Coronavirus: EIE20 delayed until October – but AccelerateHER Awards to go ahead online

Coronavirus has seen technology investor showcase EIE20 announce its postponement until October – but the AccelerateHER Awards will still go ahead later this month as a “virtual” event.

A previous EIE event.

EIE20 was originally scheduled for 23 April at the University of Edinburgh’s McEwan Hall, but will now take place at the same venue on 14 October.

Informatics Ventures runs the year-round EIE Entrepreneurship and Investor Readiness Programme that culminates with the annual EIE showcase in

Edinburgh where 50 ambitious data-driven start-up to scale-up companies pitch to investors for seed to series A funding.

Karen Wood, director of enterprise at Informatics Ventures, said it has been “really encouraged” by responses to the rescheduling. “While the tech industry is one of the most resilient sectors, the weeks ahead are going to be challenging for everyone and our very best wishes go out to all our companies, investors, sponsors, partners and speakers at this time.”

This year’s cohort includes travel tech firm Criton and employee feedback specialist Peachy Mondays while previous winners include legal software firm Amiqus.

Technology-led

Meanwhile, this year’s AccelerateHER Awards will use a technology-led solution to ensure the 2020 finals go ahead on 26 March – replacing the public event that was set to be held later this month at Barclay’s Eagle Lab at Codebase in Edinburgh.

The female-focused awards, which are now in their fifth year, will now proceed as a virtual event using Zoom. The proceedings will begin at 11am, with the 12 finalists making their pitches. A winner from each of the four sector categories will then be announced online at 2pm.

Twelve aspirational female company founders have been shortlisted as finalists from four categories: cleantech and climate; disruptive innovation; medtech and science; and fintech and cyber security.

Each winner will secure a free slot on a market-building mission to Europe or the US to showcase their business to industry contacts and global investors.

Jackie Waring, head of Investing Women, said: “While we are clearly disappointed that the coronavirus outbreak prevents us from bringing together our 2020 finalists, sponsors and wider network of investors and supporters, we are pleased that we will be virtually staging this year’s awards finals.

“Our team has worked hard to develop an accessible online format that will bring all the parties together and ensure that the show will go on. We have such an exceptionally high calibre of finalists this year and we’re pleased on their behalf that we’ll be able to keep to our proposed timescales despite the ever-changing challenges of the current situation.”