Funding Pathways for Your Startups: Investor perspectives on what makes a venture fundable, how to attract investment, and how to build credibility
Panellist: Emilio Gómez Jané, ICF, Spain
Biography: Emilio is Director of Equity Investments at ICF (Institut Català de Finances), where he has been leading venture investment activity since 2010. With over two decades of experience in private equity and venture capital, he has worked closely with high-growth technology companies, supporting founders in scaling their businesses, strengthening governance, and driving long-term value creation. Emilio currently serves as board member or board observer in several innovative companies across sectors including deep tech, biotech, SaaS, and digital platforms. He holds an Industrial Engineering degree and an MBA from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and has also been a professor in MBA programs at leading universities in Barcelona. Emilio combines technical expertise, financial discipline, and hands-on board experience to help entrepreneurs turn ambitious visions into scalable, sustainable companies
Panellist: Vanessa Palmer, Partner @ WA4STEAM, Spain
Biography: Vanessa Palmer is a seasoned innovation leader with 15+ years of experience across banking, digital business, and entrepreneurship. After co‑founding and exiting eSportics, she has held key roles in accelerators, venture builders, and investment initiatives, including launching strategic programs for tech startups at CaixaBank’s DayOne and Premios EmprendeXXI. In 2026, she joined Peninsula Corporate Innovation as Director of Business Development to lead the company’s expansion, and collaborates with Masia VC through the Masia Circle initiative. An active member of WA4STEAM and contributor to Diversity VC Iberia and Swiss EP, Vanessa focuses on supporting founders, scaling innovation, and advancing the deeptech ecosystem.
Panellist: Dr. Marc Almendros, Grow Venture Partners, Spain
Biography: Dr. Marc Almendros is a co-founding Partner at Grow Venture Partners, a venture capital firm focused on tech transfer that invests in deep tech, sustainability, med tech, etc. Marc holds an MBA from ESADE Business School and has years of experience in startup creation and fundraising, R&D and technology consulting, and general management. He holds a PhD in Aerospace Science and Technology with a focus on long-distance quantum communications from ICFO/UPC and a MSc/BSc in Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering from La Salle. In previous positions, Marc has been the general manager and co-founder of the Quantum Engineering Solutions division at Keysight Technologies, a US-based world leader in test and measurement equipment which was originally part of Hewlett-Packard. He has also been the chairman of Keysight Technologies Spain. In his earlier career, Marc was the co-founder and CEO of Signadyne, a company that spun off from an ion trap research group at ICFO in 2011. Signadyne was acquired by Keysight in 2016. On the technical and scientific side, Marc is the co-author of a dozen scientific papers about trapping and manipulation of single ions for quantum engineering applications, and the co-inventor of three patents around FPGAs, synchronization and real-time technologies
Panellist: Ananya Sinha, Artesian, United Kingdom
Biography: As a Principal at Artesian VC, Ananya works across Climate, Sustainable Food and Agriculture, AI and Robotics, MedTech, and generalist funds. Driven by her strong commitment to advancing women in entrepreneurship, she spends much of her time leading Artesian’s $100M Female Leaders Fund, which invests in high-growth, women-led startups that are often overlooked by traditional venture capital. The fund is proudly backed by institutional investors including Hostplus and LegalSuper and adopts an active gender-lens approach to capital deployment. Her background combines entrepreneurship and strategy. She previously founded an e-waste recycling company and also created an NFT collection celebrating South Asian women.
Panel Moderator: Dina Titkova, UNSW Founders, Australia
Biography: Dina Titkova is a Senior Manager Entrepreneurship at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia). With over 15 years’ experience across business development, program management, entrepreneurship. In her current role she leads a high-performing team that runs several UNSW Founders incubator and accelerator programs, with particular focus on supporting deep tech startups. She oversees UNSW Founders’ portfolio of 115 startups, who have raised over $270M in private funding and created 650+ jobs and angel invested in a few startups. She is particularly passionate about improving research commercialisation outcomes and seeing impactful solutions reaching those who need them most.
Prior to this role, Dina held various business development positions in HealthTech companies (including startups) in Australia and Europe, as well as being an early contributor to building a Digital Health innovation ecosystem in Stockholm, Sweden
