site.bta Business and Investment Forum in Sunnyvale, Cal., Promotes Bulgaria as Successful Investment Destination

The InvestBulgaria Agency is holding a Business and Investment Forum in Sunnyvale, California, aiming to establish Bulgaria as a successful investment destination. The forum is focused on the Outsourcing and IT sectors.

The keynote speaker is Ryan Fisher, who is a former VP of Bank of America at their HQ in Charlotte, North Carolina, and currently based in Bulgaria as CEO of Hill City Global Sofia. He will speak about the Bulgarian business and startup environment from an American business expat perspective, including the location advantages, VC infrastructure, underserved areas, access to financing, and market access to the EU and Asia.

Victor Manev, a partner at IMPETUS Capital, will speak to the audience about the funding opportunities for American startups in Europe, advantages and opportunities for additional rounds of startup finance and market access to global markets through Europe and Bulgaria.

Two other lecturers, Zdravko Zdravkov and Dimitar Mitkov, are the founders of Out2Bound, which is a leading Bulgarian company providing sales and product support services to American startups in Europe, recently acquired by an American company. They will share experience about how a US startup can develop a global sales and product support network.

The second panel will give practical advice about doing business in Bulgaria. The key lecturer is Ivan Mihaylov, CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria (AmCham) and ex-CEO of VISTEON Automotive, former regional executive of Johnson Controls, and board member of the Bulgarian Automotive Cluster and the Bulgarian Technical University.

Nedyalko Derenkov, CEO of BESCO - The Bulgarian Startup Association, will speak about the IT sector and the startup community in Buglaria, and his experience with foreign startups.

Omourtag Petkov, a partner at the Djingov, Gouginski, Kyutchukov & Velichkov Law Firm, will focus on GDPR and personal data protection, corporate and tax law, digital legislation, legal assistance for US startups and scaleups in Europe

Gergana Aneva, CEO and Managing Director at Rud Pedersen Bulgaria, former Division Lead at the Bulgarian eGovernment Agency, will speak about the cost of doing business in Bulgaria as a European hub, office and staff expenses, ease of setting a busines.

Borislav Slavchov, CEO of the American-Bulgarian Technology Transfer Center, ABC Innovations, will share his experience with EU R&D grants availability to US startups for innovation and scaleup in Europe.

On Monday, the Bulgarian delegation visited the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, which connects the world's largest corporations with the best startups through industry-focused accelerator programs in Silicon Valley and beyond.

The second forum of the InvestBulgaria roadshow is due December 8 in Portland, Oregon, where the focus will be on the Electronics and Information Technology sectors.