PROJECT FINAL REPORT
Grant Agreement number: 632858
Project acronym: SpeedUp_Europe
Project title: Speed UP! Europe
Funding Scheme:
Period covered: from 01.06.2014 to 31.05.2016
Name of the scientific representative of the project's co‐ordinator, Title and Organisation:
Glocal Consult e.K., Stefan Stengel, Managing Director
Tel: +49 172 400 5 333
Fax:
E‐mail: [email protected]
Project website address: http://www.speedupeurope.eu
SpeedUP! Europe FP7-632858
F7.3 Final Report
©SpeedUP! Europe
Version v1.0 Date: 14 October 2016 2
1. Final publishable summary REPORT ....................................................................................................... 3
1.1 General overview of the project / accelerator program .................................................................. 3
1.1.1 Total budget, budget spent on subgrantees ............................................................................... 4
1.1.2 Companies, average grant values, target areas, verticals, Program ........................................... 5
1.2 Major achievements by the sub‐grantees ........................................................................................ 6
1.2.1 Investment ................................................................................................................................... 6
1.2.2 Partnerships ................................................................................................................................. 7
1.2.3 Some testimonials ....................................................................................................................... 7
1.3 Key support activities ....................................................................................................................... 9
1.4 Major traction from startups ......................................................................................................... 10
1.4.1 Income ....................................................................................................................................... 10
1.4.2 Job creation ‐ Growth ................................................................................................................ 10
1.4.3 SME foundation ......................................................................................................................... 11
1.5 Results of selecting various batches of startups ............................................................................ 11
1.6 Continuation of the program ......................................................................................................... 11
1.7 Return on Investment (ROI) of the program .................................................................................. 12
1.8 Lessons learned .............................................................................................................................. 12
1. FINAL PUBLISHABLE SUMMARY REPORT
1.1 General overview of the project / accelerator program
FIWARE technologies are simple yet powerful set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that ease the development of Smart Applications in multiple vertical sectors. The specifications of these APIs are public and royalty‐free and the implementation of each of the FIWARE components is publicly available so that using these technologies to implement its future internet product results in fast and cost‐effective delivery. SpeedUp! Europe is a disruptive end‐to‐end acceleration and support programme targeting entrepreneurs making use of FIWARE technologies in the Agri‐food, Smart Cities and Cleantech domains. SpeedUP! Europe covers the entire entrepreneurial journey from idea inception to prototype development and public‐private funding and uses the lean startup methodology in its processes.
Figure 1: Speed Up Europe Project Concept
The project is supported by a combination of virtual tools (online platform for matchmaking, idea generation and call management) and a series of physical workshops organized across Europe, where entrepreneurs are trained, can meet, grow their ideas, develop their product and receive feedback from customer, partners and investors.
SpeedUP Europe launched an open call to attract and select the best projects to join its acceleration programme. 96 teams have joined the programme in February 2015 and 82 teams succeeded to make it to the end of the programme in October 2015. Customised support services were provided at each of the milestones to get the teams to the next level.
The acceleration programme and therefore the implementation of the selected projects was divided in 3 periods of 3 months each during which the teams were receiving besides funding, business and technical support. A milestone was to be achieved at the end of each period: Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the first period, Custom Market Fit for the second period and Growth ready for the last period. At each milestone, the projects were evaluated to define if they perform well and have successfully achieved the ongoing milestone and can therefore start the next period and continue receiving funding and support or drop out from the programme.
Figure 1: Project Simplified Timeline and Relationship to Milestone
1.1.1 Total budget, budget spent on subgrantees
Programme name: SpeedUP! Europe
Coordinator: Glocal Consult (DE)
Total budget: 6.900.000 € from which 5.500.000 were available to be allocated for subgrants
Final amount approved as subgrants: 5.172.789,53 €
When they applied, the teams presented a budget with maximum initial funding of 50.000 Euros. The total initial requested funding by the 96 selected teams joining the programme is 4.750.923,57 €.
In addition to the initial requested budget, the best performing teams could apply for an additional funding of Maximum 20.000 € after the first milestone. 22 teams were allocated additional budget (on top of their initial budget) and the total additional budget allocated to the 22 teams was 414.550 €.
Finally, SpeedUP! Europe envisaged since the beginning to award its best teams at the end of the acceleration programme with a total amount of 500.000 € to divide into 5 prizes for 5 teams.
The maximum budget a team could get was therefore 70.000 € plus eventually an award (prizes of 200.000 € for #1, 125.000 € for #2, 75.000 € for #3 and 50.000 € for #4 and #5).
The total budget initially allocated to the subgrantees is therefore 5.665.473,57 €.
The SpeedUP! Europe grant scheme is based on costs incurred so the teams could receive the costs incurred up to their budget. The final amount spent on subgrantees is lower than the budget and splits as follow:
Budget allocated Final approved grants
Regular grants 4 750 923,57 4 293 041,14
Additional grants 414 550,00 379 748,39
Awards 500 000,00 500 000,00
Total 5 665 473,57 5 172 789,53
In total, 856 financial statements were checked during the SpeedUP! Europe project, requiring each to check the compatibility with the related budget, the supporting documents before calculating the amount
to pay to the teams. The final total approved grant amount (Regular grants + Additional grants + Awards) is 5.172.789,53 €.
1.1.2 Companies, average grant values, target areas, verticals, Program
SpeedUP Europe subgrantees have to be in one of the 3 targeted domains: Agri‐food, Smart Cities or Cleantech. The repartition of the 96 teams per domain is provided in the following figure:
Figure 3: Repartition of the Subgrantees per domain
The split of subgrantees per country is provided in the following figure:
Figure 4: Repartition of the Subgrantees per country
In SpeedUP! Europe, the teams are composed by minimum 3 team members and maximum 5 team members. Many of these teams were international teams with members from several countries. The graphic below gives the origin of the team members:
Figure 5: Origin of the team members of the SpeedUP! Europe teams
The total grants amount received by country is provided in the following figure:
Figure 6: Total grant amount per country
1.2 Major achievements by the sub‐grantees
1.2.1 Investment
During the project, there has been a strong focus on providing the appropriate support for the teams in SpeedUP! Europe. This has made the teams able to reach high achievements.
Achievements by SpeedUP! Europe teams are on several sides: Private investment side, Additional public funding received, Additional funding received via crowdfunding, Awards and prizes as well as positioning of the teams within the FIWARE ecosystem, What the teams tell us (Testimonials).
As we will see below, 31 teams have benefitted from additional funding from different ranges and different sources. Many other teams have got awards or highlighted for a reason or another. In total, SpeedUP! Europe teams have raised or won at least 7.547.000 €.
PRIVATE INVESTMENT
16 SpeedUP! Europe teams have reported that they received additional private funding ranging from 100.000 € to 1.4 Million €. Some of these teams did not disclose the amount received and the total disclosed amount is 6.930.000 €. There might be additional investments we are not aware of.
PUBLIC FUNDING
450.000 Euros have been won by 13 teams in the form of acceleration programs, EU grants, grants from other accelerators or awards ranging from 5‐100K and
CROWDFUNDING
Another 167.000 Euros were raised via 3 Crowdfunding campaigns by 2 SpeedUP! Europe teams.
AWARDS and PRIZES
Several teams have been awarded without cash money prize:
Toursnapp selected as one of the 10 most promising early stage start‐ups by WELCOME project and
awarded EU Roadshow and Silicon valley startup School
Toursnapp featured in Mastercard/IE report "High value city tourism European city destinations ‐
global markets"
OEEX, part of the FIWARE VIP programme pitched in Milan, joined the Axel Springer acceleration
programme (Adlershof Accelerator Programme A2)
OEEX award the Young Innovator Award at the European Utility Week in Vienna
6 success stories highlighted by FIWARE out of total 85 are from SpeedUP! Europe
Among 15 startups selected for the FIWARE VIP Programme, 3 are from SpeedUP! Europe and have
benefitted from additional training.
1.2.2 Partnerships
Start‐up/project Event Where? Date
xMinutes (Datenfreunde.de)
Google, Publisher xMinutes is a publishing platform that’s able to present media content to users – based on certain information on their locations, motions, interests and the current moments: The right news, at the right time, at the right place. The content will be personalized in the right shape.
http://xminutes.net/cooperations
ParcelLab Astro‐Shop, reBuy.de, Electronic‐Star, Eyeglass24, Garten & Freizeitrunmarkt
Key‐Accounts from ParcelLab https://parcellab.com/unternehmen.html
Fashion Cloud 50 international brands
http://fashion.cloud/en/brand
Sponsoo Jung v. Matt Partnership with the biggest Marketing‐Agency in Germany
http://www.hamburg‐startups.net/sponsoo‐geht‐partnerschaft‐mit‐jung‐von‐mattsports‐ein/
benteck gmbh Hightech Gründerfond
benteck get funding from the Hightech Gründerfond
http://high‐tech‐gruenderfonds.de/de/bentekk‐gmbh‐erhaelt‐seed‐finanzierung‐zur‐markterschliessung‐mit‐gasmesstechnik/
swop‐it Kaufland swop‐it get a partnership with Kaufland, one of the biggest food dealer in Germany
http://www.swop‐it.org/partner
1.2.3 Some testimonials
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Testimonial Sponsoo
Sponsoo was founded in August 2014 with a vision to help the 90,000 sports clubs and millions of sports people in Germany by providing access to the professional sport sponsorship market.
„Our two biggest milestones are the official launch of our website https://www.sponsoo.de in January 2015, and winning Germany’s leading sports marketing agency Jung von Matt/sports as a shareholder in November 2015.
We were just about to launch the first official version of our website, when we applied for SUE. The proposal to get €50,000 in cash, free coaching and mentoring, and cheap office space made the decision to apply relatively easy.
SUE was a major step forward for us as it provided the funding, the infrastructure (office) and the mentoring to take us from the concept stage to making our first revenues.
The most important outcome of our participation, however is that we have won funding that helped us scale our business. We also found one of the investors in our upcoming seed round at a SpeedUp! Europe event. Finally, we met a lot of friendly entrepreneurs, such as the guys from Fashion Cloud, with whom we’re now sharing an office in the Hafencity in Hamburg.“
Testimonial FASHION CLOUD
Look Local is a startup from Hamburg, Germany founded in March 2015 that enables the exchange of digital content for the fashion industry with its FASHION CLOUD. The focus is on product pictures and descriptions, logos, videos and marketing material.
„We needed a way to get our first money in order to work full time on our idea. That’s why we applied to SUE. When we got accepted into SUE, we all quit our full time jobs and officially founded the company. Due to the support of the program and the fact that we were working 100% for the new company, we managed to get much more traction and found the first two investors.
SpeedUP! Europe has allowed Look Local to fully validate Fashion Cloud in the market, collecting feedback from retailers, manufacturers and stakeholders, establishing new partnerships as well as raising seed round. Finally, the prize money was important for our company’s progress: product development, hiring employees
We would not be where we are today without SUE. In fact, it is very likely that we would have never had the chance to quit our jobs and work on anything full time and our company might not exist today. For that we are very grateful.“
Parcellab:
ParcelLab monitors parcel shipments for online shops, enabling them to ensure customer satisfaction even in case of delivery issues. This is an unsolved problem for online shops worldwide.
“From the very beginning it was just an idea drafted as a concept for implementation. Then we developed a business model and a market entry strategy.
When we started in the SUE program back in February 2015, it was mostly out of 3 reasons: To get EU funding with no share dilution or payback, to be part of a technology focused program and not at least to join a big community of like‐minded startups. Around that period, a lot of great things happened. We started to build up the team, designing and validating the business model, got our first pilot customers and implemented roll‐out. With the funding from SUE, we could quit our jobs and focus 100% on building our startup.” Agricolus Agricolus aims to provide a complete system for managing pesticide and growth treatments for agricultural crops.
“We were starting to look at agriculture as a market in 2011 and SUE was the first program we applied for with the purpose of developing our Agricolus platform. Since our plan was to develop products for the agricultural sector, the SUE project fitted very well with what we wanted to do and we liked the concept of SUE.
One of the outcomes from participating in SUE is, that we have changed our approach towards starting with bringing the product to market module by module to end up with the final product, instead of trying to develop and market the entire solution in one step. In general, our participation has made us use the lean approach in all aspects of how we work. This has made us more efficient and has been really valuable. Thus, we have hired 5 more people, we have strengthened the relationship with very important partners, for example agricultural cooperatives, our local agricultural university, and we are cooperating closely with agricultural advisors. We expect to hire five more people in the next two years. In general we have a good market pull.”
Tactics Tactics has developed a system for real time analysis of fuel consumption of the tractor–implement system with the aim of reducing fuel consumption without affecting tillage quality.
“We decided to apply for SUE mainly due to funding, but also since SUE fitted well with our idea and EU strategy for farming tech development. At that stage, we had a prototype tested in university, so we felt ready to take the next step. From having an idea from university research and a prototype, we made step by step iterations in every milestone, which was needed to progress to the next round. At the end, we actually had a ready product for the farmer, our target group.
One of the highlights of the program was all the possibilities in the hub in Denmark. I felt very privileged with our coach and supervisor who helped us refine our targeting, told us who to speak with, PR etc. Of course we had the business plan, but he had the experience to help us refine it. Moreover, following the milestones and meeting the other teams in Hamburg and exchange ideas was great too. It was people from all over the world not just Greece or Europe”
1.3 Key support activities
SpeedUP! Europe has provided a big range of support activities both before the acceleration programme started and after the teams have joined the programme.
• Virtual platform: A virtual platform was made available since the beginning of the project allowing anyone interested to publish his idea and team with view to matchmaking and finding missing team members or support. The platform allowed also to collect progress reports from the teams and served as a forum between the teams, the teams and their coaches;
• Matchmaking: In its first step, the programme matched web‐entrepreneurs across Europe based on their project ideas and skills via a dedicated online platform, in order to support early stage entrepreneurs who may not have a full team in place. In a first step online and later bringing these people together at a big number of events and workshops for matchmaking purpose;
• Open Calls: the programme launched a call for proposals, received 183 applications which were evaluated. 107 teams were invited for negotiations to enter into grant agreements. 96 actually signed their grant agreements and could join the acceleration programme, receive funding as well as technical and business support; the proposals made use of the FIWARE generic enablers software library and framework components. 91 passed to the second milestone and 82 teams successfully reached the end of the process (achieving their last milestone). 22 best performing teams were allocated an additional funding after the completion of the first milestone. Five finalists won awards, a total amount of 500.000 EUR in addition to the regular grants from which all the teams have profited, with a total sunbranting amount of 5.172.789,53 EUR;
• Coaching: Coaching and mentoring have been an important component for the success of SpeedUP! Europe acceleration programme. The basic concept and the philosophy behind SpeedUP! Europe is to provide the necessary know how to the teams through a very close collaboration between coaches and the teams. SpeedUP! Europe with no less than 35 coaches to support its startups and provided more than 30 individual coaching hours per team during the 9 months of the programme, with almost a coaching session every week;
• Mentoring / Training: the programme provided training workshops across Europe on FIWARE technologies and more generally, entrepreneurial topics such a lean startup, agile software development, business planning, funding strategies; the program provided community building and networking opportunities between web‐entrepreneurs and industrials, supporting the creation of FIWARE technology clusters; the programme catalysed the development of innovative prototypes in “developer camps” and “prototyping week” events; the programme allocated 130 mentors to the teams selected in the open call.
• Physical hubs: Moreover, the programme established 4 physical hubs in Hamburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Amsterdam allowing the selected teams to work closely with their coaches and to find support when needed either from the coaches or from peers;
• Crowdfunding: the programme encouraged entrepreneurs to access various crowdfunding platforms and provided training to entrepreneurs on how to successfully leverage crowdfunding tools. 3 crowdfunding campaigns were successfully conducted with a total amount raised of 167.000 €;
• Access to other EU financing & Other public funding: the programme also provided support to submit proposals to other EU financing instruments in Horizon 2020 ICT Work Programme (Open Disruptive Innovation, Fast Track to Innovation) and the COSME program, in order to further fund the development of their projects. 2 teams made successful SME Instrument phase 1 proposals. In total
450.000 EUR won by 13 distinct teams in the form of acceleration programs, EU grants, grants from other accelerators or awards ranging from 5‐100K.;
• Access to Risk‐Finance: the programme raised awareness among the teams about pitching to investors and support was provided to prepare their pitch and train them on understanding the investor landscape and fund raising journey. Furthermore, the programme supported entrepreneurs mature enough to seek business angel or venture‐capital, by inviting them to present at selected venture‐capital events. As a result, 16 teams raised private funding ranging from 100.000 EUR to 1.400.000 EUR for a total amount exceeding 6.930.000 €;
• Dissemination: the project reached out to multiple entrepreneurial communities and organized events with broad coverage, including to facilitating the European Conference on Future Internet and Entrepreneurship Summit. It supported the FIWARE ecosystem accessing to high level conferences such as CEBIT, Metropolitan Solutions Conference, etc.
1.4 Major traction from startups
Success of SpeedUP! Europe teams can be quantified through several indexes measured via different means:
1.4.1 Income
Given the high number of teams supported by SpeedUP! Europe, it was not possible to monitor the income generated by the teams. We estimate that more than 70% of the supported projects are still live and making business at different levels.
1.4.2 Job creation ‐ Growth
Based on the lean methodology, the SpeedUP! Europe programme focuses on supporting the most successful companies and makes sure non‐successful companies are able to Fail Fast, Fail Early. The high‐growth companies will create most jobs and have the most impact. Therefore, the SUE program started with 96 teams and after 3 months and 6 months only the best teams were able to go to the next phase. Only the best 30 teams were allowed to pitch in the final to win the prize money.
A monitoring of 34 well performing projects, we can compare the total teams size at the beginning of the project and at the end. We can see that the size of these teams has increased from 138 to 252 and therefore we can conclude that these 34 projects created 114 jobs.
Figure 7: Total size of SpeedUP! Europe teams
From the survey made at the end of the project which got 36 replies, we concluded that 39% of companies continue to operate on a smaller scale (mostly 1‐2 people) or stopped completely. 22% of teams were at the end of the program the same size as when they started and continue doing business. The remaining 39% of the successful companies created the most additional jobs. Not only were they able to continue
with the team they built to start in the accelerator, they also were able to hire more people and on average they grew their company with 75%.
1.4.3 SME foundation
Based on a monitoring of the status of the projects funded by SpeedUP! Europe, we can conclude that SpeedUP! Europe has allowed the creation of 21 SMEs. Indeed, there were 44 SMEs at the beginning of the programme and 65 by the end of the project.
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Figure 8: Status of SpeedUP! Europe projects at start and end of the programme
1.5 Results of selecting various batches of startups
SpeedUP! Europe has launched a single open call, selected and invited 107 projects to sign their grant agreements and join the acceleration programme. 96 have signed their grant agreement and started their acceleration. The profiles of these projects can be viewed at the SpeedUP! Europe website: http://speedupeurope.eu .
1.6 Continuation of the program
Several tools and methods were used in the SUE project, which could be relevant in other acceleration projects: flirt camps were carried out, workshops carried out in the different hubs, Monitoring the general progress of the teams using Apptual, Use of milestones during the project, additional funding and extra awards which are motivating, the extensive use of coaches , use of the Lean Start Up approach combined with the milestones ad many others.
Several partners will integrate the learnings from SpeedUP! Europe in their normal activities.
Agro Business Park for instance is part of a newly started project, KATANA, which started on July 1st, 2016. The coordinator of the project is bwcon from Stuttgart and several others of the partners have been involved in the other FIWARE accelerators including FI – Adopt and FRACTALS. The KATANA project will also use the Lean Start Up approach and use coaches and knowledge transfer on business development, social media, crowd funding to the teams, based on the principles in SUE.
Furthermore, the coordinator of SpeedUP! Europe, Glocal Consult is in dialogue with various groups and organisations in Germany in order to establish a successor for SpeedUP! Europe. Glocal Consult is located in the north of Germany and here potential projects are under discussions. First, there is a consortium with a technology centre in Hamburg working on establishing an accelerator and SpeedUP! Europe is part of this dialogue. The accelerator will focus on hardware and has a duration of 30 months. 10 start‐ups will be supervised in one group and the potential funding source is a support program of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg from ERDF funds and by a private investor.
A second project is also being under preparation in Schleswig‐Holstein, which is also a location for Glocal Consult. The regional government in Schleswig Holstein has set up an accelerator program with great interest and support. Negotiations are currently undergoing with the State and directly with the Minister of
Economic Affairs of Schleswig‐Holstein. The subgrants amount will be similar to SpeedUP! Europe with 50,000 € available per team. The aim of this project is to fund 15 teams per year. Negotiations are currently ongoing with partners such as the state of Schleswig‐Holstein, the Chamber of Commerce and various business developers. The project concept is shown in the figure below.
Figure 9: The concept of the new Accelerator in Schleswig ‐ Holstein
The processes in the project will be similar to Speedup! Europe. 15 teams are to be processed per year in 4 batches, which means 3 to 5 teams in one batch. Glocal Consult talks with the Government about a funding program for the start ups. A second alternative is to build up an private equity fund. This program will also be relevant to digital startups and FIWARE technology will also be implemented. A network of HUBs will be also integrated in the project. The partners in SpeedUP! Europe have allowed the usage of the SpeedUP! Europe name for the project.
1.7 Return on Investment (ROI) of the program
We will calculate the ROI as ROI= (Gain from Investment ‐ Cost of Investment)/Cost of Investment.
‐ Gain from Investment: We will only take into consideration the additional funding raised by the SpeedUP! Europe startups as the gain from investment. We could have also included other gains such as revenues directly generated by the startups or societal benefits but revenues were difficult to assess. As estimated above, SpeedUP! Europe startups raised 7.547.000 € as private investments as well as additional public funding or prizes.
‐ Cost of Investment: The total funding requested from the European Commission(subgrants + costs related to the consortium efforts and expenses). The total EC Contribution requested by SpeedUP! Europe amounts to 6.800.831,37
ROI= (7.547.000 – 6.800.831,37)/6.800.831,37=10.97%
1.8 Lessons learned
The SpeedUP! Europe accelerator has proven its worth as an accelerator in several aspects and a major output for the partners are many valuable learnings for new similar projects. Some key learnings, identified by the partners are listed below.
If possible, arrange a meeting (and possibly a more in‐depth personality test) with the entire team
as part of the selection process to get a first impression of the personalities of the team members,
whereas they are able to explore if the team members show entrepreneurial characteristics and
persuasiveness.
Coach support was very valuable for all teams who had a good coach assigned and had a strong
impact on the growth of the companies. Flexibility of changing a coach is therefore important if
teams and coaches want to change during the program. Therefore assess early the satisfaction of
each team with their coach and replace if necessary.
The compilation of teams has been very successful, going from individual talents to team players.
If possible, the different teams should be started gradually and not at the same time.
Teams, working full‐time on their projects, are more successful.
It can be difficult to provide adequate service and support to a large number of teams working in
parallel in a relatively compact project period.
Extensive workshops and lectures are important for the networking between the teams and
ensuring common understanding of relevant issues. However, survey the teams in advance about
the type of the workshops they need and/or are interested in.
A shared workspace is important for the networking and community building.
When planning a project, it is very important to select a granting scheme, which is easy and
administrable for the project consortium, since regular payments based on costs can be very time
consuming.
A grant paid without risk for the teams is very attractive and effective.
The possibility to get additional funding after milestones during the project is also very motivating
to the teams.
The lean startup method is very successful to support teams to find a functioning business model in
a very short time. In the SpeedUP! Europe case, the teams had only 3 month time to find a business
model and the teams had to validate their ideas and models in this short time. The lean startup
method helps the teams to validate the idea and the business model. It is very important to talk
with potential customers. Make interviews about the needs and wishes of future users or
customers.
Make sure that evaluation criteria keep as many teams motivated in all phases, by evaluating every
phase individually.
SpeedUP! Europe FP7-632858
F7.3 Final Report
©SpeedUP! Europe
Version v1.0 Date: 14 October 2016 14
