The 3rd and last STARTUP3 Innovation Challenge will be held on the 11th of May and it will put the spotlight on Artificial Intelligence, one of the key technologies of the deep-tech stage!

High-value startups from the STARTUP3 Accelerator and from the SCS Cluster ecosystem will expose their AI-integrated solutions and compete in front of key Corporations, SMEs, and academics experts in this field. The challenge winner will get a ticket and a dedicated spot on the SophI.A. Summit 2021, an international symposium presenting recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and its applications.

The contest will take place in the frame of the SCS Cluster Plenary AI/Big Data Working Group, a yearly event consisting of cross-discussions between startups, corporations, and researchers about the trends, challenges, and opportunities of each of SCS strategic technology areas – here AI and Big Data. The event is organised with the support of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

AGENDA

9:00 -  Welcome

9:05 – Update of SCS AI Roadmap

•  Market & Value Chain – HPE P. Baudelle
• Technology Roadblocks – Orange Labs T. Nagellen
• Training, education & challenges for SME’s – Data Science Tech Institute (DSTI) S. Corniglion
• Use cases – Aiway M. Benoit
• Research entities update – Aix-Marseille Université /LIS P.Bellot
  

9:30 – Technology watch

• Normalisation & AI – Numalis A. Ioualalen
  
• AI at the edge – HPE J.Riboulon
  

10:00 – Fresh news on AI

• Challenges IA  by bpifrance : AMI Sponsors Vague 3 – SCS F. De Toma
  More information HERE
• What is the SophI.A Summit ? – SCS F. De Toma
  More information HERE
• Nouvel AAP pour les PMEs/Startups avec les ressources du 3IA Côte d’Azur – M. Barret
• STARTUP3 AI Innovation Challenge – SCS C. Castell
  

         Latest news from the STARTUP3 Project
         Pitch battle
         Voting and prize giving

More information  HERE

11:25 – Innovative Use cases with AI

• AI for textual data and document analytics insights and search – QWAM C. Langevin
  
• Use case for safer connected car – Numalis A. Ioualalen & Ezako B. Kizil
  
• Questions
  

REGISTRATION

 Registration required before 6th May 2021 to clemence.castell@pole-scs.org

> For SCS members, cluster partners, and STARTUP3 beneficiaries – Registration free
> For Others – 250€ HT/participant

The webinar access codes will be communicated to you following your registration

With the support of

What are the STARTUP3 Innovation Challenges

In the frame of the STARTUP3 project are organised several Innovation Challenges in the form of pitch challenges or hackathons, by the three digital cluster partners ITC, LITC, and SCS Cluster. The aim is to offer deep-tech startups a spot to present their solutions in front of players of the different ecosystems and to foster emulation of companies in the same fields. 

Throwback on the past Innovation Challenges:

• Farm2Fork x STARTUP3 Innovation Challenge – EDM Slovenia by ITC Cluster, 12 November 2020
• STARTUP3 Innovation Pitch Challenge by Latvian IT Cluster, 25 February 2021

A competition designed for science and deep tech entrepreneurs!

The Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge is a world-renowned competition designed to unearth early-stage startups that are developing cutting-edge, ‘deep’ technologies to tackle worldwide challenges. Selected participants will have the chance to win equity-free prize money of up to €100,000, customised coaching sessions, personal introductions with investors and corporates, global visibility, and the opportunity to pitch and showcase in front of an exclusive audience of investors and industry leaders at the annual Hello Tomorrow Global Summit, the biggest gathering of the deep tech ecosystem held on 2nd-3rd December 2021 in Paris.

What are the benefits for the startups?

• €100K Grand Prize, €30K 2nd prize and €20K 3rd prize – all equity-free
• 10 Track Winners will get customized coaching sessions & personal introductions with relevant investors & potential partners and clients.
• 60 finalists will pitch in front of 400 stakeholders and a qualified jury of VCs, CTOs from large companies, scientists and media. 
• Selected top startups (around 800) will:
  • Be invited to the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit in Paris on December 2nd – 3rd, 2021 along with opportunities to showcase their solutions.
  • Get exclusive access to Investor Day on December 1st, 2021 to meet 1-to-1 with 200 investors representing over $16Bn in fund sizes
    • 150 VCs such as DCVC, Atomico, SOSV, Sofinnova, Playground Capital, HTGF, IQ Capital, IdInvest, Balderton, Novo, Draper Esprit, etc.
    • 50 CVCs from companies such as ABB, Airbus, BASF, Bayer, Bosch, DSM, Evonik, IBM, Maersk, Merck, Samsung, Total, etc.
  • Be part of the Deep Tech Pioneers community for all-year access to a global deep tech ecosystem and to opportunities for visibility, funding and business development.

For more information, please visit Hello Tomorrow on www.hello-tomorrow.org, or follow them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Technology & Business Cooperation Days is an international trade fair that focuses on Industry 4.0. and Smart Factories and that will be held virtually from April 12 to 15, 2021.

The real Enterprise Europe Network brokerage event during Hannover Messe 2021 “Technology & Business Cooperation Days” is planned to be organised as a “virtual brokerage event” again. The HANNOVER MESSE 2021 itself will also take place as an online event, due to COVID-19.

This means that all bilateral meetings organised within the framework of the brokerage event will be held as online meetings/video-conferences via the event’s website. We will schedule meeting slots in April (12/4 –15/4). You do not need any additional software, only an up-to-date web browser, a microphone, and a webcam.

This event is organised by the local Enterprise Europe Network partner (NBank Hannover) and many other network partners ensuring a strong participation of German, European and international participants.

With the “Technology & Business Cooperation Days 2021” Enterprise Europe Network Niedersachsen will continue the great success of the 2020 virtual edition with nearly participants from 63 countries (229 from Germany), the support of more than 150 network partners and 10 other partners (e.g. NCP Energy, NCP Production, industrial and automotive cluster organisations,…).

The brokerage event offers SMEs and research organisations the opportunity to find and meet partners for commercial agreements and for research & technology cooperation in the above-mentioned fields.

Focus

• Industry 4.0 and Smart Factory solutions
• Resource and energy efficient manufacturing technologies
• Sustainable Energy & Mobility
• Measurement Tools

The registration for the “virtual/online” Technology & Business Cooperation Days is free of costs. Pending meeting requests can be confirmed or declined until 5th April 2021.

Take your chance to innovate! Gain new opportunities and competitive advantages through R&D and technological as well as business co-operations.

Why participate

• Showcase your most favorable projects, products or know-how
• Targeting potential business partners in pre-scheduled face-to-face meetings
• Initiate cross-border contacts and co-operations
• Find new commercial/technological/research partners
• Get the latest information on industrial related research results
• Meet and share views with researchers and experts
• Easy access to enterprises and scientists in the thematic focus.

The STARTUP3 Project announces the Top 5 Innovators! Teams from all over Europe will continue working hard on the next great deep-tech startup. Within the next three months, they will accelerate their market presence together with the Corporate Pool members and dedicated mentors from the programme!

At the end of March, 10 startups of the STARTUP3 Accelerator Programme presented their pitches to show the international jury the result of their hard work and progress throughout the last 6 months of the programme. Concretely, they have shown their business and financial plans which provided additional basis for the jury’s assessment.

The jury was composed of a very diverse mix of professionals from the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem with many years of experience under their belt in the roles of founders, entrepreneurs, coaches, investors as well as business developers in local and global ecosystems..

After the assessments on the Founder Studio Platform, and having in mind the above criteria such as business readiness but also organisational and innovation capacity, the jury selected 5 teams as the winners of the STARTUP3 Accelerator Programme. From Agritech, Healthech, Retail, Consumer Relations to XR, AI and Earth Observation – the 5 winning teams are living examples of how digital innovations are supporting communities to make each sphere of life easier.

The 5 winning startups and their bright ideas which you will probably hear of in the future are:

More about 3^rd phase – PRODUCT2MARKET

STARTUP3 is a mentorship-driven accelerator programme. Phase 3 focuses on customer access, strategic alliances between startups/ SMEs & corporates, and rapid internationalization. With this in mind, support activities will revolve around bid mentoring, improving interpersonal skills for dealing with clients, VCs and CVCs, pitching in front of accelerators and investors.

The STARTUP3 Networking & Collision Days will be organized where each startup/ SME that took part in the Product 2 Market phase will present their innovative solutions and business models to the crowd of investors, STARTUP3 Corporate Pool, and the general public. 

The combination of all these activities will help our startups/ SMEs validate their business model, connect to the market and investors/ partners.

The European Innovation Council (EIC) is a key novelty of Horizon Europe and represents the most ambitious innovation initiative that Europe has taken, with a budget of €10 billion for the period 2021-2027. The first calls for applicants are planned to be released on 18 March – a two-day launch event will be organised to provide information about the vision of the EIC and what is behind its funding opportunities.

The launch of the new European Innovation Council will take place over two days on 18 and 19 March. The EIC has a mission to identify, develop and scale-up breakthrough technologies and disruptive innovations. The EIC will support startups, SMEs and research teams developing high-risk, high-impact breakthrough innovation, with a particular focus on scaling up game-changing solutions that contribute to the objectives of the European Green Deal and the Recovery Plan for Europe.

Launch ceremony

18 March (9.30 – 11.30 CET)

Statements from Heads of States and EU institutions

Short specific sessions on the contribution of the EIC to Europe’s economic recovery:

• EIC for building businesses from breakthrough science
  Speakers: Ingmar Hoerr (Founder and former CEO of CureVac), Louis de Lillers (CEO CorWave) + other to be confirmed
  Moderator: Chris Sisserian (Sifted)
• EIC for investing in deep tech
  Speakers: Hermann Hauser (Amadeus Capital) + other to be confirmed
  Moderator: Robin Wauters (Tech.EU)
• EIC for creating innovation ecosystems for sustainability
  Speakers: Jim Snabe (Chair, Siemens) and Roxanne Varza (CEO, Station F)
  Moderator: Jean-Eric Paquet (Director-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission)

Applicants’ day

19 March (9.30 – 16.30 CET)

For potential beneficiaries and stakeholders, the applicant day will provide concrete information on how the EIC works, how to apply, who is eligible, etc.

Sessions will include information on funding opportunities for research teams, startups, SMEs and investors.

Source: European Commission – Research and Innovation (https://bit.ly/308cuuY)

After a pretty successful Phase 2 of the STARTUP3 Acceleration Programme, the time has come for Pitch Stop #2 where the best 5 solutions will be selected!

In this second phase of the Acceleration programme, each startup has had different goals and expectations, and therefore their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were specifically identified based on their solution, needs, and plans at the beginning of the programme. All teams were guided by experienced lead mentors who helped them with a variety of technical and business questions. Additionally, a series of Expert Sessions provided the teams with specific know-how, such as Startup Benchmark and Competition Radar, MVP Strategy, Fundraising Strategy and Digital Marketing.

Now it’s time to select the best 5 startups who will start a collaboration with the matched Corporates or Investors! The second Pitch Stop will be held on the 23rd and 24th of March, 2021.

On the first day, the STARTUP3 Beneficiaries from Health-tech, Cybersecurity and Customer Relationship Management will pitch their presentations, while the second day will be dedicated to the Agritech and Smart Infrastructure field!

The event will start at 14:00 CET on 23rd and at 10:00 CET the next day, while the announcement of the TOP 5 Winners will be held from 14:30 to 15:30 CET on the 24th!

Europe’s Deep Tech companies are worth a combined €700 billion today. Many have their roots in academia and drew early support from government grants. Yet there’s a lot more potential to be unlocked. Europe’s universities and research really are world-class. The commercial gap with China and the US can be closed by fostering an entrepreneurial culture on campuses, training first-time academic entrepreneurs and tech transfer officers, and offering spinouts simpler and faster deals. (Source: Dealroom)

We invite you to join the STARTUP3 Pitch Stop Event and discover the potential for fruitful collaboration with Europe’s top-notch deep-tech innovators! In case you’d like to assist with the event, kindly send an email to acharemis@ekt.gr.

The online event “STARTUP3 Innovation Pitch Challenge” in Latvia on February 25^th was one of the project activities, that invited startups to meetup and in an interactive way figure out the best practices of what makes the online pitch-perfect.

The aims of the event:

1. Share professional points of view to help startups understand how to create and present pitches;
2. To share experience stories and the knowledge between speakers and participants;
3. Give the opportunity for startups to share their pitches and get professional feedback on them.

The online event consisted of two parts: Presentations “Pitching in the online world: does and don’ts” shared by pitching professionals Ernests Stals and Gleb Maltsev, and Pitch Battle where startups from the STARTUP3 project and Vidzeme region competed for the title of the best pitch.

Opening with Joseph Campbell quote “People forget facts, but they remember stories” Ernests Štāls from Superhero Capital emphasized on the purpose and structure of great pitch.

Gleb Maltsev, pitch coach with more than 10 years of experience in the field, gave practical suggestions and involved event participants in short tasks to highlight how the theory should work in real life when it comes to pitching.

The first part of the event gave all the participants a great look into how to prepare not only a good pitch but also how to prepare yourself before public speaking and some more tips on how to act and manage your voice and stress level.

After presentations and a Q&A session a Pitch Battle was held, where five startups pitched their ideas, and after received professional feedback from the main speakers, as well online voting took place and startup Fauna Smart Technologies won the challenge and opportunity to attend the upcoming TechChill conference.

The event was part of project STARTUP3, Vidzeme Innovation Week, and EU Industry Week. It was a great success, reaching approximately 60 participants from different countries and providing useful information, tips and tricks, based on experience, that will potentially help many of the startups to do better in their next pitching.

Latvian IT Cluster and STARTUP3 Accelerator consortium virtually organize the Innovation Pitch Challenge in Latvia on the February 25th, 2021 from 10:00 CET!

What are the investors expecting from the pitches that are presented in the current virtual world?

The STARTUP3 Innovation Pitch Challenge invites startups to a meetup where we will talk about the best practices of what makes the online pitch-perfect. We’ll have great keynotes on the topic, presented by industry professionals, to give you the tips and tricks to help you become better. Be active! Be prepared to ask questions!

In the second part of the meetup, the attendees will have an opportunity to see a pitch battle where pre-selected startups from the STARTUP33 accelerator and Vidzeme region will fight for the title of the best pitch.

The event is part of the STARTUP3 Project, Vidzeme Innovation week, and EU Industrial week programs.

STARTUP3 invites you to join the NGI Talk – a webinar about the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Society!

About the event

Will machines become super-intelligent and will humans eventually lose control? While there is debate around how likely this scenario will be we do know that there are always unforeseen consequences when new technology is introduced. Those unintended outcomes of artificial intelligence will likely challenge us all.

As with most changes in life, there will be positive and negative impacts on society as artificial intelligence continues to transform the world we live in. How that will balance out is anyone’s guess and up for much debate and for many people to contemplate.

Join the next NGI Talk, brought to you by the NGI community ambassador Manuela Bagliattini, and meet possible challenges that we, as a society, might be faced with, and as well as several of the positive impacts artificial intelligence will have on society.

About the speaker

Manuela Battaglini is a specialist in strategic digital marketing, a law graduate and a researcher. She works on Digital Ethics (data ethics, security ethics, algorithm ethics and ethics in practice) studying the social impact of automated decision-making processes and personal profiling. She is also CEO of Transparent Internet, a consulting firm that helps organizations make their AI systems ethical, transparent and trustworthy.

Who is NGI?

The Next Generation Internet (NGI) is a European Commission initiative that aims to shape the development and evolution of the Internet into an Internet of Humans. An Internet that responds to people’s fundamental needs, including trust, security, and inclusion, while reflecting the values and the norms all citizens enjoy in Europe.

AI4EU collect the Most Critical AI Challenges among the European Industry and provide support in addressing them with the EU funds!

Interested in being a part of the AI4EU Support Program?

The objective of the AI4EU Call for Challenges is to identify 13 challenges with an industrial, business or societal impact that can be solved by exploiting existing AI resources included on the AI4EU Platform or by developing new components.

CALL FOR CHALLENGES