Celebrating Evtim Chesnovski, winner of Mentor of the Year for 2024!

Our yearly Mentor Awards recognize the mentors who have made the greatest contributions to our network. The awards are divided into three categories, based on data analysis from 2023, reflecting the following criteria:

• Hours dedicated to mentoring sessions and supporting our investor network
• Participation in events and overall engagement
• Feedback and evaluation of mentoring effectiveness

The categories are:

• Mentor of the Year – The mentor with the most hours donated in support of Endeavor’s regional and global network and Endeavor entrepreneurs.

• Most Endeavorized Mentor – An Endeavor ambassador who actively contributes through introductions, being an ambassador, or otherwise demonstrating commitment to our mission.

• Dare2Scale Mentor – The mentor with the most hours donated in support of the Dare2Scale program, including workshops, interviews, mentoring sessions, and other activities.

Meet our Mentor of the Year!

Evtim Chesnovski, Partner at Integral Capital Group, has been an informal part of our Endeavor community since 2022 and officially joined as an Endeavor Mentor in January 2024.

With an impressive background—speaking five languages and following a finance and private equity trajectory that led him seamlessly to Integral Capital Group—Evtim has built strong ties to the Bulgarian entrepreneurial ecosystem despite living in the UK. Clearly, his efforts are paying off.

I first connected with Evtim over a video call in November, and then in December, when he was in Sofia, I had the opportunity to meet him at our Endeavor offices and officially present him with his Mentor of the Year award!

You have such a fascinating journey—from Bulgaria to Budapest, to LA, and finally London. That’s quite a path!

“It was actually Bulgaria, Bratislava, Bulgaria again, Budapest LA, London, Budapest again, and then London again.”

These are three very different regions, and coupled with the languages you speak [English, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian], how did you navigate these transitions?

“Exotic languages in an Eastern European context,” he says with a chuckle. “Everything started with the transition to democracy. My family moved to Bratislava, after the Czechoslovakian split. I learned the language and studied there until my early teen years when my family sent me back to Bulgaria, where I studied at Sofia High School of Mathematics. It was an interesting combination – my interest in exact sciences and my knowledge of two Eastern European languages. The early 2000s saw the first wave of economies from our region entering the European Union, and that’s when I decided to pursue finance. With our region’s economies rapidly growing and evolving, I chose to specialize in them.

Later on, I won a scholarship to study at Corvinus University of Budapest, and learned the language. With the three languages and with my finance education, I started looking for realization in the region, and that is when I started focusing on equity investment.

There was one big player who combined all of my interests – Mid Europa Partners. At that time, I didn’t have the necessary experience to join their team, so I found a door through investment banking in London. Around three years later, [after having interned and then worked at BNP Paribas in London] I got in touch with Mid Europa Partners and got a job with them. That is where I met my current partners at Integral Capital Group, a private equity and growth capital investments firm focusing on small and medium-size enterprises from the Evolving Europe region.”

So, it was a very intentional journey.

“Absolutely, from graduating high-school, to the one year I spent in LA where I actually found out about investment banking and equity investments, to coming back to Budapest to finish my education I knew what I wanted to do and in what region. From then on, I am more or less on the exact road I imagined.”

You’ve been living in London for about 11 years now?

“Between 2009 and 2012, and from 2016 till now. I am not based in Central & Eastern Europe, but my work operations are there, so around 60% of my time I travel there.”

That’s what I wanted to ask — despite not living in Bulgaria or the region for quite a while, you still maintain a strong connection to Eastern Europe. It seems like, beyond work, you’re quite dedicated to the region.

“Yes, my nuclear family is with me in London, but my wider family is in Bulgaria, friends as well. And, of course, my business interests. I am actively traveling, I visit Bulgaria about two times a month, Romania as well, and if not then I am traveling in Central Europe.”

From an investor’s point of view, how do you see the differences between our region and Western markets?

While Evtim doesn’t directly work with Western markets, he shared his expertise on Bulgaria and the wider Central & Eastern European region. He broke the region down into three categories:

1. Central Europe – Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and, to some extent, Slovenia.
2. Southeast Europe – Romania and Bulgaria.
3. The former Yugoslav and Adriatic countries, excluding Slovenia.

According to him, Central Europe is the most developed, benefiting from factors like size and geographical proximity to Western Europe. These economies and entrepreneurial ecosystems are a few years ahead in terms of ecosystem development, transparency, government administration, funding availability, and investor presence.

“Then it is us – Romania and Bulgaria,” Evtim explains. “We are still growing, not fully developed but definitely developed enough, still evolving. With working knowledge of how investor, institutional or private, work. To some extent, the fact that our governmental administration isn’t at the same level of countries in Central and Western Europe is a factor, but because our ecosystems have established themselves, government is following. A disadvantage is that the legal framework around where asset managers and private pension funds are allowed to invest. Additional area of improvement is the banking system and the more conservative approach when it comes to partnering alongside private equity players”

Specifically regarding Bulgaria, he believes the country has a strong and growing ecosystem, supported by players like Endeavor and the increasing availability of funding.

Thank you for this! There is a report by BVCA, PwC, and European Investment Bank [at the time of the interview the report had just recently come out] about private investment in Bulgaria and South Eastern Europe that shows that while Bulgaria is the fastest growing country in SEE, increasing investment value quicker than other countries in the region. So, it was interesting to hear your take on this.

You’re an entrepreneur in your own right, being one of the founding members of Integral Capital Group. What role has mentorship played in your career?

“I was one of the first people at Integral Capital Group. Back then we had a presentation and an idea that grew to what it is today. In this process of growth, both at Integral Capital Group and at Mid Europa, I have learned a lot from the people around me. I would say that even as far back as my high-school years there has always been someone to help me adapt faster.

You are right, what we did is entrepreneurship. It took us about 8 years to grow Integral Capital Group which is now one of the largest players in the mid and small market with €300m of raised, managed or syndicated assets. At one point, after all that I’ve received, I wanted to start giving back. It felt only fair. I’ve lived abroad for a long time, obviously, but there has always been a sort of affection and attachment towards ‘home’, I am very proud of the success of our entrepreneurs, and I wanted to be part of this process.”

To Evtim, mentorship is truly about giving back—which is exactly why he was named Mentor of the Year.

Evtim and I discuss regionalization. The way the Balkans region looks like from an investor’s perspective. He was a part of Dare2Scale’s 2024 expansion into North Macedonia and Kosovo. It’s not a secret that we are constantly engaging with countries with countries of the Balkans.

When I’ve talked to other investors a common theme comes out – that your role is a type of mentorship in itself.

“That is exactly right!” Evtim exclaims. “My mentorship can be separated into two categories. One is the companies that I am in constant communication with. The second category is my role as an investor. When we partner with entrepreneurs we enter their business, helping implement good practices, developing the management team, helping with their operations, etc. We often take local or national entrepreneurs and help them scale to regional or global level. This is how we help entrepreneurs develop both themselves and their companies.”

What do you get out of mentorship?

“Enjoyment. Many of the people I work with, through Endeavor as well, are ambitious who want to grow and develop. That’s the personal reason. I want to be a part of growing our ecosystem.”

Last question, you spoke at two events [during 2024] Kapital’s Financial Summit, as well as one of HVCA’s (Hungarian Private Equity and Venture Capital Associate) Equity Thursdays. From the topics discussed during these events, I was wondering, what key trends or challenges do you see shaping investment opportunities in our region?

“I already mentioned some of the key challenges. At least from our perspective, one of the key challenges is access to traditional institutional capital in the form of traditional pension funds asset managers. We rely on capital from developmental finance institutions, like the World Bank, EBRD, European Investment Fund. They have a major role in our ecosystem and they are the main driver, but they also have a different/higher agenda, they role is typically primarily developmental. So, for us, for the ecosystem to fully benefit from what we do we need to have access to more institutional, in the traditional sense of the word, capital, from pension funds. The regulatory framework is a major bottleneck that prevents pension funds and asset managers to invest in funds, like ours and others. And as such we don’t have the capital to do even more for the local players.

The other major impediment, even though it could also potentially be positive, is the size of the economies. At the end of the day, it is all about scale. Because, when you create something, you first test it in your incumbent market, in your home market. When this market is small you have less opportunity to properly test it, you have less opportunity to provide proof of concept, and as such, you need to go outside of your home market. To do that you need expertise, you need capital, and you need a network.

Even though not every idea manages to enter new markets, if you do, the sky is the limit, because you have proven yourself capable of doing business outside of your home market. That’s why businesses that make it in small countries, when they make it – they make it big.”

What an inspiring conversation! One major takeaway for me is the power of Bulgarians abroad who choose to stay connected, give back, and help the country grow.

Mentorship is borderless—Evtim proves that.