How Poliloop became an internationally successful startup from a research initiative

Sponsored content

The story of Poliloop, founded by Liz Madaras and Krisztina Lévay, is a growing success, based on a biotechnological process that breaks down lightweight, typically single-use plastics into organic sludge, or compost, in 6-8 weeks. Most recently, Liz Madaras was honoured at the 2020 Manager of the Year Awards Gala as a recipient of the 2020 Future Manager of the Year Award. But who first saw the potential in their innovation, how did they get in touch with Vespucci Partners, and how much did the venture capital fund’s $2 million investment help them? Interview with Liz Madaras, co-founder of Poliloop.

Who first saw the potential in Poliloop?

It was Julia Sohajda, Founding and Managing Partner of Vespucci Partners. We met at quite an early stage with her, which was too early for Vespucci to even invest, as they are a seed stage fund. But Julia saw the potential in us and Poliloop immediately, so she helped us get get into a large international accelerator programme that sought to connect early-stage startups with potential investors from around the world. The Budapest-based venture capital fund organised an in-person demo day for one of the Managing Directors of Techstars, Vijay Tirathrai, and they provided us an opportunity to pitch at this event. It was thanks to this event that Vijay got to know us, saw the potential in us and that we got into the Techstars program and later also got an investment from TechStars into Poliloop.

Vijay Tirathrai, who has led the Techstars Hub71 Accelerator Program, has always favoured startups with innovative solutions in AI, blockchain, IoT, AR and VR technologies, but has also been a strong supporter of startups in key sectors such as healthcare and financial services, real estate and infrastructure, petroleum and petrochemicals, renewable energy and utilities. We’ve talked to him a lot since then, and it was clear that in addition to our innovation, he was interested in our deep knowledge of our industry and felt we had a clear understanding of our prospective customers’ needs.

I also remember one of my teachers telling us in the last class of my master’s degree that his generation, along with the one before, had destroyed the Earth, and how sorry he was that they hadn’t paid more attention. The then 93-year-old said goodbye to us by saying that our generation would have to correct this mistake. This idea was extremely inspiring for me.

 Vespucci Partners first saw the potential in Poliloop. When they invited the Managing Director of the Abu Dhabi TechStars program to Hungary, you got the opportunity to introduce yourself to him. How do you remember that first competition and what path did this opportunity take you on?

Such an event plays an extremely important role in terms of business investment and job creation, as depending on the event, the audience can come from all over the world, which creates a great opportunity for networking. We prepare accordingly. We always set realistic goals for ourselves.

Getting to such an event starts with a presentation. We will introduce ourselves in three minutes, and then answer questions for five to ten minutes. We also try to assess the composition of the audience in advance. Typically, we write a text, put together a presentation, finalise it through a series of filters and then give it a look and feel. Of course, we aren’t masters of everything, but maybe we’ve got better at this kind of process over time.

The 3 month TechStars program provided us with a great network of corporates and investors, as well as a lot of help on how to structure the business side of our startup.

How did you get into contact with Vespucci Partners?

Virág Forrai, an active ecosystem builder in the Hungarian innovation community saw my presentation and Krisztina Lévay’s, who then introduced us to Vespucci Partners, which was founded not long before that. So we introduced ourselves to the professionals of venture capital firm, with whom we immediately found a common ground and they selected us to be invited to the TechStars event.

What did you know about the world of venture capital before you started working together?

Practically nothing. We had absolutely no insight into the field of venture capital fund management. Let’s not forget that we, the founders of Poliloop, are researchers. But we realised very early on that if there is no capital available, there is no innovation.

What are the benefits of working with Vespucci Partners?

Beyond the financial benefits – they’ve given us a two-million-dollar seed investment – they’re helping us in several important areas. For exapmle, we really appreciate the fact that we were introduced to a reliable law firm and accounting team that performs its work with the utmost professionalism, and we have been working with them ever since.