The Soulmates Ventures’ year 2020 was nothing less than extraordinary, and extremely weird, a year that brought to us a kind of life that we had never experienced before.
What the year 2020 brought to us?
We had to adapt to a new environment. The element of air became crucial to us in 2020. These days, more than ever, we have to pay attention to what we breathe and how it affects our health.
In 2020, for the first time in the UK and possibly in history, air pollution was recorded as a cause of death. Indoor and outdoor air quality is now an important part of employees’ overall happiness strategy in most companies.
As our health was the most important topic of 2020, health-tech became a crucial industry, particularly to healthcare workers who worked on the front line to face endless pandemic waves. And we want to say thank you for that.
We should all be aware of the after-effects a pandemic brings, and prepare to challenge them if and when they will occur. Because they will. A pandemic can harm so many areas: our social health, psychological health, physical health, or emotional health.
We must work to protect ourselves, as we battle with influences of loneliness, social distancing, death of close ones, and many more challenges.
Education was another industry that saw a breakthrough change when it largely moved to an online regime. We can’t deny that a systematic change here was already needed, but for the best sustainable development, it needed to be done strategically, rather than under pressure.
It is clear that this recent move towards a new way of education was put under particular pressure, but we were innovative and progressive enough to make the switch to a new digital generation of education as smooth as possible.
To secure healthier and cleaner lives for every Earth-beneficial being in the next few years, we need to focus on innovations and technologies that will help to unlock new opportunities, especially when it comes to helping us handle further upcoming challenges.
We feel many new challenges are heading towards us and we are preparing ourselves for any new arrivals.
The goal of Soulmates Ventures’ year 2020
Soulmates Ventures was founded to accelerate people that discover and work with key innovations and technologies. We were looking for existing products with some track record on the market.
That was our goal for the year 2020.
But, as for many of us, our plans changed a little bit over that year. So, we’ve noted some of the highlights from the year 2020, helping us to see a recap of what we achieved and so that we can use this as a building block for the year 2021.
We want to share it with you too, so that you can see what goes on inside the Soulmates Ventures team, during a particularly difficult year.
Despite the unforeseen difficulties, we believe that we accomplished our goal for 2020 and created an accelerator for green-tech startups. But, more than that, on the way to reaching our goal and improving it, we found many other opportunities where we could help ignite the light for further innovative ideas.
“I’m very happy with the work we have done in the year 2020. The most important being the foundation of a startup ecosystem created from GIA (Green Innovation Academy) as an incubator, Soulmates Ventures as an accelerator, and Soulmates Capital as an investment fund, and with seed investments to 3 startups in our portfolio,” said Václav Gregor, CEO of Soulmates Ventures.
Finally, let’s have a look at what was achieved in the year 2020.
Soulmates Ventures’ year 2020 in numbers
▪️ We founded a Soulmates Ventures CCE Fund where our investment goal for 2021 is capital 240 million Czk (€9.1 million), which will invest 1 billion Czk ($38 million) in the next five years.
▪️ We founded the non-profit organization GIA (Green Innovation Academy) which will have the role of a green-tech incubator to our ecosystem.
▪️ We increased our network of experts to > 100
▪️ The number of startups which register for our program > 40
▪️ The number of startups which pass the registration requirements – 26
▪️ The number of startups in our portfolio – 3
▪️ Total investment – 15.8 million Czk (€0.6 million)
▪️ Expected market value of current startups in our portfolio in 2021 – 342 million Czk (€13 million)
▪️ The investment opportunity to invest in startups was in a value of 350 million Czk (€13.3 million) in six months.
▪️ Media coverage – we were talked about in Forbes, CzechCrunch, Euro, Penize.cz, CzechTV, and more…
We are so happy with the progress we made during the year 2020, and we are filled with good energy for the year ahead. We hope to make it even better.
Finally, we want to sincerely thank our partners, friends, colleagues and families for being our supporters, teammates, and leaders in the most important situations, making the last year a good year, despite the circumstances.
For 2021? We have so much more to show you, so stay tuned as we get back to work to make 2021 better & greener together.
Soulmates Ventures portfolio startups in 2020
– Perfect-Air
Soulmates’ Stream: Air
“The most accurate digital network of real-time air pollution data.”
– Sensetio
Soulmates’ Stream: Healthcare
“A patented psychodiagnostic method and technology based on scientific measuring of the intensity of emotional reactions.”
– Edlab
Soulmates’ Stream: Education
“Devices to support active experimental activities of pupils.”
