Startup Olé Accelerator hosts SEC2U
Entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as a valuable career choice for recent graduates. Developing your entrepreneurial competencies is now seen as crucial, not only for starting your own business, butfor contributing to the success of small companies. Even large corporations are beginning to see the value in entrepreneurial skills for their employees.
There still exists a struggle for students to obtain entrepreneurship skills and experience, with commercialization and knowledge transfer often overlooked. For this reason, we welcome Startup Europe Comes to Universities (SEC2U)!
SEC2Uis an initiative endorsed by the European Commission (Startup Europe) to create a strong culture of entrepreneurship and innovation within universities across Europe. This consists of a series of events that bring together students, university staff,entrepreneurs, businessmen and representatives of local governments in order to showcase the available support andform valuable connections in the startup ecosystem. The second edition of SEC2U will take place from the 23rdto the 29thof October and the University of Salamanca/Startup Olé Acceleratorwill be joining the initiative!
During the event that will take place in the Narodowy Stadium, Warsaw as part of the CEE Acceleration Summit on the 26thof October, where Universities will come together with Accelerators, Corporations and Policy Makers to bring up the startup ecosystem in Europe
Startup Olé Accelerator of the University of Salamanca will be supported by other universities across Europe, taking steps towards the internationalization of the CEE region together with over 30 prestigious universities in the SEC2U initiative.
With approximately 3000 peopleexpected in attendance, this is a time to showcase the work of universities in the entrepreneurship area, build bridges between university communities and startup ecosystems and facilitate connections!
Take the right step towards your future and don´t miss out on this opportunity. Find out more about SEC2U and the events near you: http://startupeuropeuniversities.eu/
See you there!
About Startup Europe Comes to the Universities (SEC2U)
Startup Europe Comes to the Universities (SEC2U) is a Europe wide initiative to engage universities (from the Startup Europe University Network and beyond) and enable them to spread an entrepreneurial culture. SEC2U will hold events across Europe during the week of 23rd to 29th of October 2017.
The main objective of the SEC2U events is to showcase the commitment of European universities for entrepreneurship and to connect universities to the wider startup ecosystem.
MY-WAY Two years to help students fulfil their entrepreneurial dreams!
When the MY-WAY project was funded in 2014, the European landscape of youth entrepreneurship washighly fragmented: although many support initiatives existed, they did not coordinate their efforts,information was lacking and young European prospective entrepreneurs were necessarily limited totheir local options when searching for information and support.
The idea of MY-WAY came from talksand confidence boosting speeches on how young adults should start and develop their businesses. Listening to young people’schallenges, it became clear that connecting the stakeholders of the web entrepreneurship ecosystem(mentors, accelerators, VCs, incubators etc.) with the student networks; connecting the students withbusiness people and connecting the available platforms and initiatives across Europe had the potentialof providing all actors with an added value and increase the effectiveness of the web entrepreneurshipecosystem.
From early 2015 until the end of 2016, ten organisations from eight European countries worked as a tight-knit team to bring student organisations supporting prospective entrepreneurs back into the centre stage of the ecosystem.
Our Israeli partner, Bar Ilan University, outlined a mapping methodology to lay out the most relevant actors for a young person wishing to launch a new business. By checking the MY-WAY map, you will be able to really understand the entrepreneurship environment not only around you, but throughout Europe, and you may find the missing piece of your business and directly contact a certain organisation, such as a co-working space, an accelerator, an investor, and alike.
Later on, our partners AEGEE (the European Students’ Forum) and NACUE (the National Association of College Universities Entrepreneurs) worked together to develop, carry out and later analyse online surveys and face-to-face interviews to young prospective entrepreneurs and student support centres. Through this endeavour, partners realised that students need to have closer contact and support from support centres, which should fill the gaps between the main actors in the field of entrepreneurship, including the ones providing information and guidance and encouraging young people to develop their ideas and support the fulfilment of their dreams. On the other hand, student support centres and student networks often face financial challenges and lack of proper working space, and have fragmented relationships with each other.
All partners then scouted their own ecosystem to find successful innovative collaboration agreements between a wide range of initiatives offering support to prospective entrepreneurs.Our Set of Best Practices showed that student networks can position themselves as key actors within the web entrepreneurship ecosystem if they are connected with other actors within the ecosystem, such as entrepreneurship networks, entrepreneurship centres, universities and organisations that provide financial support.
In order to facilitate novel connections and to give voice to the other side of the equation, AEGEE and Europa Media further organised two Stakeholder Meetings in Brussels, bringing together 30-40 people of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities working in the entrepreneurship field: mentors, accelerators, student networks, incubators, investors, student support centres, and much more.
As a good number of recommendations and novel ideas was shortlisted, it became high time to give back to the students: MY-WAY managed to reach out to more than 750 students in the occasion of 5 Student Enterprise Conferences organised in London (by NACUE and Capital Enterprise), Budapest (by YES and Europa Media), Lisbon (H-Farm and Europa Media), Tel Aviv (Bar Ilan University) and Treviso (H-Farm and Europa Media).
Through the participation of our rock-star mentor and coach David Trayford, of all our partners and city-specific organisations acting in the entrepreneurial field, the events were a unique opportunity for students to discuss varioustopics related to how to make their business idea become real, learn more about ongoing funding programmes and initiatives, to change the mindset of those who may lack confidence and overall to make entrepreneurship a more appealing career option.
As the project comes to an end, it is time to take stock of what has been achieved and reflect on how to continue this satisfactory work. It is fair to say that partners have worked hard and in harmony for two years, driven by a unique enthusiasm and passion for helping students with their business ideas.
Being part of the Startup Europe club has further increased our outreach potential: we have established new connections with ongoing projects and initiatives, created new collaboration agreements and programmes, raised awareness on the entrepreneurial lifestyle, trained students on crucial skills and boosted their self-confidence.