On a visit to the Technopolis in Helsinki its managers explained to me how they organized one of the most successful entrepreneurial events there. Although free entry was allowed, upon entering the room, the organizers asked all attendees a question: who are you? Based on their response, they were assigned a colored card to place on the flap.
If you were an investor the card was red, if you were an entrepreneur it was blue and if you were a consultant it was black (or something similar). Consultants were welcome but the organizers wanted to know how balanced the networking was. They understood that consulting was necessary for business development: business, communication, financial consulting… but they wanted the event to have a sufficient critical mass of investors and entrepreneurs and not be distorted .
From time to time I attend an event aimed at entrepreneurs in Spain and my feeling is that in these events there would be too many black cards and hardly any red ones. From my point of view, the often called “entrepreneurship ecosystem” is seriously unbalanced.
On the one hand, it seems that this ecosystem is not knowing how to attract enough entrepreneurs who do not know it, or do not perceive it as attractive enough. And furthermore, it has not yet been possible to generate a solid network of investors, in any of its modalities (business angels, VC, seed funds,…).
In this rickety ecosystem, I once heard someone comment that there were three “coach(es)” for every entrepreneur. But, what would be the ratio of investors? I’m afraid much worse. What can be done to increase the biodiversity of this ecosystem?