On Saturday, January 27th, the second edition of Fundable took place in Forlì—the only competition for early-stage startups that gave them the opportunity to present their prototypes/demos directly to investors, entrepreneurs, and consultants.
Fundable was created to prepare startups to access public funding and private investment, offering feedback on their development stage, training sessions, and one-to-one consultations with highly qualified providers offering services tailored to early-stage startups.
The competition was held over a single day and welcomed more than 60 finalist startups, selected from over 300 applicants. Each startup had the chance to pitch its project in closed-door sessions to a jury of expert evaluators, selected among successful former startup founders, entrepreneurs, and business angels.
This year’s edition also introduced the figure of the “Ghost Investor”, a hidden advisor whose role was to support participating startups with connections in financial, industrial, and commercial sectors, creating opportunities for investment and strategic partnerships.
The jury was composed of: Roberto Pasi, Cristiana Vignoli, Hasan Cara, Alessandro Bortolani, Isabella Masotti, Enrico Pietrelli, Massimo Foschi, Olga Iarussi, and Gianluca Baldisserri.
At the same time, each participant had the opportunity to engage in one-to-one consulting sessions with the following companies:
- AV Consulting, for hardware design and development
- Quinck, for software design and development
- A.BRE.MAR, for intellectual property protection
- Startup Geeks, for online incubation programs
- Trotter-Studio Associato, for corporate and tax consulting
- Merakyn, for communication and marketing strategies
- FinData, for data protection, GDPR compliance, and cybersecurity
- PopCorn Lab, for graphic & web design
- Bluegreen Strategy, for strategic consulting and public funding advisory
Throughout the day, each consulting firm conducted an in-depth workshop on specific and core topics related to their area of expertise, inviting startups to explore each subject further through one-on-one sessions.
The day concluded with the final pitch competition, where the 6 finalist startups presented their projects in front of the entire audience and jury. The final ranking saw the following winners:
🥇 1st Place: Rosemar Srl with its innovative products Giotto Magic and Leonardo, respectively a wall-mounted drying rack and a high-efficiency dryer. Rosemar won a prize of €10,000 in services.
🥈 2nd Place: Cryptolab Inc with the project Brain Waves, a neural interface that allows users to control drones and robots using brainwaves. The company was awarded €7,500 in services.
🥉 3rd Place: Human Maple Srls, which extracts cellulose from cigarette butts to use as padding material for clothing, received €2,500 in services.
A special thank you goes to IBD, a successful startup in the medical sector, for hosting the event in its facilities.
And most of all, thank you to the startups—the true stars of the day—because without your innovative ideas, this event wouldn’t have been such a success.
— The Bluegreen Team
