The resulting STARTUP SCALEUP ecosystem has contributed to achieve the expected impact of Topic ICT-13-2014 as follows:
1.Implementation of the Startup Europe Initiative. STARTUP SCALEUP online platform has been connected with the Startup Europe EU initiative publishing the different actions launched within Startup Europe and stimulating the ecosystem member´s participation related to skills and education, access to talent, access to capital, leadership and support to make starting up a company faster and cheaper anywhere in Europe. With this action, we have pursuit to “contribute to shaping future web entrepreneurship specific policies, in particular for the implementation of Startup Europe initiative”.
2. Creation of a new innovative environment. STARTUP SCALEUP ecosystem goes beyond existing technologies and applications, stimulating the development of the necessary pre-conditions for collaborative innovation amongst the four hubs. STARTUP SCALEUP provides, for talented European entrepreneurs, “a new innovative environment including services that will help web entrepreneurs in their process of starting up their start-ups” . Theses services will include (1) scaling up business viability, (2) scaling up technical feasibility, (3) scaling up investor attraction, (4) scaling up the international market, (5) a pan-European Acceleration Program and (6) stimulating community discussion and idea development.
3. Development of a pan-European ecosystem with global impact. A pan-European acceleration program will be developed to facilitate the successful development of new businesses that are able to take full advantage of the app economy. It will help promising web startups to efficiently launch and scale up their operations across Europe. Communication links will be established with the remaining participants in the other projects funded by the ICT13-2014 and the Commission to coordinate activities and disseminate the Open Calls scheduled for the STARTUP-SCALEUP acceleration program. It will “contribute, together with other relevant initiatives of the Commission, to a positive impact across the continuum of actors for entrepreneurship”.
A number of key performance indicators (KPIs) have been captured to monitorise the STARTUP SCALEUP’s impact and enable effective management of the progress towards goals. These indicators and metrics provide a high level of feedback of the ecosystem impact and critical information about its future sustainability through its commercial exploitation. The information has also served to improve and validate the developed acceleration program, as well as the online platform, internal procedures and content. The main KPIs are:
Number of incubators/accelerators and HUBs participating during the acceleration program organized by the ecosystem: 4 (1st year), 4 (2nd year)
Number of applications submitted to the acceleration program: 175 (1st round), 364 (2nd round)
Number of countries involved regarding applications: 30 (1st round) , 47(2nd round)
Number of start-ups running in the acceleration program: 50 (1st round), 82 (2nd round)
Number of countries involved regarding startups: 17 (1st round) , 23(2nd round)
Number of business angels involved in the ecosystem: 26 (1st round), 36(2nd round)
Number of Venture Capital groups and Business Angels Networks involved in the ecosystem: 11 (1st round), 26(2nd round)
Number of mentors involved in the ecosystem: 57(1st round), 72(2nd round)
