1.1. create a systematic, systemic & smart (s3) co ......d1.2.2 – final periodic report...

D1.2.2 – Final Periodic Report

Dissemination level - CO

FP7 GA n° 611715 1 of 161

Core of the report for the period

1.1. Project objectives for the period

The overall objective of OPENAXEL project is to create a systematic, systemic & smart (S3) co-acceleration framework among agents providing acceleration programmes at European Level. To reach its overall project goal, OPENAXEL proposed a set of objectives with its related and measurable goals:

NUMBER SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES GOALS (ACTIONS)

1 Opening transparency and accessibility of business acceleration services in Europe to all potential beneficiaries through a repository map of business acceleration offers within Europe.

This portal brings transparency to the acceleration opportunities for startups and entrepreneurs by providing a map with a repository of the main acceleration services providers, brief information on each of them and a link to their application processes. This repository allows entrepreneurs to make best choices and will intensify promotion of accelerator services of OpenAxel and other related projects to draw more startups.

2 Guaranty geo-coverage of the accelerators ecosystems at European level

Take care about geo-coverage involvement of less innovative ecosystems according to the Union's Innovation Scoreboard classification (mainly Central Europe Countries), by incorporating partners representative of North / South / East / West regions. Specific efforts on communication and dissemination activities done by the partners from east countries, in order to guaranty that accelerators and Start-ups in their footprint benefit of the cross border services to be implemented within the project. The report of corporations and acceleration services providers is complete in those countries and this information accessible in the platform. Presence in Central and North Europe reinforced.

3 Defining world class cross-border services for coaching & brockerage.

Open a constructive dialogue among the accelerator ecosystem for knowledge sharing and improvement of the facilities and services provided to Startups at European level. Stimulating cross border development and international exposure of highly innovative ICT Startups and SMEs and entrepreneurs.

4 Provide visibility to highly innovative Startups and entrepreneurs at international level [Contest Cup]

Organize a contest of contest at European level, where any qualified accelerator can candidate their top Startups. The contest provides an international level show window to attract the attention of international investor and to facilitate its business internationalization and providing them with services: trip to Silicon Valley, Personalized Coaching Plans, perks and PR and visibility to help them grow. We will try to engage entrepreneurs from all the countries in the EU.

5 Articulate concrete ways of cooperation between European Accelerators to implement cross borders services and international exposure of selected highly innovative Startups

Specific cross border services provided to the best European Startups, especially to those nominated by the accelerators and taking part in the OPENAXEL contest.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 12 of 161

NUMBER SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES GOALS (ACTIONS)

6 Provide top level executives with the opportunity to contact the best Startups of Europe, obtaining updated Technology Watch.

Top Level Executives/CEOs of Global Corporations to participate in the project as coaches for the contest winners. These relevant stakeholders benefit from coaching by direct contact to the most innovative Startups of Europe providing them with a clear overview of Technology Watch which could derive in new business opportunities for Global corporations or Startups accessing to markets for fast growth.

7 Increasing exposure of selected highly innovative ICT Startup’s and entrepreneurs to international investors

Articulate concrete actions to assure that the Startups winning the contest match with a pool of investors potentially interested in their project. Additional actions to assure best visibility to the startups winning the contest and to match with a pool of investors and more importantly, with ICT industry.

8 Coordinate market constituents within the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Europe

Facilitate market introduction for highly innovative Startups by personalized plans. Entrepreneurs have access to the Top Level Companies Community or market agents and contact them in order to align interests. Mentoring and additional supporting activities delivered by accelerators improved to increase successful possibilities of Start-ups in market penetration. The OpenAxel consortium incorporates a partner representing the European ICT industry which coordinates communication and dissemination activities in order to improve the markets predisposition to receive new Startups. In the portal, entrepreneurs can have a clear vision of the main digital companies by location.

9 Identification, improvement and standardization of criteria for the selection of Startups and entrepreneurs with best successful chances. Create the basis for a European Repository of Accelerators & Startups.

Create the basis for an European Repository of Accelerators & Startups combining three main activities developed within the project: firstly, cataloguing & classification of existing world-class facilities & services on the basis of their historical impact; secondly, the analysis of different selection criteria of accelerators to decide the best ones; thirdly, the contest gives an initial ranking of the best European Startups

10 Promote the importance of the entrepreneurial spirit in Europe, bringing the model of entrepreneurship to society.

Provide cross border services for highly innovative SMEs and entrepreneurs increasing the success potential of these entrepreneurial initiatives. Collaborate with other initiatives to increase entrepreneur´s opportunities and tangible support from public and private players. Work on communication activities of success cases that stimulate reigniting the entrepreneurial spirit in Europe.

Table 1: Project Objectives As it was suggested during the first review meeting held in Brussels on March 12

th 2015, and in order to maximize the

project impact, for the second half of OpenAxel´s implementation, it was agreed to focus specially on objectives number 1, 2, 4, 7, 8 and 10. In the table below is listed a set of indicators for being used as means of verification of the aforementioned objectives. The table will be also used for the follow up of the project results:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 13 of 161

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

EXECUTION INDICATORS OBJECTIVE RESULTS AT M32

1 Number of Registered Accelerators in the platform 120 137

1 Number of Investors 73

1 Number of Registered users in the platform 4000 6616

1 Number of Top Level Companies 50 60

2 Significant Involvement of CEE Accelerators ecosystem 15 15

3 Nº of cross-border services identified 16 15

3 Nº of cross-border services to be implemented in the framework of the project

8 9

4 Number of Startups participating in the contest receiving direct cross border services

400 1276

4 Number of Winners 18 18

4 Number of Startups involved in the contest award ceremony 25 21

4 International presence of Startups in the contest 28 28

5 Number of Personalized Coaching Plan developed: 18 Plans, one for each Top18 Startups

18 18

5 Number of Top Level Executives/CEOs coaching meetings 55 52

5 Funding mobilized: An expected amount of 6M€ (at least 10% from outside Europe)

6M€ 10M€

5 Increase of cross-border mobility of SMEs & Startups involved in the project

26 26

6 Number of Top Level Executives/CEOs of Global Corporations involved in the project

55 90

7 Nº of investors from outside Europe (USA mainly) included in the Investors Community

20 35

7 Nº of individual meetings with investors 50 65

7 Nº of Startups participating in the Silicon Valley missions 18 16

8 Nº of Start-ups receiving coaching from Top Level Executives 18 18

8 Number of Corporations involved in the Contest 20 25

8 Number of Corporations with open innovation initiatives in the repository

15 26

8 Number of National Trade Associations linked in the repository 35 35

8 Nº of entrepreneurs participating in the poll for identifying needs in terms of engagement with industry

300 319

8 Participation in events where corporations are present 20 102

9 Repository of Accelerators 72 116

9 Direct links to application to accelerators in the web 50 116

9 Repository of European Startups 1 1

10 Nº of communication events to be organized during the project 26 38

10 Communication actions targeting corporations and potential entrepreneurs

222

10 Number of agreements achieved 18 21

10 Number of initiatives and similar projects contacted in order to identify synergies

30 35

Table 2: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)



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1.2. Work progress and achievements during the period

Find below the GANTT diagram for the period M16 to M32, where main milestones expected for the project are highlighted.

Name

Activity

Type

Month

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

WP1 Project Management and Coordination MGT M8

T1.1 Project Coordination and Management

T1.2 Reporting & Financial Management

T1.3 OPENAXEL Intranet

WP2 Building the Impact Framework SUPP

T2.1 Ecosystem awareness

T2.2 Open call for accelerators endorsement & engagement

T2.3 Engagement with industry

T2.4 Openaxel Portal

WP3 Defining an European Cross Border Portfolio of Services SUPP

T3.1 Analyze Cross Border Services to be provided jointly at European Level

T3.2 Articulating the consortia current Cross Border Services Porfolio

T3.3 Defining a new Cross Border Service based on high level coaching

T3.4 Identifying interesting Cross Border Services to be develop beyond the

Project.

WP4 Defining the Selection Process SUPP

T4.1 Process readiness

T4.2 Contest tool setting up

T4.3 Contest and content management

T4.4 Panel of evaluators



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T4.5 Contest diffusion

WP5 Selection of beneficiaries SUPP

T5.1 Launch of the call for highly innovative SMEs and entrepreneurs

T5.2 Coordination of Evaluation Committee

T5.3 Selection of beneficiaries M4

T5.4 Evaluation results and communication

WP6 Delivering Cross Border Services SUPP

T6.1 Provision of improved facilities and supporting services

T6.2 Development of Personalized Coaching Plans

T6.3 World class coaching

T6.4 Cross border venturing M5 M6

WP7 Evaluation & deployment SUPP M7

T7.1 Deployment of cooperation framework for accelerators

T7.2 Impact assessment: repository & map of accelerators

T7.3 Defining the existing gaps between industry and startups

T7.4 Business plan

WP8 Communication Plan SUPP

T.8.1 Project Communication and Dissemination Plan

T.8.2 Developing the communication material

T.8.3 Communication actions in general media

T.8.4 Coordinate the project communication actions addressed to stakeholders

T.8.5 Project results dissemination

Figure 1: Gantt from M16 to M32



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WP2. Building the Impact Framework

WP Leader APPCAMPUS Status ENDED

Task 2.1. Ecosystem Awareness ENDED P1

Work Performed

The Cross Border Communities report was developed during the first half of the project, summarizing the work done by listing the framework of cooperation to facilitate additional players external to the consortium, identification of value propositions for each stakeholder, and the strategy to build the community. Main results obtained

The Cross Border Communities D2.2 report is the main result obtained out of this task in addition to the building of a common shared understanding of the task at hand. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

None.

Task 2.2. Open call for accelerators endorsement & engagement ENDED

Work Performed

This task aimed at informing the group of accelerators, external to the consortium, in order to engage them with the Cross Border Communities created under the project. In the Second part of the project implementation continued the outreach and engagement to complement efforts executed in the previous period and maintain the profiles earlier created. Engagement efforts were mostly done on a face to face manner primarily while meeting at the events OpenAxel partners joined or organized.

Some of the most representative events joined or organized by the OpenAxel partners during the second part of the project, where the consortium worked on building and increasing the community were (more details on D8.2: Comms Report):

EVENT DATE PLACE

South Summit 7-9.11.2015 Madrid, Spain

Web Summit 3-5.11.21015 Dublin, Ireland

EBAN Winter University 16-18.11.2015 Copenhagen, Denmark

Slush, Pre-slush events & End Game 10-12.11.2015 Helsinki, Finland

Mobile World Congress/4YFN 22-25.2.2016 Barcelona, Spain

11th Kazan Venture Fair 26-27.4.2016 Kazan, Russia

Acceleration industry in Europe: key insights from corporates and Startups

27.05.2016 London, UK

3rd EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON THE FUTURE INTERNET 4-7.11.2015 Hamburg, Germany

Bitspiration Festival 22-23.06.2015 Warsaw, Poland

D-RAFT Corporate Demo Day 30.10.2015 Warsaw, Poland

European Data Forum 2015 16-17.11.2015 Luxembourg

Fifth Central European Life Science Investment Conference 22-23.10.2015 Cracow, Poland

Forum Expansion of SME 24-25.11.2015 Torun

ICT 2015 22-23.10.2015 Lisbon, Portugal

ICT4 Info Day 1-3.12.2015 Brussel

Net Futures Information Day and Networking event 25.01.2016 Brussel

OpenReaktor #37 #AdTech 23.09.2015 Warsaw, Poland

Information Session in University of La Rioja 2015-09-09 Logroño

https://websummit.net/

http://www.creativebusinesscup.com/eban

http://www.endgame.fi/

https://4yfn.com/

http://www.kazanventurefair.com/show_eng/



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Regional Innovation Agency of La Rioja 2015-05-21 Logroño

Unbound 30.11.2015 London,UK

Corporate Acceleration Event 29.10.2015 London,UK

Wolves Summit 27-28.10.2015 Warsaw, Poland

Table 3: Most representative events in which OpenAxel was present (second half) Main results obtained

In the course of this task most of the main European accelerators were reached. The actual impact of the face to face meetings was limited in terms of accelerators signing up and creating a profile on the platform though. Based on the results from the first phase of the program, we have amended the approach and addressed the value proposition to update the overall value offered to partners and greatly improved the OpenAxel portal (Task 2.4). In the second phase of the program we continued in the process to sign up new partnerships (as a way to engage new accelerators and other key stakeholders) leveraging the updated approach, achieving good results and in particular with:

Five new accelerators: INCENSe, IMPACT, FI-C3, ODINE and Vertical

SEP (Startup Europe Partnership), D-RAFT and CEO-CF Overall OpenAxel is currently cooperating with 21 partners:

COOPERATION AGREEMENTS

Accelerator Assembly D-RAFT

FI-C3 SEP

ODINE IMPACT

Mashauri INCENSE

CEO-CF Startups.be

FACE The Connect East Incubator

Nesta Watify

ICT2B Startup Sesame

ODINE ACE

Vertical Health accelerator Open Coffee Club (OCC)

D-RAFT

Table 4: Agreements with partners The program managed to engage a total of 137 Accelerators to join the OpenAxel platform from a target list of 120 European Accelerators, with special success during the second half of the project, therefore fully achieving this indicator. This is mainly due to the improvement of both the platform and the messages delivered to the accelerators. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

In the light of the feedback gathered in the first phase, the OpenAxel consortium decided to further focus on this task

during the second phase of the program.

Task 2.3. Engagement with Industry ENDED

Work Performed

Based on the results of the mid-term review, the OpenAxel Consortium agreed to re-focus the task efforts on engaging with ICT industry main stakeholders: entrepreneurs, accelerators and corporations to build a community and to indirectly attract other relevant stakeholders, such as those referred in the original tasks 2.3 (mentors) and 2.4

http://www.incense-accelerator.com/

http://www.impact-accelerator.com/

http://www.fic3.eu/

https://opendataincubator.eu/

http://www.vertical.vc/

http://startupeuropepartnership.eu/

http://d-raft.com/

http://www.ceo-cf.com/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 18 of 161

(investors). With this task OpenAxel project therefore further developed its plans to narrow the gap between startups and Industry players to increase the chances of success for startups on a European scale. We aimed to engage ICT Corporates, SMEs (and startups looking for acquisition targets) with a priority for those already familiar with Open Innovation concepts and accustomed to cooperate with startups for sourcing innovative technologies, products or services. OpenAxel community reached and gathered the 60 biggest corporates with their open innovation initiatives and a network of more than 10k ICT companies through the National Trade Associations affiliated to DigitalEurope. Some examples of the open innovation inititiaves in our website are: Alcatel-Lucent Open Innovation Community; Cisco Entrepreneurs in Residence; Dell Ventures; Google Ventures; Telefonica OpenFuture; IBM Venture Capital Group; Microsoft Ventures; Panasonic Ventures; Siemens Technology Accelerator; Samsung Ventures or Sony Venture Capital. On top of this, due to more than 15 face to face meetings with top European executives; polls between executives from almost 80 organizations; personalized interviews to corporations; presence in numerous discussions, workshops and panels (such as “How can big corporations work with startups?” or “7 Deadly sins of Corporates working with startups”); and attendance to events, OpenAxel has produced a White Paper on recommendations of corporate and startups engagement, with results that have been distributed all around Europe (for example: http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorclawson/2016/05/30/mars-and-venus-improving-corporatestartup-engagement-in-europe/#57447d70b68e). Concretely, OpenAxel has developed the following actions with the mission of connecting corporates and startups:

1. Upgrading the OpenAxel website to improve offering for corporates with functionalities such as verticalized search engine of startups belonging to the OpenAxel community to be used by corporates as an advance and personalized scouting tool. Additionally, the website included main corporate and key contacts on a map, so that entrepreneurs from all around Europe could have a unique access point to these organisations.

2. Agreements to share our deal flow with several corporations that are interested in having access to a filtered

selection of OpenAxel´s portfolio, and especially, warm introductions to second batch winners to corporations (more details on WP6 description).

3. Production of OpenAxel White Paper on how corporates and startups should collaborate. The following corporations participated in that research: Unibet; BT; Telefonica; Barclays Bank Plc; Orange; Virgin; Enel; Microsoft; Cisco; Fonecta; Finnair, Santander; Deutsche Telekom; Pintos; General Electric; Qualta; Fortum; UPM Kymmene; Bitkom e.V.; AMETIC; IVSZ; GrantXpert Consulting. More information on this research can be found on WP7 description.

4. Industry representatives’ involvement as mentors/evaluators/jury for the second contest.

5. Organization of ‘Accelerating industry in Europe – key insights from corporates and startups’ event on 27th

May 2016 at WAYRA UK (http://openaxel.com/acceleration-industry-in-europe-key-insights-from-corporates-and-startups/). The event was shaped to share the project learnings and other findings on the corporate acceleration white paper produced by OpenAxel, and provided another great opportunity for the teams to engage with a broad range of speakers and participants with access to Accelerator, Corporate and VC funds. Some of the speakers representing big corporations were:

- Founders Factory (Brent Hoberman, Founder) - Orange Fab Accelerators (Natalie Boulanger, VP) - Microsoft Ventures (Alex Saunders, Senior Director) - Hub:raum/Deutsche Telekom (Axel Menneking, Head of Investments and International) - MSD (Junaid Bajwa, Director of Healthcare Services) - Telefonica (Richard Poston, Director of Public Affairs)

Some of the participating corporates were: Cisco, BT, Santander, General Electric, Barclays, Virgin, ENEL, Deutsche Telekom, Barclays Bank Plc, AVIVA, BBVA, Visa, Merck, PwC, KPMG or EY.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorclawson/2016/05/30/mars-and-venus-improving-corporatestartup-engagement-in-europe/#57447d70b68e


http://openaxel.com/acceleration-industry-in-europe-key-insights-from-corporates-and-startups/





FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 19 of 161

6. Business trip to Sweden (Stockholm and Malmo) by Wayra to introduce OpenAxel portfolio to leading Swedish corporations and accelerators, as well as disseminating the results of the white paper and discuss and debate them with the leading European open innovation hub. Meetings included, among others: Deutsche Bank, Fidelity, TeliaSonera, Cisco, Skania, Volvo and SonyMobile.

7. Conducting a poll with more than 300 entrepreneurs to gather their views on the collaboration between the

industry and startups.

8. Successful organization of a workshop the 16th

November, together with Nesta and SEP, about “What works: uncovering motivations and barriers in corporate-startup collaborations”. The participants were, among others: Castrol innoVentures, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC), Dell, Startupbootcamp, CIBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Squirrel and Telefonica.

The agenda was:

Figure 2: Workshop Agenda

9. OpenAxel Second Event: 22

nd to 25

th February 2016 in Barcelona, Spain, with a strong Industry focus

celebrated during the MWC/4YFN in Barcelona, with startups having the opportunity to pitch to key industry players on a global scale, with workshop on open innovation initiatives benefits for corporates. The Mobile World Congress is one of the most important events in ICT and mobile that takes place yearly in Barcelona. Inside the 4YFN pavilion focussing on entrepreneurship, OpenAxel arranged a stand for the OpenAxel start-



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 20 of 161

ups and the opportunity to have a final pitch in front of a vibrant audience of investors and accelerators, corporates and other startups.

Figure 3: Images from Openaxel Second Event

10. Silicon Valley Immersion Bootcamp: 9th

to 18th

February 2016 for the winners of the 2nd

contest. Worth

mentioning the intense effort done with the Silicon Valley Immersion trip to engage teams directly with

prominent investors, corporates and entrepreneurs and open direct communication channels for possible

cooperation. The 9 winners of the second OpenAxel contest joined the intensive Immersion Bootcamp in

Silicon Valley with workshops, masterclasses, and face to face meetings with investors, mentors, executives,

entrepreneurs (Uber, Transfuent) as well as visits to Universities leading efforts in innovation and

entrepreneurship, corporations, VC funds and accelerators via formal visits and informal networking

(Telefonica Ventures and Institutional Venture Partners, Nokia Growth Partners, 500 Startups, Plug & Play, SV

Bank).

Figure 4: Images from Silicon Valley Immersion Bootcamp

11. Collaboration with other projects and initiatives that are also tackling this issue to share efforts and obtain synergies to create a sustainable open innovation ecosystem in Europe. This includes collaborations with think tanks like NESTA, SEP, and EBN (through Watify and ACE)

12. Collaborating closely with NESTA to produce a Research on how to connect startups to industry and provide recommendations on how startup ecosystem can be fostered

http://openaxel.com/openaxel-2016-silicon-valley-immersion-bootcamp/



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13. Participation or co-organization of key events with strong presence of relevant industry players such as Slush & End Game, South Summit, Web Summit, 4YFN and many others. A brief description of the most relevant can be found below: - Corporate Acceleration Event organized in London on 29th October 2015 to attract and collaborate with

corporates. In this event, organised together with Wayra UK, Innovate Finance, LM and NESTA, where 70 corporates had participated. The attendee profiles consisted of: Corporates from across sectors, trade bodies, regional governments, start-ups and media. Among others:

Corporate Acceleration Event Profiles

AVIVA Cancer Research UK

Castrol innoVentures Independents United

GKN Distil Ventures

Bupa Deutsche Telekom UK Ltd.

StartupBootcamp TechStars

GLH Hotels MEC Global

HuBraum Inmarsat

PwC Samsung Ventures

Hays PLC Barclays

Mozilla Unilever

The Trampery Thomson Reuters

Capita plc Virgin

WWF-UK MSD

Intercontinental Hotels Group Pearson

Thomson Reuters Foundation L Marks

Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Barclays Bank PLC

Virgin Money Enel

Microsoft Santander

500 Startups Lloyds Bank

Virgin Startup CIBC

NBC Universal T-Rowe Price

Orange Verdict Financial

GKN Plc VCCP

RBS BVCA

Seedcamp The Bakery

Unibet World Bank Group

Intesa Sanpaolo TUI

EDF Energy R&D UK Centre Priceline.com

ISIS Oxford University Incubator CS Holdings

Standard Chartered Bank Samsung Electronics

Santander Telstra

L-Marks HealthXL

Royal Bank of Scotland Amazon



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 22 of 161

Corporate Acceleration Event Profiles

Telefónica UK (O2) Barclays

BT plc Bupa / Centre

Table 5: Corporate Acceleration Event corporations attending

Figure 5: Corporate Acceleration Event Programme

The corporations showed great interest in the face to face meetings with our startups and corporations and some positive developments are expected to develop across time. Some examples: Salesforce Europe, Sonera; Samsung, Telefonica, Orange, ENEL, Virgin, Endesa, Microsoft, Iberdrola, Deutsche Telekom or BT. More information on this can be seen in WP6. - South Summit on 7

th to 9

th October 2015 in Madrid, where OpenAxel secured free tickets and a booth for

the startups, and arranged some meetings, introductions with corporations and pitching sessions. The event is the main networking event in Southern Europe, connecting startups with big corporations from this region and international VCs. Some key figures:

-More than 12500 attendants -More than 6300 entrepreneurs -650 investors -+3100 corporations, including more than 200 big corporations



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 23 of 161

In the graphic below are some of the corporations present:

Figure 6: Corporations Present

- Web Summit 3

rd to 5

th November 2015 in Dublin, Ireland: in this massive event with +30000 participants

from 140 countries we met with several key investors to increase knowledge about OpenAxel overall program and competition, and engage with several corporates for potential interest in OpenAxel portfolio of start-ups and to join the ecosystem and in particular with Corporates like:

Diego Baldini @ Reply

Claudio Pozzi @ Technogym

Marco Argenti @ Amazon

https://websummit.net/

http://www.reply.eu/en/

http://www.technogym.com/int/

http://www.amazon.com/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 24 of 161

Figure 7: Images from Web Summit event

- EBAN Winter University: 16th

to 18th

November 2015 in Copenhagen, Denmark: a three day event attended by more than 300 representatives of the early stage financing industry and entrepreneurs from all over the world organized by the European Business Angel Network, with the participation of business angels, family investors, VC funds, business accelerators, seed funds and venture philanthropists to interact with entrepreneurs from all over Europe and the World. We participated in a panel to discuss about acceleration efforts and promote OpenAxel ecosystem, and discussed directly with several Angels to showcase select teams from OpenAxel portfolio and attract interest in joining the ecosystem.

Figure 8: Images from EBAN Winter University Creative Business Cup 2015.

- Slush: 11th and 12th November 2015, Pre-slush events & End Game 10th

November 2015 @ Vertical in Helsinki, Finland. Pre-slush event on 10

th November 2015 afternoon gave the opportunity to prepare for

networking and pitching to investors and corporate with a selection of the best mentors, angels and VCs in the area.

Figure 9: Images from @Vertical event

The End Game part of the event gave teams opportunity to meet with more than 200 among Angel Investors, VCs, and several Corporates and healthcare providers from the Nordics and Baltic region interested in sourcing innovation or funding teams:

o Patrick Franke @ TeliaSonera

http://www.creativebusinesscup.com/eban

http://www.slush.org/

http://www.endgame.fi/

http://www.vertical.vc/

http://www.teliasonera.com/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 25 of 161

- Antti Sorvari @ Amer Sports - Marko Nurmela @ Samsung - Pasi Hatakka @ Mariachi - Veli Makela @ Planmeka - Sammeli Liikkanen @ Orion Pharma - Daniele Pagani @Microsoft - Taneli Tikka @Tieto

Figure 10: Images from End Game event

There temas were also invited to join the FIBAN pre-slush event on 10.11.16 morning to network with key Finnish Angels (400 members).

Slush is massive event with +30000 participants; we arranged a stand for the OpenAxel teams inside the Aalto University stand, and helped portfolio start-ups participate to pitching competitions, arrange meetings with investors and network with corporates present at the event and participating to the corporate ‘Digital Innovation’ panel. We also continued to trigger interest in joining the OpenAxel ecosystem via the dedicated website. Some of the Companies met: Accenture, Beddit, Google, Nokia, Skype, Supercell or Unity.

Figure 11: Images from Slush Event

- 11th Kazan Venture Fair on 26

th and 27

th April 2016 in Kazan, Russia. The event gathered some 1.000

participants and was a great opportunity to showcase select teams from OpenAxel portfolio to key Russian and international VCs and accelerators and the corporates most active in acquiring innovation for the Russian market. We participated in two panels to promote OpenAxel to the audience and to co-speakers like Mervin Liao from 500 startups in San Francisco.

http://www.amersports.com/

../../../../../../../../../../../tex2251/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/TPY53XDN/samsung.com

http://www.mariachi.fi/

http://www.planmeca.com/

http://www.orion.fi/

https://www.microsoft.com/es-es/

https://www.tieto.com/

https://www.fiban.org/




FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 26 of 161

- Other events: Participation in 20+ events to network with corporates and to present OpenAxel (like Open Innovation 2.0, StartupOle, etc.).

Main results obtained

Identified and mapped 60 corporations and national ICT hubs with over 10,000 companies (through the National Trade Associations) on our website.

Corporate Acceleration Event in October 2015 was a success: total sign-up numbers topped 400 people with over 200 people attending on the day, with interesting takeaways of OpenAxel corps event: - Corporate acceleration is increasingly a hot topic. It is here to stay and it will keep evolving, especially via

partnerships. - The industry as a whole is catching up in terms of implementing innovation programmes, but it needs to

share knowledge which will in turn speed up adoption of innovation and strategies from a ‘C’ level in different corporations. Corporate’s attitude is critical.

- Lots of corporate ‘explorers’ at the moment. EU Comm funded projects might play a relevant role in narrowing the gap between startups and corps and fostering cooperation between them.

- The Corporate Venture Capital community is keen to engage corporate accelerators now as well. - The above will result in the EU increasing its competitiveness with international markets. - Corporates from across sectors are moving into the space as innovation isn’t a ‘nice to have’ anymore

but a must have. Not only from a tech perspective, but also from a corporate culture point of view. - Great result for the industry with very positive outlooks for the future and the start-up ecosystem on an

EU level.

Production of an Open Innovation White Paper to give an overview of the current status of the ecosystem and deliver some recommendations. A survey (developed with the help of Nesta) was sent to gather inputs of some corporations. Among others, the following corporations were engaged in giving feedback: Unibet; BT; Telefonica; Barclays Bank Plc; Orange; Virgin; Enel; Microsoft; Cisco; Fonecta; Finnair, Santander; Deutsche Telekom; Pintos; General Electric; Qualta; Fortum; UPM Kymmene; Bitkom e.V.; AMETIC; IVSZ; GrantXpert Consulting

OpenAxel conducted personal interviews with top level executives to better understand their view and needs on this topic, and how OpenAxel can support them. Already, the following have collaborated and given their inputs and feedback:

o Valeria Balaro: Head of Innovation Kantar o Will Pryke: Director BT Infinity Lab Program o Luciano Tommasi: Head of New Ventures, Enel o Maria Shiao: EC expert, investor, mentor o Lubaina Manji: Director Open Innovation Barclays o Mei Shui: Managing Director Virgin Startups o Nathalie Boulanger: Director Orange Startup o Jeff Hoffman, Founder Priceline.com o Nancy Fechnay, Director Techstars London o Manuel Cantalapiedra, Head of Strategic Planning, Santander Innovation

Through the OpenAxel research we provided some key recommendations that will serve as a valuable tool for corporations to be more successful when embracing open innovation. These recommendations are:

- Replicate the positive examples of other corporations - Sustain open innovation effort over time: enter this game for the long run, use short-term rewards

to aliment the marathon. - Start with the end in mind: the exercise of defining measurable goals will allow for a more thoughtful

involvement of decision makers in your company, and would permit accountancy of results and future improvements to strategic initiatives.

- Gain board level support


http://wayra.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Corporate-Acceleration-Look-Book.pdf



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 27 of 161

- Experiment with external accelerators: corporate accelerators are difficult to setup and run, and might not be for all.

Those key recommendations for successful corporate and startup engagement, and other insights and trends included in OpenAxel´s White Paper achieved wide diffusion. Some examples of the diffusion reached:

- http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorclawson/2016/05/30/mars-and-venus-improving-corporatestartup-engagement-in-europe/#57447d70b68e

- http://hipertextual.com/2016/05/aceleradoras-empresas - http://www.itproportal.com/2016/05/27/money-is-not-why-businesses-interact-with-start-ups/ - http://techcitynews.com/2016/05/27/startups-helps-corporates-new-markets/ - http://startups.co.uk/corporate-accelerators-step-needs-start-ups-report-claims/ - http://empleayemprende.com/estudio-europeo-sobre-empresas-y-emprendedores/ - https://robertoranz.com/2016/06/01/la-industria-4-0-y-el-desarrollo-del-talento-emprendedor/ - http://cincodias.com/cincodias/2016/06/09/tecnologia/1465460128_668848.html

Organization of a really successful and impactful corporate acceleration event in Wayra UK the 27th

May 2016, with the presence of numerous big corporations and more than 200 attendants. This event also encouraged the vivid debate on why corporations need startups to survive.

Some photos of the event:

Figure 12: Images from the Corporate Event Efforts to engage mentors proceeded swiftly and ensured proper support to the start-ups in terms of mentoring and developing the network of the startups in portfolio. Engagement with investors proceeded as well, engaging those that were interested in OpenAxel and the result of the project dealflow, enabling them to use the website as an effective tool to identify teams. However contacts and transactions were eventually done via a multitude of other, pre-existing channels and directly. More details on investment received can be found on WP6, but just to mention three very recent success cases related to these connections:

- Investment round of €720k by Nnergix - Investment round of €750k by MyTwinPlace - Investment round of €400k by Stay App

Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

The original Task 2.3 Engagement with Mentors was amended after the midterm review to the new Task 2.3 Engagement with Industry and its plan was implemented in the remaining period.



http://hipertextual.com/2016/05/aceleradoras-empresas

http://www.itproportal.com/2016/05/27/money-is-not-why-businesses-interact-with-start-ups/

http://techcitynews.com/2016/05/27/startups-helps-corporates-new-markets/

http://startups.co.uk/corporate-accelerators-step-needs-start-ups-report-claims/

http://empleayemprende.com/estudio-europeo-sobre-empresas-y-emprendedores/

https://robertoranz.com/2016/06/01/la-industria-4-0-y-el-desarrollo-del-talento-emprendedor/

http://cincodias.com/cincodias/2016/06/09/tecnologia/1465460128_668848.html



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 28 of 161

This task dealt with the identification and engagement of Mentors who would provide the cross-border support services to winner Start-ups. According to the strategy defined in Task 2.1 we initially identified a list of 235 Accelerators and executed an email campaign including the request to invite their mentors to the platform. In addition all partners extended the invitation to their own network of mentors and to their various networks. A dedicated landing page was designed in accordance to the value proposition earlier defined and outreach efforts were undertaken to recruit mentors. As the mentor deals created on the platform was pretty low the consortium decided to setup a workshop that re-visited the value proposition and decided to re-focus efforts and engage mentors directly for mentoring of the start-ups winner of the OpenAxel competitions.

Task 2.4. OpenAxel Portal ENDED

Work Performed

As a result of the interim review it was decided to amend the original DoW and focus task 2.4 on creating a new website and deliver significant improvements in terms of content and usability. The main functionalities and achievements are:

Interactive map of accelerators with the services they offer

Specific call to action for corporates to search for projects

List of accelerators that currently have open calls

A section for “Recommended Services”

Section for applying to the OpenAxel second contest with information on criteria, timeline and prizes (now close, thus not available anymore).

Testimonials from former winners - a specific subpage under www.openaxel.com was created to offer visibility to OpenAxel startups

General information on the project, giving visibility to OpenAxel partners

An events section, with information on OpenAxel internal and related events

A news section, with the main information and milestones of the project.

The program arranged a deep review of the initial website and using the agreed guidelines a new website was redesigned with more content displayed in a more visually appealing way and with the addition of mobile accessibility. The portal leverages an online repository of accelerators, corporates and national trade associations under the previous URL www.openaxel.com.

One of the key commitments of OpenAxel was to bring transparency to the acceleration ecosystem in Europe. OpenAxel, as the first comprehensive research of acceleration services across Europe, had to answer entrepreneur´s demands, that weren´t aware of the acceleration opportunities they could have access to in other EU countries. The findings of the research must be available to startups and other stakeholders of the European startup ecosystem in form of an online tool. In addition to this, OpenAxel is also working on building bridges between industry and startups, as described above, as a key factor to the growth and scale up of those projects, and to bring innovation to corporations to make them competitive. In this sense, the previous online tool did not address those issues efficiently enough so the consortium decided it was necessary to devote efforts and resources to deploy a new online tool to show all this research work done in an easy and accessible way. Firstly, the consortium interviewed different entrepreneurs to gather their inputs and know better their needs and requirements, as they are the main stakeholder the website is addressing to. Several CEOs were interviewed and these were some of their most relevant demands and inputs:

“I want to understand what services each entity offers”

“I want to understand the effort it takes to get enrolled in a program“

“I want to search for specific skills and experience of consultants/mentors”

“I want to access to people who understand local market conditions and can help my startup internationalize”

http://www.openaxel.com/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 29 of 161

Secondly, the consortium contacted different providers and asked them for budgets and proposals. Out of 4 finalists, the consortium decided the most competitive offer and began working on the launch of the new online tool at the beginning of August. In parallel to this, OpenAxel held several negotiations with some of the most experienced and leading platforms with robust communities to develop the project jointly with the object of achieving synergies and deepen the impact. However, during the negotiations it was clear that, due to financial issues or different scopes and objectives, it was recommended for OpenAxel to develop the repository by ourselves, to assure the quality of the information and that the repository answered the demands of our users. Some of the contacted platforms did not discriminate between accelerators and incubators, and we were looking for quality in the data offered, not quantity. We wanted to list the accelerators that are active and that can be considered accelerators within our criteria. Once the decision was taken to develop the online tool in-house, the web was designed, developed, tested and launched in a very short period of time: by September 1

st 2015.

Additionally we performed the following actions:

Expansion of accelerator profiles on our database: we added 8 extra fields for it to be more comprehensive: markets in which they are active, skills of accelerators, services to startups, number of investments, number of exits, investment ticket, investment model, maturity stage; and we added new tags to the tags library.

Creation of accelerators ‘ghost’ profiles, feeding the accelerators’ profiles with data on the accelerators gathered online by the consortium.

Invitation to accelerators (twice, by email) to take over their profiles, manage them and fill them in with additional info.

Figure 13: Openaxel Portal

In the last months of the project, intensive efforts were devoted to update the information on the web mainly by two

paths:

-Integration with FundingBox v.04

-Upload of news, events and other publications that prove the constant usage and review of the web Main results obtained

The new website delivered significant improvements in accessibility of the content, and was well received by the community and key stakeholders, delivering information more clearly and driving additional traffic and longer engagement of visitors.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 30 of 161

More than 6,616 entrepreneurs are registered in OpenAxel community and they are users of the website and platform. OpenAxel community adds up to 137 accelerators and 60 corporates. Positioning OpenAxel as the main and most complete repository map including:

- 137 key accelerators in Europe providing visibility to the services they offer (presented as icons in an attractive and visual manner),

- the main digital corporations in Europe and their open innovation initiatives, - the National Trade Associations (with a reach of over 10k of ICT companies), - Startups within OpenAxel´s network so investors; corporates and stakeholders can navigate and

search for solutions to their problems. Other results:

- The information on each organization present in the map is: logo, name, link to website, location and services the offer, as well as a brief description.

- OpenAxel´s web and platform contains a list of European accelerators open calls and the application sites are accessible through OpenAxel (Open calls disseminated in the last month: IMPACT call, INCENSE call, Next Step Challenge, Startup Alcobendas Accelerator call for projects and ADER (regional entity).

- Agreement signed with Accelerator Assembly: all the relevant European accelerators included in the interactive map in our website.

- Information on the 60 biggest digital corporations, with their locations and description of their open innovation initiative (if launched), and the NTAs within a network, which have a reach of over 10,000 ICT companies.

- Specific call to action and support offered to corporates, to search for projects in our portfolio that can solve their needs:

Figure 14: Contact Open Axel

- The tool also shows the startups from OpenAxel´s network, so that any relevant player (corporation, investor) can search for a startup that can solve a problem or need they are facing.

- Also, a visibility section for OpenAxel winners was developed, as part of the acceleration services offered by OpenAxel, including interviews and videos, as gaining awareness towards different stakeholders throughout Europe that use OpenAxel website is a highly appreciated added value service, also there is a section with General information on the project, offering visibility to OpenAxel partners in return to their support.

- Particular efforts were put in ensuring the website front-end is ‘responsive’ to different screen sizes, so that content can be optimized for best readability on devices with different screen size and resolution.


As a result of the interim review the original Task 2.4 ‘Engagement with investors’ was amended to the new Task 2.4

‘OpenAxel Portal’ and the relative plan was implemented to execute improvements to the portal during the remaining

periods of the program.

Regarding the original Task 2.4 Engage with Investors: The goal of the task was to gather a competitive pool of

investors to support the teams in OpenAxel portfolio and in particular for the contest winners, and offer a wide range

of cross border funding opportunities. As detected in earlier phase of the program, accelerators outside the OpenAxel

consortium proved not too keen to hand over a list of their investors for strategic and even more importantly privacy

reasons, so in addition to the efforts undertaken in the first part of the program, in the last part of the project we took

corrective actions to extend the program reach to Industry players (Corporate and SMEs and sometimes startups

invest in Innovation via cooperation with start-ups, licencing, investment via their corporate VC arms, and

acquisitions), Accelerators (that invest in start-ups joining the acceleration program, and in some cases like 500Startup

even for start-ups not officially joining the acceleration batches), VCs and Angels directly and via events in addition to

the initially planning recruitment for the OpenAxel platform.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 31 of 161

WP3. Defining a European Cross Border Portfolio of Services

WP Leader ACCELERACE Status ENDED

Task 3.1. Analyze Cross Border Services to be provided jointly at European Level ENDED P1

Work Performed

This task was concluded during the first half of the project, in it an analysis of each of the 72 accelerators identified under task 2.2 (WP2) was performed identifying 29 different types of services by the end of the analysis. The services after deep analysis were comprised to 23 services, which were then described in 'Deliverable 3.1 Cross Border Facilities and Services Report' and disseminated the report to the partners for feedback. Among the feedback was to group the services under even more generic umbrella groups. Consequently, the final report grouped the services into 6 umbrella groups. On basis of Deliverable 3.1, the services of interest for the accelerator community to be jointly offered as cross border services were identified, and the partners agreed to implement 5 cross border services in the project:

1. Prizes (fast track to participation at Wayra, Appcampus and Accelerace) 2. Funding (Help connecting to public and private funding across Europe) 3. Mentorship (access to mentorship network across Wayra, Appcampus and Accelerace) 4. Recruiting (access to Wayra’s global tech talent recruiting program) 5. Distribution (introductions to relevant business units within Telefonica and Nokia provided by Wayra

and Appcampus) Main results obtained

Elaboration of 'Deliverable 3.1 Cross Border Facilities and Services Report' that gave a comprehensive overview and understanding of the service portfolio of the European accelerators. This understanding created the basis for the partners to identify services that accelerators can provide on a cross boarder level. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

No deviations in this work package

Task 3.2. Articulating the consortia current Cross Border Services Porfolio ENDED

Work Performed

The first basic step was to design and test the accelerator profile, which was done by the accelerator partners (Accelerace, Appcampus and Wayra) in the project by completing their profile on openaxel.com and describing their service portfolio. Once this was done, ghost profiles were created on the 72 accelerators identified under task 2.2 (WP2). The profile was populated with the information of each accelerator’s service portfolio gathered and presented in the D.3.2 Cross Border Facilities and Services Report. An example, of a ghost profile of an accelerator profile is shown below:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 32 of 161

Figure 15: Accelerator ghost profile on front end

After creating ghost profiles of the 72 accelerators identified under task 2.2 (WP2), invitations were sent to these accelerators by e-mail. The e-mail invited them to update their profile. The e-mail can be seen below. The increasing exposure of the OpenAxel project led to more accelerators contacting OpenAxel asking to get a profile on the map. It was decided to allow these accelerators to be placed on the map even though they did not necessarily fit the strict definition of an accelerator used under task 2.2 (WP2). At the point of writing, the map counts 137 accelerators with service portfolios. The consortium decided to deliver an extra cross border service in conjunction to the accelerator map. The consortium conceived and executed the idea of arranging physical pitches of the most important startup hubs on the map, thus furthering the transparency of the European startup eco-system. A first trial of this service took place at the 4YFN startup conference in Barcelona, February 24 2016. Central personalities from 9 different startup hubs in Europe took the stage for 5 minutes to pitch their city as the best startup hub in Europe. The pitchers and cities were the following:

1. Paris Aviva Markowicz (https://fr.linkedin.com/in/aviva-markowicz-14846538/en) 2. Berlin Christoph Sollich (https://de.linkedin.com/in/sollich) 3. Barcelona Scott Mackin (https://es.linkedin.com/in/scottmackin) 4. Copenhagen Rasmus Bjerngaard (https://dk.linkedin.com/in/bjerngaard) 5. Budapest Csongor Bias (https://hu.linkedin.com/in/csongorbias) 6. Madrid Carmen Bermejo (https://es.linkedin.com/in/carmenbermejo) 7. Stockholm Philip Hallenborg (https://se.linkedin.com/in/philiphallenborg) 8. Milano Chiara Brughera (https://it.linkedin.com/in/chiarabrughera/en) 9. London Raphaël Crouan (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/raphcrouan)

https://fr.linkedin.com/in/aviva-markowicz-14846538/en

https://de.linkedin.com/in/sollich

https://es.linkedin.com/in/scottmackin

https://dk.linkedin.com/in/bjerngaard

https://hu.linkedin.com/in/csongorbias

https://es.linkedin.com/in/carmenbermejo

https://se.linkedin.com/in/philiphallenborg

https://it.linkedin.com/in/chiarabrughera/en

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/raphcrouan



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 33 of 161

Figure 16: Scott Mackin pitching Barcelona as a startup hub

The pitches gave startups a deep understanding of the acceleration services and general startup environment in nine cities in Europe. The startup hub pitches were a big success. For instance, at the time of writing one of the video cuts has been viewed more than 96,000 times. The video can be seen here: https://youtu.be/BG1RBMaPGb0 Main results obtained

Each accelerator completed their profile and articulated their service portfolio. Furthermore, external accelerators were engaged which resulted in 137 accelerators having a profile on the map. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

No deviations in this work package

Task 3.3. Defining a new Cross Border Service based on high level coaching ENDED

Work Performed

During the second half of the project and in the framework of a partner meeting in Madrid April 28th

2015, a workshop was held where the partners brainstormed on new cross border services based on coaching. It was quickly decided that accelerators should leverage the existing network of mentors and coaches in order to help startups. It was decided that the best way to provide a new coaching services was to make “exchange programs” for startups. The idea is that startups in one accelerator can join another accelerator in a different geographical market for certain duration. This will enable startups to gain access to the resources of other accelerators in other markets. The idea was first tested during the delivery of mentorship to the winners of the first OpenAxel contest. Opinno and Wayra coordinated the actual meetings between the startups and mentors coming from the different partners’

https://youtu.be/BG1RBMaPGb0



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 34 of 161

network. In this way the winners got feedback from coaches coming from a wide variety of backgrounds and countries. The idea was further explored and tested with one of the OpenAxel winners of the first contest. The startup iNovar was a participant of Wayra acceleration program in UK. Accelerace then offered iNovar to come to Denmark and participate in a program called Next Step Challenge. iNovar accepted the offer and had a very successful stay in Denmark where iNovar could utilize the coaching network and general resources of the Next Step Challenge acceleration program. The concept was implemented again for two of the winners of the second contest. Nnergix and Green Momit. They both receive weekly remote mentoring from Accelerace coaches because they fitted into the Incense acceleration program that Accelerace is a partner in. Main results obtained

The partners succeeded in providing cross border coaching to several startups and testing different formats for this. The most successful case was iNovar that relocated in order to utilize the resources of an accelerator in a different geographical market to get market entry in another country. The collaboration between two different accelerators is novel and an interesting concept to explore further in the future. The partners believe that this concept could be scaled and systematized among accelerators on wider scale. However, this would require accelerators to agree on a common framework and ruleset. The partners believe that the first step to this has been taken by making the service portfolio of each accelerator transparent and providing a success case to be emulated. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

ACCELERACE, OPINNO and WAYRA had overlapping roles because task 3.3 is closely related to WP6. Furthermore, it was decided to host the first award ceremony in Madrid where both OPINNO and WAYRA have head offices. Consequently, OPINNO and WAYRA played the leading roles in coordinating meetings between coaches and the winners of the first OpenAxel contest.

Task 3.4. Identifying interesting Cross Border Services to be develop beyond the Project. ENDED

Work Performed

During the partners’ meetings it was frequently discussed which new cross border services developed during the project could be extended beyond the project. It was decided to focus on the map as the main cross border service to continue and be further developed beyond the project. The map of acceleration services is the first comprehensive map of its kind. The partners regard the map as a cross border service because it delivers the service of information about acceleration services to startups across borders. Any startup, regardless of its geographical origin, can access information about acceleration services on a European level. This will have several positive effects. First, it lowers the barriers for startups to obtain help from accelerators to enter new geographical markets. This will increase the mobility for startups and create a more effective European market for startups and startup services. Secondly, it increases awareness and knowledge of accelerators in terms of other accelerators. Awareness and knowledge is the first step to collaboration. Accelerators that do not know each other can not collaborate. OpenAxel has brought accelerators closer to each other by exposing the location and service portfolio of other accelerators. Furthermore, the OpenAxel partners have engaged these accelerators and brought attention to the potential benefits of closer collaboration. Wayra and Accelerace have even demonstrated a successful case of co-acceleration of a startup (iNovar). Such co-acceleration project would not have taken place without the relationships developed between the two accelerators as a result of learning about each other (as prior to OpenAxel there was no communication between Wayra and Accelerace). Accelerace has taken the concept further and started collaborating with other accelerators as well. On basis of the map, Accelerace contacted the other accelerators in the Nordic region. Several of the Nordic accelerators decided to



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 35 of 161

arrange a pitch competition called Battle of the Vikings with the batches of each accelerator competing. The event was successfully held during Nordic Startup Conference the 18

th of March 2016.

Figure 17: Nordic Startup Conference agenda showing Battle of the Vikings

The partners believe that the map will serve as a fundamental building closer collaboration between accelerators in the future and thus serve as an enabler for more cross border services. Another new and interesting cross border service to be further developed beyond the project is the housing service for entrepreneurs with MyTwinPlace. MyTwinPlace for Entrepreneurs was launched during the project and was created based on feedback from accelerators. Accelerators reported that relocation service in form of housing was important but hard and expensive to provide. To solve this problem, the consortium collaborated with MyTwinPlace to launch a platform that will allow entrepreneurs to easily exchange housing with other entrepreneurs for limited periods of time. This will allow entrepreneurs to move more freely around Europe and thus reduce friction in relation to receiving acceleration services in other markets. The service was launched and promoted during the 4YFN startup conference in Barcelona, February 24 2016. Main results obtained

An interactive map with the service portfolios of more 137 accelerators that has increased cross border mobility for startups and created the basis for a more effective market between startups and accelerators. The map has also served as the fundament for collaboration between accelerators. An example of this was the Battle if the Vikings pitch competition between accelerators in the Nordics. The housing service MyTwinPlace for Entrepreneurs (https://www.mytwinplace.com/en/for-entrepreneurs/) was launched and made available to entrepreneurs at the 4YFN startup conference in Barcelona, February 24 2016. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

The original intention with this task was to identify new types of direct acceleration services to startups. The D.3.1 Cross Border Facilities and Services Report' found 29 different services already provided by accelerators. The partners concluded that new types of direct services were not needed. Instead the partners invented a meta-service. A service that makes all the existing services easier to identify, find and obtain. This meta-service is the interactive map. The partners believe that the map has far greater impact than any direct service to startup would have had.

https://www.mytwinplace.com/en/for-entrepreneurs/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 36 of 161

WP4. Defining the selection process

WP Leader ECONET Status ENDED

Task 4.1. Process readiness ENDED

Subtask 4.1.1. Process readiness (round 1) ENDED P1

Subtask 4.1.2. Process readiness (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

The OPENAXEL 2nd

Contest for Startups involved all OPENAXEL Partners, under the guidance of Econet for the process analysis and redesign, and FundingBox for the online application and evaluation tool. The Contest was launched on 1

st

September 2015 and closed on 30th

October 2015. Between June and September 2015, OPENAXEL Partners devised a complete redesign of the whole process, incorporating lessons learned and experimental new ideas on how to combine multiple accelerators in order to create a new generation of ‘meta-contest’ spanning over different European countries, industries and ecosystem players. The idea of the ‘meta-contest’ consists in creating a contest that plugs into existing open calls run by accelerators all over Europe and selects startup champions among all of the participating accelerators to deliver added value in terms of extra opportunities. These extra opportunities are drawn from ecosystem players like corporations, independent consultancy boutique firms, incubators, investors, and similar, who are interested in accessing fresh and up-to-date qualified dealflow. Partnering with Accelerators After the analysis of the 1

st OPENAXEL contest a number of lessons learned were detected:

1. Competition among incubators and accelerators and, generally startup competition in Europe and worldwide was becoming fierce: with the offer growing steadly from the conception of OPENAXEL in 2012 till the Mid of 2015, when financing in the form of grants was being provided throughout Europe, startup contests with no economic reward nor significant tangible benefits attached entailed risk of attracting lower level or too early stage proposals.

2. The prize package defined the target segment of applicants: companies at very different stages of development, like for instance seed stage as opposed to expansion stage, apply to different opportunities. The most appreciated prize packages across all segments are: access to funding (direct or indirect, and commesurate to the different levels; e.g. 50,000€ is an interesting prize for seed stage, but not for expansion stage) and access to customers.

3. Enterpreneurs struggle in applying to many different opportunities: each requires to use different application processes, to provide different information, or sometimes to provide the same information but in different formats. In short: applying to opportunities requires time, which is a precious resource for a startup.

4. Entrepreneurs produce a lot of online information about their startups: nowadays most startup entrepreneurs have a website, run a blog or use twitter, have online profiles on Linkedin or other social network, have already produced video pitches or short commercial videos, and share presentations and pitches online. And obviously more information is provided through application forms to other startup competitions, or accelerator and incubator programmes.

From this analysis we realised that value would be added to entrepreneurs if OPENAXEL really provided a one-stop shop where an entrepreneur could access multiple opportunities with only one application. Also we understood that, in order to pursue OPENAXEL’s mission of accelerating the accelerators ecosystem, we could provide value by running the contest across multiple accelerators. This journey brought us to creating a ‘meta-contest’ to speed up the European ecosystem. We conceived OPENAXEL 2

nd Open Call as a means to gather a picture of the startups currently

in the ecosystem as wide as possible, in order to link together different accelerators and opportunities for startups.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 37 of 161

We worked on putting together the open calls of different accelerators, with the goal of identifying lessons learned to disseminate for future attempts of building Europe-wide contests. In conclusion, we set off on a mission to completely redesign the OPENAXEL startup contest along the following guidelines:

a. More opportunities with just one application: we aimed to widen the set of opportunities made available to entrepreneurs applying to OPENAXEL by building a system that would redistribute our information to many external partners and key players in the European startup ecosystem, like for instance accelerators, incubators, corporations, boutique search firms working in close contact with corporations, other European Projects, and so on.

b. Less effort for the entrepreneur: we aimed to diminish as much as possible the effort required by entrepreneurs to participate in OPENAXEL Contest and adapted our request for information to the ones from other contests, accelerators and application pages with the goal of indirectly increasing the value in terms of time and focus they can dedicate to their real business, while still accessing the opportunities brought to them by the European Commission’s investments. We shifted the quantity of effort required from the application phase (entrepreneurs’ side) to the evaluation phase (consortium’s side).

c. More value to existing accelerators: instead of adding noise to the lot of startup competitions, we aimed to create additional value for those ecosystem partners like accelerators and incubators by combining their efforts on additional opportunities for the startups that applied to their calls. We directly promoted OPENAXEL among their applicants, in order to give accelerators a tool to build a relationship with their communities of applicants in view of future selection rounds.

The redesign brought to a number of changes. The redesign and implementation activities included:

- Repositioning of the Contest - Advertising the call - Redesign of the application process - Redesign of the selection process - Signing partnerships with other accelerators

Building a Meta-Contest with all Stakeholders in Mind In order to include as many ecosystem players as possible, the Open Axel Contest was re-positioned both towards accelerators and startups, by putting their interest as a first goal. We also re-positioned our Contest towards third parties, like corporations, or boutique search firms working with corporations, in order to create a seamless bridge to those opportunities for the startups participating in our call or in our partner accelerators’ calls.

Re-positioning towards accelerators: - Re-targeting to early stage: After conceiving our Contest as a ‘meta-contest’ in favour of existing

accelerators, we decided to target only early stage companies, who are also the target of accelerators. Thus we dropped the “expansion-stage” companies from our target group and selection process.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 38 of 161

Figure 18: Guide for Applicants, Section 5.1:

Only 2 categories: seed and early stage (vs. 3 categories in 1st

Contest)

- Package for accelerators: We created a Partnership MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) to attract accelerators, containing:

- An advertising package for their open calls in OPENAXEL community (spanning to over 6,600 entrepreneurs);

- A prize package that would add value to most accelerator programmes, without overlapping: we focussed on our flagship one-week Business Bootcamp in Silicon Valley.

Figure 19: Process to sign up accelerators into the ‘meta-contest’:

Template of Memorandum of Understanding.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 39 of 161

As a result, we signed partnerships with four accelerators: INCENSe, IMPACT, FI-C3, and ODINE.

Re-positioning towards startups: - 5-minute application form: the shortest possible application form was created, to let entrepreneurs apply

without defocussing from their business; we introduced the tagline “Win equity-free support packages and a business week in Silicon Valley, in just 5 minutes”.

- One-stop shop: we assembled a number of offers from external partners to give additional opportunities/prizes to the applicants to OPENAXEL Contest (see below); this was communicated clearly in the website.

Figure 20: OPENAXEL website, Contest page: One-stop shop concept, showing other opportunities offered by partners.

Re-positioning towards third parties (suppliers of opportunities): - Selected dealflow: In order to implement the ‘one-stop shop’ concept, we approached a number of

ecosystem players offering opportunities to startups (including: other European projects, e.g. SEP; boutique search firms for corporations, e.g. D-RAFT; elite networking players, e.g. CF-CEO), by offering them access to quality dealflow for their activities, i.e. startups selected from our 1,000+ leads of the 2

nd Contest according

to our partners’ criteria. Redisigning the application process: Combining Multiple Information Sources After studying many application forms from different accelerators world-wide, we understood that:

- Most forms request similar information; - Filling an application form takes time and focus out of an entrepreneur’s main job: his business; - Entrepreneurs produce the same information over and over again in different formats; - A lot of information about a business is usually already available online or in other applications (e.g. in those

from our partner accelerators). We redesigned the application process and application form with the goal of reusing as much as possible the information already provided by entrepreneurs, either in other open calls (i.e. in our partner accelerators’ calls) or in shared databases online (e.g. slideshare, vimeo, youtube, linkedin, etc). To enable the whole new concept of ‘meta-contest’, we had to ensure that information would flow:

1. Seamlessly from our partner accelerators to OPENAXEL;



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 40 of 161

2. Seamlessly from OPENAXEL to our partners offering additional opportunities for startups; 3. Easily and with little effort from our own applicants to us.

For (1), we implemented a smart approach made of two components:

- Consent tick box: We requested partner accelerators to include a tick box in their application box, where applicants could give consent to our partners to share the applicant’s data with us;

- Simplification of selection criteria: We reduced in number our selection criteria, focusing mostly on the Team and Business Opportunity (for more details see the paragraph below on the selection process).

For (2), we asked our reviewers to classify OPENAXEL applications according to the same criteria we were requested by our third-party partners. As a side effect, since in this way we shifted the workload of classification of startups from the applicants to the reviewers, this approach also helped us pursue (3). For (3), we acted along different lines:

- For applicants from partner accelerators: the consent tick box mentioned above allowed them to share the applicant’s data with OPENAXEL;

- For applicants from our website: we reduced the application form to a request of pointers to online resources (e.g. social network profiles for partners, video and presentation for the business, etc). This also implied a further shift of the workload from the applicant to the reviewers, since the information about team and business would not be readily available through pre-formatted answers but it would require an effort by the reviewers to retrieve it from the online resources.

|

Figure 21: OPENAXEL 2nd

Contest Application Form: Short form requesting mostly links, to keep up with the “5-minutes fill-in” claim.

Open Call: Reaching Out to Startups From June to August 2015 the 2

nd Contest was organised in all of its details. The Open Call was advertised to startups

all over Europe in the period from 1st

June (pre-launch) to 30th

October 2015 via multiple actions:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 41 of 161

- Direct emailing to startups: Thanks to the partnerships with other accelerators, we could indirectly advertise our call by advertising our partners’ calls. It is important to notice this point, given the remarkable conversion rates we had from our partner accelerators. We distributed email advertisments to approximately 4,000 leads present in our OPENAXEL Community with:

- Message to apply to OPENAXEL: 25 Aug, 9 Sep, 29 Sep, 12 Oct, 27 Oct - Message to apply to IMPACT: 17 Jul, 25 Aug, 9 Sep, 29 Sep, 12 Oct - Message to apply to INCENSe: 22 Jun, 17 Jul, 25 Aug, 9 Sep, 29 Sep - Message to apply to ODINE: 22 Jun

- Direct emailing to accelerators: We reached out to all accelerators in our network and beyond, with a request to forward our Open Call to their startups. In total, 77 accelerators, incubators or co-working spaces were reached.

- Direct messages to startup communities (not the above mentioned projects) - Online dissemionation including social media, websites, e-newsletters, and further announcements - Participation to events: We advertised the call with either a booth or a presentation (or both) to several

events in various European countries: - IVSZ Startup Conference, Budapest, Hungary, 10 June (booth) - Openreaktor #36 with Pirate Summit, Warsaw, Poland, 21 June (presentation) - Bitspiration, Warsaw, Poland, 22-23 June (booth + presentation) - Openreaktor #37 #AdTech, Warsaw, Poland, 23 Sept (presentation) - South Summit, Madrid, Spain, 7-9 Oct (booth + presentation) - ICT 2015, Lisbon, Portugal, 20-22 Oct (leaflets) - Wolves Summit, Warsaw, Poland, 27-28 Oct (booth + presentation) - Rise of Corporate Accelerator, London, UK, 29 Oct (presentation) - D-RAFT Corporate Demo Day: E-commerce , Warsaw, Poland, 30 Oct (booth) - STARTUP OLE, Salamanca, 9-11 Sept - Slush, Helsinki, Finland, 11-12 Nov - Fifth Central European Life Science Investment Conference, Cracow, Poland, 22-23 Oct (leaflets) - Information Session in University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain, 09 Sept (presentation)

Selection Process Redesigned: Evaluating Different Application Forms We redesigned also the selection process and evaluation form with the goal of merging the application processes and the evaluation processes of multiple accelerators contributing to our ‘meta-contest’, within a framework of smart optimisation of resources. To enable the new concept of ‘meta-contest’ during the selection process, we had to enable the following features:

1. Accepting and processing applications coming in different application forms (from accelerator partners); 2. Leveraging available evaluations from partner accelerators, when possible; 3. Combining all evaluation scores from different sources in one final ranking.

More information on the implementation of this new design can be found in Task 5.3.

Defining of prize packages

The prize packages were defined as follows:

Top 30 finalists received the following rewards and could benefit from the following services: - Visibility on www.fundingbox.com for at least 2 weeks (featured company) - Invitation to participate as observer to a final Public Event in 4YFN 2016 in Barcelona (travel expenses to be

covered by the companies) - Public funding supporting service - Additional benefits as defined by individual Partner Initiatives

Additionally, TOP 9 winners received the following rewards and could benefit from the following services:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 42 of 161

- Bootcamp Week in Silicon Valley with selected business meetings with top companies and investors in the Valley (hosting and flight expenses were covered by OPENAXEL for up to 1 founder per company)

- Participation to a final Public Event in 4YFN 2016 in Barcelona (all travel expenses were covered by OPENAXEL for up to 1 founder per company)

- Fast track to Accelerace, Wayra or Next Step Challenge - Participation in selected events in Accelerace and Wayra programmes - Introduction to key people and institutions in the European startup ecosystem - Coaching sessions with Accelerace business accelerators (coaches) - Visibility on www.fundingbox.com for at least 4 weeks (featured company) - Individual Public Funding Reports with information on current public funding opportunities in Europe - Additional benefits as defined by individual Partner Initiatives - Personalized Coaching Plans, tailored to their needs - Warm introductions to corporations and investors

All extra opportunities mentioned above were not reserved exclusively to the thirty semi-finalists or to the nine winners. When identified, the extra opportunities would be communicated to interested companies only. No action was required from OPENAXEL applicants in order to be taken into considerations for these opportunities with Partner Initiatives. Evaluation process To make the evaluation process possible, for a massive total of 1,098 applications, over 60 possible reviewers from Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, and from a mixed of backgrounds: corporations, accelerators, business angels were contacted in October-November 2015. Finally 53 signed up. Evaluators mostly came from industry to make sure the startups are assessed by experts with relevant background (at the same time we ease to get closer to the industry). Sign up of reviewers were done by all partners independently. Then, assignment of reviewers to specific applications was made by Econet on the basis of expertise information shared by the reviewers (e.g. reviewers with expertise in smart energy systems were assigned to INCENSe, etc). Onboarding of reviewers on the FundingBox online platform occurred between 29th October and 13th November (for late on-boarding). On 16th November a webinar was organised for reviewers to learn of OPENAXEL, of the review criteria, and of the online evaluation tool

The evaluation process was divided in different stages in order to assure the rigour and solidness of the final decision.

1- Online Evaluations of the projects by external evaluators, selected considering their professional experience and participation in other selection processes. The complete list of all the evaluators engaged is:

NAME PROFILE AT FUNDINGBOX

Hans Chr. Bjerre Andersen http://www.fundingbox.com/p/hans-chr-bjerre-andersen/

Christian Hvashøj http://www.fundingbox.com/p/christian-hvashoj-schaarup_3552/

Claus Strand Kristensen http://www.fundingbox.com/p/claus-kristensen_3556/

Jes Nordentoft http://www.fundingbox.com/p/jes-nordentoft/

Lone Gammelgaard http://www.fundingbox.com/p/lone-gammelgaard-schwarz/

Mikkel Toft-Olsen http://www.fundingbox.com/p/mikkel-toftolsen/

Morten Heide http://www.fundingbox.com/p/morten-heide/

Peter Birk http://www.fundingbox.com/p/peter-birk_3577/

Søren Lottrup http://www.fundingbox.com/p/sren-lottrup_3560/

Thomas Wiborg http://www.fundingbox.com/p/thomas-wiborg-steen/

Luis Alfonso Alvarez Sestelo http://www.fundingbox.com/p/luis-alvarez-sestelo_4093/

Alvaro Martin Mayorga http://www.fundingbox.com/p/lvaro-martn/

Cátia Rabaça http://www.fundingbox.com/p/ctia-sonnemberg-rabaa/

Fernando San Martín http://www.fundingbox.com/p/fernando-san-martin/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/hans-chr-bjerre-andersen/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/christian-hvashoj-schaarup_3552/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/claus-kristensen_3556/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/jes-nordentoft/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/lone-gammelgaard-schwarz/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/mikkel-toftolsen/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/morten-heide/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/peter-birk_3577/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/sren-lottrup_3560/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/thomas-wiborg-steen/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/luis-alvarez-sestelo_4093/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/lvaro-martn/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/ctia-sonnemberg-rabaa/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/fernando-san-martin/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 43 of 161

NAME PROFILE AT FUNDINGBOX

Leo Italiano http://www.fundingbox.com/p/leo-italiano/

Mónica Forconi http://www.fundingbox.com/p/monica-forconi/

David Orban http://www.fundingbox.com/p/david-orban/

John Sperryn http://www.fundingbox.com/p/john-sperryn_4109/

Chris Bouret http://www.fundingbox.com/p/chris-bouret/

Axel Ferrazzini http://www.fundingbox.com/p/axel-ferrazzini_3594/

Gergely Darvas http://www.fundingbox.com/p/gergely-darvas/

Günter Schneider http://www.fundingbox.com/p/gunter-schneider/

Jonathan Murray http://www.fundingbox.com/p/jonathan-murray_3204/

Zsolt Balog http://www.fundingbox.com/p/zsolt-balog/

Willem Zandbergen http://www.fundingbox.com/p/willem-zandbergen_4111/

Burak Buyukdemir http://www.fundingbox.com/p/burak-buyukdemir/

Iván Zavala http://www.fundingbox.com/p/ivan-zavala/

Félix López http://www.fundingbox.com/p/felix-lopez-capel/

Russchen Wytze http://www.fundingbox.com/p/wytze-russchen/

Jesper Knudsen http://www.fundingbox.com/p/jesper-knudsen/

Hani Tarabichi http://www.fundingbox.com/p/hani-tarabichi/

Stefano Campadello http://www.fundingbox.com/p/stefano-campadello/

Katarzyna Koziol http://www.fundingbox.com/p/katarzyna/

Barnabás Málnay http://www.fundingbox.com/p/barnabas-malnay_4095/

Csongor Biás http://www.fundingbox.com/p/csongor-bias/

Mátyás Horvai http://www.fundingbox.com/p/matyas-horvai/

Tamás Barathi http://www.fundingbox.com/p/tamas-barathi/

Tamás Turcsán http://www.fundingbox.com/p/peter-tamas-turcsan_4103/

Veronika Pistyur http://www.fundingbox.com/p/veronika-pistyur/

Viktor Bálint http://www.fundingbox.com/p/viktor-blint/

Zoltán Beke http://www.fundingbox.com/p/zoltn-beke/

Zsolt Winkler http://www.fundingbox.com/p/zsolt-winkler/

A. Mete Cakmakci http://www.fundingbox.com/p/a-mete-akmakc/

Clauidio Rodrigues http://www.fundingbox.com/p/claudio-rodrigues/

Alfredo Urdiales http://www.fundingbox.com/p/alfredo-urdiales-gonzalez/

Ana Núñez http://www.fundingbox.com/p/ana-nez-gonzlez/

Carlota Cobo http://www.fundingbox.com/p/carlota/

Enrique de la Lastra http://www.fundingbox.com/p/enrique-de-la-lastra/

Jorge M. Martín García http://www.fundingbox.com/p/jorge-martin_4124/

Maria Bobillo http://www.fundingbox.com/p/mara-bobillo-varela/

Raul Rodriguez Couto http://www.fundingbox.com/p/ral-rodrguez-couto/

Table 6: External Evaluators

On 16

th 2015, before starting the 2

nd contest, the OPENAXEL team organized an online webinar to train

evaluators and to explain the ideas the project was looking for. Each application was evaluated at least by two different evaluators, and with the average score the first ranking was produced.

2- Once this first ranking was produced, an Evaluation Committee was formed (more information Task 5.2) The output of this meeting was a shortlist of the best 15 projects that should go through the next stage: face to face web meetings.

3- The 15 finalists were selected and called to an online meeting in front of an external jury on 7th

January 2016. These 15 finalists were:

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/leo-italiano/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/monica-forconi/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/david-orban/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/john-sperryn_4109/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/chris-bouret/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/axel-ferrazzini_3594/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/gergely-darvas/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/gunter-schneider/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/jonathan-murray_3204/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/zsolt-balog/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/willem-zandbergen_4111/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/burak-buyukdemir/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/ivan-zavala/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/felix-lopez-capel/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/wytze-russchen/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/jesper-knudsen/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/hani-tarabichi/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/stefano-campadello/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/katarzyna/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/barnabas-malnay_4095/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/csongor-bias/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/matyas-horvai/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/tamas-barathi/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/peter-tamas-turcsan_4103/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/veronika-pistyur/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/viktor-blint/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/zoltn-beke/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/zsolt-winkler/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/a-mete-akmakc/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/claudio-rodrigues/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/alfredo-urdiales-gonzalez/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/ana-nez-gonzlez/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/carlota/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/enrique-de-la-lastra/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/jorge-martin_4124/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/mara-bobillo-varela/

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/ral-rodrguez-couto/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 44 of 161

- Brain+ ApS - DiabetesLab - Games With Attitude NV/OJOO - Green momit - Mobail Apps S.L./STAY APP - NIKOLAOS & MARINOS LIVANOS O.E. - NNERGIX ENERGY MANAGEMENT, S.L. - Remote Eye s.l. - Tamuz Energy LTD - VEASYT srl - Viomedo UG - Waynabox - Wiffinity - Xetal - Zalr A/S

Wayra was in charge, with the collaboration of partners, of recruiting the members of the external jury. The final 9 winners were decided by this external jury, enhancing the independency that ruled the whole process.


For the Second Contest, we redesigned the application and evaluation processes completely, and we created a new, experimental form of ‘meta-contest’. The result of this change exceeded the consortium’s expectation:

- 4 accelerators participated in this ‘meta-contest’ experimentation; - 3 ecosystem players provided additional opportunities consisting in connecting startups and

corporations which in turn brought to significant improvements in the community engagement:

+490% applications received (1.098 vs 178 in the 1st contest);

+69% engagement of external experts for the selection process.

We signed partnerships with 4 accelerators to be partners in our experimental ‘meta-contest’: FI-C3, IMPACT, INCENSe and ODINE.

We signed partnerships with 3 ecosystem players (SEP, D-RAFT, and CEO-CF) to provide extra opportunities to startups applying to OPENAXEL (both directly and via accelerator partners), with a focus on match-making opportunities between startups and corporations (i.e. SEP, D-RAFT).

The second contest closed with nearly 1,100 applications (approx. a 490% increase with respect to the first contest). Most of the European countries are represented in the contest.

The conversion rates from our partner accelerators (from total # applicants to partner accelerator, to # applicants to OPENAXEL) thanks to the consent tick box system were remarkably high, thus validating the new model:

- IMPACT: 95% (530 out of 559) - INCENSe: 93% (240 out of 259) - ODINE: 76% (94 out of 124) - [FI-C3 redirected their applicants on OPENAXEL website: 20 applied]



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 45 of 161

Figure 22: Applications received by source

After our smart assignment in the evaluation process (elimination of low-ranking applications in partner accelerators’ scoring), 632 applications were evaluated. They come from at least 14 European countries, plus Iceland (many needed to be classified manually).

Figure 23: Applications y country

44 external evaluators have been successfully involved in the selection process and are now aware of OPENAXEL community.

We have built a classified database of over 630 companies that we can share with other ecosystem players for dealflow generation and extra opportunities.

Building on lessons learned in the first contest, the table below summarizes the main results achieved in this Second Contest with respect to the first:

1st

Contest 2nd

Contest

# of applications 178 1,098 (234 directly from our website)

# of reviewers 26 53

# categories of companies 3 2 (‘expansion’ eliminated)

# questions in application form 28 11 (+ consent to treat data)

Time estimated to fill in the form 3 hours 5 minutes

Table 7: Results comparison between contests

Engagement of the most relevant ICT industry players with open innovation activities, providing direct access to their “internal entrepreneurial champions” (Virgin, Orange, ENEL).

Continuous increase in of the community figures: already 6,616 entrepreneurs; 137 accelerators, 60 Top Level companies and a network of more than 10k ICT companies.

Presence in the key entrepreneurial events throughout Europe achieving high impact for the project and our startups (Bitspiration, Wolves Summit, OpenReaktor, South Summit, Slush, Unbound, Websummit, ECFI…).



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 46 of 161

Task 4.2. Contest tool setting up ENDED

Subtask 4.2.1. Contest tool setting up (round 1) ENDED P1

Subtask 4.2.2. Contest tool setting up (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

FundingBox Platform (V.03), also named FBOX (V.03), was the web platform chosen by OPENAXEL to manage Application and Evaluation phase within OPENAXEL 2

nd open call. FBOX was also the platform selected by two FIWARE

Accelerators funded by the European Commission under Call 3 of the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership, FI-PPP, call identifier FP7-2013-ICT-FI, within FP7 Objective ICT-2013.1.8 Expansion of Use Cases.

OPENAXEL Open Calls were accessible directly at http://www.fundingbox.com/p/OPENAXEL/ in its Version.03. At the present time FBOX is running its new version .04 and the forms are not accessible on line.

PLATFORM STRUCTURE

FBOX (V.03), was organized in 6 sections considering different types of entities: Startups, Accelerators, Opencalls, Funding, People and Companies. These sections were available from the Welcome page and Home page.

Figure 24: FBOX Welcome page

As contest management tool the most important sections are OpenCall and Evaluator Dashboard.

We can differentiate 2 main FBOX user profiles: Basic user and Advanced users:

- Basic users can access the 6 sections already mentioned: Startups, Accelerators, Opencalls, Funding, People and Companies.

- Advanced users can access those 6 sections plus the Dashboard where FBOX users can create and Manage Open Call, including evaluation process. Advanced user status has to be granted by FBOX Administration Team.

FBOX user profiles can easily be created using an email account or a Linkedn account.

Basic users can access different sections:

Portfolio: Where FBOX users can create a Company profile. Company profile allows FBOX users to show their activity as Founder or Partner or Team Member in different organization.

http://www.fundingbox.com/p/openaxel/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 47 of 161

Overview: Here FBOX user can show their professional information in the “About me” section and their interests in the “What I am looking for” section.

Followers: FBOX user can be followed by other FBOX users creating a community link. Here FBOX users can see those FBOX users that follow them.

Following: FBOX user can then followed other FBOX users creating this community link. Here FBOX users can see the FBOX user they follow.

My applications: Here FBOX users can see and follow the application they are working on or already submitted.

My post: FBOX can public post that will be seen by their followers.

Advanced users can access also Application Dashboard. This dashboard allows Advance user Create and Manage Open Call, including evaluation process.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Any FBOX user can start working on the application in EDIT mode and save changes clicking on the “Save draft” button to continue later, and finally submit when all the compulsory fields have been filled clicking on the “Submit” button changing application status to POSTED. Even if the application form has been submitted, FBOX users can always edit it before the Open Call deadline and submit again as many time as they need. Also, FBOX users once they have submitted their application can follow them in “My applications” section in their Personnel profile.

OPEN CALL MANAGEMENT PROCESS: My Open Calls

FBOX, as a Contest tool, allows Advanced FBOX users owning an Open Call to manage and monitor them using the Dashboard in the “My OpenCalls” section.

Figure 25: Dashboard: “My OpenCalls” section

Once a FBOX Advanced user creates a New Open Call, as owner, he or she can access different functionalities:

OpenCall Stats: Where Open Call owners can see some basic data about their Open Call, i.e. number of applications in different status, basically EDIT and POSTED status.

Applications: Where Open Call owners can see a list of Applications received and access applicant’s data and application forms.

Evaluations: Open Call owners can here monitor evaluation process, see the evaluator assigned to each Applications and the evaluation form in EDIT or SUBMITTED status.

Assign roles: Open Call owners can here assign other FBOX users 2 basic roles within an Open Call: MENTOR, which allows the FBOX user to be assigned as Evaluator; and VIEWER, which allows the FBOX user to visualize the OpenCall Stats and Applications.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 48 of 161

Assign evaluations: Here, the Open Call owners can make specific assignation of MENTORs to Applications as Evaluators.

EVALUATION PROCESS: My Evaluations

FBOX Dashboard allows FBOX users, assigned as Evaluator to an Open Call, to access Evaluation process in the “My Evaluations” sections.

Figure 26: Dashboard: “My Evaluations” section.

The Open Call Owner assigns applications to each evaluator through the Dashboard, in “My Open Calls” section. The process is as follows.

Assign roles: the Open Call Owner assigns the role of “MENTOR” to each evaluator.

Figure 27: Role assignment

Assign evaluations: the Open Call Owner assigns applications to each evaluator.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 49 of 161

Figure 28: Applications assignment

On the “My Evaluations” section of FBOX, any user assigned as Evaluator to an Open Call can see the applications assigned to them by the open Call Owner. Applications appear in a first step as “ASSIGNED” status. The possible status of an application being evaluated is:

EDIT: the application is being evaluated. Evaluator can save a draft of the evaluation as many times as he needs before submitting the final evaluation.

POSTED: the evaluation has been completed.

A proposal can be assigned to as many evaluators as needed. In OPENAXEL, each proposal is evaluated by two different evaluators.

Figure 29: Assigned/Posted application



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 50 of 161

Figure 30: Evaluation screen.

Evaluators can assign, for each evaluated criteria, predefined comments chosen from a drop down and also free comments from a textbox, and a score from 0-10. The overall score of the proposal evaluated is the sum of the criteria evaluated. All information is collected in a downloadable CSV export file where the Open Call Owner manages the info available in order to select the best-evaluated-proposals.


A FundingBox electronic tool for the project has been set up. The tool has been used in the 2nd

open call of the project and has worked perfectly, allowing to assess, evaluate and select the 9 winners from amost 1,100 applicants.


No deviation in this task.

Task 4.3. Contest and content management ENDED

Work Performed

This task aimed at integrating and managing the contest procedure, information, and contents in the CET platform.

Each partner had specific activities related to CET assigned such as

- Managing call for applications, contest application procedure, and evaluation process, - Managing results communication, - Updating of contest news - Managing platform based, direct cross border services to the Startups contest (market information, funding

opportunities, incubator/acceleration programs, on-line knowledge management tool etc.)

The principles, rules, criteria of the evaluation of the contest and all other mechanisms were developed during the 1st

period of the project but for the 2

nd Contest, we redesigned the application and evaluation processes completely.

Contest Redesign: Combining Accelerators

We started from the analysis of the 1st OPENAXEL Contest and detected a number of lessons learnt which lead to the redesign the OPENAXEL startup contest along the lines explained in Task 4.1.2.

Selection Process Redesigned: Evaluating Different Application Forms



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 51 of 161

We redesigned the selection process and evaluation form with the goal of merging the application processes and the evaluation processes of multiple accelerators contributing to our ‘meta-contest’, within a framework of smart optimisation of resources, as it is also explained in detail in Task 4.1.2. Main results obtained

For the Second Contest, we redesigned the application and evaluation processes completely, and we created a new, experimental form of ‘meta-contest’.

The second contest closed with 1,098 applications (a 490% increase with respect to the first contest). Most of the European countries were represented in the contest.


No deviation in this task.

Task 4.4. Panel of evaluators ENDED

Task 4.4.1. Panel of evaluators (round 1) ENDED P1

Task 4.4.2. Panel of evaluators (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

In order to be able to properly brief evaluators and coordinate their activities, basically the ‘Panel of evaluators’ document – prepared earlier for the 1

st contest – was used and completed with the following main amendments:

Milestones and schedule of evaluators’ tasks were updated for the 2nd

contest.

Selection process of evaluators and timing: we had to re-calculate the number of evaluators needed for the 2

nd contest, as we expected more than 1000 applications (ex-ante), which is equivalent to approximately 85

evaluators needed (counting with at least 2 evaluations per project and 25 reviews per evaluator).

In order to meet this requirement, partners were asked to extend their first-round evaluators’ list with as much more evaluators as they could nominate.

Tasks of evaluators were amended in some points, as they were asked to: - Register on FundingBox platform - Evaluate applications assigned to them (instead of choosing one or more) - Finish evaluation before the deadline defined for the 2

nd contest

Other main tasks of and key requirements from evaluators have not been changed.

Based on the nominated evaluators by each partner, the following detailed list of them was created including their LinkedIn profiles, email addresses, status of their registration, evaluations assigned to them, etc. (only evaluators who confirmed their participation are on the list):

PARTNER NAME EMAIL

FundingBox Cátia Rabaça [email protected]

FundingBox Fernando San Martín [email protected]

FundingBox Leo Italiano [email protected]

FundingBox Mónica Forconi [email protected]

FundingBox David Orban [email protected]

Accelerace Hans Chr. Bjerre Andersen [email protected]

Accelerace Christian Hvashøj [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]









FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 52 of 161

PARTNER NAME EMAIL

Accelerace Claus Strand Kristensen [email protected]

Accelerace Jes Nordentoft [email protected]

Accelerace Jesper Knudsen [email protected]

Accelerace Lone Gammelgaard [email protected]

Accelerace Mikkel Toft-Olsen [email protected]

Accelerace Morten Heide [email protected]

Accelerace Peter Birk [email protected]

Accelerace Søren Lottrup [email protected]

Accelerace Thomas Wiborg [email protected]

AppCampus John Sperryn [email protected]

AppCampus Chris Bouret [email protected]

AppCampus Hani Tarabichi [email protected]

AppCampus Stefano Campadello [email protected]

DIGITALEUROPE Axel Ferrazzini [email protected]

DIGITALEUROPE Gergely Darvas [email protected]

DIGITALEUROPE Günter Schneider [email protected]

DIGITALEUROPE Jonathan Murray [email protected]

DIGITALEUROPE Zsolt Balog [email protected]

DIGITALEUROPE Katarzyna Koziol [email protected]

Econet/Fundingbox Jorge-Luis Sánchez-Ponz [email protected]

Econet/Fundingbox Luis Alfonso Alvarez Sestelo

[email protected]

Econet/Fundingbox Willem Zandbergen [email protected]

IVSZ Barnabás Málnay [email protected]

IVSZ Csongor Biás [email protected]

IVSZ Mátyás Horvai [email protected]

IVSZ Tamás Barathi [email protected]

IVSZ Tamás Turcsán [email protected]

IVSZ Veronika Pistyur [email protected]

IVSZ Viktor Bálint [email protected]

IVSZ Zoltán Beke [email protected]

IVSZ Zoltán Kovács [email protected]

IVSZ Zsolt Winkler [email protected]

Opinno Burak Buyukdemir [email protected]

Opinno Iván Zavala [email protected]

Opinno Félix López - Conectando [email protected]

Opinno Russchen Wytze [email protected]

Opinno A. Mete Cakmakci [email protected]

Opinno Clauidio Rodrigues [email protected]

Wayra Alfredo Urdiales [email protected]

Wayra Alvaro Martin Mayorga [email protected]











































FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 53 of 161

PARTNER NAME EMAIL

Wayra Ana Nuñez [email protected]

Wayra Carlota Cobo [email protected]

Wayra Enrique de la Lastra [email protected]

Wayra Jorge M. Martín García [email protected]

Wayra Marco Antonio Cabrera León

[email protected]

Wayra Maria Bobillo [email protected]

Wayra Agustín Moro [email protected]

Wayra Adrián Fernández [email protected]

Wayra Jaime Fernández-Lerga [email protected]

Wayra Raul Rodriguez Couto [email protected]

Table 8: Evaluators identified by each partner

The following letter of invitation was sent out by each partner to the above mentioned evaluators:

Dear …., On behalf of the OPENAXEL Steering Committee, we have the pleasure of inviting you to apply to be an OPENAXEL 2nd Call Reviewer. The OPENAXEL Consortium is looking for experts with investment background, proven entrepreneurial skills and scientific and technological expertise, for people who are passionate about technology, Internet and innovation. You will be requested to review from 20 to 30 projects in 3 weeks, starting from the 5

th to 27

th of November.

In the attachment you will find additional information: - Declaration of Honour - Guide for Evaluators If you are interested, please login or join FundingBox platform (it will take 1 minute): http://www.fundingbox.com/register/ The OPENAXEL Consortium will review all applications and confirm your involvement as soon as possible and will assign you the applications to be reviewed. We value your expertise and we would be honoured to have you in our evaluation committee. Do not hesitate to contact us if you need any further information. Kindest regards,

A webinar was then held on 16th November 2015 to explain the expectations from evaluators, their tasks, etc.; we sent out the following invitation by email to each evaluator:

Dear OPENAXEL Evaluators, As a supporting activity in the framework of 2nd Contest OPENAXEL evaluation stage, the OPENAXEL partners have organised a Webinar next Monday 16th at 2:00 pm CET. This Webinar will take place via https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/322197645. Please, find out how to connect at the end of this email. In this Webinar we will learn of some useful aspects regarding the evaluation process:

1. Why the OPENAXEL Contest is more than (one) call for startups 2. Why it is important to score both 10 and 0* 3. How to sign-up/log-in at FBOX - demo 4. How to use the evaluation dashboard - demo

*As the Evaluators Guide states “Do not be afraid to score 0, or to score 10. We need to be able to identify the top 9 projects out of 1098! So please score 0-3 for those you want to eliminate, and 8-10 for those you think should make it to the top” This will be the occasion to answer all of your questions.








http://www.fundingbox.com/register/

https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/322197645



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 54 of 161

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn practical guidelines for the evaluation of applications!

A specific presentation called ‘OPENAXEL evaluators guide – 2nd

Call’ was prepared in order to be able to run through the main tasks of evaluators, evaluation process, criteria and principles, as well as key deadlines of 2

nd contest related

to evaluators. This document was then also shared with the involved evaluators.

In order to be able to follow-up the evaluation process and the status of the evaluations, we regularly updated the list of evaluators with the following information:

Registered at FundingBox portal (or not)

Dashboard credential

Webinar status

Evaluator call

Evaluations assigned

Nr. of applications assigned

Status - Finished (with the evaluation) or not

Expected finish / finish on deadline

Reminders were sent to evaluators in more rounds so evaluators could be able to meet deadlines and the status of evaluations was followed-up and monitored regularly.

Thanks to the above mentioned, effective activities, all applications were evaluated on time -by the November 30th

, 2015. The following table shows the number of evaluations made by each evaluator in detail:

SOURCE/Reviewer EVALUATED Total general % individual

2nd INCENSe call 83 83 100,00%

Cátia Sonnemberg Rabaça 20 20 100,00%

David Orban 20 20 100,00%

Fernando San Martin 3 3 100,00%

Leo Italiano 20 20 100,00%

Monica Forconi 20 20 100,00%

3rd IMPACT Open Call 221 221 100,00%

Álvaro Martín 5 5 100,00%

Christian Hvashoj Schaarup 14 14 100,00%

Claus Kristensen 14 14 100,00%

Hans Chr. Bjerre Andersen 54 54 100,00%

Jes Nordentoft 14 14 100,00%

Lone Gammelgaard Schwarz 18 18 100,00%

Luis Alvarez-Sestelo 23 23 100,00%

Mikkel Toft-Olsen 18 18 100,00%

Morten Heide 14 14 100,00%

Peter Birk 20 20 100,00%

Søren Lottrup 14 14 100,00%

Thomas Wiborg Steen 13 13 100,00%

ODINE - OPENAXEL 188 188 100,00%

Axel Ferrazzini 20 20 100,00%



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 55 of 161

SOURCE/Reviewer EVALUATED Total general % individual

Burak Buyukdemir 6 6 100,00%

Chris Bouret 31 31 100,00%

Felix Lopez Capel 6 6 100,00%

Gergely Darvas 15 15 100,00%

Gunter Schneider 10 10 100,00%

Ivan Zavala 10 10 100,00%

John Sperryn 20 20 100,00%

Jonathan MURRAY 30 30 100,00%

Willem Zandbergen 20 20 100,00%

Wytze Russchen 5 5 100,00%

Zsolt Balog 15 15 100,00%

OPENAXEL 2nd Open Call 468 468 100,00%

Alfredo Urdiales Gonzalez 31 31 100,00%

Ana Núñez González 32 32 100,00%

Barnabas Malnay 7 7 100,00%

Claudio Rodrigues 6 6 100,00%

Csongor Bias 26 26 100,00%

Enrique de la Lastra 27 27 100,00%

JCarlotaCG 29 29 100,00%

Jorge Martín 6 6 100,00%

Katarzyna 15 15 100,00%

María Bobillo Varela 26 26 100,00%

Matyas Horvai 26 26 100,00%

Peter Tamas Turcsan 31 31 100,00%

Raúl Rodríguez Couto 26 26 100,00%

Tamas Barathi 26 26 100,00%

Veronika Pistyur 21 21 100,00%

Viktor Bálint 19 19 100,00%

Zoltán Beke 26 26 100,00%

A. Mete Çakmakcı 6 6 100,00%

Jesper Knudsen 14 14 100,00%

Hani Tarabichi 3 3 100,00%

Stefano Campadello 17 17 100,00%

Jaime Fernández-Lerga López-Pelegrín 20 20 100,00%

Adrián Fernández Castellanos 8 8 100,00%

Agustin Moro 20 20 100,00%

Total general 960 960 100,00%

Table 9: Applications evaluated per evaluator



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 56 of 161

In order to be able to identify TOP 10 evaluators who performed the best, FundingBox suggested following a mixed approach that takes into consideration the following (from most important to down):

number of evaluations (and help provided when we requested at the last minute)

quickness of evaluation

statistical (un)bias

Based on the above mentioned methodology, the following evaluators were selected as best performing ones, including a few reserves (indicated by blue):

EVALUATOR Nº OF PROPOSALS INDEX UNBIAS

Enrique de la Lastra 27 364,47 0,00

Raúl Rodríguez Couto 26 25,14 0,00

Zoltán Beke 26 5,90 -0,10

Ana Núñez González 32 4,40 0,10

Csongor Bias 26 3,61 0,10

Alfredo Urdiales Gonzalez 31 3,46 0,10

Peter Tamas Turcsan 31 1,72 -0,20

Chris Bouret 31 1,72 -0,20

Hans Chr. Bjerre Andersen 54 1,39 -0,20

Peter Birk 20 1,13 -0,30

Claus Kristensen 14 8,40 0,00

Jes Nordentoft 14 4,92 0,00

Mikkel Toft-Olsen 18 1,09 -0,30

Table 10: Best performing evaluators

The following email template was sent out to the above mentioned evaluators:

Dear ……,

Thank you for your amazing work for the OPENAXEL 2nd Contest evaluation!

We will now invite the top 30 for a more in-depth screening. We will publish the results on our website before mid

January 2016 at the latest.

We know that it has been long and hard, so we are happy to tell you that your outstanding effort will be

compensated: you are invited to join us in Barcelona during the Final Event, and OPENAXEL will reimburse up to 1000€

of your travel expenses!

OPENAXEL Final Event will be hosted within the "4 Years From Now" event in parallel to Mobile World Congress, to

take place in Barcelona on 22-25 Feb 2016 (http://4yfn.com/ ).

We will send you more details when closer to date.

Please confirm that you intend to profit of this opportunity by replying to this email.

Looking forward to seeing you in Barcelona early next year!

The OPENAXEL Team

The evaluation process itself was conducted in three separate stages:

1. Identification of the TOP30 startups (External evaluation): for this phase, the aforementioned evaluators were responsible. Based on their scores given for each application, OPENAXEL consortia identified the TOP30 startups

2. Selection of the TOP15 startups from the TOP30 (detailed evaluation), which occurred as follows: each consortia partner scored once for each applicant, excluding external experts from this evaluation stage. All

http://4yfn.com/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 57 of 161

partners had to score on each criterion from 0 to 10 (both Business Opportunity and Management Team). Scores were collected online.

3. Selection of TOP9 winner (Final stage): selection of TOP9 winners was conducted through online interviews, where the following evaluators were invited:

Enrique de la Lastra

Ana Nuñez

Raul Rodriguez Couto

Alfredo Urdiales

Csongor Biás

Péter Tamás Turcsán Unfortunately, Péter Tamás Turcsán and Csongor Bias were finally not able to attend, thus “only” four of previously selected evaluators and some of the consortia members participated at the meeting.


Related to this task, we have obtained the following results:

with the help of each partner, 53 high-calibre, experienced proffesionals confirmed their participation as evaluators (out of more than 100, who were previously nominated)

evaluators did approximately 960 evaluations altogether on time

most of the evaluators were really active (with above 20 evaluations)

TOP30, TOP15 and TOP9 startups were identified on time


In the course of the 2nd

phase of the selection process (detailed evaluation), external experts (involved evaluators) were excluded in order to speed up the selection process and meet the deadlines. Originally, setting up a selection committee consisting one member appointed by each of the OPENAXEL partners, plus one or more external experts taken from the involved evaluators (Experts Directory) was defined as a practice.

Task 4.5. Contest diffusion ENDED

Task 4.5.1. Contest diffusion (round 1) ENDED P1

Task 4.5.2. Contest diffusion (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

Wayra, together with DIGITALEUROPE (as responsible for the overall communication activities of the project) leaded this subtask. The following actions were developed by the consortium:

- Direct emailing to startups: Thanks to the partnerships with other accelerators, we could indirectly advertise our call by advertising our partners’ calls. It is important to notice this point, given the remarkable conversion rates we had from our partner accelerators (see below, section ‘Main results obtained’). We distributed email advertisements to approximately 4,000 leads present in our OpenAxel Community with:

- Message to apply to OpenAxel: 25 Aug, 9 Sep, 29 Sep, 12 Oct, 27 Oct - Message to apply to IMPACT: 17 Jul, 25 Aug, 9 Sep, 29 Sep, 12 Oct - Message to apply to INCENSe: 22 Jun, 17 Jul, 25 Aug, 9 Sep, 29 Sep - Message to apply to ODINE: 22 Jun

- Direct emailing to accelerators: We reached out to all accelerators in our network and beyond, with a request to forward our Open Call to their startups. In total, 77 accelerators, incubators or co-working spaces were directly reached.

- Direct mailing to multiplicator organisations: We contacted organisations that are not necessarily accelerators, but that are in permanent contact with startups.

- Participation to events: We advertised the call with either a booth or a presentation (or both) to several events in various European countries. Among others:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 58 of 161

- IVSZ Startup Conference, Budapest, Hungary, 10 June (booth) - Open Innovation 2.0 Conference, Helsinki, Espoo (booth + presentation) - Openreaktor #36 with Pirate Summit, Warsaw, Poland, 21 June (presentation) - Bitspiration, Warsaw, Poland, 22-23 June (booth + presentation) - Openreaktor #37 #AdTech, Warsaw, Poland, 23 Sept (presentation) - South Summit, Madrid, Spain, 7-9 Oct (booth + presentation) - ICT 2015, Lisbon, Portugal, 20-22 Oct (leaflets) - Wolves Summit, Warsaw, Poland, 27-28 Oct (booth + presentation) - Rise of Corporate Accelerator, London, UK, 29 Oct (presentation) - D-RAFT Corporate Demo Day: E-commerce , Warsaw, Poland, 30 Oct (booth) - STARTUP OLE, Salamanca, Spain. 9-11 September (presentation)

Example of presence in some of those events:

Figure 31: Openaxel presence on diffusion events

- An official press release announcing the opening of the call was distributed in media channels with impact in the entrepreneurial community (attached in this report).

- Projects brochures with the details of the contest, which were distributed around Europe (partners’ headquarters, Wayra Academies, entrepreneurial events in Europe). The brochures are attached in an annex.

- Coordinated communication actions on Twitter (both on OpenAxel central account and partners’ Twitter accounts in the form of tweets and re-tweets) and other online massive communication tools. Some examples below:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 59 of 161

Figure 32: Openaxel diffusion on social media

- Phone calls to different stakeholders announcing the contest, - Visits to accelerators and Venture Capital firms to announce the contest and encourage them to present their

portfolio, - Diffusion in the partner´s communication channels - Banners in the partner´s websites,


1,098 startups from all around Europe applied to the contest.

Here are some examples of the main sites where the open call was announced: http://www.muypymes.com/2015/09/30/openaxel-convoca-su-segundo-concurso-europeo-para-startups http://www.finnovaregio.org/openaxel-2nd-startup-contest/ http://startupeuropeclub.eu/openaxel-announces-its-second-european-startup-contest/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/openaxel-launches-open-call-second-startup-contest-accelerator http://www.digitaleurope.org/OurWork/Projects/OpenAxel.aspx http://www.alphagamma.eu/entrepreneurship/openaxel-startup-contest-2015/ http://openaxel.com/openaxel-announces-its-second-european-startup-contest/ Continuous increase in of the community figures (up to date): 6,616 entrepreneurs; 137 accelerators and a network of more than 10k ICT companies. Presence in the key entrepreneurial events throughout Europe achieving high impact for the project and our startups, described in WP8 Communication Plan.


N/A

http://www.muypymes.com/2015/09/30/openaxel-convoca-su-segundo-concurso-europeo-para-startups

http://www.finnovaregio.org/openaxel-2nd-startup-contest/

http://startupeuropeclub.eu/openaxel-announces-its-second-european-startup-contest/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/openaxel-launches-open-call-second-startup-contest-accelerator

http://www.digitaleurope.org/OurWork/Projects/OpenAxel.aspx

http://www.alphagamma.eu/entrepreneurship/openaxel-startup-contest-2015/

http://openaxel.com/openaxel-announces-its-second-european-startup-contest/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 60 of 161

WP5. Selection of beneficiaries

WP Leader WAYRA Status ENDED

Task 5.1. Launch of the call of highly innovative SMEs and entrepreneurs ENDED

Subtask 5.1.1. Launch of the call 1 of highly innovative SMEs and entrepreneurs ENDED P1

Work Performed

First call of the project launched on April 21st

2014 during the first half of the project. Main results obtained

Overall satisfactory results with 178 applications and only 11 discarded. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

The consortium decided to change the competition from being exclusive to accelerators and their portfolio to being open to all start-ups.

Subtask 5.1.2. Launch of the call 2 of highly innovative SMEs and entrepreneurs ENDED

Work Performed

Once the second contest was redesigned as explained in WP4, the partners had to move quickly to deploy and implement the decisions that were taken. The challenge was to align all the stakeholders involved (mainly partner accelerators and entrepreneurs, but also evaluators, corporations, prizes providers, media…) and to manage a call that was going to receive a high number of applications (1098) coming from different sources. Under this WP5 all the tasks, from launching the call, to evaluating the apllicants and selecting the winners and finally announcing and communicating the results, had to be carefully drafted, distributed between partners and effectively carried out. From June to August 2015 the partners organised the 2

nd Contest in all of its details. The following documents were

produced: - Application Form, according to the redesigned guidelines of the application process description - Guide for Applicants (GfA), available on our website – which defined the Open Call in detail - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), available on our website - Evaluation Form, according to the redesigned guidelines of the selection process - Guide for Evaluators (GfE), distributed to evaluators during their signup phase

The planned calendar of the Open Call for the 2

nd Contest:

- Open Call opened on September 1st

2015 - Closed on October 30

th 2015 (no deadline extension)

- External Evaluations started on November 10th

2015 - External Evaluations closed on November 27

th 2015

The open call for the second OPENAXEL contest was launched September 1

st 2015 once the new website was up and

running. All partners were coordinated to develop communication activities once the call was launched. The first step was to distribute an official press release that was produced in English and Spanish, between partners so they disseminated it through their networks. This official press release was:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 61 of 161

Figure 33: Openaxel second contest announcement

All communication materials redirected the interested startups to the OPENAXEL webpage: www.openaxel.com. There, a direct link to apply to the contest was created (to allow startups to apply easily), as follows:

Figure 34: OpenAxel website: second contest

When pressing that link, the applicant was conducted to a specific site that included basic information of the contest objectives, awards, requirements, FAQs, and Application procedure. In the Application procedure section the applicants could access to the official contest documents and proceed to submit their application. The next stage to submit the application was registering in the platform (user ID and password) and filling the Application Form. This form was previously designed by the partners bearing in mind two considerations:

It had to be easy and quick to fill in, so that the applicants did not drop out the application process because of its complexity and duration.




FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 62 of 161

It had to be as complete as possible, requesting all the necessary information on each project so that each one could be deeply assessed

The application process and application form was redesigned as ‘meta-contest’ (see detailed description of this process in Task 4.1.2.) with the goal of reusing as much as possible the information already provided by entrepreneurs. With all the information completed, the application could be submitted and the applicant received a confirmation email. The online application tool gave the option of saving an application so it could be completed later, with the user ID and password. Thus, the contest didn´t lose any applications. FundingBox was in charge of setting up the parameters for the online application tool; testing the performance of the application functionality, and launching this functionality in the online tool. Before launching the application tool publicly, all the partners tested the tool to confirm operability and detect bugs. A specific deal for OPENAXEL contest was also created in the project portal to allow portal members to apply to the contest directly. Additionally, partners created a dashboard to be able to monitor and control the applications received, the evaluators granted, the evaluation process and the outcomes of the evaluations. Main results obtained

The overall results of the call were very satisfactory and a high number of applications were received (as much as 1098), with the majority of the applications received were complete. Overall this redesign effort a 490% increase in applications. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

The consortium decided to change the competition from being exclusive to accelerators and their portfolio to being open to all start-ups, increasing the reach and impact of the contest were considerably augmented with this action. The decision to accept applications from other contests and calls was also very positive, as this increased the number of projects received substantially and provided higher value to startups that participated in other programs and calls.

Task 5.2. Coordination of Evaluation Committee ENDED

Subtask 5.2.1. Coordination of Evaluation Committee (round 1) ENDED P1

Work Performed

During the first half of the project, an Evaluation Committee was selected in order to rule the selection process of the first contest. Main results obtained

The overall performance of the Evaluation Committee was very satisfactory with high involvement of external members. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

N/A

Subtask 5.2.2. Coordination of Evaluation Committee (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

In the second contest, due to effectiveness and willing to improve and speed up processes, the Evaluation Committee was divided in two subcommittees. The first subcommittee, composed only of partners, was in charge of the internal and methodological issues, mainly:

Assuring the time schedule was met and the information flowed between partners and with the candidates.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 63 of 161

Checking the evaluations, reviewing and evaluating the top 30 preselected projects and produce the first provisional ranking of the finalists of the contest, considering the input and the ranking of the first evaluations.

Establishing rules and steps of the evaluation process, and particularly, assuring the veracity and coherence of the information about the project, to detect any possible incoherencies, and assure a real involvement of the entrepreneurs with their project

These were the members, agreed by the partners:

MEMBER REPRESENTING NATIONALITY

Mr. Agustin Moro (Chair) Telefónica Spain

Jaime Fernández-Lerga Wayra Spain

Tomasz Mazuryk Econet Poland

Paolo Lombardi FundingBox Italy

Gabor Vicze Digital Europe Hungary

Klara Heilingbrunner IVSZ Hungary

Paolo Borella Appcampus Finland

David Ventzel Accelerace Denmark

Table 11: Evaluation Committee

This Evaluation Internal Committee had an online meeting the 17th

December 2015 where the top 30 projects were reviewed taking into account the information provided by evaluators. The output of this meeting was a shortlist of the best 15 projects that should go through the next stage: face to face web meetings.

The second subcommittee involved also external experts, and had the following duties:

Ensuring the independence, liability, smoothness and development according to the rules and principles of the whole Evaluation Process and settling all the disputes and claims that appeared during the process concerning any partner, evaluator or candidate.

Once the provisional list of the 15 finalists was produced, the Committee was in charge of organizing and conducting the online pitching and Q&A session, where the winners were decided. The 15 finalists were selected and called to an online meeting in front of this committee on 7th January 2016.

The final composition of this subcommittee was Enrique de la Lastra, Ana Nuñez, Raul Rodriguez Couto and Alfredo Urdiales, looking to gather expertise in areas such as entrepreneurship, technology and investment. In addition to these external experts the following consortium members took part: Jaime Fernández-Lerga (Wayra), Jonathan Murray (DigitalEurope), David Ventzel (Accelerace), Kasia Goj (FundingBox), David Bernal (Econet) and Paolo Lombardi (FundingBox).

During that Evaluation Committee Consensus Meeting detailed information on the top 15 projects was reviewed by the members. That information included:

Punctuation received on the previous evaluation process and the provisional ranking position

Feedback and comments on the evaluators about different aspects of the projects (team/market opportunity/competition/differentiation/commercial status)

Summary of team skills and background

Problem detected and solution provided

The secret sauce/differentiation of the business

Monetization of the idea and financial previsions

Impact Analysis

Value proposition

Time schedule until having a Minimum Viable Product

Dream and future plans of the entrepreneurs The CEOs, after pitching their project, were asked by the jury members on different issues of their projects. That Q&A session had duration of around 10 minutes.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 64 of 161

Additionally, those members were invited to participate in the OPENAXEL Event that took place in Barcelona during the 4YFN. They participated actively in the diffusion of the OPENAXEL Event and they leaded the mentoring sessions to the finalists. The project covered their travel expenses and the event ticket, as a reward for their involvement and support. Main results obtained

The overall performance of the Evaluation Committee was very satisfactory, as the whole Evaluation Process was managed smoothly and on time. The balanced composition of the Committee, with members with different skills and backgrounds, permitted the project to assess deeply several aspects of a big number of projects and select the best. With the incentives that the project offered, the external members of the Evaluation Committee were highly involved and the project engaged them on several stages of the process (even giving mentoring and advice to the finalists). Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

N/A

Task 5.3. Selection of beneficiaries ENDED

Subtask 5.3.1. Selection of beneficiaries (round 1) ENDED

Work Performed

Within this subtask, during the first half of the project, a ranking of applications was prepared and fine-tuned. Main results obtained

The TOP15 teams were identified and 12 out of them were selected based on the face to face web interviews. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

N/A

Subtask 5.3.2. Selection of beneficiaries (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

The work performed in this task was an improved methodology of the one applied in the first contest, that worked perfectly and smoothly. The selection process and evaluation form were redesigned with the goal of merging the application processes and the evaluation processes of multiple accelerators contributing to our ‘meta-contest’, within a framework of smart optimisation of resources. To enable the new concept of ‘meta-contest’ during the selection process, we had to enable the following features: 1. Accepting and processing applications coming in different application forms (from accelerator partners): In this

task we spotted the following challenges: - Different information available to reviewers: In the application process we implemented a consent tick box to

share data of applicants with OPENAXEL, optimising time for entrepreneurs by not obliging them to resubmit another application form; these features implied that we had to process applications coming directly from partner accelerators, in different forms and containing different information (in terms of questions, data, applicants profiling);

- Risk of confusion: Our external reviewers could be confused if they were presented with application forms of different types and content during the evaluation process.

To tackle these challenges, we devised the following solutions: - Simplification of evaluation criteria: We reduced the evaluation criteria and focused on the Team and the

Business Opportunity. After reviewing about 20 evaluation forms of other startup competitions, we realised that these criteria were always predominant and among the most widely used. Inside the latter, we included



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 65 of 161

consideration of feasibility and technical viability, which is another frequent criterion. We verified that all application forms from partner accelerators provided information about these dimensions. Thus, our reviewers would have sufficient background information for their evaluations, independently of the source of the application.

- One source of application per reviewer: To avoid confusion, we decided to adopt a smart assignment process and to present only applications from one source to a given reviewer. For instance, a reviewer evaluating applications originating from our partner accelerator IMPACT would not see any one application from our own website, or from INCENSe nor ODINE.

The implementation of these features required the following changes on the online FundingBox evaluation tool (FundingBox was directly responsible for these new implementations):

- Allow for OPENAXEL evaluators to access other partner accelerators’ applications while these partners were still evaluating;

- Allow for parallel evaluations for partner accelerators as well as OPENAXEL, on different evaluation forms. 2. Leveraging available evaluations from partner accelerators, when possible. We decided to adopt a smart

evaluation process and reuse the scores of our partner accelerators whenever possible. This approach had two fundamental benefits: - Optimising resources: By reusing scores of our partner accelerators, we de facto integrated the knowledge of

their reviewers into our evaluation process, meanwhile sparing resources in our process (reviewers’ time, budget).

- Eliminating low quality applications: In startup competitions there is often a high percentage of low quality proposals, due to a number of possible factors, for instance: (a) insufficient information provided by applicant, (b) inappropriate business approach, (c) mismatch between highly competitive market and scarce team experience, etc. These applications typically receive low scores independently of the reviewers or the specific startup competition. By eliminating these low-scoring applications from our process, we could focus our reviewers on higher quality dealflow, thus using better their time and providing a branding opportunity for OPENAXEL towards them.

As a consequence of the above approach, we adopted the following assignment strategy: - For applications coming from the OPENAXEL website, which had not been evaluated by our partner

accelerators, we assigned at least 2 reviewers for each application (as described in the GfA); - For applications coming from our partner accelerators, for which we had their scoring (i.e. FI-C3, IMPACT, and

INCENSe), we sorted their ranking according to only our two criteria, and assigned 1 of our reviewers to the top ranking (or all, in the case of FI-C3);

- For applications coming from our partner accelerators, for which we did not have their scoring (i.e. ODINE), we assigned 2 of our reviewers to each application;

- Overall we reviewed 632 applications, all of those coming from ODINE, FI-C3 and our website and the top of those coming from IMPACT and INCENSe.

3. Combining all evaluation scores from different sources in one final ranking. We combined our scores with those of

partner accelerators by remapping both onto a scale 0-10. We considered our two adopted criteria when combining the scores from different evaluation processes. Thus the final ranking indirectly contained all contributions of all reviewers who evaluated the same application according to the process of any one of the accelerators participating in our ‘meta-contest’.

To make this evaluation process possible, for a massive total of 1,098 applications, we contacted in October-November 2015 over 60 possible reviewers from Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, and from a mixed of backgrounds: corporations, accelerators, business angels. We finally signed up 44. Evaluators mostly come from industry to make sure the startups are assessed by experts with relevant background (at the same time we ease to get closer to the industry). Sign up of reviewers were done by all partners independently. Then, assignment of reviewers to specific applications was made by Econet on the basis of expertise information shared by the reviewers (e.g. reviewers with expertise in smart energy systems were assigned to INCENSe, etc). Onboarding of reviewers on the FundingBox online platform occurred between 29

th October and 13

th November (for late on-boarding). On 16

th



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November a webinar was organised for reviewers to learn of OPENAXEL, of the review criteria, and of the online evaluation tool. Beyond scoring along our two criteria, OPENAXEL reviewers were asked to classify applicants according to the following categories:

- Funding stage (seed or early stage) - Development stage (from idea to internationalisation) - Business type (B2C, B2B, or B2B2C) - Sector of activity

This information was used to match applicants with our third-party ecosystem partners, offering opportunities to all startups. In practical terms, we requested explicit consent to our applicants to distribute their data to our qualified partners inside the application form, thus enabling us to use their data to match with the request of our third-party partners. The workload of classifying applicants was intentionally shifted from applicants to reviewers for two reasons:

- To decrease the effort from applicants, in line with our claim of a 5-minutes application form. - To receive more objective information about the actual stage of the company from reviewers, rather than

from the applicants themselves. Since we assigned at least one OPENAXEL reviewer to each application, independently of its source, we were able to collect classification data about all applications. All applications were assessed and scored by at least two external and independent evaluators (non OPENAXEL partners) included in the Experts Directory prepared by OPENAXEL partners. The partners managed to engage a total of 52 external evaluators. The evaluators were divided, as the sources and forms of the applications were different (OPENAXEL, ODINE, INCENSE and IMPACT), so all of them only evaluated projects from one source. Each proposal was scored on the following criteria:

• Business Opportunity: the growth potential, scalable business model, global focus, and potential for a fast commercial time-to-market deployment. • Management Team: the project founders’ and team competence range, experience, and commitment to the project.

Each external evaluator scored the applications from 0 to 10 for each criterion. The final score of each proposal was calculated using a weighted average of the individual assessments provided by external evaluators, after normalising their scores in order to compensate for scoring bias. The weights varied according to the category:

Table 12: Evaluation categories weights

Independently of their category, all proposals entered a single list and ranked according to their score. From this first evaluation phase, a shortlist of the TOP30 (semifinalists) was produced, and those were the projects that entered a more detailed evaluation. The shortlist was the following:



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Company name

WEIGHTED

AVERAGE

TOTAL

Games With Atti tude NV 9,92

NIKOLAOS & MARINOS LIVANOS O.E. 9,82

DiabetesLab 9,73

Xetal 9,72

Ampersand UG (Haftungsbeschränkt) 9,64

viomedo UG 9,61

Zalr A/S 9,53

1848 9,45

Waynabox 9,42

Project Ray - Smartphones and Mobi le Services for the Visual ly Impaired 9,42

Interfaces Hombre Máquina Avanzados S.L. 9,40

Wiffini ty 9,39

Tamuz Energy LTD 9,32

Green momit 9,30

GlassUp srl 9,23

Remote Eye s .l . 9,12

Screen.io 9,10

Brain+ ApS 9,05

VEASYT srl 9,03

Brain Trust Consulting Services 9,01

Datenwerft UG 8,95

In.s ight 8,88

NNERGIX ENERGY MANAGEMENT, S.L. 8,86

Incubio 8,83

iResTech 8,83

PUSH 8,82

WeFitter 8,80

Hightrack SL 8,80

Guide Me Right 8,79

The EQ Project International S.L. 8,76

Mobai l Apps S.L. 8,75 Table 13: Top 30 Contest Ranking

For the shortlisted startups, the following email template was sent out in order to congratulate to them and to present them the next steps and their tasks: Dear [NAME], It is our pleasure to communicate that you have been shortlisted as a Semi-Finalists for the OPENAXEL 2nd Contest! CONGRATULATIONS Your application was submitted via the www.openaxel.com portal, or via one of our partner accelerators FI-C3, IMPACT, INCENSe or ODINE. The winners OF OPENAXEL will be awarded with dedicated mentoring, perks and free packages from corporations, and a 1-week Business Bootcamp in Silicon Valley tentatively scheduled on 7-14 Feb 2016. Plus winners will access an exclusive pitch event in Barcelona on a side event of Mobile World Congress, on 22-25 Feb. All this will be granted without equity stakes, thanks to European Commission funds. NEXT STEPS

1. Please prepare a video pitch of max 3 minutes, upload it online (you can protect it by password if you wish) and register it on this Google form: http://goo.gl/forms/pzJRJVlZF8 Ideally, your video pitch will be showing slides, and your voice explains the slides. Other formats are also


http://goo.gl/forms/pzJRJVlZF8



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allowed, for instance your face and the slides. Avoid commercial videos: focus on problem, solution, target market, market trends, competitive advantage, competitive landscape, stage of development and roadmap, financials and traction (if any). The audio and texts must be in English (or provide English subtitles). DEADLINE: Sunday 13

th December end of day.

2. OPENAXEL will go through an internal review and will possibly invite you to an online video interview of 15-30 minutes on either 16, 17 or 18 Dec. The interview will consist in a Q&A with our Jury. No pitch will happen during the interview, unless explicitly requested by the Jury.

3. As indicated in the Guide for Applicants, section 5.2, a selection committee will screen the Semi-Finalists and select the Finalists.

Then, the final selection will be communicated asap and in any case before 15 January 2016. For a further explanation of the selection process, please see our guide for applicants in attachment.

SAVE THE DATE Please book your time for this potential interview on 16/17/18 Dec. We would send you more details by Tuesday 15 Dec, with a few options to book your slot. But please be ready and flexible, and free as much of your time as possible in those days

For any questions do not hesitate to contact us at: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] We wish you good luck for the selection! OpenAxel Team A selection committee screened all these Semi-Finalists and selected the 15 Finalists. This selection committee was composed of internal OPENAXEL members, as stated in task 5.2.2. Throughout the selection process, some projects were discarded before obtaining the list of 15 finalists below. The evaluators and partners went carefully through the business models of the projects, the real dedication and impulse of the team, the fit of the project with OPENAXEL´s objectives and prizes offered (if they were really going to add value to the project in the stage it was). After this second stage, the 15 finalists were selected:






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Company name Business Team Total

Wiffinity 7,6 8,4 16,0

Tamuz Energy 8,0 8,0 16,0

Xetal 7,0 6,5 13,5

viomedo 6,7 6,7 13,4

Waynabox 6,6 6,8 13,4

momit 7,0 6,3 13,3

nnergix 6,6 6,0 12,6

Brain+ ApS 6,2 6,3 12,5

remoteeye 6,0 6,5 12,5

Games With Attitude NV 5,2 7,2 12,4

DiabetesLab 5,8 6,6 12,4

Zalr A/S 6,3 5,3 11,6

ireact.gr 4,5 7,0 11,5

VEASYT srl 5,3 6,0 11,3

StayAPP 5,7 5,3 11,0 Table 14: Top 15 Contest Ranking

For finalists (TOP15), the following email template was sent out in order to congratulate to them and to introduce their main tasks to them regarding the next round: Dear [NAME], It is our pleasure to communicate that you are one of the 15 FINALISTS of the OPENAXEL 2nd Contest! CONGRATULATIONS!!! The final stage of selection will consist in 10 mins Q&A online session (using GoToMeeting): - 2 mins are open to you to pitch or summarize your achievements (keep in mind that all jury members will have reviewed your company data already, including the video pitch) - 7 mins Q&A - 1 min wrap up and go to next finalist If you have not provided your 3-min video pitch yet, please do asap (and in any case before 3 Jan) here: XXX Interviews will take place on 7th Jan 2016. Schedule your interview time here: XXX Login details will be sent closer to date. Please make sure that you sign up to GoToMeeting AT LEAST 15 MINUTES BEFORE your scheduled time. We cannot accommodate for delays: if you cannot show up at the scheduled time, let us know asap by email to [email protected] or on skype at d2.bernal and we will find a solution. Looking forward to meeting you at your interview! And in the meantime, our best wishes for a successful New Year! OpenAxel Team For non-finalists, the following email template was sent out: Dear [NAME], Today we held our internal meeting and we are sorry to communicate that you have not been selected among the finalists. However, as a Semi-Finalist of OPENAXEL you have already achieved a very hard selection, ranking in the top 30




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among 1,098 applications. As such, we are happy to include you in all opportunities that we reserve to our Semi-Finalists, such as introductions to our corporate partners and tech perks. We will stay in touch as of the beginning of 2016 with more opportunities, as they arise. In the meantime: Our best wishes for a successful New Year! OpenAxel Team The final stage of the Selection Process took place, online, the 7

th January, from 10 am to 2.30 pm. The following

external evaluators were invited to act as jury to select the 9 winners from the 15 candidates: Enrique de la Lastra, Ana Nuñez, Raul Rodriguez Couto and Alfredo Urdiales. The format of this stage consisted on an online pitch by the team, followed by a Q&A session by the evaluators. The online pitch had the following content:

Brief introduction, explaining its product / service

Explanation of the company´s business model

Description of the team

Analysis of its unique value proposition and its competition

Discuss why OPENAXEL services could be the best way for them to scale As stated in the previous task description, OPENAXEL partners participated, especially in the Q&A and assisting the members of the jury. After averaging all the evaluations of each member of the jury (an overall assessment from 1 to 10), the projects were ranked from 1 to 15, resulting the first 9 the winners. The table below shows the final ranking of the top 15, with the 9 winners, which were decided during that the above mentioned pitching session, with the following results:

PITCHING SESSIONS RESULTS

NNERGIX ENERGY MANAGEMENT, S.L. 1

Viomedo UG 2

Games With Attitude NV 3

Brain+ ApS 4

remoteeye 5

Mobail Apps S.L. / StayAPP 6

Green momit 7

DiabetesLab 8

Xetal 9

Wiffinity 10

Tamuz Energy 11

Waynabox 12

Zalr A/S 13

NIKOLAOS & MARINOS LIVANOS O.E. (Emmtech) 14

VEASYT srl 15

Table 15: Pitching session’s results (9 winners) Main results obtained

In this second call, thanks to some changes made -such as: moving to a multiplatform scheme; focusing on the simplicity of application form; dividing the applications only in two categories; accepting various applications forms (to put work on the evaluation process rather than the application); signing partnerships with other projects and devoting



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 71 of 161

efforts on building the prizes package-, a really high number of applications, 1098, were received, exceeding our expectations and the project´s KPIs. Once again, the geographical reach of the contest was impressive, receiving projects from all European countries.

Related to the task the following results were obtained:

1) Evaluator community was set up, briefed and engaged

44 evaluators were checked based on their LinkedIn profiles, then contacted and briefed in many ways (e.g. infopackage, webinar)

4 evaluators had been identified as most active ones, who were then also invited to 4YFN in Barcelona, where they participated in the event and coached the teams

2) Two Evaluation Committees were set up and Consensus Meeting took place 3) Ranking of applications was prepared and fine-tuned: Almost all applications were received and reviewed in

the first round and all the evaluations were finished on time. 4) Top30 semifinalists were identified and Top15 called to the online pitching session where the definite 9 best

were selected and announced as winners. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

Main changes regarding the selection process compared to the practice used during the first contest have been described above.

The main and most important impact of these changes was the significantly higher number of applications we received in the 2

nd contest compared not only to the number of applications in the 1

st contest, but also our

expectations and previously defined KPIs.

Task 5.4. Evaluation results and communication ENDED

Subtask 5.4.1. Evaluation results and communication (round 1) ENDED P1

Work Performed

12 finalists were selected and invited to Madrid for the final pitch competition and award ceremony.. Main results obtained

All 12 start-ups successfully participated in the many events arranged for them and 9 winners were announced Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

The original plan was to select and invite the top 10 start-ups from each of the three categories to an award ceremony. Instead, it was decided to introduce more excitement to the event and add a pitch competition.

Subtask 5.4.2. Evaluation results and communication (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

At the first stages of the process, FundingBox, through the platform, was in charge of announcing the results of the first evaluation stage to the participants. The 30 finalists were called by FundingBox to the final stages of the evaluation and selection process by email. The details and template emails of these stages can be seen in the previous subtask description of Task 5.3.2: Selection of beneficiaries (round 2).

At the final stages of the process the coordinator, announced the result of the contest by e-mail to the 15 finalist start-ups. To make it more personal and close, a letter was sent by email to all the participant teams. The letters were modified versions of the e-mails made by Accelerace in the first contest. Two letters were designed, one for the finalists that weren´t winners explaining the decision and appreciating their interest and efforts. Another letter was crafted to the top 9 start-ups congratulating them and announcing the winner package. Below are examples of both letters:



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Figure 35: Letter to finalist but not winner

Figure 36: Letter to winners

The ecosystem was made aware of the results by general communication efforts by the partners. These activities pivoted mainly in twitter messages and a press release drafted by Wayra. The press release can be seen below:



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Figure 37: Press release

The winners were officially announced and celebrated at a very successful event arranged at the 4YFN startup conference in Barcelona, February 24 2016. Wayra arranged that OPENAXEL could use Telefonica’s exhibition space and assisted in executing many of the practical tasks. The OPENAXEL area at 4YFN can be seen below:



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Figure 38: Openaxel area at 4YFN

The planning of the event took place several weeks in advance. A detailed playbook for the execution of the event was created. The playbook was iterated and modified during conversations with the partners. The final playbook can be seen below:



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Table 16: Communication event playbook



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Communications material for the event, including social media messages and e-mail invites were developed.

Figure 39: E-mail invitation



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Each partner communicated the event through their channels and sent invitations to their network. To manage registrations, the consortium created and ad-hoc Eventbrite page.

Figure 40: Eventbrite page The actual program included three main elements. The first element was a round table discussion between representatives of different European startups hubs. The round table discussion was moderated by David Ventzel from Accelerace. The topics of discussion were: successful and failed initiatives, corporates involvement in the startup ecosystem and governments role in the startup ecosystem. The second element was the startup hub pitches. Representatives from 9 different startup hubs in Europe took the stage for 5 minutes to pitch their city as the best startup hub in Europe. This theme was chosen by the OPENAXEL partners because it was novel and in spirit with the aim of OPENAXEL. More information on these Pitchs can be found in Task 3.2.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 78 of 161

The third element was the announcement of the winners of the second OPENAXEL contest. Accelerace succeeded in getting Jimmy Maymann, President of AOL and former Huffington Post CEO, to announce them and hand the prizes to the winners. Jimmy also did a speech where he highlighted the importance and impact of the OPENAXEL project.

Figure 41: Jimmy Maymann and the winners of the second OPENAXEL contest

After the event, a video of the day was created and distributed. The video can be seen here: https://youtu.be/4a_96Cclk3s Main results obtained

A successful announcement and celebration of the winners at 4YFN. It took place during a full day program that got more than 350 people attending to the complete event. A successful startup hub pitch event. Relevant startup personalities from 9 different cities came to pitch their city as a startub hub. A successful prize ceremony of the winners of the second OPENAXEL startup contest with Jimmy Maymann to hand over the prizes. This gave tremendous visibility to the winners and a unique opportunity to network with key stakeholders. On top of this, lots of media players were informed of the results and the startups were interviewed and published in various sites. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

None

https://youtu.be/4a_96Cclk3s



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WP6. Delivering Cross Border Services

WP Leader OPINNO Status ENDED

Task 6.1. Provision of improved facilities and supporting services ENDED

Work Performed

This task was designed to provide the companies with tools, knowhow and learning experiences. The program was tailored for the companies with the knowledge to grow at the scale and pace to which they can adapt and leverage their own experience. Therefore, OPENAXEL provides a structure and a support group that the selected companies can easily follow, adapt to and participate in. The structure includes access to business leaders, experts and mentors to accompany the entrepreneurs in their path to growth.

Within WP3 partners made an analysis of acceleration services with cross border potential, currently accessible on the market. The outcome of this analysis was put to report (D.3.1 Cross Border Facilities and Services Report) which was the starting point to concrete acceleration services with great cross border potential. These services, designed during the first half of the project, were integrated into the OpenAxel portal where project partners have offered their acceleration services with most cross border potential.

The OpenAxel consortium also collaborated by putting in common their resources, which made it possible to offer improved facilities to the startups. While seed stage startups benefited from access to training, office space and other trans-border local resources, later stage startups were the most benefited since they had access to OpenAxel partners’ full array of extended contact networks, events and markets. While the former were motivated by properly defining their product, obtaining a first customer or finding the right market to start in, the later were looking to expand internationally, obtain the right expert knowledge. Several services were offered by the consortium. Even if they will be detailed below, these are some relevant ones:

Fast track to further acceleration programs.

Direct link to co-organised events with close support.

Introduction to potential corporate partners, investors.

Access to training and specific expertise from other parnter’s

Soft landing in markets, support in partnering with local key players for credibility, office space.

European-wide mediatic campaigns for promotion of OpenAxel’s startups, their products/services.

As an example, iNovar accessed the South Korean market through Wayra (as so did Momit), encountered leading world corporations through Telefonica and AppCampus network (O2, Dell, Microsoft), some of which were introduced through major partner events (South Summit, Slush), was fast tracked to Accelerace’s program, and entered negotiations with US investors encountered through Opinno’s Silicon Valley trip.

In addition to these services, a new Supporting Service for OPENAXEL winners and finalists was prepared and launched from March 2016 in order to help them to look for complementary funding coming from the SME Instrument Program to develop their projects: SMEs Instrument participation.

The service was implemented in two steps: First launching was focused on winners (March 2016) and having in mind the availability of hours, the same service was offered to finalists (April 2016).

As part of the OPENAXEL supporting services to winners and finalists, professional assistance was offered, consisting of:

Report about the potentiality for the SME instrument program of applicant’s idea;

Review of application written by tehmselves;

Help in writing proposal.



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The offer was directed to startups that had an idea that they considered with potential or who had already submitted an application to SMEs Instrument, phase I or phase II. As part of this offer, Econet consultants received expression of interest from 10 companies:

8 with completed information

2 were supported resolving all the doubts, as they didn’t send the required information

Depending of the situation of participants, different personalized tasks were undertaken:

a) For those with an idea, Econet offered support in identification of the most suitable funding program available. In these cases, all participants sent to econet basic information about the idea in the format of a Project Scope. Once received the information, the staff members with deeper expertise in the field of SME Instrument Program maintained a teleconference in order to identify the main aspects of the idea and funding needs of the company. In most of the cases, the companies had to send additional information about the company and the product. Afterwards, for all companies, the responsible consultants prepared the applicable Funding Opportunities report. Econet developed 4 reports about Funding Opportunities from March to April 2016. For the two ideas with biggest potential, econet offered the assistance with writing the application. These two applications, linked to Phase 1 of the SMEs Instrument, were submitted in the beginning of May.

b) For those with previous proposal (former applicants), a different solution was proposed. First it was asked to the startups to send their previous application and ESR. Once received, OpenAxel prepared a Quality Report with recommendations about how to improve each proposal. 4 reports (2 Phases 1 and 2 Phase 2) were prepared from March to April 2016.

The service was offered for applications aimed at the next Phase 1 and Phase 2 according to the following schedule:

Phase 1: 3/5/2016

Phase 2: 14/4/2016


The main results of these added services were:

UNIwise: met Gary Stewart Director of Wayra UK, introduced to governmental programs and major stakeholders from South Korea, soft landing in UK market, introduction to several Scandinavian universities through AppCampus. OpenAxel has helped them obtain funds for a 3 year program with European Commission funds in collaboration with South Korea that would have been impossible otherwise.

MyTwinPlace: 50,000€ (Wayra) as well as introductions that resulted in a 750,000€ investment, as well as promotion of a new service for entrepreneurs co-designed with OpenAxel. Warm introductions and promotion in new markets through the partners.

Magic Photo: warm introduction to investors that resulted in 350,000€ investment and access to Wayra acceleration program.

iNovar: Access to Wayra program (50,000€), access to the OpenAxel consortium’s partner network resulting in meetings with Enel, BT, Orange, Samsung, Sonera, Telefonica, Dell, O2, Microsoft. Access to the Scandinavian and UK markets. Fast track to Accelerace’s NextStep challenge and soft landing that resulted in opening of a new branch office in Denmark.

89BITS: Access to Wayra program (50,000€) as well as AppCampus (20,000€ grant).

FanART Games: 20,000€ grant through AppCampus.

Viomedo: earned a 100,000€ investment round through investor network, entered ODINE, has been invited to Accelerace’s new Life Science focused accelerator NOME, sponsored by Novo Nordisk.

Momit: Earned 50,000€ from Wayra accelerator, closed an agreement to sell 1000 thromostat units in South Korea following support through Wayra’s local parners and network.

Brain+: has had weekly mentoring meetings with Accelerace to advance in their growth.

Remote Eye: have become finalists in NextStep challenge, Wayra Barcelona, Go-Ignite. Commercial agreements with Google, Accenture and Microsoft reached through the partner’s network, Remote Eye accessed a 200k€ seed capital investment.



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Stay App: Raised a 400,000€ investment round.

DiabetesLab won TechPeaks accelerator, has had access to funding through FundingBox and has been invited to Accelerace’s new Life Science focused accelerator NOME, sponsored by Novo Nordisk.

Several events co-organised by at least one of the partners were made available to the startups, and special care was taken to support them in their activities, such as South Summit, 4YFN and Acceleration Industry in Europe event in London (through Wayra), Slush (through AppCampus), access to Accelerace’s training programs.

Through FundingBox’s support services to access SME Instrument, the following were achieved:

4 funding opportunities reports (RemoteEye, Stay App, Viomedo, Veasyt). 2 of them with high potentiality for SMEs Instrument

2 Proposal writing SME Instrument- Phase 1 (RemoteEye and Viomedo)

2 Peer Review (Quality Check) SME Instrument- Phase 1 (Uniwise, Diabetes Lab)

2 Peer Review (Quality Check) SME Instrument – Phase 2 ( Ojoo, Project Ray)

Figure 42: Extract from SME Instrument proposal

At the moment of writing this report, there is not resolution about the applications presented yet. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

A new Supporting Service for OPENAXEL winners and finalists was added to the initial planning in order to identify new funding opportunities for them and complete the services provided by the consortium.



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Task 6.2. Development of Personalized Coaching Plans ENDED

Task 6.2.1 Development of Personalized Coaching Plans (round 1) ENDED P1

Work Performed

This task presented, for the first half of the project, the descriptions of the personalized coaching plans designed by the project for the 9 winners. Main results obtained

The main result obtained was the definition of the structure of the personalised coaching plans and the information on the beneficiaries gathered.


N/A

Task 6.2.2 Development of Personalized Coaching Plans (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

A Personalized Coaching Plan [D6.2] was designed for the 9 winners of the OPENAXEL contest. Following lessons learned from the first round of startups, focus was put mainly on:

Networking and warm introductions

More focus on connecting with corporations

Less focus on formal training and more on personalised mentoring This plan was organised as follows: Phase 0: Assessment

a. Business Plan Review: Identify key areas of improvement. b. Questionnaire: Identify expectations and areas that the winners would be most interested in

improving. Phase 1: Silicon Valley Immersion Bootcamp – 2 weeks

a. Investor face-to-face SF: companies had access to at least three investors to pitch their product and receive feedback.

b. Networking: Silicon Valley hosts the leaders in entrepreneurship and OPENAXEL guided the companies in making connections and networking.

c. Visits and Coaching: 10 days of visits and workshops offices and other locations depending on expert availability, based on strategic visits to and from international innovation referents

Phase 2: OPENAXEL Week in Europe – 3 days d. 4YFN: International debut of the winning companies. e. Executive Coaching: Meeting with coaches.

Phase 3: Further Opportunities

To bring the maximum value to the winners, an initial assessment was carried out. Here below is an extract of the questionnaire that was carried out with them in phase 0 following their selection.

Welcome to OpenAxel!

18 January 2016

Dear entrepreneurs,

Welcome to the OpenAxel program! You have now been selected as one of the most promising startups in Europe, and as such we would like to push you forward and help you make the biggest impact possible.



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Since we do not believe in one-size-fits-all we will be tailoring the experience to you. We would therefore like to know your current situation and needs by asking you a few questions. This is more of a guide than a strict script so you do not need to answer everything exhaustively, but it is in your best interest to be as specific as possible in the most relevant aspects. Points 3 and 4 are obviously key and should be returned by Thursday. You may include a simple first draft of point 5 since you will be working on this anyway over the next few weeks.

The European Commission's philosophy is to help those to help themselves, so we strongly advise you to take a proactive stance, help us rework and update these as the program advances, and both do your research and ask us everything you do not know. 1. What are the key milestones that you have achieved so far? Include indicators where useful:

- Deal reached with main provider / customer - Investment round - Market / growth milestone - Product development, e.g. announcement, new product - Entry in new market / segment

2. What are the key milestones that you are now looking forward to: - [Same structure]

3. What kind of help would you be most interested in getting? - Investment - Access to corporate / sectorial key contacts - Promotion (advertising, product launch) - Soft landing in new markets - Specific knowledge / talent (income management, how to approach investors, an expert in

a specific technology) 4. What do you expect to get from the trip to Silicon Valley? 5. Is there any specific person or entity that you are particularly interested in getting involved with /

have tried to contact? - Investors - Partners - Mentors, talent - Events

6. Have you participated in other accelerators? What were your main learings? Could you tell us who your main contact was?

After these questions, we will be helping you prepare over the next few weeks for the progra. You will get more details over the next few weeks, but these will consist mainly of the following:

Silicon Valley week (2nd week of February) - You are adviced to start thinking and defining as clearly as possible what you expect from it

OpenAxel event at the end during 4YFN, which will include: - Exclusive networking events for OpenAxel winners - One-to-one coaching sessions - Training - We will make sure you have plenty of time to participate in the event and make the most

of it

Training program

Other events we think you may find interesting Thank you,

Figure 43: Extract of the questionnaire of phase 0


The main result of this task was the Coaching Plans, which were produced as a deliverable 6.2 of the project.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 84 of 161


N/A

Task 6.3. World class coaching ENDED

Task 6.3.1 World class coaching (round 1) ENDED

Work Performed

This work package was scheduled to end in the first half of the project. However, following the mid-term review, it was effectively extended in order to maximise its impact on the project: gather more success stories that would help showcase OPENAXEL’s principles and bring more visibility to the project.

The following actions were agreed upon:

Maximize the added value to OPENAXEL best performing startups, creating sustainable success stories and continuously support them with cross border services. The startups on which effort focused on were:

- UNIwise - MyTwinPlace - iNovar - 89bits

Disseminate those success stories through channels to prove them and give visibility. These efforts were catered for on the following three axes:

- Production of webpage material - Media coverage and presence in events with high visibility - Personalised support strategy

Webpage material The startups were interviewed asking them about their experience with OPENAXEL, their evolution since they joined the program and how they see their future steps. Their feedback was incorporated and given a prominent place in the OPENAXEL website. A whole section was included where specific successes were shared, as well as easy access to contact details of the startups.

Figure 44: Webpage materials

To make the content more engaging, a series of videos was prepared:



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Figure 45: Videos prepared Link: https://youtu.be/Au_twCDbU_U Link: https://youtu.be/WJVdFW2o6bA

Additional content was created in the form of personal webpages within the website:

Figure 46: MyTwin Place personal space within the website

Media coverage and presence in events with high visibility

Slush

Slush is one of the main European events in entrepreneurship, where the focal point is for entrepreneurs and tech talent to meet with top-tier international investors, executives and media.

Through AppCampus’ influence in the Scandinavian market, the OPENAXEL consortium headed by Wayra, took two startups (iNovar and MyTwinPlace) to the event and closely supported them by helping with warm introductions andactive promotion. The possibility to offer them stands was considered but put aside after the startups themselves commented that the benefit would be marginal.

OPENAXEL organised one-to-one sessions and provided access to the full list of participants to liaise with them. Additionally, the OPENAXEL teams were invited to participate in the elevator pitch competition.

On top of this, a separate event was organised by the consortium, together with Vertical VC where we gathered numerous international delegations including Singaporean and Italian, as well as involving big corporations such as Samsung and Sonera. This event took place on the 10

th of November.

https://youtu.be/Au_twCDbU_U

https://youtu.be/WJVdFW2o6bA



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Communication materials and dissemination

Aligned with the new strategy, an updated communication and dissemination plan was prepared by DIGITALEUROPE to ensure the most efficient dissemination of the project, including main channels used to promote success stories and give them more visibility.

OPENAXEL collaborated with a media agency in exchange for giving them access to our media & video vertical from our portfolio. They produced a top quality communications material and to promote the startups on the media. Several video interviews were carried out, and main international media have been engaged for dissemination purposes and were uploaded to the OPENAXEL website.

4YFN 2016

The consortium organized a big OPENAXEL event during the 4YFN Startup Conference that took place together with the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2016: “OPENAXEL DemoDay” where the winning startups were showcased in front of numerous investors and corporations, and startups from previous batch, namely MyTwinPlace, UNIWise and iNovar were involved by sharing their experiences and providing advice to the new winners and being arranged personal meetings and provided with individual booths to showcase their products. More details on this event can be found on Task 6.3.2 description.

Personalised support strategy to OPENAXEL winners

On top of the previous, high visibility activities, a personalised strategy cantered on the specific needs of each startup has been prepared:

UNIwise

UNIwise is a software company that produces WISEflow, a cloud-based exam platform that allows educators to conduct the entire testing process—distribution, grading, and more—digitally. The company targets higher education institutions and is based on a software-as-a-service model, generating revenue through license-per-student, entrance/startup, and yearly license fees. The UNIwise team features members with experience in education and development, and its approach for filling gaps in its own expertise is to seek the best from outside the company.

Support Strategy

The main bottleneck is the customer acquisition time and efforts: much investment is required to build trust, carry out negotiations and fulfil local compliance requirements. In most markets, procurement requires an EU-tender proces to be carried out. However once a deal is closed with a client, it is easier to spread to the rest of the national market. After the successful establishment in Scandinavia (major contracts valid for 6 years), UNIwise decided to put emphasis on a "second round" of markets, particularly United Kingdom and South Korea. UNIwise is growing by seeking permanent contracts in S KOR, UK, NL and DE (still immature, will need another 2 years). They are evaluating several options, among them setting an office in the target country or enter with a local partner. Partnerships are somewhat effective but take a lot of time to build.

OPENAXEL supports by building on the following blocks:

Promote PR to build trust within local institutions by: - Carrying out introductions: OPENAXEL helped by leveraging on the local partnerships that some of

its partners have in South Korea (Korea Telecom) and UK (O2). Local partners can serve as great allies to build trust.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 87 of 161

- Providing visibility: all OPENAXEL partners are communicating about UNIwise through their networks.

Mentoring:

- UNIwise needed strong mentoring to help them in negotiating and closing those deals with educational institutions in the targeted markets (public administration and/or education experts that may have dealt with the spread of MOOCs, for example). To this avail, OPENAXEL arranged a 2 hours coaching session in UK with top class experts and introduced them to Mr. Gary Stewart, Director of Wayra UK.

- UNIwise pushes for organic growth, however as both a lot of investors have expressed interest (offers of up to 1 M€) and growth requires investment e.g. for compliance requirements and assumed necessity of physical presence of local employees (sales and support), it could use expertise on how best to incorporate and invest that funding.

MyTwinPlace

MyTwinPlace provides a way for homeowners to exchange homes in order to travel. The company’s service leverages existing home rental platforms, such as Airbnb, by allowing those platforms’ users to transfer their home information to MyTwinPlace with one click. When swapping homes, MyTwinPlace users pay a success fee of 9.99 euros per day swapped, and the fee also includes insurance. The MyTwinPlace team has a strong entrepreneurial background, with its CEO already having established other companies.

Support Strategy

Marketing and visibility were key concerns for the company. MyTwinPlace depends on having many customers all over the world so that there are many house-swapping options; it must increase its visibility in order to increase its customer base. MyTwinPlace has several established competitors, including such entities as Airbnb and HomeExchange.com. MyTwinPlace has been widely featured, acquiring great visibility of their product throughout Europe and entering the US market.

OPENAXEL launched, together with MyTwinPlace, a new cross border service: MyTwinPlace for Entrepreneurs, offering free housing service to European entrepreneurs: https://www.mytwinplace.com/en/for-entrepreneurs/ (More information in Task 3.4). This service was widely promoted, including the appearance in DG Connect´s newsletter forwarded to 4300 subscribers: https://mytwinplace.wistia.com/medias/ic7ksiuzpg

The OPENAXEL consortium introduced them to Italian, Finish, Spanish and Singaporean VC funds, and they successfully closed an investment round of €750k.

Through AppCampus’ influence in the Scandinavian market, the OPENAXEL consortium took MyTwinPlace to the event and closely supported them by helping with warm introductions and active promotion.

MyTwinPlace participated in an exclusive evenorganised with Samsung, Sonera, Telefónica as well as investors and Industry players from Singapore and Italy, mentors and specialists, together with iNOvar and the 10 teams of the Vertical VC batch.

The team participated in the South Summit and given first class mentoring and introductions to the investors and stakeholder database.

Introduction to and mentorship by Vincent Rosso, co-founder of Blablacar and collaborative economy expert that has directly invested in MyTwinPlace and is mentoring them.

Their activity has now spread to Italy, France, USA and the Nordic countries.

This growth has been shown to be legitimate. Since we helped them they have designed a new business model, launched in February after our Silicon Valley trip, that has achieved through 2015:

- +500% growth.

https://www.mytwinplace.com/en/for-entrepreneurs/

https://mytwinplace.wistia.com/medias/ic7ksiuzpg



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 88 of 161

- 350 transactions / month and growing monthly. - 25% of people seeking, find what they want. - Very high satisfaction - 8,6 / 10 on average + many recommendations: 130 a month. - Very good user experience.

iNovar

iNovar produces a business intelligence software platform (MyBI 2Go) that enables users to access their content on mobile devices securely and regardless of format; MyBI 2Go addresses the current difficulty of accessing content created in Flash, Java, and other interactive technologies on mobile devices. The company’s revenues depend on licensing and fees for subscription, support, and maintenance. The iNovar team is already highly experienced in the business world, with the founders having previously worked together in business intelligence solutions.

Support Strategy

The product can be configured so quickly that iNovar can take any volume of big clients; the bottleneck is the acquisition of customers. By having more large enterprises the sales revenues from these are expected to reduce their need to bring in external funding and allow them to recruit sales people more rapidly.

Provide “warm introductions” to key executives to shorten the timescales involved in growing revenues. Introductions to potential big customers all round the world: Japan, US, Europe, Latin America. The consortium organized the following meetings: AMD, Apple, BOSE, CA Technologies, Cassidian, Lenovo, Siemens and Swatch Group

iNovar has been put in contact with the business heads of several global corporations, with great results: Dell, O2, Telefónica

Support in the participation in key conferences (tickets, stand, introductions), such as: Gitex (Dubai), South Summit, 4YFN, Mobile World Congress (Barcelona), HIMSS (Health Infomatics) in 2016 at Chicago or Slush 2015


Following the first half of the project and in order to maximise impact, focus was put on the following aspects:

Introductions to industry and corporation,

Visibility (B2C) and credibility (B2B)

Cross-border venturing

Specialised knowledge The most notable results resulted in these investments:

MyTwinPlace: 50,000€ (Wayra) + 750,000€ investment round

Magic Photo: 350,000€

iNovar: 50,000€ (Wayra)+ 200,000€ investment round

89BITS: 50,000€ (Wayra)

UNIwise

Arranged mentoring sessions with Mr. Gary Stewart (Director of Wayra UK) on a potential investment round; help in getting into the UK market (leveraging OPENAXEL partners’ resources).

Introduction to key Governmental programs and players in South Korea, which is their next key market, with the option of being given a free office space by Telefonica´s partners and participating in the main entrepreneurial event. UNIwise has now an office in South Korea.

Introductions to several Universities (Aalto, Southampton…).

They have 350k validated users (i.e. have taken at least 1 exam with UNIWise solution) in 42 client institutions (with between 100 to 30k students).



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 89 of 161

They presently hold 80% of Danish market and 50% of Norway’s higher ed. market, their next Scandinavian market where they are entering is Sweden. A UK borad launch is expected soon thanks to OPENAXEL efforts to support them, bringing them contacts and credibility to the local stakeholders.

They have established partnerships (resellers/R&D) in Sweden (Timeedit) and South Korea (Wedu communications).

Thanks to OpenAxel they have obtained great results in South Korea: staying at Wedu communications’s offices helped them find a local company they could obtain a 20% stake in in exchange for the possibility for them to use the license.

By building on an EC project, they will have 3 years to further build on the efforts carried out and both further work on the application, adapt the product to the Korean market and build a radically innovative, higher layer of authentication using disruptive biometric technology.

MyTwinPlace MyTwinPlace has been widely featured, acquiring great visibility of their product throughout Europe and entering the US market.

OPENAXEL drived a campaign to offer MytwinPlace as a new cross border service to European entrepreneurs.

Additionally, featured in: - TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/24/mytwinplace/ - http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2015/06/26/vivienda/1435310863_201512.html - http://www.abc.es/economia/20150221/abci-intercambio-casas-vacaciones-201502201552.html - http://www.elmundo.es/economia/2014/12/02/547caea3268e3ee7048b4570.html - http://cincodias.com/cincodias/2014/12/03/empresas/1417626580_896473.html - http://www.eleconomista.es/emprendedores-innova/noticias/6210863/11/14/MyTwinPlace-una-

web-de-intercambio-de-casas-para-vacaciones.html - http://www.eleconomista.es/emprendedores-innova/noticias/6326018/12/14/MyTwinPlace-crece-

un-425-y-se-hace-con-el-liderazgo-del-sector-en-Espana.html - http://periodicoviaje.com/opinion/3001/-Cambiar%C3%A1-Airbnb-la-forma-de-hospedarse-de-los-

turistas - http://www.economiadigital.es/es/notices/2014/02/mytwinplace_la_start_up_que_nacio_por_amo

r_a_nueva_york_50763.php - http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/24/mytwinplace/ - http://www.easyviajar.com/noticia/intercambia-tu-casa-gratis-30202 - http://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20160428/401426470696/catalunya-la-startup-mytwinplace-

cierra-una-ronda-de-financiacion-de-750-000-euros.html - http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/actualites/lire-la-plateforme-collaborative-locative-

mytwinplace-leve-750-keteuro-64689.html - http://www.itespresso.fr/nightswapping-mytwinplace-seduit-investisseurs-128225.html

Radio interview at esRadio, disseminating MyTwinPlace for Entrepreneurs, with an audience of over 500k listeners.

The OPENAXEL consortium introduced them to Italian, Finish, Spanish and Singaporean VC funds, they are currently under an investment round.

Introduction to and mentorship by Vincent Rosso, co-founder of Blablacar and collaborative economy expert that has directly invested in MyTwinPlace and is mentoring them.

Their activity has now spread to Italy, France, USA and the Nordic countries.

This growth has been shown to be legitimate. Since Openaxel helped them they have designed a new business model, launched in February after our Silicon Valley trip, that has achieved high growth and an investment round of €750k

iNovar

Acceptance in Next Step Challenge acceleration program managed by Accelerace;

Introductions to Enel, BT, Orange, Samsung, Sonera, Telefonica business units;

Meetings with Singapore investors and representatives due to opening business there.

Opening activities in the Gulf.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/24/mytwinplace/

http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2015/06/26/vivienda/1435310863_201512.html

http://www.abc.es/economia/20150221/abci-intercambio-casas-vacaciones-201502201552.html

http://www.elmundo.es/economia/2014/12/02/547caea3268e3ee7048b4570.html

http://cincodias.com/cincodias/2014/12/03/empresas/1417626580_896473.html

http://www.eleconomista.es/emprendedores-innova/noticias/6210863/11/14/MyTwinPlace-una-web-de-intercambio-de-casas-para-vacaciones.html

http://www.eleconomista.es/emprendedores-innova/noticias/6210863/11/14/MyTwinPlace-una-web-de-intercambio-de-casas-para-vacaciones.html

http://www.eleconomista.es/emprendedores-innova/noticias/6326018/12/14/MyTwinPlace-crece-un-425-y-se-hace-con-el-liderazgo-del-sector-en-Espana.html

http://www.eleconomista.es/emprendedores-innova/noticias/6326018/12/14/MyTwinPlace-crece-un-425-y-se-hace-con-el-liderazgo-del-sector-en-Espana.html

http://periodicoviaje.com/opinion/3001/-Cambiar%C3%A1-Airbnb-la-forma-de-hospedarse-de-los-turistas

http://periodicoviaje.com/opinion/3001/-Cambiar%C3%A1-Airbnb-la-forma-de-hospedarse-de-los-turistas

http://www.economiadigital.es/es/notices/2014/02/mytwinplace_la_start_up_que_nacio_por_amor_a_nueva_york_50763.php

http://www.economiadigital.es/es/notices/2014/02/mytwinplace_la_start_up_que_nacio_por_amor_a_nueva_york_50763.php


http://www.easyviajar.com/noticia/intercambia-tu-casa-gratis-30202

http://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20160428/401426470696/catalunya-la-startup-mytwinplace-cierra-una-ronda-de-financiacion-de-750-000-euros.html

http://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20160428/401426470696/catalunya-la-startup-mytwinplace-cierra-una-ronda-de-financiacion-de-750-000-euros.html

http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/actualites/lire-la-plateforme-collaborative-locative-mytwinplace-leve-750-keteuro-64689.html

http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/actualites/lire-la-plateforme-collaborative-locative-mytwinplace-leve-750-keteuro-64689.html

http://www.itespresso.fr/nightswapping-mytwinplace-seduit-investisseurs-128225.html



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 90 of 161

Presence as speaker in White Paper presentation Event the 27th

May in London where a high number of corporations and accelerators were present.

The entire iNovar team relocated to Esbjerg in Denmark at the beginning of February as part of the Next Step Challenge and this has brought a number of benefits including a speed up in their development team as a result of working geographically in the same place rather than as they were scattered across the US and has also enabled them to look seriously at developing a solid business base in Scandinavia operating from here in Esbjerg.

Formation of a new subsidiary – iNovar Scandinavia ApS which is being used as the sales and support base for our latest sales approach to mobilising Entreprise Resource Planning applications worldwide.

Accessed a whole new market (Entreprise Resource Planning market) where Microsoft has around 70% market share in DK through the acquisition of a locally developed Danish solution, and have acquired a 1st local client, SydEnergi, for whom they mobilised their entire Enterprise Resource Planning suite in 4 days

Opened 1st Original Equipment Manufacturer contract negotiations with ERP vendor Kerridge worth estimated minimum of $3m over 5 years

Currently negotiating a potential contract with a Tier 2 UK ERP vendor, this would require local recruiting.

Contracts signed with Telefonica O2 in UK to be their 1st Digital Accelerator Partner within their new “Go Paperless” campaign.

Contracts signed with Dell for the solution to be sold in 34 countries worldwide.

Opening up a new sales operation in Singapore (being run from iNovar EMEA Limited initially but may lead to the formation of a Singapore company) which has already resulted in iNovar being represented at a Singapore Government event with the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Home Affairs and EY all interested in running Proof of Concept projects in the next few months.

Negotiations with major end user organisations such as: o SydEnergi, Velux, Vestas, SydDanmark (this is the Regional Authority running the civic infrastructure

but also the healthcare system – hospitals, clinics etc. – in Southern Denmark), QBS Group, EG, Columbus Group.

As a result of the attendance at White Bull, interest from Barcelona City Council and IAG (British Airways, Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus).

Ongoing discussions with investors in US, UK, Scandinavia and now a number of others arising from White Bull.


As mentioned before, following the mid-term review meeting, an agreement was reached to focus all efforts on the following:

Maximizing the added value to OPENAXEL best performing startups, creating sustainable success stories and continuously support them with cross border services: UNIWIse, MyTwinPlace, iNovar.

Disseminate those success stories through channels to prove them and give visibility. The following channels were used:

Partners’ networks via their respective communications channels, including websites, mass emails, newsletters, social media sites, etc.

Partner projects and networks

Central project website (www.openaxel.com)

Central Twitter account (https://twitter.com/OpenAxel) coordinated by DIGITALEUROPE

Task 6.3.2 World class coaching (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

The work carried out was structured following the Coaching Plan:

Phase 1: Silicon Valley

Phase 2: OPENAXEL Week in Europe

Phase 3: Further Opportunities Additional tasks were carried out during our last event in May to further promote our startups.

Phase 1: Silicon Valley Immersion bootcamp


https://twitter.com/OpenAxel



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The consortium organised an immersion bootcamp in Silicon Valley with workshops, masterclasses, and face to face meetings with key stakeholders of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. The objective of the visit was to get a glimpse of the Silicon Valley ecosystem and the requirements to be successful there, benchmark against local startups, and establish connections with key stakeholders to asses for each team on how to best leverage opportunities in USA. (More detail in Task 6.4.2).

Phase 2: OPENAXEL Week in Europe: 4YFN and Mobile World Congress

To deliver a maximum value to the startups, the OPENAXEL consortium organised an event within one of the most important European events, the Mobile World Congress that takes place yearly in Barcelona, more specifically in the 4YFN sister event that focuses on entrepreneurship.

TIME SUBJECT

Tuesday 23/02 4FYN

14-18:00 Corporate Acceleration Event

18:00-21:00 Networking Cocktail

Wednesday 24/02 4FYN

9.30-12.30 Mentoring sessions

13.00-14.00 Lunch break

14.00-14.10 Welcome by OpenAxel

14.10-15.20 Eco-system pitches (10 pitches x 6 min)

15.20-15.35 LIVE Interview with MyTwinPlace by Vincent Rosso

15.35-15.45 Announcement of the winners by Jimmy Maymann (+video from Silicon Valley trip)

15.45-16.30 Networking/Q&A @OpenAxel booth

21.00-23.00 OpenAxel Dinner

Thursday 25/02 Mobile World Congress

9:00-18:00 Networking at Mobile World Congress

Table 17: 4YFN Agenda

Figure 47: 4YFN venue images



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European startup hub pitches

As a preliminary to the announcement of the winning startups, and in order to diffuse OPENAXEL’s works, efforts and results, a series of talks took place where representatives of Europe’s most important innovation hubs promoted and explained how their ecosystem had developed. The hubs represented were: Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, London, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Milan and Paris and the pitchers showed the entrepreneurs the opportunities and singularities of their ecosystem, as a way to promote internationalization between European startups.

The startups had the opportunity to learn about potential ecosystems and speak directly to their representatives of the different hubs.

Startup winner announcements and visibility

To provide visibility to the startups, the main part of the event was announcing and showcasing the winners. This was done by Jimmy Maymman, former CEO of Huffinton post and currently VP of AOL, who attracted lots of media and audience to the announcement.

Figure 48: Startup winners announcement

Coaching

The coaching sessions that were arranged during the event are shown in the table below:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 93 of 161

BR

AIN

+

DIA

BET

ESLA

B

GA

MES

WIT

H

ATT

ITU

DE

MO

MIT

STA

Y A

PP

NN

ERG

IX

REM

OTE

EY

E

VIO

MED

O

XET

AL

Ana Núñez González 9h30 10h30 11h30

Chris Bouret 9h30 11h30 10h30

Csongor Bias 10h30 9h30 11h30

Enrique de la Lastra 10h30 11h30 9h30

Hans Chr. Bjerre Andersen

11h30 9h30 10h30

Peter Birk 10h30 9h30

Peter Tamas Turcsan 11h30 10h30 9h30

Raúl Rodríguez Couto 11h30 9h30

Zoltán Beke 10h30 11h30

Paolo Borella 11h30 9h30 10h30

Table 18: Coaching sessions schedule

Stands and Networking Sessions

OPENAXEL winning startups had access to individual stands at the event with high visibility, where they had the chance to network with investors and big corporations and to show their products and attract customers and partners.

Figure 49: Stand and networking session

Phase 3: Further Opportunities

As mentioned before, we prepared a program to help our startups seek further opportunities by facilitating access to additional events and training programs, always with the support of the partners. These actions were designed on an individual basis, after face to face meetings with each of the teams.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 94 of 161

Specific actions proposed include:

COMPANIES REACH COMMENTS

Momit 2-week Bootcamp in South Korea Reached through Telefonica OpenFuture’s network. Soft landing space, meetings with investors, corporations, public bodies…

Momit Participation at Wayra Munich Demo Day

Pitching event in front of >300 investors and corporate executives

Momit, Nnergix Warm introduction to Iberdrola Head of Innovation

Explore business development opportunities

Momit Warm introduction to Colonial CEO Explore business development opportunities

Nnergix Personalised agenda of events and meetings in Barcelona

Wayra Barcelona

RemoteEye Introduction to TokBox Technological collaboration opportunities with the platform that RemoteEye is based upon

RemoteEye Fast track to Wayra´s acceleration program

Access to Wayra’s acceleration program

Brain+, DiabetesLab, Viomedo

Meeting with Javier Garcia Martinez and Peter Birk

Investment and business opportunities within the medical sector

Momit, Nnergix, Xetal Access to Clean Tech Open event Global leading event and startup competition for green tech, Opinno partner

Games with attitude, Stay App

Introduction to leading touristic players

Main EU players in the touristic sector to explore business opportunities

Games with attitude, Stay App

Access and support in FITUR conference

Business and networking opportunities in leading global event in tourism

Momit, RemoteEye, Nnergix

Fast track to Google’s Startup Grind Powered by Google Campus Madrid

DiabetesLab, Games with attitude, Viomedo

Introduction to European ICT network partners in Brussels

Provided through Digital Europe

All startups Invitation to Innovators under 35 France, Spain, EU editions

Organised by Opinno

DiabetesLab, Brain+, Viomedo

Fast Track to Accelerace program and training

Provided by Accelerace

Brain+, Games with attitude, Viomedo, RemoteEye, DiabetesLab

Adobe Summit EMEA Europe’s largest digital content and creativity conference

All startups Connected Conference 3-day conference highlighting the intersection of Industrial and Internet sectors

DiabetesLab, Momit, Nnergix, RemoteEye, Viomedo, Xetal

Challengers 2016 Referent event that focuses on high impact technologies

Brain+, Games with attitude, Stay App, Viomedo, DiabetesLab, Xetal

Founders Forum Forum for leading digital and technology entrepreneurs

Brain+, Games with Attitude

Introduction to Nokia and Rovio Investment and business opportunities

Table 19: Specific Actions programmed



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Extra Opportunity: Acceleration industry in Europe

The results of OPENAXEL’s research on corporate acceleration in Europe were officially presented at a unique event at Wayra UK on Friday 27th May between 12:00-15:00, where high level and relevant personalities representing all the key players (entrepreneurs, corporations, accelerators, public bodies and media) debated on the conclusions. All this followed by a networking cocktail where to meet all these relevant stakeholders.

OPENAXEL Portfolio Booklet:

To make the most of these events, on top of inviting the startups to the event, we gathered a booklet with their one pagers that was distributed to the audience:

Figure 50: Example of Portfolio booklet

Round tables with key winning startups:

Two OPENAXEL winning startups were invited



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 96 of 161

Figure 51: Remote Eye CEO Jordi Boza talks about corporate-startups relationships.

Figure 52: iNovar’s David Monks in one of the event’s panels talks about how accelerators can better help startups.


Despite the reduced available time we still had the possibility to see some significant results:

Nnergix: 720,000€ investment round

Viomedo: earned a 100,000€ investment round (ODINE accelerator), has been invited to Accelerace’s new Life Science focused accelerator NOME, sponsored by Novo Nordisk

Momit: Closed an agreement to sell 1000 thromostat units in South Korea following support by the partner accelerators

Brain+: has had weekly mentoring meetings with Accelerace to advance in their growth

RemoteEye: have become finalists in NextStep challenge, Wayra Barcelona, Co-Ignite. Commercial agreements with Google, Accenture and Microsoft, they are official providers for Hololens. Remote Eye had just received a 200k€ seed capital investment and were therefore not looking for immediate investment.

DiabetesLab won TechPeaks accelerator, has had access to funding through FundingBox and has been invited to Accelerace’s new Life Science focused accelerator NOME, sponsored by Novo Nordisk.

Mobail Apps/Stay App: Closed a deal with Melia and One and an investment round of 400,000€

Xetal: closed a distribution agreement in Italy, Ireland and Mexico



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 97 of 161


No important deviations had to be done, other than the change of focus resulted from the mid-term review.

Task 6.4. Cross border venturing ENDED

Task 6.4.1 Cross border venturing (round 1) ENDED

Work Performed

A 1 week bootcamp in Silicon Valley that took place during the last week of January 2015 was prepared for the winners. An initial attempt to organise it in December 2014 was made in order to be able to include a full report of the 1st round of WP6 in the present report. However December implies busier than usual schedules for both the contacts in Silicon Valley and the startups themselves, so a decision was made to postpone the trip. All startups were able to make it for the week of the 26

th of January 2015 saves for one, FanART Games, for personal reasons unrelated to the

project.

For the first Immersion Bootcamp, OpenAxel organized for the startups a series of workshops, and face to face meetings with investors and VC funds, mentors, executives, entrepreneurs, leading universities involved in entrepreneurship and innovation as well as local service providers, corporations and accelerators. By introducing the startups to a wide array of stakeholders from the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem, OpenAxel offered the startups the possibility to understand the elements and dynamics that define such an ecosystem reputed to be a global reference for its agility and capacity for disruption. By comparing with their own markets and by discussing first hand with key constituents, we hoped they could learn about different Sales & Business Development, Financing, Product Development and Resourcing strategies that they could adopt, as well as establish local connections and prepare in view of a potential future international expansion. To achieve such results the Bootcamp was shaped as a combination of the following types of sessions:

Soft landing sessions with relevant ecosystem players like Younoodle, Techcrunch, SV Forum, Founders Space, Fire Matter, Endeavor or Mind The Bridge to give the startups a first glimpse of what the Silicon Valley ecosystem is like, help them understand what to expect from it and help them prepare for it

Tutoring leading up to the Bootcamp to help them search for potential partners and focus their sessions on the most beneficial matters, and thus make the most our their week

Masterclasses on Financial and Banking issues (Bank of the West, Silicon Valley Bank) or legal issues (Reed Smith LLP)

Pitching sessions with investors: Telefonica Ventures, Austral Capital, Microsoft Ventures or Intel Capital

Workshops in successful corporations like AirBnB, Amazon or Microsoft for discussions on hyper-growth and global expansions

Visit from a recognized figure from the University of Berkley, one of the most relevant Universities for Innovation and entrepreneurship in California.

In addition to the sessions themselves, Opinno prepared: Landing support material that would serve as a reference to move around, know how local everyday services work in San Francisco, reference prices, transportation, as well as basic steps to help settle as a company, all this to sum on the landing sessions A microsite specifically dedicated to the Bootcamp adapted to the expectations of potential local speakers, investors and other key people. It would offer a very quick overview of OpenAxel, the purpose of the trip, the startup portfolio with updated one pagers and links to the startup’s webpages. Microsite The microsite was entirely dedicated to the trip to facilitate the approach of the local innovation ecosystem main actors, so as to maximise the efficiency of the contact. Also, each startup had a link to their website and to a one pager.



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Figure 53: OPENAXEL Silicon Valley Week Microsite

Bootcamp Agenda

The program prepared can be seen below:

TIME SUBJECT COMPANY SPEAKER

Mon 26/01

12:30 - 13:30 Welcome to SV Opinno Marcela Priwin

14:00 - 15:00 Banking in the US Bank of the West Vincenzo Mitolo

15:30 - 16:30 Legal Considerations Reed Smith Richard Horning

17:00-18:00 Workspaces You Noodle Torsten Kolind

Tue 27/01

10:00 - 11:00 Meeting with Telefónica Ventures Telefónica Ventures Jack Leeney

11:20-12:00 Community Management and Growth Airbnb Chiara Castagnini

14:00-15:00 Investor meeting Lumia Capital Zachary Finkelstein

15:30 - 17:00 Venturing in the Valley University of California, Berkeley

David Charron

18:30 - 21:00 Funding and Explosive Product Market Fit Founders Space Steve Hoffman



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Wed 28/01

13:00 - 14:30 Tech Crunch: Pitch Training. Getting press in the US

Tech Crunch Samantha O'Keefe

15:00 - 17:00 Biz Dev Workshop FireMatter Matteo Fabiano

18:00 - 19:00 Meeting with AWS Start Up team and using AWS credits

AWS (Amazon Web Services)

Ryan Kiskis

Thu 29/01

11:00 - 12:00 Meeting with Endeavor Endeavor Allen Taylor

14:00-15:00 Investor meeting Austral Capital Hiroshi Wald

15:00 - 16:00 Investor meeting SVB (Silicon Valley Bank)

Barry O'Brien

16:00-17:00 The Valley’s ecosystem SV Forum Klaus Børme

18:00-20:00 MV Open House - Second Seattle MV Accelerator class

Microsoft Ventures -

19:00 - 22:00 Networking event California Academy of Arts

-

Fri 30/01

9:00 - 10:00 Investment Options and Founder Vesting Intel Capital Sumeet Jain

10:30 - 11:30 IT considerations of ventures Docusign Greg Robbins

12:00 - 13:00 Creating an Advisory Board / EU Funding Mind The Bridge Marco Marinucci

Table 20: Bootcamp Agenda


“Landing” sessions helped startups both to guide them on how to approach venturing in San Francisco and show them a different entrepreneurial mindset. The startups spent a whole week meeting key stakeholders from the Silicon Valley. Over 70 meetings were carried out during their stay outside the normal program and 2 networking events provided them with plenty of opportunities to grow their network.

These meetings involved agents from throughout the ecosystem:

Corporates such Amazon and Telefónica that spoke

Startups such as AirBnB to understand how they have approached their ventures, how they coped with growth and how their culture impacted in shaping the company and its results

Investors like Telefonica Ventures, Microsfot Ventures or Lumia Capital to help the startups understand their needs and their point of view on the process of venture investment

Universities with leading first hand knowledge of the local innovation dynamics and research

On top of this, the teams were invited to several local entrepreneurial and networking event in the California Academy of Arts and Rocket Space. One should keep in mind that the main result that we wanted to obtain from such a short bootcamp was the learning experience for the startups, especially for seed stage startups. If we want European startups to be competitive on a global basis, they need to know how reference entrepreneurial ecosystems work in order to translate the best practices to the local situation.

MyTwinPlace took the opportunity to learn how to promote itself to US media to launch its products locally: http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/24/mytwinplace/


N/A




FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 100 of 161

Task 6.4.2 Cross border venturing (round 2) ENDED

Work Performed

For the 9 winners of the second OPENAXEL contest, OPENAXEL organized an intensive Immersion Bootcamp in Silicon Valley with workshops, masterclasses, and face to face meetings with investors, mentors, executives, entrepreneurs as well as visits to Universities leading efforts in innovation and entrepreneurship, corporations, VC funds and accelerators.

The objective of the visit was to get a glimpse of the Silicon Valley ecosystem and the requirements to be successful there, benchmark against local startups, and establish connections with key stakeholders to asses for each team on how to best leverage opportunities in USA from Sales & Business Development, Financing, Product Development and Resourcing.

To achieve such results the Bootcamp was shaped as a combination of:

Masterclasses on Financial and Banking issues (Silicon Valley Bank), legal issues (Reed Smith LLP) and the opportunity to leverage European institutional support in the USA market (EIT Digital)

Pitching sessions with investors: Telefonica Ventures and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP)

Workshops in successful corporations like Uber for discussions on hyper-growth and global expansions, Transfluent for pivot to USA market and resourcing.

Meetings with accelerators such as Plug and Play and 500 Startups to assess local acceleration opportunities and key trends, main issues faced by European Teams entering USA market.

Mentoring sessions with Idean (User Experience excellence, entering USA market form Europe) and Transfluent Founders (pivoting from Europe to USA market and establishing operations in California)

Visits to the two most relevant Universities for Innovation and entrepreneurship in California: Stanford and Berkeley.

The consortium captured the team expectations and needs, and based in this input some of the sessions were tailored to fulfill the specific needs and give a better perspective of the local market and key players (for instance Health segment and visit to Better doctor for DiabetesLab and Viomedo).

On top of this, the teams were invited to the main networking event in the Valley: Rosewood Hotel Cocktail.

The agenda was fast paced to help adjust to the local pace of the business, and the teams also had the opportunity to have some free time to arrange their own meetings with investors and to drive forward business development opportunities.

As a final touch some leisure activities were arranged to foster the development of the Alumni spirit and stimulate ‘pay forward’ attitude among the OPENAXEL teams participating the Bootcamp.

Bootcamp Agenda


Tuesday 09/02 Arrival

14-18:00 Team arrivals and Hotel check-in - -

B18:00-21:00 Welcome to SV & Dinner OpenAxel Tapio Siik, Paolo Borella

Wednesday 10/02 Day in San Francisco

9:00-10:00 EIT Node in USA EIT Marko Turpeinen

10:00-10:30 Move to SVB office - -

10:30-11:30 Banking services in US (and in UK)

Silicon Valley Bank

Ricky Khamphoumy, Liam Fairbain

11:30-13:00 Lunch Break & move to Über office

- -

13:00-15:00 Visit to Uber Uber Daniel Graf



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15:00-15:30 Move to Telefonica office - -

15:30-17:00 Meeting with Investor Telefonica Ventures

Jack Leeney

Thursday 11/02 Day in Silicon Valley

8:30-9:30 Bus Transfer to Silicon Valley United Coach Tours

-

9:30-12:00 Visit to Plug & Play Plug & Play Jackie Hernandez

12:00-13:00 Lunch Break - -

14:30-15:00 Bus Transfer to Sandhill Road United Coach Tours

-

15:00-17:00 Visit to Investor IVP (Institutional Venture Partners)

Michael Miao/ Gina Bauman

17:00-20:00 Rosewood experience Rosewood Hotel

-

20:00-… Bus Transfer to San Francisco United Coach Tours

-

Friday 12/02 Day in San Francisco

10:00-11:00 Visit to Investor 500 startups Marvin Liao

11:00-12:00 Integrating design in startups Idean Risto Lahdesmaki

12:00-13:00 Lunch Break Fisherman Wharf - -

13:00-17:00 Visit to ReedWood OpenAxel Tapio Siik

Weekend 13-14/02

Free time

Monday 15/02

Silicon Valley

8:30-9:30 Bus Transfer to Silicon Valley United Coach Tours

-

9:30-12:00 Visit To Reed Smith Reed Smith Richard Horning

12:00-13:00 Lunch Break - -

13:00-16:00 Visit to Stanford University - Paolo Borella

16:00-… Bus transfer to San Francisco United Coach Tours

-

Tuesday 16/02

San Francisco

8:00-9:00 Pivot to USA, Health Business, Investors

Better Doctors

Ari Tulla, CEO

9:30-12:00 1on1 Mentoring OPENAXEL Paolo Borella, Tapio Siik Aparna Sain

12:00-13:00 Lunch Break - -

13:00-19:00 Visit to UC Berkeley center for entrepreneurship

UC Berkeley Ken Singer

19:00-22:00 Farewell Dinner OpenAxel Tapio Siik, Paolo Borella

Wednesday 17/02 Free agenda for own meetings

9:00-16:00 Own meetings - -

Thursday 18/02 Departure

9:00-12:00 Own meetings - -

12:00-… Ckeck-out from Hotel & Teams depart

- -



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Table 21: Bootcamp Agenda


All startups but one participated in the trip, and all were highly active. Individual efforts were difficult to track, but despite the short time some teams achieved results even in Business Development and funding strategy. As showcases, the following can be provided:

Viomedo face to face meeting with Better Doctors and leads for several BD efforts, meeting with several VCs after official program

Games with Attitude met several potential customers and finalized contract with a San Francisco museum to discuss potential use of their gaming platform to enhance the experience of the visitors.

Nnergix got intro to solar city (ongoing discussions) and leads to several power company in California that are active following, also got invite to speak to energy event in California.

After acquiring a better understanding of how the Silicon Valley ecosystem works, RemoteEye decided to refocuse its fundraising efforts in Europe only and repatriated resources accordingly.

Efforts to engage mentors proceeded swiftly and ensured proper support to the start-ups in terms of mentoring and developing the network of the startups in portfolio. More details about the Speakers, Mentors and Hosts can be found in the deliverable D.6.2 Coaching Plan. A dedicated website for the trip was prepared for the Openaxel website, with notably a videosummary where the participants are interviewed and interact with the contacted personalities: http://openaxel.com/openaxel-2016-silicon-valley-immersion-bootcamp/ Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

N/A





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WP7. Evaluation of deployment

WP Leader FUNDING BOX Status ENDED

Task 7.1. Deployment of cooperation framework for accelerators ENDED

Work Performed

According to the plan project partners created a good environment to facilitate the collaboration among European accelerators in the OPENAXEL portal. This portal includes specific profiles for accelerators, mentors, investors, startups, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders.

In the first period, the project partners created a virtual place where accelerators can meet and exchange information related to their activities to improve their performance and service portfolio to their clients, startups and entrepreneurs.

During the second period, Openaxel partners uploaded information to share knowledge among accelerators and with other stakeholders (startups, entrepreneurs, investors, mentors). A marketplace has been enabled for deal flow between the stakeholders, so the partners and some other users have offered cross border services to startups.

The dissemination and promotion actions for the portal were satisfactory executed and many profiles were created as explained in previous tasks description.

Big efforts had to be done to engage a critical mass within the entrepreneurial ecosystem in order to open the accelerators ecosystem by fostering smart cooperation. The project partners had contacted more than 200 accelerators that did not necessarily participate in OPENAXEL first open call and sent them invitations via mail.

By the end of the OPENAXEL project more than 6,500 profiles were created in OPENAXEL portal.

Additionally partners devoted attention and efforts in analyzing the status of the project after the first contest round and determining the value proposition for the different stakeholders. At the end of the 1

st contest, and just after the

award ceremony, project partners met in Madrid the 09th

of October 2014, to plan the deployment of the cooperation framework and the execution of WP7, as well as execute other project tasks. During this meeting, project partners assessed the activities and actions developed during the project to maximize the efficiency of accelerators’ collaboration and engaging additional resources and capabilities for implementation of future projects. As result of this assessment, partners realized that the current momentum in the accelerator arena had substantially changed. For example, the FIWARE Accelerator program has become a relevant player in relation with acceleration and the European Commission has allocated substantial funds and considerable efforts to support this initiative.

Due to the outcomes of this meeting, in 31st

of October, OPENAXEL partners met to review how OPENAXEL should build a sustainable cooperation framework for accelerators and a re-new strategy came out specially linked to the engagement of accelerators and the value proposition for them based in the openness and exchange of data.

An improved version of the accelerator profile was defined to collect useful information from accelerators to be able to assess and compare their performance. This re-new profile was included in a search engine that allows tagging, classifying and visualizing the accelerators by the services they provide; by opening this information to entrepreneurial community we provided advanced cross border services to entrepreneurs and startups and enabled accelerators to share best practices. According to the contry responsibility shared between the partners the European accelerators have been checked and their profiles carefuly updated. These actions allowed successfully develop and deploy a proper cooperation framework for accelerators.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 104 of 161

Econet, the owner of the technology used in the OPENAXEL Virtual Portal has expressed its interest in continuing the virtual space created in the project. OPENAXEL and its SME partners are talking to define the terms of this continuation.


Continuous increase of the community figures (up to date): 6,616 entrepreneurs; 137 accelerators and a network of more than 10k ICT companies. Deep and updated knowledge of acceleration ecosystem used to build a suitable & sustainable cooperation framework for the accelerators. Information related to the proper value proposition for accelerators to cooperate among them.


N/A

Task 7.2. Impact assessment: repository and map of accelerators ENDED

Work Performed

During the first period, the OPENAXEL partners defined the initial scope of information to be filled in the accelerator’s profile and the basis for ranking & benchmark methodology.

In the Review Meeting held in March 2015 the partners agreed to build an interactive map of accelerators based on previously prepared repository. By the end of September 2015, 1,320 profiles were created in OPENAXEL portal. This was the starting point for further work on the preparation of the map.

Project partners also prepared, during the first half of the project, the list of fields to be completed by an accelerator when registering and now needed to be included in the accelerator profile at OPENAXEL map. These fields were: profile, basic data and extended data.

After preparing all the information needed for registration of stakeholders at the FundingBox platform, the partners decided to engage external developers whose goal was creating a map for OPENAXEL. Several developers were contacted and the final decision was to work with an experienced developer that has done similar works for Telefonica.

After a tough developing process, the OPENAXEL map was launched the 1st

September 2015 and since then it is regurarly used by entrepreneurs searching for acceleration services in Europe (http://openaxel.com/search/ ). It is one of the main cross border services that OpenAxel has offered the ecosystem.

http://openaxel.com/search/



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Figure 54: OPENAXEL Map

The map shows and geolocalizes European accelerators, big digital corporations, NTA’s and startups within the OpenAxel community. The data feeding the map comes from the FundingBox platform and enables the map to be dynamic and up to date when accelerators, corporations, startups or NTAs profiles are created or/and updated. The user can zoom and navigate the map using the mouse or touch and it has “pins” that indicates where accelerators, corporations, startups and NTA are located.

In order to work correctly, OPENAXEL map performs four requests to the FundingBox API. These are:

1. http://www.fbacc.pl/json/usearch/main/table_name%3AENTITIES%20type%3ACOMPANY/NONE/signal%20desc/0/4000/ : Aim of this request is to bring all the API entities and to pull the relevant data of each of them. Also, the developers (CBI Consulting) do another request per each of the current entities: (http://www.fbacc.pl/json/gettags/ [entity_id ] /ABOUT/ )

2. http://www.fbacc.pl/json/gettags/[entity_id]/ABOUT/: This request is done in order to pull complementary data that is needed: services and skills. It can be noticed that currently the frequency of doing the requests is much higher. There is a possibility of merging both requests in order to simplify the process. This could be achieved by including a new property "filters" to each of the entities including the skills and services as follow: "filters":{"skill":["Business accelaration"],"service":["Mentoring","Fundraising","Training"]}

3. http://www.fbacc.pl/json/usearch/main/table_name%3AENTITIES%20type%3A[type]/subtype%3A [subtype]/signal%20desc/0/40/: Request performed in order to obtain the data shown in the homepage (circular highlight).

4. http://www.fbacc.pl/json/usearch/main/table_name%3ACMT_OPPORTUNITIES/opportunity_due%3A%5B[fecha_actual]%20TO%20*%5D/opportunity_due%20asc/0/40/EXACT/: Request aimed at getting the Open Calls.

The map is being constantly updated thanks to feedback provided by entrepreneurs, who are the end users and “clients” of the map. The main objective of gathering this feedback is to improve the map around filters, navigation, information and sorting. Currently, the map is being updated and linked to the newest version of FundinBox platform (v.04) in order to remain up to date and to be sustainable.

http://www.fbacc.pl/json/usearch/main/table_name%3AENTITIES%20type%3ACOMPANY/NONE/signal%20desc/0/4000/

http://www.fbacc.pl/json/usearch/main/table_name%3AENTITIES%20type%3ACOMPANY/NONE/signal%20desc/0/4000/

http://www.fbacc.pl/json/gettags/%5bentity_id%5d/ABOUT/

http://www.fbacc.pl/json/usearch/main/table_name%3ACMT_OPPORTUNITIES/opportunity_due%3A%5B%5bfecha_actual%5d%20TO%20*%5D/opportunity_due%20asc/0/40/EXACT/

http://www.fbacc.pl/json/usearch/main/table_name%3ACMT_OPPORTUNITIES/opportunity_due%3A%5B%5bfecha_actual%5d%20TO%20*%5D/opportunity_due%20asc/0/40/EXACT/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 106 of 161

Figure 55: OPENAXEL Map: Filters

The consortium is also under conversations with the developers to potentially add filters reflecting the owner or sponsor of the acceleration program, namely: University; VC / investor; Corporation; Public and/or Private. This change will require adding new type of information to each accelerator “card”.


Creation of the map of European accelerators and corporate startups programmes: www.openaxel.com/search . It is interactive and provides a complete vision of the different acceleration services offered within Europe as well as information of startups and the main digital corporations within our network. The map helps accelerators reach their targets by promoting their contests and by increasing the reach and cross border opportunities for all organizations. The new OpenAxel website (whose main functionality is this map), has reached almost 20,000 pageviews, proving the value that stakeholders see on the map.


There are no deviations in the objectives and impact of this task.

Task 7.3. Defining the existing gaps between industry and startups ENDED

Work Performed

Due to the redefinition of the project´s objectives, the consortium focused in this second period in discovering and unveiling the gaps and barriers that slows down the engagement between startups and corporations, and in proposing some solutions and recommendations that could foster the ecosystem. The main output of this task was the production of OPENAXEL White paper on corporate and startup engagement, together with the recommendations contained in it. Most of the work deployed related to this task is covered in other parts of this report, but it is useful to enlist and explain them here.

The first step to discover the gaps was doing field research within the involved stakeholders: entrepreneurs and corporations. With the objective of producing the OPENAXEL White Paper on corporate and startup engagement, the consortium conducted several actions that involved both parties.

The field research consisted of more than 20 in-person and online interviews, and on two surveys distributed to over 100 innovation managers and executives in large corporations and SMEs in the digital sector, and to over 60

http://www.openaxel.com/search



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 107 of 161

accelerators of digital startups in Europe. These surveys were designed with the support of expert researchers in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Finally, a dozen case studies were analysed in further detail, the most prominent of which are included in OPENAXEL White Paper as examples for inspiration and role model. The desk research was based on reading dozens of publications, news, blogposts, and reports available online and dated 2012 or later. Collected data, interviews, and literature were analysed and discussed by all OPENAXEL partners, in order to identify patterns and derive recommendations for future actions to corporations, startups, accelerators, and to the European Commission. The main editors gathered all inputs and gave shape to the paper, in maximum respect of the original assertions and opinions expressed by the other contributors.

With all this inputs and discussions, the consortium was able to reveal the main barriers of this engagement which are the following:

- Absence of board level support of open innovation initiatives within corporations - Lack of defined KPIs for the open innovation responsible in corporations - Rigid internal structure in corporations that have established departments, goals and procedures.

Consequently, it is very hard for them to engage in anything that does not fit with their structure. This results in a slower decision process, as issues can get thrown from one department to another resulting in confusion as to how to proceed with a startup.

- Most corporations serve existing customers in their main market. Startups tend to cater to early adopters in new markets and often endeavour to completely change the way things are being done. As corporations are driven by their customer relations they prioritize issues which customers demand, often connected with improvements to existing products and services not new, disruptive solutions.

- Most corporations, especially public companies, are driven by short term growth in revenue or profitability. Startups are rarely able to contribute to that. With corporate revenues counted in billions of Euros, a positive contribution of a startup is negligible.

Based on these barriers and the knowledge on the current state of art of open innovation policies, OPENAXEL issued a series of recommendations, addressing both startups and corporations. The recommendations for corporations were the following:

1. Replicate the positive examples of other corporations: enacting open innovation in a corporate environment is far from being easy; however you gain inspiration from successful implementations of others. It is also easier to gain support at all levels, from top management as well as from peers, when replicating an approach already experimented by others.

2. Sustain open innovation effort over time: engaging with startups requires cultural and procedural changes at many levels of the company. Enter this game for the long run, use short-term rewards to aliment the marathon.

3. Start with the end in mind: in our survey, too many responded that KPIs for collaborations with startups were not discussed before approaching them. The exercise of defining measurable goals will allow for a more thoughtful involvement of decision makers in your company, and would permit accountancy of results and future improvements to strategic initiatives.

4. Gain board level support: although starting small is better than not starting, achieving board level support will entail to have a wider impact and pursue the cultural transformation that is needed to make the most profit of startup collaborations.

5. Experiment with external accelerators: corporate accelerators are difficult to setup and run, and might not be for all. Additionally, corporate employees may lack the language to speak to startups, while external entrepreneurs called to run corporate accelerators may encounter the same problem when talking to internal business units. Working with external accelerators may lower the risks and costs.

Likewise, startups were also provided with some recommendation to be succesfull when approaching corporations:

1. Build a concrete business case for a corporation: corporations are still mostly motivated by solving immediate business problems when they engage with startups.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 108 of 161

2. Look for corporations outside of your market: more and more corporations are driven to startup to seek differentiation of their core business and to expand to new markets.

3. Agree upfront on a common definition of success: corporations tend to look at different key performance indicators, and to define success in a different way than startups do. When preparing for collaboration, make sure that you and your counterpart share common goals and common metrics.

4. When choosing an accelerator, look at both the sources of its funding and at its intrinsic goals: as with any other organisation, accelerators have to respond to their financiers and to their stakeholders.

5. Pay attention to services provided to accelerators’ alumni: if you are interested in using an accelerator to engage in collaborations with corporations, you should analyse the number of success cases of such collaborations achieved by the accelerator’s alumni, more than the number of corporations in the accelerator’s network.

All these recommendations were published and widely diffused, through events and different articles, to gain awareness and achieve real impact with them. The results and main highlights of this communication will be shown in WP8 report.

Once these recommendations were issued, OPENAXEL designed a survey for startups so that entrepreneurs could give their vision on this ecosystem and the conclusions the Research revealed. Almost 320 entrepreneurs from all around Europe took part in this step of our research. Some of the conclusions of this last survey met our expectations, as the main reason for a startup to engage with corporations is gaining access to new markets (as happens the other way round), as can be seen in the graphic below:

Figure 56: OPENAXEL Survey Question: Why would you approach a corporation?

Another key reason for startups to search for corporations is visibility and credibility and, while often offered service of access to working space seems to be dispensable for startups.

Lastly, OPENAXEL also wanted to have the entrepreneur´s vision on the usefulness of the tools that corporations deploy for open innovation purposes. The results proof that entrepreneurs find more useful accelerators and incubators and formal partnerships, rather than corporate venturing. This conclusion is aligned with what corporations answered, preferring corporate accelerators rather than corporate venture capital, as the graphic below shows:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 109 of 161

Figure 57: OPENAXEL Survey Answers


All the efforts and the work deployed related to this task has enabled OPENAXEL to produce a unique study on corporate acceleration in Europe, issuing concrete recommendations and engaging a big number of corporations that will use the research as their guide. The research can be downloaded: http://openaxel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/OpenAxel-white-paper.pdf For the first time the research has involved corporations, entrepreneurs and accelerators (as enablers of this relationship). The main results were discussed by representatives of these stakeholders in an event in Wayra UK on May 27

th 2016, with the participation of Telefonica, Orange, Microsoft, MSD, Deutsche Telekom, Nesta, Tha Bakery,

Wayra, Knowledge Transfer Network, FundingBox and OpenAxel entrepreneurs, among others. A high number of representatives took part in the research, from all around Europe, being the first complete Pan-European research of its kind. Finally, it is important to highlight the high level of success and engagement that this study has achieved, appearing in numerous publications, articles, videos… as will be shown in WP8.


N/A

Task 7.4. Business Plan ENDED

Work Performed

Funding Box leads this task aimed at defining the articulation of the strategic direction for the future use of the project

results, setting also the sustainability actions for project outputs at the end of the project. All this based on a deep

analysis of the existing ecosystem built around OPENAXEL and the sustainability analysis of its services and main

results beyond EU funding period. The main tasks performed were:

1) Collecting information within the consortium. Personal interviews with each of the 8 partners were done

following a predefined script. The questions were designed following the Business Model Canvas structure:

Value Proposition, Target users, Key resources, partnerships and activities, including some more questions

about IPR management.

The results of the interviews were analysed and structured in five blocks:

Main products of the project: map, community, OPENAXEL winners and White Paper.

http://openaxel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/OpenAxel-white-paper.pdf

http://openaxel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/OpenAxel-white-paper.pdf



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 110 of 161

Target users of the main products: Startups, Accelerators, Policy Makers, Corporates, EC, Agencies

and Service providers.

Possibilities of exploitation of the different products.

Continuity of the project.

Benefits of participating in the project.

2) Validating conclusions within the consortium. The conclusions of the interviews were presented to the

partners in a meeting in Barcelona during the 4YFN event of 2016.

In the meeting were decided the exploitation possibilities to explore in the following months and the

necessary tasks to develop the sustainability plan. Each partner was assigned with a number of tasks.

In various cases these tasks implied the engagement with third parties, overall similar projects or

organizations that could be interested in exploit or use OPENAXEL main results.

3) Exploring synergies with similar initiatives. OPENAXEL team explore synergies with similar initiatives in order

to explore collaboration opportunities regarding their exploitation strategies. In particular similar initiatives

were contacted for building a community of communities and for the sustainability of the map.

4) Drafting of the business plan. Funding Box collected the contributions of the different partners to prepare

the general strategy for sustainability. Based on this information a Business Model Canvas was prepared for

the main products of the project and for the target or user segments identified.

The sustainability of the project will be based on four pillars, the four main products addressed to a wide audience of

startups, accelerators, corporates and public bodies:

Figure 58: OPENAXEL sustainability Pillars

The works performed within this task for the sustainability of the four main products of the project were:

1) Map - Contact stakeholders to gather their interest in using OPENAXEL map and/or database. - Contact users to gather their feedback on the map.

2) Community - Contact similar communities to analyze them and to gather their interest in being part of such a

community of communities. - Preparation of an accelerator accreditation system.

3) OPENAXEL winners



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 111 of 161

- Compile information from 18 OPENAXEL winners to measure the impact of the project in terms of the services delivered to the startups considering the following variables: growth, access to investment, valuation, jobs generated and also the main benefits for the startups to participate in the project.

- List the services that the partners will deliver to the startups after the end of the project to continue supporting them.

4) White Paper - Preparation of a dissemination and communication strategy to spread the word about the

White Paper.

As a result, a Business Model Canvas was prepared including the main products of the project as value proposition addressed to the following users: startups, accelerators, policy makers, corporates, EC, agencies and service providers. Finally, a preliminary exploitation agreement including responsibilities of the partners to implement the sustainability plan was drafted. In which partners commit to deliver different tasks to ensure the sustainability of the project and also commit to work to prepare a final exploitation agreement six months after the end of the project.


Seven out of eight partners have signed the preliminary exploitation agreement; it implies that partners will continue

to work in the project in the following six months. Only AppCampus, due to the cease of its activities, didn´t commit to

the continuity of the project. After this period partners are committed to sign a final exploitation agreement.

The tasks that partners will deliver in the following months are the following:

PARTNER RESPONSIBILITIES

Wayra Website service, functionalities and technical (hosting and simple incidences solving) maintenance.

Update events section with information proposed by partners

Continue supporting OPENAXEL Winners

Integration of the map in third parties’ platforms

Contribution to the preparation of the final Exploitation Strategy

ACCELERACE Continue supporting OPENAXEL Winners

Commercial approach to stakeholders to use and update the map


Providing and distributing content (news, events and/or social networks) at least on a monthly basis

DE Distribution of communication materials (leaflets, images, graphical material).

Providing and distributing content (news, events and/or social networks)


White paper and results dissemination strategy Community Management (Social Networks update).

ECONET Providing and distributing content (news, events and/or social networks) at least on a monthly basis


Keep on working on the possibility of building a community of communities

OPINNO Providing and distributing content (news, events and/or social networks) at least on a monthly basis


Continue supporting OPENAXEL Winners

IVSZ Providing and distributing content (news, events and/or social networks) at least on a monthly basis



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 112 of 161

PARTNER RESPONSIBILITIES


FBOX Providing and distributing content (news, events and/or social networks) at least on a monthly basis

Leader of the Exploitation Strategy preparation

Platform service, functionalities and technical (hosting and simple incidences solving) maintenance.

Integration of the map in FBOX platform and integration of the database with third parties databases

Table 22: Next months tasks by partner

So far the main results achieved for the sustainability of the project are:

a) 3 out of 12 stakeholders are interested in integrating the database within their solutions. 7 out 12 stakeholders are still studying this possibility.

b) 9 out of 10 contacted communities are interested in exploring the possibility of building a community of communities. Most communities neither set goals for their community nor have a content plan. They also lack basic profiles for building and managing a community.

c) An accelerator accreditation system has been defined. d) OpenAxel winning startups have created 41 jobs, raised €2,235,000 and increased their valuation by 54%

after participating in the project. e) Partners have committed to continue support to the startups in the following months. This support has been

already specified: support to participate in events, support in international expansion of the companies, visibility and networking opportunities, warm introductions to investors and corporations, mentoring sessions or access to perks from technological providers.

f) A plan for the dissemination of the White Paper and project results has been defined and is being implemented.


N/A



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WP8. Communication Plan

WP Leader DIGITAL EUROPE Status ENDED

Task 8.1. Project Communication and Dissemination Plan ENDED

Work Performed

Whilst this task has already ended, based on the outcome of the first review meeting and in order to maximise the impact, a new dissemination plan was prepared, aligned with OpenAxel´s new strategy. The objective was to ensure the most efficient dissemination of the project messages, promote the second startup contest as broadly as possible, bring startups closer to industry, and focus more on opening the European accelerator scene to the larger European entrepreneurship ecosystem. A specific communication plan was also prepared in the last phase of the project to disseminate results, the lessons learned, and especially the White Paper (including the London event on 27 May 2016). A detailed Gantt-chart was created to clearly define each communication activity and when to execute them. All activities of each partner were planned in excel format (actions line-by-line) and reports were prepared to track the outcomes, reached audience etc. Main results obtained

Thanks to the new dissemination plan, the OPENAXEL community has largely expanded since the end of the first period of the project. The second startup contest received 1098 applicants which we consider as a key result and proof of the success of the synchronised communication actions undertaken by all consortium partners. We also focused to build our community and set up partnership 21 Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) were signed with key European players. These MOUs ensured a massive scale up of our communications impact. Consortium partners continued their communication and dissemination activities also in order to guarantee geo-coverage of the accelerator ecosystems at European level in the 2

nd period of the project as well. Project partners

from Eastern countries continued the good work to guarantee that accelerators and startups in their footprint are involved in the project. Proven this, the following chart shows the country breakdown of each session on the webpage in this period:



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 114 of 161

Figure 59: Country breakdown of sessions on OpenAxel portal

As can be seen in the chart above, dissemination and communication activities had a great impact not only in the Western-European countries, but also in Central, North and Eastern Europe (e.g. many visitors were from Hungary and Poland). Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

New objectives defined by the European Commission during the mid-term meeting required to update the Dissemination Plan in order to maximize the impact and to be able to reach the newly defined goals.

Task 8.2. Developing the communications material ENDED

Work Performed

Given the importance of social media, high quality communication materials were prepared, which multiplied the communication impact of the partnership. In addition to the communication materials prepared during the first period of the project, the consortium prepared several new charts, graphs (20+) and an infographic containing the main outcomes of the survey (White Paper). Concretely, for the 27.05 London event the partners prepared and produced printed versions of the White Paper and a booklet with the startups onepagers to give them visibility in front of the audience of corporations, investors and media.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 115 of 161

Figure 60: Communication materials developed Images and charts were prepared to be used by all consortia partners in the frame of their own individual project dissemination activities (e.g. in their social media sites, websites, etc.) and also by our partners where we signed MOUs. In addition, 2 specific videos were prepared in order to contribute to the efficient dissemination of the project itself and the achieved milestones and results. They were really helpful in showcasing the huge impact of OpenAxel.

- The first one aimed at introducing the main workshops, meetings, masterclasses where contest winners attended during Silicon Valley Bootcamp (09-19 February, 2016).

- The second one aimed to highlight the key moments of 4YFN event (22-25 February, 2016), where the 9 winners of 2

nd OpenAxel contest were able to present. It also served to create awareness around the project.

These videos have been uploaded to OpenAxel’s Youtube channel and can be reached under the following links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v1UIYesqRU (OpenAxel SV Bootcamp)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMO7gaowuuY (OpenAxel at 4YFN event) The above mentioned events and the related videos were also promoted through OpenAxel main portal, under the following subpages:


http://openaxel.com/openaxel-event-4yfn/ Main results obtained

The second contest had a major increase of applicants over the first contest which took place in the first part of the project. The OpenAxel community has increased significantly (for example in some countries OpenAxel has been considered as Top 5 startup contest in 2015). As the following charts show, from the new website development almost 20.000 pageviews were achieved by OpenAxel website. What is also really important is that two-thirds of them were new visitors, underpinning that OpenAxel community has significantly expanded, and numerous new stakeholders have been getting involved into the project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v1UIYesqRU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMO7gaowuuY


http://openaxel.com/openaxel-event-4yfn/



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Figure 61: Website statistics of OpenAxel portal for the period

The final closing event in London on 27 May 2016 had 300+ registrations. The aim of the conference was to introduce the results of the extensive research on the current status, trends, case studies, recommendations and lessons learned on corporate acceleration (White Paper) conducted earlier by OpenAxel. The event was celebrated in Wayra UK, and numerous corporations were present in it. Keynote speaker was Brent Hoberman, founder of LastMinute.com, and making a $1,1bn exit. In addition – among others – Ana Segurado (Telefonica Open Future), Junaid Bajwa (MSD), Alec Saunders (Microsoft Ventures), Nathalie Boulanger (Orange Start-up Ecosystem), Luuk Borg (EC) and Richard Poston (Telefonica S.A.) presented during the event. More information on this event can be found in Task 2.3. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

The impact of the second contest and the White Paper was much higher compared to first period of the project. Proven this, for the first contest we received 178 applications, while for the 2

nd contest we received almost 1,100.

With the help of our social media and online activities we mobilised the European entrepreneurial scene through the conference which took place in London on 27 May 2016 (see above for more details). Number of registerrations counted almost 400, with a final turn up rate of 70%.

Task 8. 3. Communication actions in general media ENDED

Work Performed

In order to disseminate the OpenAxel project, targeted promotional activities were executed in addition to numerous events during the course of the whole project. All of the specific communication actions are described in the related deliverable 8.2 called Communication Report. In the table below, the activities during this second period by one of the partners, DigitalEurope, are shown as an example (all partners developed similar activities): COMMUNICATION LEVEL

ACTIVITY DATE PLACE OF ACTIVITY

DESCRIPTION AUDIENCE REACHED

TYPE OF AUDIENCE

European level Article on OpenAxel in Digital Headlines newsletter

Sept 2015

N/A Digital Headlines reaches 1.500 people including main stakeholders of ICT industry

1,500 ICT entrepreneurs, managers



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COMMUNICATION LEVEL



TYPE OF AUDIENCE


Oct 2015

N/A Digital Headlines reaches 1.500 people including main stakeholders of ICT industry


European level Update of dedicated page on DIGITALEUROPE's website

Sept 2015

web Describe and promote the project on DIGITALEUROPE's website

10,000 ICT entrepreneurs, managers, EC decision makers

European level Posting OpenAxel video on DIGITALEUROPE's website

Sept 2015

web Posting OpenAxel video and tweeting about it


European level Distribution of OpenAxel brochure at events in Brussels

Sept/ Oct 2015

Brussels Throughout the duration of the project distribution of brochure at DIGITALEUROPE events


European level Twitter: DIGITALEUROPE will regularly tweet on OpenAxel

Sept/ Oct 2015

web Regular tweets to reinfoce the press release, other comm channels, share info on startup contest etc.


European level Facebook: promote OpenAxel on DIGITALEUROPE facebook page

Sept/ Oct 2015

web Regular updates and info on startup contest

- ICT entrepreneurs, managers, EC decision makers

European level Posting OpenAxel video on DIGITALEUROPE's webiste

Feb. / March 2016

web Posting OpenAxel video on DIGITALEUROPE's website

500 ICT entrepreneurs, managers, EC decision makers


March 2016

web Digital Headlines reaches 1.500 people including main stakeholders of ICT industry


European level Promotion of OpenAxel in Digital Bytes newsletter

March 2016

web Digital Bytes reaches all members of DIGITALEUROPE

100+ ICT entrepreneurs, managers

European level Promotion of OpenAxel in Digital Bytes newsletter

May 2016

web Digital Bytes reaches all members of DIGITALEUROPE

100+ ICT entrepreneurs, managers



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COMMUNICATION LEVEL



TYPE OF AUDIENCE

European level Promotion of OpenAxel through DIGITALEUROPE Twitter

May 2016

web Regular tweets to reinfoce the press release, share info on final event, etc.


European level Facebook: promote OpenAxel on DIGITALEUROPE facebook page

May 2016

web Sharing info primarily on the final even

- ICT entrepreneurs, managers, EC decision makers

Table 23: Communication activities implemented by DIGITALEUROPE throughout the 2nd period of the project

A high number of articles were released through online channels. 2nd contest of OpenAxel, Silicon Valley Immersion Bootcamp, final event and the White Paper were particularly promoted by OpenAxel comms team. This included own press materials and also articles published in different (online and printed) media (mostly based on OpenAxel comms material). For instance, the following ones included information regarding the above:

1. http://startupeuropeclub.eu/openaxel-announces-its-second-european-startup-contest/ 2. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/openaxel-launches-open-call-second-startup-contest-

accelerator?redirectFromSplash=true 3. http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorclawson/2016/05/30/mars-and-venus-improving-corporatestartup-

engagement-in-europe/#57447d70b68e 4. http://hipertextual.com/2016/05/aceleradoras-empresas 5. http://www.itproportal.com/2016/05/27/money-is-not-why-businesses-interact-with-start-ups/ 6. http://techcitynews.com/2016/05/27/startups-helps-corporates-new-markets/ 7. http://startups.co.uk/corporate-accelerators-step-needs-start-ups-report-claims/ 8. http://empleayemprende.com/estudio-europeo-sobre-empresas-y-emprendedores/ 9. https://robertoranz.com/2016/06/01/la-industria-4-0-y-el-desarrollo-del-talento-emprendedor/

In addition to the above mentioned communication activities, the central OpenAxel twitter site has been one of the most important channels to market. In order to reach out the most possible stakeholders, the most relevant and actual news, status and other information on OpenAxel were continuously tweeted and re-tweeted. During the second period of the project, three peak periods can be mentioned, when we significantly increased and reinforced our communication activities. The first one was to promote the 2

nd contest of OpenAxel in September/October 2015.

In order to generate hype around the OpenAxel event at 4YFN at Mobile World Congress 2016, Barcelona related to the contest, we increased our social media activities on it in February, 2016. Getting to the end of OpenAxel project, the final event in London at WayraUK on 27 May 2016 was promoted as well, during which our White Paper was also published. In our promotion strategy we always relied on consortia partners and on partners where we signed MoUs.

http://startupeuropeclub.eu/openaxel-announces-its-second-european-startup-contest/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/openaxel-launches-open-call-second-startup-contest-accelerator?redirectFromSplash=true

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/openaxel-launches-open-call-second-startup-contest-accelerator?redirectFromSplash=true



http://hipertextual.com/2016/05/aceleradoras-empresas

http://www.itproportal.com/2016/05/27/money-is-not-why-businesses-interact-with-start-ups/

http://techcitynews.com/2016/05/27/startups-helps-corporates-new-markets/

http://startups.co.uk/corporate-accelerators-step-needs-start-ups-report-claims/

http://empleayemprende.com/estudio-europeo-sobre-empresas-y-emprendedores/

https://robertoranz.com/2016/06/01/la-industria-4-0-y-el-desarrollo-del-talento-emprendedor/



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Figure 62: Promotion of OpenAxel’s 2nd contest through OpenAxel central Twitter site

Openaxel partners also put high emphasis on the promotion of the above mentioned events through other channels. Therefore, it was created a dedicated page on www.eventbrite.com website for both events, where stakeholders could easily get tickets for them. Moreover, for the final event, which took place in London, we created a specific subpage on www.f6s.com portal (home for founders and startup programmes globally with thousands of Startup organisations and startups). On top of this we reached an agreement with www.f6s.com to ensure promotion among their community of 24,000 stakeholders.

Figure 63: Event page for OpenAxel final event on f6s portal

http://www.eventbrite.com/

http://www.f6s.com/

http://www.f6s.com/



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Based on the information provided by all partners, IVSZ (with the support of DIGITALEUROPE) prepared the deliverable ‘Communication Report’ related to this WP, which contains, among others, descriptions of the following main events for the second period of the project, where OpenAxel was promoted in some form by partners.

PARTNER NAME OF THE EVENT DATE LOCATION

Aalto 10th Kazan Venture Fair 23-24.4.2015 Kazan, Russia

NFT Techventure Singapore 18-27.9.2015 Singapore, Singapore

Venture Capital IT 2014: 14o Congresso Internacional de Empreendedorismo e Capital de Risco

9-10.12.2014 Lisbon, Portugal

Open Innovation 2.0 Conference 07-09.06.2015 Espoo, Finland

pre-Slush event @ vertical & End game 10.11.2015 Espoo Finland

Slush startup conference 10-12.11.2015 Helsinki, Finland

Open Coffee Cyprus 11.06.2015 Nicosia, Cyprus

Digital Borgo Startup School 12-19.2.2015 Pescara, Italy

Accelerace Bitspiration Festival 22-23.06.2015 Warsaw, Poland

Tech Open Air 17-18.07.2015 Berlin, Germany

CPHFTW 29.10.2015 Copenhagen, Denmark

Web Summit 03-05.11.2015 Dublin, Ireland

ECFI 04-07.11.2015 Hamburg, Germany

Capital on stage 17.03.2016 Copenhagen, Denmark

Nordic Startup Conference 18.03.2016 Copenhagen, Denmark

DIGITALEUROPE eDigiRegion conference 19.05.2015 Budapest, Hungary

NTA Summit 2015 03-04.06.2015 Brussels, Belgium

Open Innovation 2.0 Conference 07-09.06.2015 Espoo, Finland

Unconvention 15-17.06.2015 Brussels, Belgium

Fostering SMEs’ growth through digital transformation

02.07.2015 Brussels, Belgium

European Youth Awards 10-12.09.2015 / 19-20.11.2015

Cluj Napoca, Romania / Graz, Austria

EPP European Democrat Students Roundtable - the importance of digital and entrepreneurial skills

21.09.2015 Brussels, Belgium

Podiumsdiskussionen MINT Botschafter - Konferenz

29.09.2015 Stuttgart, Germany

ITU Telecom World congress 2015 12-15.10.2015 Budapest, Hungary

ICT Day Lisbon 19-22.10.2015 Lisbon, Portugal

Transforming Europe towards the Digital Age Conference

14-15.12.2015 Luxemburg, Luxemburg

ECONET Fifth Central European Life Science Investment Conference

22-23.10.2015 Cracow, Poland



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 121 of 161

PARTNER NAME OF THE EVENT DATE LOCATION


FUNDINGBOX OpenReaktor#36 with Pirate Summit 21.06.2015 Warsaw, Poland

Bitspiration Festival 22-23.06.2015 Warsaw, Poland

OpenReaktor #37 #AdTech 23.09.2015 Warsaw, Poland

Wolves Summit 27-28.10.2015 Warsaw, Poland

D-RAFT Corporate Demo Day 30.10.2015 Warsaw, Poland

3rd EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON THE FUTURE INTERNET

4-7.11.2015 Hamburg, Germany

CIONET. Innovation- what we can learn from startups?

14.04.2016 Warsaw, Poland

InfoShare 18-20.05.2016 Gdansk, Poland

IVSZ IVSZ’s General Assembly 20.05.2015 Budapest, Hungary

IVSZ startup conference – Budapest 10.06.2015 Budapest, Hungary

MENTA conference 17.09.2015 Kecskemét, Hungary

IVSZ VIK conference 05.05.2016 Budapest, Hungary

SMART 23.05.2016 Budapest, Hungary

eDigiRegion conference 19.05.2015 Budapest, Hungary


Wayra Accelerator Assembly 02.07.2015 London, UK

South Summit 07-09.10.2015 Madrid, Spain

Startup Olé 09-11.09.2015 Salamanca, Spain

Slush 11-12.11.2015 Helsinki, Finland

ThisWayUp 16.06.2015 Barcelona, Spain

Digital Jobs Fair 20.11.2015 Madrid, Spain

Rise of Corporate Acceleration 27.10.2015 London, UK

Acceleration industry in Europe: key insights from corporates and startups

27.05.2016 London, UK

Wayra DemoDays 2015-2016 UK, Germany, Spain

Unbound 30.11.2015 London, UK

4YFN 2016 22.02.2016 Barcelona, Spain

Opinno Innovators under 35 France 15.04.2015 Paris, France

Innovators under 35 Poland 23.06.2015 Warsaw, Poland

Innovators Summit Europe 20.10.2015 Brussels, Belgium

Innovators under 35 Spain 03.12.2015 Madrid, Spain

Innovators under 35 Belgium 25.05.2016 Brussels, Belgium

Innovators under 35 France 13.04.2016 Paris, France

Innovators under 35 Spain 8-10-06.2016 Madrid, Spain

Table 24: OpenAxel second period promotion events

Thanks to the renewed and updated portal, project stakeholders could easily register and a broad and active community emerged. Openaxel partners communication activities led to a significantnumber of registrations on the portal, including accelerators, incubators, mentors, investors, startups, etc.



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To meet the communication plan’s objectives, all partners published press releases (on their own website, sent it to media contacts etc.). In addition, Openaxel was published for instance on www.ec.europe.eu, www.startupeuropehub.eu and EBN (European business network) portals in addition to the partner’s websites. Main results obtained

Number of communication events organised during the project: 35+ (25)

Number of registered accelerators in the portal up to now: 135+

Number of registered investors in the portal up to now: 70+

Number of registered entrepreneurs in the portal up to now: 6600+ Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

N/A

Task 8.4. Coordinate the project communication actions addressed to stakeholders ENDED

Work Performed

In order to increase the outreach of the project and to reach main target groups (startups, accelerators, corporates and other relevant stakeholders) in the most efficient way, OpenAxel was continuously looking for cooperation opportunities with third parties, other projects of the European Commission, local initiatives and hubs etc. Whilst in the first period of the project these cooperation cases were not formalised, during the second period, Openaxel changed its strategy regarding the cooperation with third parties and decided to formalise the agreements. A MoU was designed specifying the cooperation cases with each partner initiative. The document, signed by the representatives of both parties detailed the terms of the cooperation, the specific areas of cooperation and associated actions. Such areas included:

Both parties agreed to give support and develop common communication activities;

Both parties agreed to disseminate key messages and the other initiative among each other’s network;

Both parties agreed to take active part in the other parties´ activities and events.

http://www.ec.europe.eu/

http://www.startupeuropehub.eu/



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Figure 64: Example MoU signed with startups.be

The following cooperation agreements were signed:

1. MoU with Watify Partner name: DIGITALEUROPE Location, venue: online / at events / personal meetings Date: from September 2015 Scope of Alliance:

a) Both parties agreed to give support and develop common communication activities; b) Both parties agreed to disseminate key messages and the other initiative among each other’s network; c) Both parties agreed to take active part in the other parties´ activities and events.

Detailed description: MoU signed with the leaders of the Watify (an initiative by EC to foster digital entrepreneurship) project in order give support to each other and develop communication activities to enhance impact and the outreach of each other’s initiatives. Therefore, Watify started to promote OpenAxel through its main communication channels (e.g. through social media, different events) and vice versa. This means that both parties started to regularly tweet and retweet relevant messages and information about the other party’s initiative, using the appropriate hashtags as well in their communications (as examples, see figure 1 and 2 below).



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 124 of 161

Figure 65: OpenAxel promotion on Watify twitter

Both parties took active part in the other party’s activities and events, when it was possible and where it made sense. On top of the aforementioned activities, for instance, OpenAxel was promoted and introduced at different events organised by National Trade Associations (NTAs). During these events, serial entrepreneurs explained how they had overcome their doubts while starting or digitizing their own business, which issue could easily be linked with OpenAxel’s goals.

2. MoU with Startups.be Partner name: DIGITALEUROPE Location, venue: online / at events / personal meetings Date: from July 2015 Scope of Alliance:


3. MoU with ACE

Partner name: DIGITALEUROPE Location, venue: online / at events / personal meetings Date: from September 2015 Scope of Alliance:


4. MoU with Startup Sesame

Partner name: DIGITALEUROPE Location, venue: online / at events / personal meetings Date: from April 2016 Scope of Alliance:

a) Both parties agreed to give support and develop common communication activities; b) Both parties agreed to disseminate key messages and the other initiative among each other’s network; c) Both parties agreed to take active part in the other parties´ activities and events. d) Both parties agreed to display the other on their website as partner e) OpenAxel undertook to promote Startup Sesame’s contest among the participants of the 2

nd contest (1100+

startups)



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 125 of 161

f) Startup Sesame undertook to promote OpenAxel white book and its lessons learned on European Accelerator market; and will promote OpenAxel’s accelerator map

These are only some examples of the agreements achieved by one of the partners. The following table shows the full list of signed MoUs, including the scope of each alliance:

PROJECT CONTACTED MAIN COOPERATION ACTIONS AGREED

Accelerator Assembly Celebration of Accelerator Assembly at Wayra UK

Engagement to OpenAxel of accelerators part of the Assembly

Presence of OpenAxel in all AA events

Dissemination of OpenAxel contest between AA member´s portfolio

Publication of OpenAxel presentation at AA website

FI-C3 Dissemination of OpenAxel second Contest between all FI-C3 applicants

The 39 FI-C3 winners to automatically apply to OpenAxel contest

ODINE Opportunity to directly apply to OpenAxel second contest with ODINE´s form (nº still to be determined)

Mashauri Publication of OpenAxel Second call in Mashauri platform

CEO-CF CEO-CF will offer direct coaching services to the nº1 startup of the Second OpenAxel Contest

CEO-CF will offer free tickets to OpenAxel 9 winners to the next ThisWay Up Event (5400€)

CEO-CF will provide OpenAxel with mentors for the batch of winners of the Second OpenAxel Contest

Online visibility and dissemination of contest

CEO-CF will support and provide speakers to the OpenAxel Final Event.

FACE Presence of OpenAxel in FACE events

Dissemination of OpenAxel contest and OpenAxel winners success stories through Secuoya channels

FACE will support and provide speakers to the OpenAxel Final Event.

Organization of FACE events at Wayra UK and Wayra Germany

ICT2B ICT2B gives OpenAxel online visibility

Dissemination of OpenAxel contest between ICT2B network

D-RAFT Support in common communication activities

Involvement in organizing SV trip

Presence of OpenAxel in D-RAFT events

Assuring OpenAxel online visibility by placing OA logo and redirection on D-RAFT www landing page

Offer additional prizes in OA 2nd call

OpenAxel news site is fed with the news from D-RAFT blog on corporate-startup partnerships

SEP Dissemination of OpenAxel contest between SEP network

Support in common communication activities

Presence of OpenAxel in SEP events

Assuring OpenAxel online visibility by placing OA logo and redirection on SEP www landing page

Offer additional prizes in OA 2nd call

SEP will support and propose speakers to the OpenAxel Final Event

IMPACT Support in common communication activities

Dissemination of OpenAxel contest between IMPACT network



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Presence of OpenAxel in IMPACT events

Agreement with IMPACT enabled IMPACT applicants to apply with the same application in the 2nd OpenAxel contest

IMPACT will support and propose speakers to the OpenAxel Final Event

INCENSE Dissemination of OpenAxel contest between INCENSE network

Support in common communication activities

Presence of OpenAxel in INCENSE events

Agreement with INCENSE enabled INCENSE applicants to apply with the same application in the 2nd OpenAxel contest

INCENSE will support and propose speakers to the OpenAxel Final Event

Startups.be Common communication activities

Mutual dissemination of each other’s activities ad messages

Participation in each other’s events

Watify Common communication activities



Open Coffee Club Common communication activities

Mutual dissemination of each other’s activities and messages

Cooperation in connection with the 2nd contest


The Connect East Incubator Active participation in each other’s events

Contribution to each other’s communication activities

Mutual online visibility

Mutual introduction in their networks

Startup Sesame Common communication activities


Both parties display the other on their website as a partner

NESTA Organisation of joint events

Cooperation in research activities and policy recommendations

Cooperation in the elaboration of relevant reports and documents


Orange Lab Common communication activities



Orange Labs will link the map of OpenAxel and OpenAxel will provide a link to OL’s website

Dissemination of OpenAxel’s White Paper

OpenAxel will provide candidates to Orange Lab

Vertical Common communication activities



Vertical will organise a Pre-Slush event and provide mentors to select



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OpenAxel teams Orange Labs will link the map of OpenAxel and

OpenAxel will provide a link to OL’s website

OpenAxel will provide candidates to Vertical’s call

Vertical will provide mentors in connection with the 2nd contest

ACE Common communication activities



Table 25: MoUs reached and scope All consortia partners who signed MoUs about the startup contest, the Barcelona event and also the final event in London that took place on 27 May 2016. Consortia partners sent out targeted emails with templates, images, predefined communication materials, primarily in order to enable the above mentioned third parties (with whom it signed MoUs) to easily customise and distribute OpenAxel messages in their communities. All partners were asked to promote OpenAxel project during the whole duration of the project in all the countries where partners have presence. As an example, DIGITALEUROPE contacted the following accelerators (all other consortia partners contacted accelerators in their network all around Europe – here we use the indicative list below to give some examples):

NAME OF THE ACCELERATOR

LOCATION CONTACT NAME ROLE / POSITION EMAIL PHONE NUMBER

Agentschap Ondernemen

Brussels Bernard De Potter Administrateur-generaal,

[email protected]

+32 2 553 37 00

Westartup Etterbreek Leo Exter Founder and Chief indoctrination officer

[email protected]

Idealabs Antwerp N/A N/A [email protected]

Huawei Brussels Tony Graziano Vice-President of Huawei’s EU Public Affairs Office

[email protected]

Innoviris Brussels Katrien Mondt General Director [email protected] +32 2 600 50 36

Samsung Belgium Wouter van Tol Director of Sustainability and Citizenship

[email protected]

Agence de Stimulation Economique

Liège Vincent Bovy General Director [email protected] +32 4 220 51 13

Impulse Brussels Bruno Wattenbergh

Directeur Opérationnel

[email protected] +32 2 422 00 27










FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 128 of 161

NAME OF THE ACCELERATOR

LOCATION CONTACT NAME ROLE / POSITION EMAIL PHONE NUMBER

iMinds Ghent Wim De Waele CEO [email protected]

STOIO Ghent Sophie Manigart [email protected]

Nest'up by Creative Wallonia

Mont-Saint-Guibert

Damien Van Achter

Head [email protected] +32 495 79 47 97,

FREE Bouge Baudouin Dubuisson

President [email protected]

Betagroup Brussels Julie Foulon Managing Director

[email protected]

Startups.be http://www.startup

s.be/

Ghent Karen Boers Managing Director

[email protected] +32 473 76 42 49

VLAJO Heverlee Peter Coenen Directeur [email protected] +32 16 29 84 01

JUMP Brussels Isabella Lenarduzzi Director [email protected]

UCL R&D Louvain-la-Neuve

Anne Bovy Directeur [email protected] +32 10 47 38 73

ULB TTO Brussels Isabelle Lefebvre Managing Director

[email protected] +32 2 650 2401

Ulg Interface Liège Michel Morant Managing Director

[email protected] +3243498510

Unamur R&D Namur Nicole MOGUILEVSKY

Director [email protected]

+32 81 72 50 47

VUB TTO Brussels Sonja Haesen Director [email protected]

Ugent TTO Ghent Ignace Lemahieu Head of Department

[email protected]

UAntwerp TTO Antwerp Christian Daman Head of Department

[email protected]

+32 3 265 30 25

Table 26: Accelerators contacted by DigitalEurope







http://www.startups.be/

http://www.startups.be/


















FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 129 of 161

Following initial email contacts with the above mentioned accelerators, project updates and news were provided on a regular basis over the phone, by email, meetings and workshops. For example, the email was sent out to the above mentioned actors, in order to promote the 2nd contest of OpenAxel:

EUROPEAN STARTUPS APPLY NOW!

OPENAXEL LAUNCHES AN OPEN CALL FOR THEIR SECOND STARTUP CONTEST

After the success of the first contest, OPENAXEL launches its second call to detect the best European entrepreneurial talent and offers a high potential boot camp in Silicon Valley.If you believe you are

someone in the tech scene and can be eligible as one of the TOP30 European start-ups be sure to apply.

The 30 selected startups will be provided with equity-free support packages to boost the status of their businesses. From these 30, the 9 winners will gain additional concrete advantages, including:

Exclusive Immersion Week in Silicon Valley visiting the leading technological companies, the

biggest investment funds, mentors and specialized innovation organisms

Connections with industry leaders in Europe

Visibility in the main European events (Slush, South Summit, Mobile World Congress)

Access to the biggest partner´s network in Europe, offering perks that add up to more than €100k

Face-to-face meetings with investors

Personalized coaching by top level entrepreneurs and executives

Special additional support packages to speed-up growth

The OpenAxel Team!

Apply now!

http://openaxel.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=86ab7244b3537a19487893dbe&id=afff0a4947&e=52ea81c66b

http://openaxel.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=86ab7244b3537a19487893dbe&id=32aac758b6&e=52ea81c66b



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 130 of 161

Copyright © *2014* *OpenAxel*, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is:

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Figure 66: Second contest accelerators dissemination e-mail

Following the mid-term review meeting, the consortium partners agreed to focus all communications efforts on the following:

Maximizing the added value provided to OpenAxel’s best performing startups by continuously supporting them with cross-border services. These startups were: UNIWIse, MyTwinPlace, Inovar, Nnergix, Momit Viomedo and RemoteEye.

Communicate the success of these startups to increase even more their visibility

In order the meet these requirements, the following channels were used to disseminate these successes:

The partners’s networks via their respective communications channels (websites, mass emails, newsletters….)

The project’s website

Partner projects and networks In order to get significantly more applications in the 2

nd contest, the contest was disseminated through the following

main channels:

Online newsletters to our stakeholders (‘Digital Bytes’);

Website (through a subpage dedicated to OpenAxel);

Newsletters of all partners (including DIGITALEUROPE’s National trade associations);

Emails (to the most relevant corporate members who are interested in startups);

Twitter (regular tweets and retweets using @openaxel);

Direct mails to startups;

Online media;

Presentations at events. Additionally, a specific subpage (http://openaxel.com/winners/) under OpenAxel portal was established for winners in order to gain visibility to them as success stories. Winners of the 2

nd contest were able to present their companies and make pitches during the 4YFN: Mobile World

Congress in Barcelona, 2016. They were showcased in front of numerous investors and corporations, and startups from previous years were also involved in order to share their experiences and provide advice to the new winners. Main results obtained

The following results were obtained (target numbers defined for the 2

nd period are in brackets):

Number of Accelerators in the platform: 137 (72)

Number of Startups participated in the 2nd

contest: 1098 (300)

Number of corporations with open innovation initiatives in the repository: 26 (15)

Number of National Trade Associations (NTAs) linked in the repository: 35 (35)

Number of registered users on OpenAxel platform: 6600+ (4000)


http://openaxel.us8.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=86ab7244b3537a19487893dbe&id=1c6415b06e&e=52ea81c66b&c=52ebbc32d8

http://openaxel.us8.list-manage1.com/profile?u=86ab7244b3537a19487893dbe&id=1c6415b06e&e=52ea81c66b

http://openaxel.com/winners/



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 131 of 161

Number of initiatives and similar projects contacted in order to identify synergies and contribute to each other’s dissemination and promotional activities: 30+ (30)

Number of agreements (MoUs) achieved: 20+ (15)

Estimated impact of direct communication activities: 500k As it can be seen above, all of the goals defined for the 2

nd period have been fully accomplished; moreover, regarding

most of them OpenAxel outperformed the originally defined indicators. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

N/A

Task 8.5. Project results dissemination ENDED

Work Performed

In line with its mission of bringing startups closer to ICT corporations, the consortium conducted research at European level on current status, trends, case studies, recommendations and lessons learned on corporate acceleration (The White Paper). FundingBox was responsible for the preparation of the White Paper and all consortium partners contributed to it. The results of this work were presented at an event at Wayra UK in London on May 27

th 2016, to entrepreneurs,

corporations, accelerators, public bodies and the media. More information on this event can be found in Task 2.3. This event was promoted in the following ways:

- Under OpenAxel main website, a specific subpage for events was created, where the above mentioned event (Acceleration industry in Europe: key insights from corporates and startups) was promoted, including its main objectives and speakers.

- In order to ease the registration process, both on f6s (https://www.f6s.com/openaxelcorporatestartupengagement/about) and Eventbride portal (https://www.eventbrite.es/e/acceleration-industry-in-europe-key-insights-from-corporates-and-startups-tickets-24812162847, people could easily get tickets for it, which was fully free of charge.

- A planning promotion schedule was prepared including suggested social media (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) posts.

Figure 67: Suggested Tweets to promote the final event and the White Paper of OpenAxel

https://www.f6s.com/openaxelcorporatestartupengagement/about

https://www.eventbrite.es/e/acceleration-industry-in-europe-key-insights-from-corporates-and-startups-tickets-24812162847

https://www.eventbrite.es/e/acceleration-industry-in-europe-key-insights-from-corporates-and-startups-tickets-24812162847



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 132 of 161

As posts on Twitter with images get significantly more impressions, so several were prepared, in order to increase the reach of potential event participants.

Figure 68: Suggested attachment for Twitter posts (example)

All relevant posts on the event were tweeted and re-tweeted on a daily basis during the month of May, 2016 through OpenAxel central Twitter site.

Figure 69: Tweet on OpenAxel’s central account

The following figures show top tweets, mentions and followers with the highest impact in May, 2016.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 133 of 161

Figure 70: Highlights of OpenAxel Tweets with the highest impact

Moreover, numerous Tweets were posted on the partner’s Twitter accounts as well and we also included the information on the event regularly in their newsletters (e.g. Digital Bytes and Digital Headlines).



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 134 of 161

Figure 71: Promotion of OpenAxel in Digital Bytes

A shorter version of the White Paper and an infographic were also prepared by the consortium in order to ensure the quick intelligibility, transparency and accessibility of the key findings of the survey, which was described in the White Paper in detail.



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 135 of 161


Regarding the dissemination of the project results and the White Paper, the following main results were obtained:

Information regarding the final event and the White Paper reached out approximately 54,000 people just through Twitter.

Final event at Wayra UK in London on 27th

May 2016 took place successfully, with a number of around 200 participants.

Number of followers on OpenAxel’s main Twitter site increased to more than 500.

Just in May, OpenAxel had 59 new followers and almost 3,000 profile visits on Twitter. Compared to the previous month, total impressions, profile visits and mentions reached approximately a 460%, 940% and 3800% growth respectively on OpenAxel’s main Twitter site. Deviations and its impact (if applicable)

N/A



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 143 of 161

2. Deliverables and milestones tables

6 PU = Public

PP = Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services). RE = Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services).

CO = Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services).

Make sure that you are using the correct following label when your project has classified deliverables. EU restricted = Classified with the mention of the classification level restricted "EU Restricted"

EU confidential = Classified with the mention of the classification level confidential " EU Confidential "

EU secret = Classified with the mention of the classification level secret "EU Secret "

7 In this table are summarized all the deliverables planned for year one (M1 – M12) and their Status at the moment of the submitting this Report.

TABLE 4.1. DELIVERABLES

Del. no.

Deliverable name Versi

on WP no.

Lead beneficiary

Nature

Dissemination level

6

Delivery date from Annex I (proj month)

Actual / Forecast

delivery date

Status No submitted/ Submitted

7

Contractual

Yes/No Comments

D1.1 Project Management Plan and Quality Plan

1 1 Econet R CO 3 17/01/2014 S NO

D1.3 OPENAXEL Intranet 1 1 Econet O PU 3 20/01/2014 S NO

D2.1 OPENAXEL Portal 1 2 Wayra O RE 28 17/03/2016 S NO

D2.2 Cross Border Communities report 1 2 Appcampus R RE 5 03/03/2014 S NO

D3.1 Cross Border Facilities and Services Report 1 3 Accelerace R PU 4 03/03/2014 S NO

D3.2 Implementation Plan for Cross Border Services 1 3 Accelerace R RE 32 09/06/2016 S NO

D4.1 OPENAXEL contest methodology report 1 4 Econet R PU 5 29/04/2014 S NO

D4.2 CET platform 1 4 Econet O RE 5 14/05/2014 S NO

D4.3 Evaluation Committee composition 1 4 Wayra R PU 9 29/08/2014 S NO



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 144 of 161

Table 29: Deliverables

8 PU = Public

PP = Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services).

RE = Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services). CO = Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services).

Make sure that you are using the correct following label when your project has classified deliverables. EU restricted = Classified with the mention of the classification level restricted "EU Restricted" EU confidential = Classified with the mention of the classification level confidential " EU Confidential "

EU secret = Classified with the mention of the classification level secret "EU Secret " 9 In this table are summarized all the deliverables planned for year one (M1 – M12) and their Status at the moment of the submitting this Report.

TABLE 4.1. DELIVERABLES

Del. no. Deliverable name Versi

on WP no.

Lead beneficiary

Nat-ure

Dissemination level

8

Delivery date from Annex I (proj month)

Actual / Forecast

delivery date

Status No submitted/ Submitted

9

Contractual Yes/No

Comments

D5.1 Contest participant ranking List (1st. round) 1 5 Wayra R PU 13 25/11/2014 S NO

D5.2 Contest participant ranking List (2nd. round)

1 5 Wayra R PU 27 27/01/2016 S NO

D6.1 Personalized Coaching Plan for the winners (#1) 1 6 Opinno R RE 20 16/07/2015 S NO

D6.2 Personalized Coaching Plan for the winners (#2) 1 6 Opinno R RE 29 14/04/2016 S NO

D7.1 Repository and Map of accelerators 1 7 Wayra R PU 32 09/06/2016 S NO

D7.2 The White Paper of connection of Startups to industry 1 7 Fbox R PU 32 09/06/2016 S NO

D7.3 Business Plan 1 7 Fbox R RE 32 09/06/2016 S NO

D8.1 Project Dissemination Plan 1 8 Digital Europe R RE 7 29/04/2014 S NO

D8.2 Communication report 1 8 IVSZ R RE 32 09/06/2016 S NO



FP7 GA n° 611715 Page 145 of 161

TABLE 4.2. MILESTONES

Milestone no.

Milestone name Work

package no

Lead

beneficiary

Delivery date from Annex I

Achieved Yes/No

Actual / Forecast achievement date

Comments

MS1 OPENAXEL Community

WP2 2 8 YES 8 -Engagement With accelerators -Engagement with World Class coaches and investors

MS2 Cross border service WP3 3 10 YES 10 -Cross Border Facilities and Services are defined and classified (D3.1)

MS3 Competition #1 WP4 & 5 5 13 YES 13 -Launch of call for applications -Individual Evaluation Reports for the first contest are finished. -Startup ranking List is published (D5.1)

MS4 Competition #2 WP4 & 5 5 27 YES 27

-Launch of call for applications –Individual Evaluation Reports for the second contest are finished. –Startup ranking List is updated (D5.2)

MS5 Services provision

#1 WP6 6 20 YES 20

-Personalized Coaching Plan for the winners of the first contest is released (D6.1). -Meetings with coaches and investors are scheduled and realised.

MS6 Services provision

#2 WP6 6 29 YES 29

-Personalized Coaching Plan for the winners of the second contest is released (D6.2). -Meetings with coaches and investors are scheduled and realised.

MS7 Accelerators & Startups European Repository

WP7 1 32 YES 32 -The White Paper of connection of startups to industry is finished (D7.2). -The report with the initial Business Plan (D7.3) is finished.

MS8 End of Project WP1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8

1 32 YES 32 Successful and timely completion of project within the planned budget constraints. All deliverables are submitted.

Table 30: Milestones

1.1. create a systematic, systemic & smart (s3) co ......d1.2.2 – final periodic report...

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