- June 17, 2025
- Posted by: EBAN Team
- Category: News
EBAN Congress 2025 Wrap Up
Brussels, 17 June 2025
Between 2-5 June, the EBAN Annual Congress 2025 brought together 400+ angel investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and thought leaders from across Europe and beyond in the vibrant city of Copenhagen. Co-organised with DanBAN and InvestEU, this event focused on crucial missions: scaling European innovation to global impact, spotlighting women’s entrepreneurship, lifesciences, sportstech, and defencetech & dual use.
EBAN Congress 2025 Key Highlights
Strong Policy Focus on Scale-Up Funding
This year’s Congress spotlighted the scale-up gap as a top policy priority. While early-stage angel investment in Europe remains strong, challenges persist in accessing follow-on capital. Policymakers, fund managers, and business angels called for:
- Stronger involvement of institutional investors (e.g., pension funds and insurance companies)
- Clearer incentives for co-investment across borders
- Regulatory reforms to unlock private capital for growth-stage ventures
Deep Dives into Space, Defence & Dual-Use Tech
The DefenceTech and Space Forum brought together investors, agencies, and founders to discuss Europe’s growing role in dual-use innovation. Key takeaways included:
Europe needs faster procurement pipelines for defense startups
Agencies like ESA and EDF are critical partners in scaling
Angels and VCs must adapt to new risk models in deeptech
Spotlighting Women’s Entrepreneurship
Diversity and inclusion took center stage with powerful sessions dedicated to elevating women in tech and investment. Highlights included:
- The Women TechEU Pitching Session, showcasing female-led deeptech ventures from across Europe.
- The UN Women EXPO Capital Quest, amplifying the voices of women entrepreneurs from Europe and Central Asia working toward global impact.
- A standout panel on Women in Startups and VC, featuring Rita Anson, Katja Ruhnke, Phaedria Marie St. Hilaire, and Delina Ibrahimaj, Albania’s Minister of State for Entrepreneurship and Business Climate, who shared powerful insights on closing the gender gap in funding and leadership.
Empowering Business Angel Networks.
During our BAN Manager Track created a dedicated forum for Europe’s angel network leaders to connect, collaborate, and elevate best practices across the ecosystem. The track emphasised the need to professionalise BAN operations, increase access to EU and public funding, and develop tools that support the long-term sustainability of angel networks. Participants also called for deeper cross-border alignment, and for more recognition of BAN managers’ strategic role in Europe’s innovation ecosystem. Key discussions focused on:
- Strategies for growing and engaging BAN membership and streamlining internal processes to manage dealflow efficiently
- Supporting angel syndication and helping deals get done as well as enabling successful exits for angel investors through targeted support
- Strengthening international collaboration through cross-border syndication model
Championing SportsTech
The EBAN Sports Community led the way in promoting early-stage investment in SportsTech through:
- A dedicated panel session on the SportsTech startup and investment landscape. Thank you to everyone who were part of this special programme: Alberto Bichi, Ignat Bobrovich, Niels Henrik Sørensen, Emiliano Marcondes, Carsten Couchouron, David Rosa Mañez, and EBAN Sports co-chairs Audra Elena Shallal & Juan Fuentes Fernández
- The EBAN Explorer Sportstech Track, where the EBAN Sports Community introduced its mission and hosted a programme on early-stage Sportstech investment, trends, and the role of athlete angel investors.
- The launch of the EBAN Sports Manifesto, outlining Europe’s opportunity to lead in performance tech, fan engagement, health, and sustainability 👉 Read the manifesto
Spotlight on Women’s Health and MedTech
The Life Sciences Track at this year’s EBAN Congress brought together pioneers from across Europe to explore how healthcare systems, investment models, and innovation frameworks must evolve. Thank you to Ulla Sommerfelt for organising this amazing track, and to the speakers that brought it to life. Some highlights include:
- Bogi Eliasen called for a fundamental shift in how we design health systems, moving from acute care to long-term, data-driven, and patient-centered models.
- Jon I. Bergsteinsson broke down the barriers to MedTech investing, offering practical strategies to navigate regulation, timelines, and risk with smarter capital deployment.
- The insightful panel, moderated by Caroline Sai, and Jon I. Bergsteinsson, Andrew Stretton, and Diana Arsovic as panelists, emphasized the need for inclusive ecosystems, stronger validation frameworks, and cross-sector cooperation to bridge persistent funding gaps, especially in women’s health, and drive the next wave of impactful innovation.
Startup Competition Winners
Throughout the Congress, over 30 startups pitched across multiple sessions — and these standout innovators took top honours:
Space & Defence Investor Forum:
– TALOS
– Sternula
Innovation Showcase:
Women TechEU Pitching Session:
– S.Lab
UN Women Capital Quest:
– two runner-ups EZSpeech by Mila4AI and Biobalance
EBAN Sports Pitching Session:
– NDURE
NDURE will go on to pitch again at EAIS25 in Brussels (Oct 28–29)!
We hope to hear your success stories soon and of course to have you pitch at EBAN events again in the future!
Gala Award Winners
The event reached its peak at the Gala Dinner Awards, and we couldn’t be prouder of our community. Huge congratulations to our winners:
💫 Angel of the Year – Janne Jormalainen
💫 Best Performing EBAN Member – HBAN
💫 Best Performing New EBAN Member – SweBAN – Swedish Business Angel Networks
💫 Deal of the Year – Silo.ai exit by Mikko Leino and Harry Brade
💫 Thesis Award – Davide Viglialoro from the University of East Anglia | Politecnico di Torino
Huge Thanks
A huge thank you to all the speakers who shared their expertise, to our startup juries, and to the hundreds of attendees who brought such energy and curiosity to the event. Thank you also to Danish Business Angels – DanBAN for hosting us, and to InvestEU for supporting yet another EBAN event. We’re especially grateful to our partners who helped make this happen:
🔹 Danish Board of Business Development
🔹 UN Women Europe and Central Asia
🔹 EUVC
🔹 futureSAX – die Innovationsplattform des Freistaates Sachsen
🔹 Dealum
🔹 Cassini
🔹 Nordea
🔹 EIFO
The biggest thank you goes to our EBAN team as well as DanBAN and InvestEU for making this event happen! 👏
What’s Next for EBAN?
The momentum continues! We’re thrilled to announce the next destinations for the EBAN Annual Congress:
🔹 Vilnius in 2026, hosted with our partners at LitBAN – Lithuanian Business Angel Network
🔹 Leipzig in 2027, hosted by FutureSax in collaboration with BAND – Business Angels Deutschland e.V. and BAM! – Business Angels Mitteldeutschland e.V.
But first, we’ll see you at the European Angel Investment Summit in Brussels this October 28–29 for EAIS25 — a high-level gathering of investors, policy makers, and founders you won’t want to miss!
