The online pre-registration has been extended up to and including the 31st of March 2008.

The ESA Investment Forum 2008 will take place in its technology center ESTEC – Noordwijk-NL on 15th April, preceded by a gala dinner at Space Expo on the evening of 14th April; a Venture Academy in ESTEC is also planned for the 14th April.

ESA/ESTEC is strongly supporting the Investment Forum; the forum complements the ESA/ESTEC initiative to establish the "E-Synergy International Partnership LP Fund" (formally known as the "European Special Application Fund"), managed by
E-SYNERGY, to assure early stage financing of Space Technology downstream activities.

The ESA Investment Forum 2008 follows the successful edition of 2007 and is again a pro-active approach to the creation, stimulation and support of new businesses arising from the sector. Those are typically Start-Ups companies, qualified SMEs and, more in general, companies seeking to develop terrestrial businesses derived from the Space Technology & Satellite Applications Sector. Space Technologies are used by all Industry Sectors for daily terrestrial use. The aim is promote the creation of a downstream market to support and increase the quality Deal Flow of space technology based business ventures.

For companies interested in presenting to investors at the events, the below questions are to be answered before applying.

□	Technology Novelty: Are you dealing with a successful Space Technology based product, application or business for down-to-earth commercialisation? Is the novelty of the underlying technology, its benefits in terms of cost, weight, efficiency or performance it brings compared with competing technologies, systems or applications?
□	Technology Presentation: Has been the maturity of the technology and the “closeness to market” of the resultant product or application well assessed? How about your Business Plan rendering financial assumptions and revenue targets to affect success rate?
□	Strength of Intellectual Property: Is your core technology patented or otherwise protected
□	Third Party Issues: Has the ownership of the core technology been determined? Is ownership clearly defined (single-point or spread ownership) or do barriers exist that makes the project unviable?
□	Accessible Market: At the evaluation stage did you determine that a market (or markets) exists for the technology product or application and is growing at least robust? Is the potential market large enough to support the company revenue predictions?
□	Entrepreneurship: Did you assess the strength of the Management Team, with market considerations as one of the main determinations of success? (e.g. small academic/engineering teams with no previous company management skill and without qualified support are considered by Financiers as high risk!) Do you need to better assess the market value of your venture and develop tools for robust Business Plans and Due Diligence exercises?

ESA Investment Forum is a Match Making event!

The aim of the ESA Investment Forum 2008 and annex Venture Academy is to enhance the dialogue between the Private and Public Investment and Financial community with Investment-Ready Innovative Entrepreneurs and active Space-Actors; "One2One" meetings may be envisaged for the purpose.

Efforts are focussing to increase Investment Activity by active Investors and Financial Actors in dedicated and promising Space Technology related projects. Therefore Technology based operational Start-Ups and SMEs aiming to commercialise Space Technology in terrestrial markets for Materials, Products, Services, Processes and Applications across Europe are invited to attend the ESA Investment Forum.

Start-Ups and quality value adds SMEs of all technology sectors and stages related to Space Technology downstream activities will present their Business Venture in front of International Investors.

In case you want to participate to this event, you are cordially invited to register and submit your Company Profile sheet, duly filled, to ttp @ esa.int

Your pre-registration is considered for evaluation upon your Company Profile sheet is submitted; you can download the empty form (xls) here.

• Download the cover letter (pdf) here
• Download the invitation (pdf) here