“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.