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Final Publishable Summary Report FI-C3-040-V1.0
© FI-C3 consortium 2016 Page 1 of 13
PROJECT FINAL REPORT
FINAL PUBLISHABLE SUMMARY REPORT
Grant Agreement number: 632738
Project acronym: FI-C3
Project title: Future Internet Connected Content inCubator
Funding Scheme: CP-CSA
Date of latest version of Annex I against which the assessment will be made: 4 Feb 2016
Period covered: from 1st Sept 2014 to 31 Aug 2016
Name, title and organisation of the scientific representative of the project's coordinator:
Gaël MAUGIS
Images & Réseaux
Tel: +33 2 57 19 94 41
E-mail: [email protected]
Project website address: http://www.fic3.eu/
Doc number : FI-C3-040-V1.0
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FINAL PUBLISHABLE SUMMARY REPORT
1 General overview of the project
FI-C3 is an accelerator of the FI-PPP Programme-phase 3 (http://www.fi-ware.org/fiware-accelerator-
programme/). The FI-PPP programme follows an industry-driven, holistic approach encompassing R&D on
network and communication infrastructures, devices, software, service and media technologies. In parallel, it
promotes their experimentation and validation in real application contexts, bringing together demand and
supply and involving users early in the research lifecycle. The FI-PPP phase 3 accelerators aim to promote
the creation of innovative products and services making use of the technology developed within phases 1 and
2 of the programme and known as the FIWARE technology.
Within FI-PPP phase 3, the goal of FI-C3 was to implement an incubator for innovative products/services
proposed by SMEs or individual entrepreneurs in the domains of Smart Territories, Media & Contents
and Care & Well-being. Each project selected received a sub-grant from FI-C3 and was offered
personalised assistance in the initial phase of bringing their technology to the market through business
modelling and customer development workshops, one-on-one business coaching, high-level advice from
potential stakeholders and Living Lab support.
The overall FI-C3 budget was 5.7 M€ out of which 4.56 M€ have been spent on sub-grantees.
40 projects have been selected through 2 open-calls (respective deadlines for proposals were: 30 Nov 2014
and 30 June 2015).
In the first call 228 proposals were submitted from 23 European countries (refer to Figure 1), among which
12 have been selected.
Figure 1 - Geographical distribution of submitted proposals in Call 1
In the second call, among the 352 submitted proposals, 30 European countries were represented (refer to
Figure 2).
Figure 2 - Geographical distribution of submitted proposals in Call 2
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The distribution of the submitted proposals regarding the addressed domain is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3 – Distribution of proposals per addressed domain(s)
The average budget of selected projects was 114 k€ (refer to Figure 4).
Budget
granted
Number
of
projects
Average amount
/sub-grantee
Average
duration
(months)
Call 1 1 594 203 € 12 132 850 € 11,75
Call 2 2 965 797 € 28 105 921 € 9
Call 1+ Call 2 4 560 000 € 40 114 000 € 9,8
Figure 4 – Average budget and duration per project
The SMEs running those projects were from 14 countries (see Figure 4).
Call 1 Call 2
Austria 1 1 3%
Belgium 5 2 7 18%
Denmark 1 1 3%
Estonia 1 1 3%
France 1 2 3 8%
Germany 1 1 3%
Greece 1 1 3%
Hungary 1 1 3%
Italy 1 1 2 5%
Ireland 2 2 5%
Israel 2 2 5%
Netherlands 1 1 3%
Spain 4 10 14 35%
United Kingdom 1 2 3 8%
Total 12 28 40 100%
Total
Figure 5 – Geographical distribution of selected projects
Out of the 40 projects selected in the accelerator, ca 36 have already reached a status where their
product/service is available in commercial conditions or for experimentation to customers. 4 FI-C3 projects
have been promoted into the FIWARE success story portfolio. 3 projects have also been selected to be
part of the VIP programme (out of 15 in total).
YMLP
CONSEIL
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2 Major achievements by the subgrantees
Technology
All projects have integrated the FIWARE technology. The list of used FIWARE generic enablers is given
below. Unsurprisingly, the ORION Context broker, being at the heart of the FIWARE architecture has been
the mostly used one, followed by enablers from the security chapter.
IDM-KeyRock
PEP Proxy-Wilma
AuthZ-AuthPDP
Object Storage
Kurento
2D-UI
MIWI-AR
POI data provider
GIS data provider
Mashup-Wirecloud
Wstore
CEPHEUS
IDAS
Orion Pub Sub
Proton CEP
COSMOS
PERSEO CEP
SpagoBi
In addition to these Generic enablers, specific enablers from FI-Content and FI-Star have been used, in-line
with the thematic positioning of FI-C3:
FI-Content: FI-Star:
OpenCity Database,
Social network enabler,
Text2speech,
Gamification,
Context Aware Recommender
Health questionnaire,
EHR-EN,
Privacy SE
Startup creation
One third of the 40 SMEs supported by FI-C3, (7 in Call 1, 6 in Call 2), were newly created startups
(less than one year) or were created specifically to take part to the accelerator .
Official recognitions
AlzhUp: http://www.alzhup.com/Reta/en/ , Zebra-Academy: http://www.zebra-telemedicine.com/,
EverImpact: http://www.everimpact.org/news/, have been selected in the VIP Programme.,
Market readiness
Out of the 40 projects that were selected to take part in FI-C3:
18 have a product or service now on the market at commercial conditions (although this does not
mean they make money at this stage). In most of the cases those products or services are available
for the general public,
16 are performing beta tests or experiments with customers: in several cases this is due to the
nature of the service (for instance a medical device still under test within hospital).
Downloadable products
Examples of products can be found hereafter :
Videona : the Video Editor is already available for downloading :
http://corporate.videona.com/ (both from AppStore and from Googleplay :
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.videonasocialmedia.videona&referrer=ut
m_source%3DWeb_Eng%26utm_medium%3DLink_Directo%26utm_campaign%3DVideon
a
NEVEO has 2 commercial products to keep social/family link with elder peoples
http://www.myneveo.com/
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AlzhUp : the Beta version is available. The service will be opened to public in Jan 2017 :
http://www.alzhup.com/Reta/en/
In July 2016 CartSkill launched an online fashion store in Facebook Messenger
for Monton, an apparel brand with close to 100 stores across several countries. The launch
of the Messenger store received coverage in AdExchanger, a premier US advertising and
marketing news portal http://adexchanger.com/social-media/apparel-brand-monton-taps-
chatbot-facebook-messenger/ and ArcticStartup, the leading startup news site in the
Nordics http://arcticstartup.com/article/cartskill-messenger-shop/
The Sofasession webportal http://www.sofasession.com/ is online since the
beginning of FI-C3 project and has by the end of the project more than 6000 active
musicians are users of jam sessions. They have commercial partnerships with 2 music
schools and they do continuous marketing. Field test has been done with the new live jam
features.
Presently Kissmyshoe https://kissmyshoe.com/ works with more than 35
independent stores. Since January 2016, 2500 downloads of the App enabled Kissmyshoe
to propose a new App version every two weeks (the social network Facebook is one used).
Since the beginning of the FI-C3 project VeloCarrier
http://www.velocarrier.de/ has been a successful running commercial service
starting their business in the German town Tübingen. During the project they have
expanded to Giessen, Esslingen, Würzburg, Stuttgart, Ulm and Neu-Ulm und
Bochum.
The Oblumi tapp http://www.oblumi.com/fr/#top can be bought by e-commerce
from several European ountries (price 49.90 €, the app is free).
FI-C3 facilitated the Fuseami company https://fuseami.com/ to spin out from the
research institution TSSG with 3 employees. It supported the company to continue the
development of its smarter networking and conference app and allowed the company to run
an extensive period of live trials, supporting major international conferences. The fuseami
app has been adopted by such prestigious organisations as: IEEE, PMI, Enterprise Ireland,
Dublin Chamber of Commerce, European Patent Office and the European Commission.
The app has been the official app at such conferences as: IEEE GLOBECOM2015 in San Diego, ICT2015
Conference in Lisbon, PMI Annual Conference in Israel, the Innovation Showcase in December 2015 in the
Dublin convention centre and the Patent Information Conference by the European Patent Office in Madrid
November 2016. The company commenced charging in July 2016 and is now focused on growing sales and
scaling.
Digital Driving pass, the solution of MotoSmarty,
is now used by the mobile operator Mobile Vikings in
Belgium as the “Road Vikings” app, helping young drivers
to stay safe by promoting safe driving in a rewarding and
engaging way. Details of the deal are confidential. The app
is available here: http://www.roadvikings.eu/
Access to fund raising
Most of the startups supported by FI-C3 are looking for funding after the completion of their project within
the accelerator. This can take several forms: partnership, fund raising, research contract, or even acquisition
by another company. For confidentiality reasons it is not possible to report here all the operations that
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are currently in progress and known by FI-C3 but only a couple of them that have, at this stage, been made
public.
Fuseami has received recognition from the following start-up competitions:
Intertrade Ireland - Seed Corn Investor Readiness Competition 2016. Got through as a regional finalist to
Intertrade Ireland’s Seed Corn competition as an early stage company. This competition is ongoing. This is a
major investor readiness competition with significant cash prizes.
http://www.intertradeireland.com/seedcorn/Regional_Finals/
Bank of Ireland Start-Up Awards 2016 : got through as a regional finalist and a nationalist finalist to the
Bank of Ireland Start Up competition under Digital / Online Start Ups. : http://startupawards.ie/regional-
shortlist/
AIB Start UP Academy : got through to the last 23 in the AIB Startup academy competition
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/aib-start-up-academy/the-shortlist-aib-startup-academy-reveals-shortlist-
1.2514239
The company is being supported by Enterprise Ireland through the HPSU Start program and it has recently
pitched to the Angel (HBAN) network seeking to raise seed funding. This fund raising is ongoing.
After a 4 week field test Eskesso is now cooperating with a mayor Estonian
online women shopping portal. They have participated in Europe wide fairs and
workshops and offering now the integration of their recommendation technology solution
into existing ecommerce online channels. The last step is a crowdfunding
campaign https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eskesso/eskesso-smart-sous-vide-cooking-
machine.
Making Mind Matter : http://www.cortechs.ie/ gained a research contract for
over 2 millions. They offer next to their B to C Sales model also now B to B sales model.
They are since spring 2016 on investor roadshow.
Hostabee won a competition in Israel and will go to CES Las Vegas
https://twitter.com/BeMyAppIsrael/status/781148099771260928
Voiceitt is one of the 18 companies that made it into the Startup NY programme
in the US: https://startup.ny.gov/companies; http://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-
cuomo-announces-18-additional-companies-join-start-ny Voiceitt has been recognized by
established, strategic corporations for their contribution to medical technology. A long list
of accolades and prestigious awards include the 43North Buffalo business idea
competition, Medica 2015, Verizon Powerful Answers Competition (9 companies were
selected out of over 2,000 worldwide applicants), Philips Innovation Fellows Competition (winning the
grand prize out of hundreds of companies worldwide), Deutsche Telekom Innovation Award, Orange 4G
Innovation Lab (the grand prize out of 110 national companies), and the Wall Street Journal Startup
Showcase. They were invited among selected startups to showcase at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC (2016).
3 Key support activities
In addition to funding and periodic monitoring of each project every 3 months (130 project reviews in total),
the following support has been provided to the sub-grantees:
Technical assistance
Technical assistance to developers was mainly implemented through the FIWARE coach assigned to FI-C3.
Interactions took place through bilateral chat discussions (Skype), through the FIWARE ticketing system
(Jira) and during the FI-C3 periodic 3-month evaluation reviews.
It included:
optimisation of the software architecture from the FIWARE perspective,
on-demand continuous support to the developers.
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Support to implement User centric approach
Specific attention has been paid to activities, carried out by the sub grantees to involve the end users in the
innovation process. The experience showed that almost all sub-grantees adopted a user centric approach.
This led them to make use of focus groups (with the help of FI-C3 where necessary), and in some cases to
perform field user tests as part of the development process.
At the occasion of the 3-month reviews, the Monitoring Committee discussed with all projects their plans to
organise user testing. In many cases the projects organised those tests by their own means because their
businesses were too specific (blind or deaf people, or suffering from special diseases) and could only be
organised within specialised environment (for instance hospital, retirement home). In such cases, that latter
provided the scientific support and clinical tests. In other cases, FI-C3 contributed directly to the tests and
provided the required assistance to validate the products/services.
Business Modelling and Customer Development workshops
Upon the selection of the projects full day Business Modelling workshops were organized. These workshops
were supported by the iMinds Living Lab team and business model experts and used a recognized
methodology to facilitate the interaction. 31 SMEs out of the 40 selected projects participated in 2
workshops.
Each workshop was structured as follows:
Plenary training session: experts gave the introduction on the validation board methodology,
instructing the beneficiaries how to use the methodology, sharing theory combined with practical
examples,
Guided co-creation session: SME’s were invited to work in small groups of 2 to 3 plus a dedicated
Business Modeller, to define the fundaments of their business model with the support of their peers
and the onsite coach. During that session concrete questions were addressed and additional advice
was provided.
Business one to one coaching
As soon as a project entered the accelerator, a contact point belonging to the FI-C3 consortium was assigned
to that project to act as a link between FI-C3 and the project. In addition to any administrative/organizational
aspects of the sub-grant agreement, the contact point was in charge of maintaining frequent (monthly)
contacts (physical visits or telephone calls) with the sub-grantee, and detect any advice and support that the
project needed from the accelerator (or the programme) to run its project successfully.
Additional mentors were brought on board to complement the support given by the FI-C3 contact points and
bring another perspective to the startups in the portfolio. Those mentors were external from FI-C3
consortium members but were issued from their networks; they had relevant domain expertise and
experience and many of them had founded their own businesses. Each sub-grantee was assigned at least one
mentor; in some cases several experts were invited to bring additional assistance.
The role of the mentors was to guide the companies on:
Strategic guidance, such as:
Business model suggestions;
Looking critically at the business plans of the startups, help them where needed with the
approach for sales, marketing, managing their company;
Identifying and correcting gaps in the startup team’s business knowledge and understanding,
Tactical guidance, such as:
Connections to other people in their network “Why don’t you call X? Let me introduce you,”
Pushing the team “out of the building” and into the marketplace, to aggressively validate
assumptions,
Ensure that the startup is not simply hearing what they want to hear from their research.
Challenge them on the conclusions they’re drawing, and the assumptions they’re making.
High level advisory board
Another tool to assist the participating SMEs in the initial phase of bringing their technology and ideas to the
market is the High Level Advisory Board. That board, composed of 8 experts from various industries
appointed by FI-C3, aimed at providing the sub-grantees with High Level Advise.
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2 HLAB sessions have been organised during the 2 project years, in which SME’s were invited, on a
voluntary basis to pitch during 8 minutes in front of the assembly.
At the end of each pitch the high-level advisory Board challenged the companies during 25 minutes (Q&A)
and suggested improvements or referred to other companies in their network for potential business
cooperation and access to venture capital. After that, each sub-grantee met (either on-site or by video-
conference) the HLAB individually in order to assure the confidentiality among all the participants.
The HLAB exercise was well appreciated by the 17 SME’s participating.
Vertical/geographical events
In addition to the previous activities, in order to create real connections and promote collaboration
between startups, FI-C3 organised meetings open to all FIWARE actors. In order to offer the best
publicity to that initiative, a common event database was shared with all accelerators so to invite all sub-
grantees to attend.
The goal of those meetings was to facilitate cross accelerator experience sharing between SMEs using the
enablers, and to get aware and discuss on the FIWARE sustainable offering. Some meetings aimed also to
create contacts with customers and/or investors.
A series of events were organised, with various configurations and various sizes, from informal and short
meetup with a couple of animators, to bigger conference with the presence of investors or customers or
recognized experts. Those meetings were held in Belgium (monthly meetups), in Spain (2 meetups with
coaches), Germany (on specific thematic with experts), France (3 events with specific FIWARE session).
FIWARE startups were also promoted in meetings with foreign delegations (Canada, China, Morocco, US).
4 Major traction from startups
There is no quantification of the startup success available at the moment. In general SMEs do not
communicate their business figures until they reach a significant size. As most of the newly created
companies (13 in the accelerator) started their operations recently, this is their case. Some other companies
address the B2B market (cities, hospitals, retirement homes), and are currently in (private) negotiation with
customers or investors. So for which concerns FI-C3 there is only a limited information available publicly,
mainly from enterprises that had started to deploy their applications very early, before they entered FI-C3:
Guide Me Right raised 380K€ (€250K by grants and prices + €130K by private
Business Angels) Sole24Ore . It has +16.000 registered users , +800 active Local Friends,
+1.800 experiences available in +500 locations, +1.000 experiences booked. The team is
now (up to) 11 people. Sharing Economy influencer leader in Italy in the field of Tour &
Activities: "Sharing Economy in the Tourism: an opportunity for Italy" (Luca Sini at
TEDx) .
The Fuseami app has been used by over 4000 delegates during the extensive conference trials (this
translates to supporting thousands of valuable new connections for conference delegates). The fuseami app
has been adopted by over 120 conferences from around the World to support their delegates to network
smarter. The fuseami app has been adopted by such prestigious organisations as: IEEE, PMI, Enterprise
Ireland, Dublin Chamber of Commerce, European Patent Office and the European Commission. The app has
been the official app at such conferences as: IEEE GLOBECOM2015 in San Diego, ICT2015 Conference in
Lisbon, PMI Annual Conference in Israel, the Innovation Showcase in December 2015 in the Dublin
convention centre and the Patent Information Conference by the European Patent Office in Madrid
November 2016. The company currently has 3 full time employees.
With 4 team members, Making Mind Matter has a revenue of 54.000 EUR by product sale.
Oblumi has 25000 registered users. Their income will reach 400 k€ by the end of 2016 and will
double in 2017.
Videona has over 50000 downloads. They are still acquiring users. They estimate a revenue of 300
k€ in 2017.
Thanks to their fast expansion with the crowdfunding campaign, Eskesso will reach 4 people by the
end of this year and is expecting a turnower of 200 k€ in 2017.
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Oliva Card created 5 jobs during the FI-C3 programme. The company was sold but the technology
is still used by the deployed clients.
VeloCARRIER’s product is an order entry product so over 1.000 customers will use it till October
2016 to key in the orders. With 12 persons next year, the income with reach 1.2 M€.
The SUOP community reaches 20 K users after 3 years :
https://www.suop.es/es/blog/-/blogs/tres-anos-de-comunidad%E2%80%A6-%C2%A1tres-anos-de-
logro-
1?_33_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suop.es%2Fes%2Fblog%3Fp_p_id%3D33%26p_p_lifecy
cle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-
2%26p_p_col_count%3D1
They calculated that the monthly gross revenues jumped from 9.5 K€ at start of the project (Sept-2015) to 46
k€ at the end of the project (Sept-2016). They will reach a revenue of 600 k€ in 2017.
SmarTaxi moved to outside Europe. Contracts have been signed with 420 taxis in
Guatemala + another one in Panama+ discussions in El Salvador. They have now 3
employees.
Related to the project WiiM (formerly FI-Glass) also launched and sells Senda, a
similar project but for other niche : http://descubresenda.com . The company is now up to 5
persons.
Outbarriers created 5 jobs during the FI-C3 programme. Another one is expected
end of this year. They have now 120 customers. So far they have achieved 500 downloads
(only present in Granada); they have started expanding to Madrid so they will increase the
number of downloads considerably in the coming months
5 Results of selecting various batches of startups
All details of the selected startups can be found on the FI-C3 site at : http://www.fic3.eu/our-startups
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6 Continuation of the program
In collaboration with the French Brittany region Images & Réseaux will invite to consider FIWARE as a
preferred technology to be used in the collaborative projects funded either by the regional funds of the
National funds.
Another project under preparation consists in developing a FIWARE based platform to collect energy data.
At this stage this project is still not finalized and cannot be detailed more.
Besides continuing to look at the H2020 calls, iMinds – which is now merged with imec - already has a
number of projects to support startups and scale-ups, by way of the iStart and ICON programs, as well as the
imecXpand fund. iMinds experiences in the FIWARE programs will be integrated into these programs (FI-
C3 companies are also welcome to apply to these programs if they meet the requirements).
Madrid ICT-Audiovisual Cluster (MAC) is negotiating with the Madrid Regional Government the creation
of an open call for innovative companies in 2017. MAC is proposing that this call promotes projects related
to Internet of the future, and that those using FIWARE technology receive special consideration, i.e. some
additional score.
On the other hand, MAC is working on creating a private support system for companies and startups, a
regional accelerator of Future Internet projects, promoting various technologies, including FIWARE. This
accelerator would provide workshops and mentoring to support businesses and entrepreneurs, based on the
FI-C3 experience. To that end, MAC is talking with other accelerators from Ferrovial, RTVE, Telefónica and
Telemadrid.
Grassroots got in contact with NUMA https://paris.numa.co/, a Parisian accelerator since November 2015
to investigate running an open source and FIWARE accelerator call. They decided not run an explicit
FIWARE call but just an open source track in their calls, but they are interested to let people apply for any
open source technology including FIWARE. Secondly after the terror attack in Paris the idea is to open an
educational FIWARE programme for student and pupils in the disadvantaged multi-culti areas such as Saint
Denis in Paris, where the high unemployment und dissatisfaction are the roots of youth terrorism, to improve
their technical skills. The idea is to involve the local youth centers and schools. Investigation is ongoing
where to get the regional funding for this education program. NUMA will collaborate with Grassroots on this
programme, to support the best of them in their incubator.
Grassroots asked also Startplatz, an incubator in Cologne, to invite their Start-ups to use FIWARE and to
continue in workshops to disseminate the FIWARE catalogue. Grassroots is collaborating with Startplatz on
these workshops.
7 Return on Investment (ROI) of the program
A figured RoI of the programme is premature at this stage. Such figure, calculated as a ratio of return over
investment (both measured at different epochs) would suppose the first term is already known for an
investment that has just been completed. The impact of the FIWARE accelerators will only be measurable
after 3-4 years when the SMEs will have passed the Valley of Death. However we can measure now how the
investment has been materialised into concrete actions by the following figures:
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Number of SME supported : 40
Number of newly created enterprises : 13 startups (created just before applying to FI-C3).
Number of companies acquired : we know at least 1 company already merged into a bigger structure
(probably this will be the case of others)
Number of jobs created (during the period) : ca 55
New products/services available at the end of the accelerator project : 34 (including those in beta-
test)
After the end of the programme number of startups under discussing with investors : approximate
figure 70% (the other 30% either are big enough or look for other types of funding)
Visibility of the FIWARE technology implemented through 43 promotion meetings
Number of finalised applications to the 2 calls : 580 proposals from 30 countries
Use of the FIWARE technology : 26 enablers used and integrated.
8 Lessons learned
From the experience of running this accelerator, the FI-C3 partners have learnt the following
lessons:
Technology
Startups need stabilized technology with clear commercial offer:
In order to mobilise candidates for Call 1 FI-C3 had to develop much effort: the first questions asked by
SMEs was the reliability of the enablers. FI-C3 missed lot of valuable candidates because they had doubts
about the future of the FIWARE technology. In Call 2, the commercial perspectives being much clearer, the
situation was quite different
Technical support was a key asset of the accelerator
A number of companies encountered technical issues with enablers or simply needed some support to use
them. Entrepreneurs having a lot to do to launch a new business may be discouraged to use a new
technology without a strong support. Having an expert on board who can provide immediate technical advice
is crucial to run a (high-tech) accelerator.
Startup selection
Selection with clear criterions by a group of experts from a variety of domains is a good
process
FI-C3 is rather satisfied with the selection process that has been used. A significant number of experts of
various domains (including business experience), preferably external to the consortium to get an independent
opinion was a good process. Getting one jury at the end of the selection process to hear the top scoring
companies pitch was also good choice, it enabled one jury to see all the best companies and pick the top ones
to get funded. The use of electronic communication to avoid the physical presence of candidates ran well. All
the selection procedure must be written to ensure fast implementation of the process.
Agile review process
Quarterly reviews is a good frequency
It was good to give the budgets after quarterly reviews. This did give us leverage over the companies
(because we were not allowed to act as a real accelerator/investor and could not take an equity stake into the
companies). In addition, the startups appreciated such regular contacts with the consortium which forced
them to concentrate on defined objectives but also to spend some time for an informal discussion. Although
distant project reviewing (by video conference) proved to be possible, physical meetings were much better to
develop good contacts between the startups and the accelerator.
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Business support
Initial business workshop is more than optional
Although the entrepreneurs that were entering the accelerator had been selected on the quality of their project
(technical/business/team) a formal course at the beginning of the acceleration process had a real added value.
Starting within the accelerator with a full analysis of all aspects of their business/ strategy provided them a
safe and realistic vision of the status of their project.
Accelerator basic business support is permanent mentoring
The basic support expected by the startups is a regular contact with, where possible, the same person from
the accelerator. Those contacts must be frequent (every month is a minimum) but can be implemented
through telephone. Physical meetings with that (permanent) mentor can be quarterly. When that mentor has
himself the experience of startup creation, another mentor is not required, otherwise an additional business
expert has to be appointed to supplement the first mentor.
Specialised mentoring has not been required by the startups
Although it was expected that very specific advices (for instance on legal, Intellectual property or similar
topics) would be welcomed by the startups, they did not request those services. An explanation could be that
such dedicated advices are available from other supporting organisations.
But startups were strongly demanding of contacts with customers/ investors
When analyzing the startups expectations in terms of business support, the most frequent request was to
facilitate the contacts with customers or investors (and in general any means to access to funding).
Startups are always interested by reactions from external experts
Entrepreneurs showed high interest to test their pitch in front of a group of advisers and where possible
investors. In FI-C3 the High Level Advisory Board (HLAB) was a good way to get the companies to test
their business model and pitching skills in front of a wide variety of experts in their field (business,
investing, etc). This is a kind of service that accelerators should propose.
Other topics
Duration of the projects
Within FI-C3 the projects lasted from 9 to 18 months. In the (technical and business) context of FIWARE
and with the acceleration process defined by FI-C3, 9 months has been considered as short. 12 months would
have been better to ensure better project support thanks to the quarterly review procedure.
At the end communication is a contact with a person
Despite many channels of communication (“e-communication”), the fact that the potential applicants were
able to reach us either by phone or mail was really appreciated.
And …startups were more serious that even hoped !
Through its quarterly evaluation process, FI-C3 ran 6 project evaluation sessions and has been impressed by
the quality of the startup teams through 130 reviews. The number of opportunistic projects was rather small.
All reviews were conducted in a very positive spirit, open to discussion, with a strong wish of making the
best use of the FIWARE technology and of the support offered by the programme.