How Monetryx Helps Bulgaria Innovation Hub to Connect Founders With Investors and Mentors?
Jivko Koltchev and Jivko Moutafov are Bulgarian diaspora entrepreneurs, BIH mentors, and the co-founders of Monetryx, a platform that connects early-stage founders with investors and mentors. The startup helps young companies to structure their financing processes and handle several organizational tasks such as building their equity structure, organizing their management process, facilitating interactions with investors, and securing funding.
In line with their mission to support early-stage founders, Koltchev and Moutafov provide all the participants in BIH’s cohorts with free access to all the features and functionalities of Monetryx. The co-founders see that as their “little contribution” to developing the local entrepreneurship ecosystem. They have generously shared the platform with BIH and its portfolio companies to streamline the application and onboarding of companies and mentors.
“Most of all, the reason why we are supporting BIH is connected to the enthusiasm and the desire to help and be a part of something really big and significant. We also felt a desire to contribute and target our know-how and ability to help somewhere where it will have the most impact,” Jivko Koltchev, co-founder and CEO of Monetryx says.
According to Jivko Koltchev, what Bulgaria Innovation Hub does, is inspiring on many levels. The more he learns about the organization, the more exciting he gets about it. He believes that what BIH does is to put together the best of the Bulgarian ecosystem and show it what Silicon Valley has to offer. Namely, the experience, the knowledge, and the network.
On a mission to help early-stage startups
“It all started with the idea to create a platform in which it is possible to help early-stage founders to find a way to discover each other and to discover investors who are interested in working with them,” Jivko Moutafov, co-founder and Head of Finance and Operations of Monetryx, remembers.
The problem that they were trying to solve in the beginning was to find a way to revolutionize the way funding works. They envisioned doing that by putting the startup companies in a position where they can create their own investment instruments and schemes for working with investors rather than the other way around.
They were very passionate about the idea to help the regular entrepreneur build their dream company and be set for success. Around a year later, however, they did a pivot. The co-founders discovered that the problems were not related to processing and organization but instead related to the lack of financing know-how and tools.
“We realized that helping them raise money wasn’t sufficient. We needed to help them with guidance and tools on how to issue stocks, how to govern their companies, and conduct board meetings. Thus, little by little Monetryx grew from a simple tool that was initially aimed for investment purposes to something quite different that is still changing,” shares Moutafov.
Accelerating the impact of good structure and network
The BIH portfolio founders use Monetryx’s platform to manage a number of core administrative processes from accepting applications to handling enrollment, cohort management, and putting together all their documents and resources in one place. One of the technologies Monetryx provides to BIH is helping the organization improve the communication processes with the portfolio founders. The Spring 2022 cohort was the first one to use the platform for the entire process.
The co-founders of Monetryx mention that there are a couple of success stories of foreign companies, which have used the platform to improve their processes. Therefore, Moutafov and Koltchev are now trying to replicate the model and make it applicable to the BIH portfolio companies.
“We measure success in two different ways. First, it is about the success of our partner BIH as an organization. Then the second success criteria are whether the platform is helping portfolio companies on their journey in the long term - be it finding the right partners, raising money, and attracting the right talent,” Koltchev highlights.