Startup Europe after 2 years!

Startup Europe has reached the two year mark. check out how our projects have been doing!

Together we have achieved some incredible things and truly boosted the European startup ecosystem, connecting people and helping startups to grow and thrive in Europe.

Highlights of Startup Europe

The Startup Europe projects have collectively connected the cities of Berlin, Madrid, Dublin, Rome, Lille, Warsaw, Brussels, Milan and many more!

An incredible +700 startups have participated in Startup Europe programmes, which have raised more than 200m€ in total.

One of Startup Europe’s strong points has been the sheer number of events that we have organised to create connections and help startups grow across Europe: over 300 events in two years.

 

More than just conferences, the Startup Europe projects have helped startups at these events to work through their tough spots and achieve their goals. Over 115 workshops, courses, hackathons, bootcamps and training sessions have been held for startups all over Europe, supporting them in every stage of growth. In particular, we have helped startups with that well-known growing pain- learning how to pitch and epitch. Over 240 epitching support sessions were organised to give startups the training they needed and to turn that 2 minutes with an investor into a golden opportunity.

For those startups that were ready to take the next step, the Startup Europe projects supported over 1300 pitches to business angels and corporates.

In fact, Startup Europe also organised well-thought-out matchmaking meetings between startups and investors, over 500 individual matchmakings between startups and investors all over Europe. Many were more than just boardroom conversations, in fact they were quite unique and ingenious (see WELCOME project’s meeting investors in cars post!).

Startup Europe also saw +160 startups join Startup Scaleup’s acceleration programme, in two waves of programmes.

One of the four key objectives of Startup Europe has been to help startups internationalise– and boy have we crossed oceans with you! From preparatory internationalisation sessions to giving startups the support they need to land in new ecosystems, Startup Europe has also crossed the atlantic with European startups to Silicon Valley. Two missions to Silicon Valley saw European startups travel to the USA to meet local giants like Google, get to know the ecosystem and test out the waters in the world’s most famous startup hub.

On an important note, one topic that many people are keen to see improved in Europe is the environment for women entrepreneurs. WeHubs, one of the Startup Europe projects, aimed to help women connect and gain the support and resources they need to become successful entrepreneurs, no matter where in Europe they are. WeHubs facilitated the creation of 34 women’s entrepreneur organisations, organised 20 mentors and registered over 330 female entrepreneurs.

Startup Europe also put efforts into encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs, specifically targeting students. Startup Europe Comes to Universities (SEC2U) saw it’s first year, in which more than 35 universities held entrepreneurships events for their students across 18 countries. The network is already accepting expressions of interest from Universities for next year- take a look here.

Other initiatives which Startup Europe prompted and supported are Startup Europe Comes to India, Startup Europe Week and European Maker Week.

A fair bit of research has also been conducted throughout the project, with over 25 publications being published on Europe’s startup and entrepreneurial environment.

Finally, our following on social media demonstrates the real impact of the Startup Europe initiative – 11,400 members in our Facebook community and 20,000 followers on twitter (13,000 tweets!).

CALL TO ACTION: if you have taken part in Startup Europe projects over those 2 years, make sure you fill out this Google Form, selected startups will be announced during the ‘Startup Europe After 2 Years conference’ in Brussels on 2nd February 2017. Please fill out the form by 20th January 2017. For more info take a look here. 

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It has been a blast and we aim to keep this website updated with the most recent startup news and activities going on in Europe- keep checking our news and blog sections in the future!