Harker Attends Baltic Ventures 2024 Accelerator Demo Day

Baltic Ventures’ flagship Accelerator programme, an early-stage tech accelerator based in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle area, ended its 2024 run with a bang, or rather a Demo Day. This was not only a chance to celebrate the 2024 Accelerator cohort completing the programme, but also their opportunity to pitch to an audience of investors, ecosystem partners, and fellow founders. The pitches were broken up by a panel of investors giving a whistle-stop tour of founder advice on how to make their start-ups investor-ready.

Myself, James (CEO & Co-Founder) and Matt (Graduate Software Developer) walked down to Camp & Furnace to attend the event. Secretly, we were undercover as part of the then-unannounced Baltic Ventures 2025 Launchpad cohort, which is their companion programme to Launchpad. If you’d like to find out more about Harker getting on Launchpad, check out my blog from last week.

Personally, my favourite pitch was from EdenFiftyOne, who I also saw pitch last year at Liverpool Slush’D, due to their pitch delivery and their slide deck. It felt like listening to a melody with the way it naturally flowed and had a rhythmic delivery, accompanied by slides which make great use of clear icons and statistics that were perfectly timed to the founder’s delivery. One key line that stuck with me was their analogy for explaining their 51 key English skills model: ‘There are only 51 key English skills that kids need to know. It’s like a piano, as you get better you play the keys faster but the number of keys never increases.’ For me, the key takeaways after watching their pitch are to have an engaging vocal delivery with a strong accompanying slide deck, along with easy-to-understand analogies that stick in the minds of the audience.

Another pitch which caught my eye was DearBump as they not only have clear market potential, but their potential to have a significant positive impact on the world, which resonated with me as Harker similarly is building a ‘tech for good’ solution. We're so excited to be joining the Baltic Ventures family as part of the 2025 Launchpad cohort, and following in the footsteps of amazing businesses which share our values.

After a strong set of pitches, it was great to catch-up with the Baltic Ventures team, a few friends from the Liverpool entrepreneur ecosystem, and also meet a few new founders from across the UK! The evening was capped off with a few drinks and some exceptional salt and pepper chips. The Demo Day was a fantastic way to set the tone for our time on Launchpad, which began with the first Masterclass earlier this week. We’ve already learnt so much from the Baltic Ventures team and we’re excited to see how Harker will benefit from Launchpad. Congratulations to all the 2024 Accelerator alumni and we hope Harker will follow in your inspiring footsteps!