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SpeedUp! Europe

by EUROCROWD on 01.06.2014

Funding programme: FP7 – European Commission

Duration: June 2014 – May 2016

Website: http://teams.speedupeurope.eu/

Description: SpeedUp! Europe was a disruptive acceleration programme supporting entrepreneurial education, innovation and ramp-up to finance. It was supported by the European Commission’s Future Internet Public-Private Partnership and related to the “FI-WARE” Platform, an innovative library, a platform and a framework developed by 25 leading European IT companies, providing an open cloud-based infrastructure for cost-effective creation and delivery of Future Internet applications and services on a scale never before seen. The SpeedUp! Europe project provided team formation, seed funding, coaching/mentoring, and finally, access to finance through crowdfunding.

ECN’s role: ECN led tasks aiming at raising awareness of entrepreneurs on crowdfunding and connecting entrepreneurs with crowdfunding platforms and other investors. ECN also mentored teams coming from eight companies and helped them to pivot their business and prepare applications for crowdfunding platforms.

Results:

  • 100 projects granted €50,000 each for software and equipment, travel expenses, rent of facilities and accommodation costs, and an additional €20,000 requested during project implementation to bring in another project member at a later stage. This was a grant with no repayment, nor need to give away shares
  • Approved projects supported by one of the nine European business support organisations involved in SpeedUp! Europe, located in Hamburg, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Aarhus and Brussels
  • Every project team appointed mentors and coaches for up to one year
  • Successfully evaluated projects have also received assistance to ramp-up for further funding

Project partners:

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