email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

Thierry Baujard • CEO of peacefulfish

"There’s definitely a lack of numbers and business information for investors"

by 

- Cineuropa met up with Thierry Baujard to talk about ENTER Europe, the training programme about financing within the European creative industries

Thierry Baujard  • CEO of peacefulfish

For the second year running, peacefulfish is launching ENTER Europe, a training programme supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe framework and its Continuous Training scheme, among others, in order to shed some light on financing within the European creative industries. The programme is intended for private investors, financial intermediaries, and managers of venture capital funds and lending/crowdfunding platforms, as well as organisations such as banks, business angel networks and VC funds. For this edition, the programme is divided into two sessions – one in Paris in September and one in London in October – and a number of customised workshops. This time, ENTER Europe is offered free of charge to the selected group of participants. Cineuropa talked to peacefulfish CEO Thierry Baujard about this unique programme and the improvements that have been made to it since last year’s edition.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Cineuropa: What are the objectives of the training programme?
Thierry Baujard: This training is targeted at people who want to bring a new kind of financing to the film and videogame business. Last year, we took ten investors from different parts of Europe, and we helped them to develop their ideas. We wanted to be a business focal point, to specialise on capital funds and to help public funds that want to be more private. For the next edition, we’ll change the format a little bit – we’ll focus more on the lending and investment side. Alongside that, we’re going to do customised workshops for organisations that we didn’t manage to reach last year – for example, banks. We’ve already got some proposals from banks all across Europe that want to participate in these customised workshops, so they can invite people for the product development. We’re also including crowdfunding platforms so that people can understand how to run a project there, how it works and how it can fit into the original financing scheme for films and videogames.

What was the main idea behind the start of the initiative?
The main idea came from getting the same response from banks: “It is interesting, but we don’t know anything about the film business.” Investors always say that they can’t get into the business, because they don’t know it, and now, after the training, they’re really learning. We brought a lot of experts to explain what’s happening, and we do a lot of mentoring with them, to help them and to develop the right activities with them. Every financier has a different business profile. We have a lot of people connected to new technology, new media and transmedia, and many of them are interested in how they can link that to investment in the film industry. There’s a lot of interest and potential, but you need to talk to them.

Is there a need to create a database in order to bring the different agents together?
There’s definitely a lack of numbers and business information for investors; it’s very important. What we’ve done this year is a kind of central filing of information, but we want to go further; we want to create a database – more on the sales side than on the production side. We’re interested in how to market and sell a project, and there are a lot of questions about that (distribution, VoD…), and the answers are missing. We need numbers. People are investing, but they don’t know how much other projects have sold. The investors are coming now from the technology side – and they’re used to being transparent, to having a lot of information everywhere. So they expect the same thing here.

Do you have any information on the training programme?
The call for application just opened and we are starting to look for people interested in working with projects. We’ve been developing an investment club in DG-Connect, which we’re launching in Cannes on 22 May, and we’ll also be working with ideas and backing from Creative Europe. We are also going to share information about banking and cash flow – we’re putting the focus on that this year because it’s easy to understand, and as of 2016, the investors will be able to use the new tools from Creative Europe. We need to start training them now so that they know how to use the new financial instruments in 2016. If you want to have private investors working in the film business, you need to spread the information around so that it can attract more potential collaborators.

For more information on the content of the ENTER Europe training programme, as well as how to apply, click here.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy