2020 for Scale-up Champions: Turning Challenges into the Milestones

Our deep tech startup community is happy to share our challenging journey through these years. A lot has been done – starting with the run of webinar series and ending with the second call for startups eager to join Investment Readiness Programme (until January 10th). 

Scale-up Champions offers deep tech start-ups the opportunity to accelerate their growth through training activities aimed at increasing their ability to raise money, and through a series of online events that bring entrepreneurs, companies, mentors and investors together to create partnerships and new market opportunities. As one of the partners of this project Tehnopol offers great support services to growth companies.

The first 8 kick-off webinars were for those wondering what the deep tech startup community and latest trends in this industry are. The first one was dedicated to the deep tech innovation in EU in 2020 and beyond. Later we dived into the corporate venturing to find out about the rules of the game. Corporates play an important role encouraging startups to develop joint innovation and broaden the general scape of the industry’s needs. While joint innovation development requires some certain skills and procedures, partners from Tehnopol explained this process.

Later webinars focused on the importance of venture capitalists and investors support for deep tech scaleups. Expanding businesses to different regions in Europe were analyzed – starting from the New Nordic,  and moving through Central and Eastern Europe to South of Europe. The final series were released in July, summarizing the practices of growing deep tech startups for the future.  

During the first lockdown of the pandemic, a comprehensive Startup deep tech Ecosystem Guide was created to provide high-quality resources available to startups, investors and corporates looking into establishing their businesses in the Danish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Spanish flourishing scenes. We have compiled a set of available resources such as the best co-working spaces, hubs, accelerators, incubators, investors, and funding entities, as well as the most relevant events and activities in these five vibrant countries.  

In addition, Startup-Corporate Collaboration Program was released, enabling a powerful challenges-based work. This November, during Virtual Knowledge Summit event 21 corporates pitched their main challenges and was reverse pitched by 61 startups with their unique solutions in the categories Smart Cities, Industry 4.0, FinTech, MedTech and GreenTech. The Summit has matched ambitious companies and corporates with scale-up ready deep tech startups and talents. The corporates have selected 38 startups they want to match with for the Corporate and Start-up Acceleration Programme in the coming 3-6 months. 

Scale-up Champions are excited for networking with Venture Capitalists and Business Angels. After finalizing the recruitment and startups evaluation process, during the first batch of the Investment Readiness Programme coordinators have chosen 26 startups to engage into a set of training activities and networking events to increase the fundraising capacity. The startups are ready to accelerate their growth with the help of business mentors and couches as well – in this case, the experts provide legal advice, financial plans, and even detailed schemes of converting venture capital into a startup fuel. As it comes to the deep tech community, more than 70 VCs funds and Business Angels have joined the Scale-up Champions Program.