Forum, Industry, Innovations, Investments, Latvia, Technology

The SLUSH festival will be visited by at least 15 000 participants, bringing together about 2 000 start-ups, at least 800 venture capitalists and 700 journalists from over 100 countries worldwide. The event, which is described by many as "Burning Man meets TED", will take place on 30 November and 1 December in Helsinki, Finland.

Promising participants in the Latvian start-up ecosystem, including Startin.LV and TechHub Riga members, will be invited to apply for participation in the Latvian start-up delegation. Interested parties should keep track of Twino and its cooperation partners for future announcements.

Twino CEO Jevgenijs Kazanins explains: "In order to create viable ideas with global potential, one must be able to think on a global level. Almost 20 Latvian start-up entrepreneurs will provide a unique opportunity for the festival to feel the pulse of the world and present themselves and their ideas to potential investors, mentors and the media. By helping new companies and new ideas, we promote development of the Latvian start-up ecosystem. We started our mutual loan platform as a start-up idea, so we are able to appreciate the importance of global thinking from the very early days of an idea."

Latvian Start-up association Startin.LV Chairman of the Board Jekaterina Novicka: "Twino supporting the start-up Latvian delegation to travel to SLUSH is an outstanding example of an already mature start-up company being involved in the growth of the latest start-up ecosystem. Such assistance is very much appreciated among the members of the association, because the cost required to attend an international conference is often too high for a start-up company in an early stage of growth. With its initiative Twino enables many Latvian start-up companies to access in a single place international investors, customers and partners, and raises the overall profile of the Latvian start-up ecosystem in the region."

Twino is the peer-to-peer lending marketplace in Europe. It offers investors the opportunity to invest in unsecured consumer loans across Georgia, Latvia, Denmark and Poland.

Since it was established in 2009, Twino has originated over €300m of lending. The company launched its marketplace investment platform in 2015 and has since attracted over 4,000 investors from more than 30 countries, in particular from the Baltic countries, Germany, and Great Britain.