Berlin/Sankt Augustin, 27th August 2014 – Over the next two years, the EU funding pogramme “EuropeanPioneers” will support 25 startups and SMEs in the European Union with a total of 4.5 million Euros. The scheme targets businesses active in the fields of Smart City Services, Social Connected TV, Pervasive Gaming and E-Learning. The aim of the project is to boost media-sector startups and SMEs with innovative business models. The application deadline for the first round is 31st October 2014. Interested companies can apply online from 1st September at https://www.europeanpioneers.eu.
In the course of the 8-month programme, the selected startups will receive funding of between 50,000 and 250,000 Euros each, as well as access to the technologies of the powerful FIWARE and FI-CONTENT software platforms. The platforms provide open- source software, software as a service and cloud service infrastructures for the digital industry. These technologies have been developed by companies and research institu-tions in the context of the EU’s “Future Internet Public Private Partnership”.
The participants will also be supported by experienced coaches in areas including con-cept and business model development, milestone-planning, user-testing, team-building, marketing and financing. In addition, the programme offers access to mentors and a strong network of useful business contacts. This year, 5 companies will be accepted onto the programme, and two more application rounds in 2015 will select a further 10 participants each.
EuropeanPioneers is a consortium of innovation experts from all over Europe, led by startup-builder etventure (Berlin) in collaboration with the following partners: the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS (Sankt Augus-tin), Weblify (Poland), Thoughtbox (Ireland) and F-Secure (Finland). EuropeanPioneers is one of 16 accelerators which will distribute a total of 80 million Euros to innovative companies on behalf of the European Union.
Original Release: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-08/f-e4082714.php