STARTUP3 and the European IP Help Desk invite you to join a webinar – The importance of IP for SMEs!

Intellectual property (IP) and its value often not adequately taken into account and tackled by small businesses and startups alike. In the increasingly knowledge-driven economy, IP is a key consideration in day-to-day business decisions. New products, brands, and creative designs appear almost daily on the market and are the result of continuous human innovation and creativity. However, SMEs and startups often lack the time, resources, or knowledge to address IP issues.

On January 13^th 2021, from 10:30 to 12:00 CET a training webinar called “The importance of IP for SMEs” will take place. Hosted by the European IP helpdesk, this training is dedicated to the STARTUP3 cohort, but is open to everyone.

The European Commission aims to help SMEs use IP more effectively by providing a coherent policy of IP support for SMEs, tools such as IP Helpdesk and by regularly monitoring the support available to small businesses.

Why and How?

SMEs can protect their innovative solution or improved solution by obtaining a patent that can give a business a competitive advantage. Patent protection gives them the right to exclude others, allowing them to fend off competition, assume a lead, and secure market position. If left unprotected, a good invention or creation may be lost to larger competitors that are in a better position to commercialize the product or service at a more affordable price, leaving the original inventor or creator without any financial benefit or reward. Adequate protection of a company’s IP is a crucial step in deterring potential infringement and in turning ideas into business assets with a real market value. After the training, participants should be able to address the following:

• What is Intellectual Property (IP)?
• What are Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)?
• Common problems of SMEs in their day to day activities?
• Why should I deal with IP/IPR issues? Why should IP be an integral part of my business strategy?
• How can IP be a business asset?
• Which IP protection tools exist/can I use (e. g. trademarks, patents etc.)?
• To which institutions can I turn for help?

This training is part of the STARTUP3 acceleration programme and is open to any SMEs willing to initiate re-think their strategy, and tackle IP in order to protect their solutions.

Registration is free of charge, but still mandatory. Hope to see you there and Happy holidays!

GATEKEEPER project launched an open call for startups, SMEs, midcaps, industry or research technology organisations active in AI and Big Data applications!

The open call aims to engage actively new technology members in it’s ecosystem supplying new AI and Big Data applications, tools or components which will be incorporated in the technology offering portfolio of GATEKEEPER to Pilots and Platform designers and developers.  The project duration lasts 12 months starting on March 2021.

The total Budget is 600.000€, with a maximum of 10 projects funded and the deadline is January 29^th 2021 at 5 pm CET.

The Open Call can be found here.

The webinar of the open call for potential applicants will take place on Wednesday 16th December 13:00-14:00 (CET). During the webinar, the Gatekeeper team will answer any questions you may have about the 1st Open call.

Webinar access details: 

URL: https://medtronic.zoom.us/j/96075354567?

GATEKEEPER is a European Multi Centric Large-Scale Pilot on Smart Living Environments, with main objective to enable the creation of a platform that connects healthcare providers, businesses, entrepreneurs, and elderly citizens and the communities they live in, for the origination of an open, trust-based arena for matching ideas, technologies, user needs and processes, aimed at ensuring healthier independent lives for the ageing populations. It’s scope is the application of advanced ICT to tackle the challenge of improving the quality of life of citizens, while demonstrating its significant efficiency gains in health and care delivery across Europe.

Apply before January 29^th, 2021

For more information, please visit GATEKEEPER on www.gatekeeper-project.eu, or follow them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Youtube.

Founded in 2017 by 4 space industry experts and image analysis gurus, Latitudo 40 has combined the 20 years of experience of the “aged” founders to the multidisciplinary and young team which has grown to over 10 people. The team has now artificial intelligence, machine learning, image processing experts, UIX specialists, and business development professionals. Our vision is to give easy access to satellite images for everyone. We bring together data and algorithms from multiple sources and provide straightforward information to understand our planet from above.

The EarthAlytics cloud platform developed by Latitudo40 provides quick and easy access to all the information contained in Copernicus and Commercial High-Resolution satellite images. The platform is based on three fundamental pillars, access to the satellite catalogues of the main suppliers (Airbus, Planet, Maxar), process automation, and the use of AI/ML algorithms to analyse and interpret the images and user-friendly dashboards. Latitudo40 offers vertical solutions in the precision agriculture sector, urban planning, and monitoring, smart infrastructures. 

The solution is characterised by a very simplified and intuitive customer journey, which allows access to the necessary monitoring information in just a few minutes. 

The platform is designed to be simply integrated into any IT infrastructure of our customers, thanks to standard connectors, already available and usable with a Zero Code approach.

“Innovation is part of our DNA and, in addition to developing product activities, we like to take on new challenges in the international arena”, said Gaetano Volpe, CEO of the Latitudo40. The Latitudo40 team has decided to participate in the CEF Digital Innovation Challenge to test itself with the integration of open solutions (context broker, eDelivery, and Blockchain) offered by the European Commission. 

They want to use open solutions as a tool to accelerate the development and scalability of the project. 

During the first Bootcamp phase, the solutions were validated, and a pitch with the Urban Analytics application was presented. 

They focused, among the available open solutions,  on ContextBroker  (to standardize the model of access to open data available in the municipalities and data lakes of our clients) and on Blockchain (to create a model of notarization of the information processed, to give greater transparency and reliability to our fully automated processing processes). Both challenges have been completed, they have started the process of fully integrating the solutions into the cloud platform. 

Latitudo40 was among the finalists, together with CleverBooks and OpenContent, bringing for the first time a remote sensing solution with blockchain integration. The final result saw Latitudo40 arrive second, behind CleverBooks, but with great satisfaction. 

The Digital Innovation Challenge allowed Latitudo40 to make their vision of easy access to remote sensing images as a tool to create sustainable and resilient cities known internationally and, above all, within the European Commission and CEF, through new applications that allow public decision-makers to make informed decisions.

Their roadmap is very clear; they launched the product for the precision farming sector a few months ago. Also, they are preparing to launch the platform for urban monitoring in early 2021, for which they already have over 10 letters of interest from major European cities. They want to contribute to environmental sustainability and the fight against climate change. These battles must start from cities, which already host more than half the world’s population.

Join the REACH Incubator to get up to €120K, and opportunity to work with leading corporations and their proprietary data!

First REACH Incubator Open Call is ready for applications

The REACH Incubator has a €3.5 Million fund to foster the creation of data value chains across Europe and is looking for 30 promising big data startups and SMEs to take part in its first round of incubation. 

REACH is an incubation programme, run by 10 core partners and 9 data providers. It will create a fertile ground for startups and SMEs to solve real-world challenges of large corporations and conduct experimentation of secured and trusted data-fuelled solutions which utilize proprietary, often multi-stakeholder, industrial and personal data.

The REACH Incubator provides the following benefits:

• Up to €120,000 in Equity Free Funding
• Access to Large Corporations and their Industrial data sets
• Access to Digital and Business Skills
• REACH toolbox for secure and trusted data value chains
• Big Data Computing Infrastructure
• Access to Private Investment
• Visibility

The programme takes startups through 4 intense stages of technical and business growth (EXPLORE, EXPERIMENT, EVOLVE and EXPOSE) over eleven months, and will go through 3 incubation rounds in its three-and-a-half-year project duration. Due to Covid-19, REACH will take all the precautionary safety measures and implement its incubation services online, whenever on-site meeting and trainings are not allowed.

How does it work?

Interested startups and SMEs have three ways of applying and participating in REACH Incubator.

THEME-DRIVEN (Track 1): REACH consortium has in collaboration with the 3 leading European Digital Innovation Hubs onboard defined the cross-sectorial Data Value Chain (DVC) themes to be tackled by participants. DVC themes available in the first open call are tourism & entertainment, energy, retail, healthcare & insurance, health, manufacturing/industry.

READY-MADE (Track 2): Applications will deal with challenges defined by the REACH Data Providers according to the needs detected in their market (JOT Internet Media, Migros Ticaret A.Ş., Sonae MC, Yapı Kredi Teknoloji, De Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie nv (VRT), Play&go experience, Idea75, Almerys, Biscay Government).

FREE CHOICE (Track 3): Applicants will devise novel DVCs by bringing their own data provider/s and/or their own datasets with those already facilitated within the REACH Data Catalogue. The applicant, a single SME, will apply together with their own Data Provider/s (at least one) proposing a joint challenge to be solved.

Are you ready for open innovation opportunity?

Apply before 15 February 2021

For more information, please visit REACH on www.reach-incubator.eu, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Reserve your place at the REACH Webinar to find out more

 December 16th, 13:00 CET

JOIN THE DAPSI PROGRAMME AND GET UP TO €150K, TECHNICAL & BUSINESS SUPPORT, AND
ACCESS TO TOP INFRASTRUCTURE!

The Data Portability and Services Incubator (DAPSI) is launching its second Open Call to distribute 2.1 Million Euros to internet innovators, empowering them to develop new solutions in the Data Portability field.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has the purpose of making significantly easier for citizens to have any data which is stored with one service provider transmitted directly to another provider. But in most cases, it is still difficult to do so.

DAPSI will support top-notch projects through a 9-month supporting programme where experts in diverse fields will provide a successful working methodology, access to top infrastructure, training in business and data related topics, coaching, mentoring, and a vibrant ecosystem. On top of that, each DAPSI project can receive grants up to €150k.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

In a two-phase supporting programme, the projects will develop advanced solutions in the Data Portability field, attend training sessions, pitch and access top infrastructures, with coaching support.Some of those projects will progress to the second phase where the solutions will be fostered to evolve into solid projects to gain enough traction for deployment and get ready for the market.

ABOUT DAPSI

The Data Portability and Services Incubator (DAPSI) is a EU funded project, under the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, to empower top internet innovators to develop human-centric solutions, addressing the challenge of personal data portability on the internet, as foreseen under the GDPR.

The project is operated by 6 partners: Zabala Innovation Consulting (Spain), F6S (Ireland), Cap Digital (France), IMT Starter (France), Fraunhofer IAIS (Germany), and Engineering (Italy).

Next Generation Internet (NGI) is an EU initiative that aims to shape the development of the Internet into an Internet of humans that responds to people’s fundamental needs, including trust, security and inclusion, and reflects the values and the norms that we enjoy in Europe.

€2.1 MILLION FUND AND SUPPORTING PROGRAMME TO
EMPOWER DATA PORTABILITY INNOVATORS

Apply before 20 January, 2021

For more information, please visit DAPSI on www.dapsi.ngi.eu, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

ITC – Innovation Technology Cluster and STARTUP3 Accelerator consortium virtually organized the Ecosystem Discovery Mission event in Slovenia on the November 12th, 2020. The webinar was divided into two parts, with a multi-stakeholder approach being formalized within the event, where we have the presence of SMEs, business support organisations, Universities, industry, and also public organisations.

The main objective was to allow participants to understand and “feel” the hosting ecosystem, learn about the processes to boost innovation in Slovenia, find out about the available resources and capacity to support the growth of SMEs’.

The first part was dedicated to take a deep look at the startup ecosystem in Slovenia, where some key players, who are coming from different support environments (private, university, and public) presented their initiatives and view on what is the best way to support the startup community. This included also presentations from Investor 1337 Works, which is included into the corporate pool of the project, and presentation from ArrowFast Medical Device Engineering, which is part of the big industry player in MedTech, Cosylab.

The second part of the webinar was dedicated to startup acceleration and pitching. Experts George Megas and Ornella Solari spoke about different opportunities for startups (financing and others) and coach them on how to properly sell their stories to the investors. The webinar was concluded by a pitching session, where 10 startups show their skills in pitching, while participants voted the best one. This small competition has been won by startup Fauna Smart Technologies, who was given a 5-day pass to the Hello Tomorrow Sumit and dedicated mentorship from ITC.

The pitching session was an introduction to the event organized by ITC on the 24^th of November 2020, where participants from Farm2Fork Hackathon will pitch to win awards. Anyone interested can still register and join the event.

The Venture Summit, EIT Food’s annual event for the entrepreneur community, returns this year as a virtual event!

The Venture Summit brings together rich network of startups, investors, EIT Food partners and other key stakeholders active in agrifood innovation.

After the huge success of Paris and Lisbon, the third edition of the Venture Summit is now 100% virtual – and it’s going to be the biggest yet.  

From the comfort of your own home, you can explore commercial partnerships and investment opportunities with 130+ high-impact startups through our online platform, and hear pitches from a select group of some of EIT Food’s leading entrepreneurs.

In the 3-D expo space, you’ll be immersed in a walkthrough marketplace which will capture the feel of a real event, allowing you to visit virtual startup stands and arrange individual meetings with founders to explore opportunities in:

Alternative Proteins
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable aquaculture
Digitalised traceability
Circular food systems
Targeted nutrition  

This is also a chance to learn about EIT Food flagship entrepreneurship programmes and meet other agritech leaders.

Take a look at last year’s edition

ITC – Innovation Technology Cluster and STARTUP3 Accelerator consortium virtually organize the Ecosystem Discovery Mission event in Slovenia on the November 12th, 2020.

The STARTUP3 Ecosystem Discovery Missions are a supporting tool/methodology to engage and connect startups/SMEs (from different ecosystems) allowing its participants to understand and “feel” the hosting ecosystem, learn the processes required to boost innovation, find out about the available resources, build relationships and expand their networks and capacity to support their SMEs’ growth.

In this webinar, the first part will be dedicated to taking a deep look at the startup ecosystem in Slovenia, where some key players, who are coming from different support environments (private, university, and public) will present their initiatives and view on what is the best way to support the startup community.

The second part of the webinar will be dedicated to startup acceleration and pitching. Experts/mentors will speak about different opportunities for startups (financing and others) and coach them on how to properly sell their stories to the investors. The webinar will be concluded by a pitching session, where startups will be able to show their skills in pitching, while participants will vote who is the best one and who will receive 1 on 1 mentorship from a STARTUP3 Consortium mentor.

The STARTUP3 Project announces the Top 10 Innovators! Over the next 6 months, teams from all over Europe will continue working hard to build the next great deep-tech startup!

STARTUP3 is proud to announce the 10 companies selected to participate in the 2^nd phase of the STARTUP3 Business and Growth Programme. They represent a group of founders and entrepreneurs addressing challenges across different deep-tech industries that have the potential to make a lasting impact in creating a more equitable and inclusive global influence.

Each of these 10 companies tackles systemic industry obstacles and embodies what it means to drive inclusive innovation. STARTUP3 is excited to see how they will continue their growth over the next 6 months of the programme and beyond.

More about 2^nd phase – MENTORING: IDEATION2PRODUCT

STARTUP3 is a mentorship-driven accelerator programme. During this phase, teams will be prepared to enter the last stage – Product2Market by submitting a valid and strong Executive Summary and through soft skills necessary for a successful business meeting. After this phase, the projects holding a major market potential will be invited to enter the last stage of the process.

Individuals from Europe, from startup founders to corporate and community leaders, have raised their hands offering to do whatever they can to help STARTUP3 companies succeed. Leaders in the deep-tech industries, such as NVIDIA, Symag by BNP Paribas, TMW, and 30 others have also taken note of STARTUP3’s efforts, and have signed on to mentor programme’s incoming teams and support innovators.

A virtual accelerator is not a lesser, or less valuable, accelerator. It provides the ability to embrace the constraints to innovate, being globally inclusive with mentors, investors, and interesting new technologies. Stay tuned for more from the STARTUP3 Innovators!

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”  – Steve Jobs, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO, Apple

The first STARTUP3 Pitch Stop was a 3-day event organised from September 16th till 18^th – designed to gather the 25 deep-tech Best potentials from the STARTUP3 Open Call. The event was divided into 4 sessions; all sessions had started with an opening welcome speech by Clémence Castell from Pole SCS, Project Coordinator, and Jean-Luc Fretard from HOLA-UP Startup Studio, providing an overview of the STARTUP3 Project and its activities to all of the Pitch Stop participants.

The introduction was followed by a session where all STARTUP3 Innovators from the Open Call had an opportunity to introduce themselves and their solutions with 5-minute pitch presentations. The Innovators’ pitches were followed by a Q&A session between STARTUP3 Corporate Pool members and the Pitch Stop participants, which led to fruitful discussions and useful conclusions on the topics relevant to STARTUP3 Innovators.

During the Q&A sessions, members of the Corporate Pool had an opportunity to ask questions about products and services developed by innovators. This is one of the key aspects of the Pitch Stop since it provided the innovators with a rare opportunity to meet their potential investors and collaborators considering their geographical distribution, facilitating quality networking, and raising the potential for new business deals and ventures.

Finally, jury members composed of the Corporate Pool members as well as of the Consortium Partners, gave a final assessment to all innovators present. The best 10 innovators are selected! They will be part of the 6-month long growth training and mentorship. Teams will be prepared to enter the last stage – Product2Market by submitting a valid and strong Executive Summary and through soft skills necessary for a successful business meeting. After this phase, the projects holding a major market potential will be invited to enter the last stage of the process.