national competition, organized by Startup Connect and USMAC, was held with the support of USAID Economic Security Program, European Union (EU), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Georgian Innovation and Technology Agency (GITA) and Batumi City Hall. The local startup competition is supported by the EU and UNDP regional initiative "Mayors for Economic Growth" (M4EG), which is based on cooperation with municipalities. The sponsors of the award ceremony are private companies Chelti Vinery and MediaLab.
Batumi Mayor Archil Chikovani, M4EG Regional Project Manager Tina Storm, USAID Georgia Economic Growth Office Director Marika Olson and USAID Economic Security Program Head Mark McCord addressed the participants of the event held in Batumi.
The award ceremony was held within the framework of the "Bridge to Silicon Valley" conference, which was attended by more than 150 participants from the USA, Great Britain and EU countries. During the conference, international experts spoke about the development of the startup ecosystem and shared with the conference participants their accumulated experience in terms of startups with high growth potential, venture capital, commercialization of innovations and new financial opportunities for development.
"The goal of the Startup World Cup was to present the best entrepreneurs of Georgia and their opportunities. The leading companies of Georgia's Silicon Valley also visited, which will further strengthen Georgia's place in the global arena of innovation. USAID's Economic Security Program is proud to support this initiative and wishes success to all contestants," said USAID's Economic Security Program Director Mark McCord.
Among the jury members of the Startup World Cup Georgia competition are such well-known people as Nina Levchuk, the head of startups and venture capital at Google's German office, and Levan Shalamberidze, the senior investment specialist of the World Bank Group of Financial Institutions.
The world finals of the competition will be held on September 30, 2022 in Los Angeles (USA), where the best startups from more than 70 countries will compete for the main prize.