Final Publishable Summary Report FI-C3-040-V1.0

© FI-C3 consortium 2016 Page 1 of 13

PROJECT FINAL REPORT

FINAL PUBLISHABLE SUMMARY REPORT

Grant Agreement number: 632738

Project acronym: FI-C3

Project title: Future Internet Connected Content inCubator

Funding Scheme: CP-CSA

Date of latest version of Annex I against which the assessment will be made: 4 Feb 2016

Period covered: from 1st Sept 2014 to 31 Aug 2016

Name, title and organisation of the scientific representative of the project's coordinator:

Gaël MAUGIS

Images & Réseaux

Tel: +33 2 57 19 94 41

E-mail: gmaugis@images-et-reseaux.com

Project website address: http://www.fic3.eu/

Doc number : FI-C3-040-V1.0

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FINAL PUBLISHABLE SUMMARY REPORT

1 General overview of the project

FI-C3 is an accelerator of the FI-PPP Programme-phase 3 (http://www.fi-ware.org/fiware-accelerator-

programme/). The FI-PPP programme follows an industry-driven, holistic approach encompassing R&D on

network and communication infrastructures, devices, software, service and media technologies. In parallel, it

promotes their experimentation and validation in real application contexts, bringing together demand and

supply and involving users early in the research lifecycle. The FI-PPP phase 3 accelerators aim to promote

the creation of innovative products and services making use of the technology developed within phases 1 and

2 of the programme and known as the FIWARE technology.

Within FI-PPP phase 3, the goal of FI-C3 was to implement an incubator for innovative products/services

proposed by SMEs or individual entrepreneurs in the domains of Smart Territories, Media & Contents

and Care & Well-being. Each project selected received a sub-grant from FI-C3 and was offered

personalised assistance in the initial phase of bringing their technology to the market through business

modelling and customer development workshops, one-on-one business coaching, high-level advice from

potential stakeholders and Living Lab support.

The overall FI-C3 budget was 5.7 M€ out of which 4.56 M€ have been spent on sub-grantees.

40 projects have been selected through 2 open-calls (respective deadlines for proposals were: 30 Nov 2014

and 30 June 2015).

In the first call 228 proposals were submitted from 23 European countries (refer to Figure 1), among which

12 have been selected.

Figure 1 - Geographical distribution of submitted proposals in Call 1

In the second call, among the 352 submitted proposals, 30 European countries were represented (refer to

Figure 2).

Figure 2 - Geographical distribution of submitted proposals in Call 2

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The distribution of the submitted proposals regarding the addressed domain is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 – Distribution of proposals per addressed domain(s)

The average budget of selected projects was 114 k€ (refer to Figure 4).

Budget

granted

Number

of

projects

Average amount

/sub-grantee

Average

duration

(months)

Call 1 1 594 203 € 12 132 850 € 11,75

Call 2 2 965 797 € 28 105 921 € 9

Call 1+ Call 2 4 560 000 € 40 114 000 € 9,8

Figure 4 – Average budget and duration per project

The SMEs running those projects were from 14 countries (see Figure 4).

Call 1 Call 2

Austria 1 1 3%

Belgium 5 2 7 18%

Denmark 1 1 3%

Estonia 1 1 3%

France 1 2 3 8%

Germany 1 1 3%

Greece 1 1 3%

Hungary 1 1 3%

Italy 1 1 2 5%

Ireland 2 2 5%

Israel 2 2 5%

Netherlands 1 1 3%

Spain 4 10 14 35%

United Kingdom 1 2 3 8%

Total 12 28 40 100%

Total

Figure 5 – Geographical distribution of selected projects

Out of the 40 projects selected in the accelerator, ca 36 have already reached a status where their

product/service is available in commercial conditions or for experimentation to customers. 4 FI-C3 projects

have been promoted into the FIWARE success story portfolio. 3 projects have also been selected to be

part of the VIP programme (out of 15 in total).

YMLP

CONSEIL

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2 Major achievements by the subgrantees

Technology

All projects have integrated the FIWARE technology. The list of used FIWARE generic enablers is given

below. Unsurprisingly, the ORION Context broker, being at the heart of the FIWARE architecture has been

the mostly used one, followed by enablers from the security chapter.

IDM-KeyRock

PEP Proxy-Wilma

AuthZ-AuthPDP

Object Storage

Kurento

2D-UI

MIWI-AR

POI data provider

GIS data provider

Mashup-Wirecloud

Wstore

CEPHEUS

IDAS

Orion Pub Sub

Proton CEP

COSMOS

PERSEO CEP

SpagoBi

In addition to these Generic enablers, specific enablers from FI-Content and FI-Star have been used, in-line

with the thematic positioning of FI-C3:

FI-Content: FI-Star:

OpenCity Database,

Social network enabler,

Text2speech,

Gamification,

Context Aware Recommender

Health questionnaire,

EHR-EN,

Privacy SE

Startup creation

One third of the 40 SMEs supported by FI-C3, (7 in Call 1, 6 in Call 2), were newly created startups

(less than one year) or were created specifically to take part to the accelerator .

Official recognitions

AlzhUp: http://www.alzhup.com/Reta/en/ , Zebra-Academy: http://www.zebra-telemedicine.com/,

EverImpact: http://www.everimpact.org/news/, have been selected in the VIP Programme.,

Market readiness

Out of the 40 projects that were selected to take part in FI-C3:

18 have a product or service now on the market at commercial conditions (although this does not

mean they make money at this stage). In most of the cases those products or services are available

for the general public,

16 are performing beta tests or experiments with customers: in several cases this is due to the

nature of the service (for instance a medical device still under test within hospital).

Downloadable products

Examples of products can be found hereafter :

Videona : the Video Editor is already available for downloading :

http://corporate.videona.com/ (both from AppStore and from Googleplay :

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.videonasocialmedia.videona&referrer=ut

m_source%3DWeb_Eng%26utm_medium%3DLink_Directo%26utm_campaign%3DVideon

a

NEVEO has 2 commercial products to keep social/family link with elder peoples

http://www.myneveo.com/

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AlzhUp : the Beta version is available. The service will be opened to public in Jan 2017 :

http://www.alzhup.com/Reta/en/

In July 2016 CartSkill launched an online fashion store in Facebook Messenger

for Monton, an apparel brand with close to 100 stores across several countries. The launch

of the Messenger store received coverage in AdExchanger, a premier US advertising and

marketing news portal http://adexchanger.com/social-media/apparel-brand-monton-taps-

chatbot-facebook-messenger/ and ArcticStartup, the leading startup news site in the

Nordics http://arcticstartup.com/article/cartskill-messenger-shop/

The Sofasession webportal http://www.sofasession.com/ is online since the

beginning of FI-C3 project and has by the end of the project more than 6000 active

musicians are users of jam sessions. They have commercial partnerships with 2 music

schools and they do continuous marketing. Field test has been done with the new live jam

features.

Presently Kissmyshoe https://kissmyshoe.com/ works with more than 35

independent stores. Since January 2016, 2500 downloads of the App enabled Kissmyshoe

to propose a new App version every two weeks (the social network Facebook is one used).

Since the beginning of the FI-C3 project VeloCarrier

http://www.velocarrier.de/ has been a successful running commercial service

starting their business in the German town Tübingen. During the project they have

expanded to Giessen, Esslingen, Würzburg, Stuttgart, Ulm and Neu-Ulm und

Bochum.

The Oblumi tapp http://www.oblumi.com/fr/#top can be bought by e-commerce

from several European ountries (price 49.90 €, the app is free).

FI-C3 facilitated the Fuseami company https://fuseami.com/ to spin out from the

research institution TSSG with 3 employees. It supported the company to continue the

development of its smarter networking and conference app and allowed the company to run

an extensive period of live trials, supporting major international conferences. The fuseami

app has been adopted by such prestigious organisations as: IEEE, PMI, Enterprise Ireland,

Dublin Chamber of Commerce, European Patent Office and the European Commission.

The app has been the official app at such conferences as: IEEE GLOBECOM2015 in San Diego, ICT2015

Conference in Lisbon, PMI Annual Conference in Israel, the Innovation Showcase in December 2015 in the

Dublin convention centre and the Patent Information Conference by the European Patent Office in Madrid

November 2016. The company commenced charging in July 2016 and is now focused on growing sales and

scaling.

Digital Driving pass, the solution of MotoSmarty,

is now used by the mobile operator Mobile Vikings in

Belgium as the “Road Vikings” app, helping young drivers

to stay safe by promoting safe driving in a rewarding and

engaging way. Details of the deal are confidential. The app

is available here: http://www.roadvikings.eu/

Access to fund raising

Most of the startups supported by FI-C3 are looking for funding after the completion of their project within

the accelerator. This can take several forms: partnership, fund raising, research contract, or even acquisition

by another company. For confidentiality reasons it is not possible to report here all the operations that

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are currently in progress and known by FI-C3 but only a couple of them that have, at this stage, been made

public.

Fuseami has received recognition from the following start-up competitions:

Intertrade Ireland - Seed Corn Investor Readiness Competition 2016. Got through as a regional finalist to

Intertrade Ireland’s Seed Corn competition as an early stage company. This competition is ongoing. This is a

major investor readiness competition with significant cash prizes.

http://www.intertradeireland.com/seedcorn/Regional_Finals/

Bank of Ireland Start-Up Awards 2016 : got through as a regional finalist and a nationalist finalist to the

Bank of Ireland Start Up competition under Digital / Online Start Ups. : http://startupawards.ie/regional-

shortlist/

AIB Start UP Academy : got through to the last 23 in the AIB Startup academy competition

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/aib-start-up-academy/the-shortlist-aib-startup-academy-reveals-shortlist-

1.2514239

The company is being supported by Enterprise Ireland through the HPSU Start program and it has recently

pitched to the Angel (HBAN) network seeking to raise seed funding. This fund raising is ongoing.

After a 4 week field test Eskesso is now cooperating with a mayor Estonian

online women shopping portal. They have participated in Europe wide fairs and

workshops and offering now the integration of their recommendation technology solution

into existing ecommerce online channels. The last step is a crowdfunding

campaign https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eskesso/eskesso-smart-sous-vide-cooking-

machine.

Making Mind Matter : http://www.cortechs.ie/ gained a research contract for

over 2 millions. They offer next to their B to C Sales model also now B to B sales model.

They are since spring 2016 on investor roadshow.

Hostabee won a competition in Israel and will go to CES Las Vegas

https://twitter.com/BeMyAppIsrael/status/781148099771260928

Voiceitt is one of the 18 companies that made it into the Startup NY programme

in the US: https://startup.ny.gov/companies; http://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-

cuomo-announces-18-additional-companies-join-start-ny Voiceitt has been recognized by

established, strategic corporations for their contribution to medical technology. A long list

of accolades and prestigious awards include the 43North Buffalo business idea

competition, Medica 2015, Verizon Powerful Answers Competition (9 companies were

selected out of over 2,000 worldwide applicants), Philips Innovation Fellows Competition (winning the

grand prize out of hundreds of companies worldwide), Deutsche Telekom Innovation Award, Orange 4G

Innovation Lab (the grand prize out of 110 national companies), and the Wall Street Journal Startup

Showcase. They were invited among selected startups to showcase at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC (2016).

3 Key support activities

In addition to funding and periodic monitoring of each project every 3 months (130 project reviews in total),

the following support has been provided to the sub-grantees:

Technical assistance

Technical assistance to developers was mainly implemented through the FIWARE coach assigned to FI-C3.

Interactions took place through bilateral chat discussions (Skype), through the FIWARE ticketing system

(Jira) and during the FI-C3 periodic 3-month evaluation reviews.

It included:

optimisation of the software architecture from the FIWARE perspective,

on-demand continuous support to the developers.

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Support to implement User centric approach

Specific attention has been paid to activities, carried out by the sub grantees to involve the end users in the

innovation process. The experience showed that almost all sub-grantees adopted a user centric approach.

This led them to make use of focus groups (with the help of FI-C3 where necessary), and in some cases to

perform field user tests as part of the development process.

At the occasion of the 3-month reviews, the Monitoring Committee discussed with all projects their plans to

organise user testing. In many cases the projects organised those tests by their own means because their

businesses were too specific (blind or deaf people, or suffering from special diseases) and could only be

organised within specialised environment (for instance hospital, retirement home). In such cases, that latter

provided the scientific support and clinical tests. In other cases, FI-C3 contributed directly to the tests and

provided the required assistance to validate the products/services.

Business Modelling and Customer Development workshops

Upon the selection of the projects full day Business Modelling workshops were organized. These workshops

were supported by the iMinds Living Lab team and business model experts and used a recognized

methodology to facilitate the interaction. 31 SMEs out of the 40 selected projects participated in 2

workshops.

Each workshop was structured as follows:

Plenary training session: experts gave the introduction on the validation board methodology,

instructing the beneficiaries how to use the methodology, sharing theory combined with practical

examples,

Guided co-creation session: SME’s were invited to work in small groups of 2 to 3 plus a dedicated

Business Modeller, to define the fundaments of their business model with the support of their peers

and the onsite coach. During that session concrete questions were addressed and additional advice

was provided.

Business one to one coaching

As soon as a project entered the accelerator, a contact point belonging to the FI-C3 consortium was assigned

to that project to act as a link between FI-C3 and the project. In addition to any administrative/organizational

aspects of the sub-grant agreement, the contact point was in charge of maintaining frequent (monthly)

contacts (physical visits or telephone calls) with the sub-grantee, and detect any advice and support that the

project needed from the accelerator (or the programme) to run its project successfully.

Additional mentors were brought on board to complement the support given by the FI-C3 contact points and

bring another perspective to the startups in the portfolio. Those mentors were external from FI-C3

consortium members but were issued from their networks; they had relevant domain expertise and

experience and many of them had founded their own businesses. Each sub-grantee was assigned at least one

mentor; in some cases several experts were invited to bring additional assistance.

The role of the mentors was to guide the companies on:

Strategic guidance, such as:

Business model suggestions;

Looking critically at the business plans of the startups, help them where needed with the

approach for sales, marketing, managing their company;

Identifying and correcting gaps in the startup team’s business knowledge and understanding,

Tactical guidance, such as:

Connections to other people in their network “Why don’t you call X? Let me introduce you,”

Pushing the team “out of the building” and into the marketplace, to aggressively validate

assumptions,

Ensure that the startup is not simply hearing what they want to hear from their research.

Challenge them on the conclusions they’re drawing, and the assumptions they’re making.

High level advisory board

Another tool to assist the participating SMEs in the initial phase of bringing their technology and ideas to the

market is the High Level Advisory Board. That board, composed of 8 experts from various industries

appointed by FI-C3, aimed at providing the sub-grantees with High Level Advise.

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2 HLAB sessions have been organised during the 2 project years, in which SME’s were invited, on a

voluntary basis to pitch during 8 minutes in front of the assembly.

At the end of each pitch the high-level advisory Board challenged the companies during 25 minutes (Q&A)

and suggested improvements or referred to other companies in their network for potential business

cooperation and access to venture capital. After that, each sub-grantee met (either on-site or by video-

conference) the HLAB individually in order to assure the confidentiality among all the participants.

The HLAB exercise was well appreciated by the 17 SME’s participating.

Vertical/geographical events

In addition to the previous activities, in order to create real connections and promote collaboration

between startups, FI-C3 organised meetings open to all FIWARE actors. In order to offer the best

publicity to that initiative, a common event database was shared with all accelerators so to invite all sub-

grantees to attend.

The goal of those meetings was to facilitate cross accelerator experience sharing between SMEs using the

enablers, and to get aware and discuss on the FIWARE sustainable offering. Some meetings aimed also to

create contacts with customers and/or investors.

A series of events were organised, with various configurations and various sizes, from informal and short

meetup with a couple of animators, to bigger conference with the presence of investors or customers or

recognized experts. Those meetings were held in Belgium (monthly meetups), in Spain (2 meetups with

coaches), Germany (on specific thematic with experts), France (3 events with specific FIWARE session).

FIWARE startups were also promoted in meetings with foreign delegations (Canada, China, Morocco, US).

4 Major traction from startups

There is no quantification of the startup success available at the moment. In general SMEs do not

communicate their business figures until they reach a significant size. As most of the newly created

companies (13 in the accelerator) started their operations recently, this is their case. Some other companies

address the B2B market (cities, hospitals, retirement homes), and are currently in (private) negotiation with

customers or investors. So for which concerns FI-C3 there is only a limited information available publicly,

mainly from enterprises that had started to deploy their applications very early, before they entered FI-C3:

Guide Me Right raised 380K€ (€250K by grants and prices + €130K by private

Business Angels) Sole24Ore . It has +16.000 registered users , +800 active Local Friends,

+1.800 experiences available in +500 locations, +1.000 experiences booked. The team is

now (up to) 11 people. Sharing Economy influencer leader in Italy in the field of Tour &

Activities: "Sharing Economy in the Tourism: an opportunity for Italy" (Luca Sini at

TEDx) .

The Fuseami app has been used by over 4000 delegates during the extensive conference trials (this

translates to supporting thousands of valuable new connections for conference delegates). The fuseami app

has been adopted by over 120 conferences from around the World to support their delegates to network

smarter. The fuseami app has been adopted by such prestigious organisations as: IEEE, PMI, Enterprise

Ireland, Dublin Chamber of Commerce, European Patent Office and the European Commission. The app has

been the official app at such conferences as: IEEE GLOBECOM2015 in San Diego, ICT2015 Conference in

Lisbon, PMI Annual Conference in Israel, the Innovation Showcase in December 2015 in the Dublin

convention centre and the Patent Information Conference by the European Patent Office in Madrid

November 2016. The company currently has 3 full time employees.

With 4 team members, Making Mind Matter has a revenue of 54.000 EUR by product sale.

Oblumi has 25000 registered users. Their income will reach 400 k€ by the end of 2016 and will

double in 2017.

Videona has over 50000 downloads. They are still acquiring users. They estimate a revenue of 300

k€ in 2017.

Thanks to their fast expansion with the crowdfunding campaign, Eskesso will reach 4 people by the

end of this year and is expecting a turnower of 200 k€ in 2017.

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Oliva Card created 5 jobs during the FI-C3 programme. The company was sold but the technology

is still used by the deployed clients.

VeloCARRIER’s product is an order entry product so over 1.000 customers will use it till October

2016 to key in the orders. With 12 persons next year, the income with reach 1.2 M€.

The SUOP community reaches 20 K users after 3 years :

https://www.suop.es/es/blog/-/blogs/tres-anos-de-comunidad%E2%80%A6-%C2%A1tres-anos-de-

logro-

1?_33_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suop.es%2Fes%2Fblog%3Fp_p_id%3D33%26p_p_lifecy

cle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-

2%26p_p_col_count%3D1

They calculated that the monthly gross revenues jumped from 9.5 K€ at start of the project (Sept-2015) to 46

k€ at the end of the project (Sept-2016). They will reach a revenue of 600 k€ in 2017.

SmarTaxi moved to outside Europe. Contracts have been signed with 420 taxis in

Guatemala + another one in Panama+ discussions in El Salvador. They have now 3

employees.

Related to the project WiiM (formerly FI-Glass) also launched and sells Senda, a

similar project but for other niche : http://descubresenda.com . The company is now up to 5

persons.

Outbarriers created 5 jobs during the FI-C3 programme. Another one is expected

end of this year. They have now 120 customers. So far they have achieved 500 downloads

(only present in Granada); they have started expanding to Madrid so they will increase the

number of downloads considerably in the coming months

5 Results of selecting various batches of startups

All details of the selected startups can be found on the FI-C3 site at : http://www.fic3.eu/our-startups

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6 Continuation of the program

In collaboration with the French Brittany region Images & Réseaux will invite to consider FIWARE as a

preferred technology to be used in the collaborative projects funded either by the regional funds of the

National funds.

Another project under preparation consists in developing a FIWARE based platform to collect energy data.

At this stage this project is still not finalized and cannot be detailed more.

Besides continuing to look at the H2020 calls, iMinds – which is now merged with imec - already has a

number of projects to support startups and scale-ups, by way of the iStart and ICON programs, as well as the

imecXpand fund. iMinds experiences in the FIWARE programs will be integrated into these programs (FI-

C3 companies are also welcome to apply to these programs if they meet the requirements).

Madrid ICT-Audiovisual Cluster (MAC) is negotiating with the Madrid Regional Government the creation

of an open call for innovative companies in 2017. MAC is proposing that this call promotes projects related

to Internet of the future, and that those using FIWARE technology receive special consideration, i.e. some

additional score.

On the other hand, MAC is working on creating a private support system for companies and startups, a

regional accelerator of Future Internet projects, promoting various technologies, including FIWARE. This

accelerator would provide workshops and mentoring to support businesses and entrepreneurs, based on the

FI-C3 experience. To that end, MAC is talking with other accelerators from Ferrovial, RTVE, Telefónica and

Telemadrid.

Grassroots got in contact with NUMA https://paris.numa.co/, a Parisian accelerator since November 2015

to investigate running an open source and FIWARE accelerator call. They decided not run an explicit

FIWARE call but just an open source track in their calls, but they are interested to let people apply for any

open source technology including FIWARE. Secondly after the terror attack in Paris the idea is to open an

educational FIWARE programme for student and pupils in the disadvantaged multi-culti areas such as Saint

Denis in Paris, where the high unemployment und dissatisfaction are the roots of youth terrorism, to improve

their technical skills. The idea is to involve the local youth centers and schools. Investigation is ongoing

where to get the regional funding for this education program. NUMA will collaborate with Grassroots on this

programme, to support the best of them in their incubator.

Grassroots asked also Startplatz, an incubator in Cologne, to invite their Start-ups to use FIWARE and to

continue in workshops to disseminate the FIWARE catalogue. Grassroots is collaborating with Startplatz on

these workshops.

7 Return on Investment (ROI) of the program

A figured RoI of the programme is premature at this stage. Such figure, calculated as a ratio of return over

investment (both measured at different epochs) would suppose the first term is already known for an

investment that has just been completed. The impact of the FIWARE accelerators will only be measurable

after 3-4 years when the SMEs will have passed the Valley of Death. However we can measure now how the

investment has been materialised into concrete actions by the following figures:

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Number of SME supported : 40

Number of newly created enterprises : 13 startups (created just before applying to FI-C3).

Number of companies acquired : we know at least 1 company already merged into a bigger structure

(probably this will be the case of others)

Number of jobs created (during the period) : ca 55

New products/services available at the end of the accelerator project : 34 (including those in beta-

test)

After the end of the programme number of startups under discussing with investors : approximate

figure 70% (the other 30% either are big enough or look for other types of funding)

Visibility of the FIWARE technology implemented through 43 promotion meetings

Number of finalised applications to the 2 calls : 580 proposals from 30 countries

Use of the FIWARE technology : 26 enablers used and integrated.

8 Lessons learned

From the experience of running this accelerator, the FI-C3 partners have learnt the following

lessons:

Technology

Startups need stabilized technology with clear commercial offer:

In order to mobilise candidates for Call 1 FI-C3 had to develop much effort: the first questions asked by

SMEs was the reliability of the enablers. FI-C3 missed lot of valuable candidates because they had doubts

about the future of the FIWARE technology. In Call 2, the commercial perspectives being much clearer, the

situation was quite different

Technical support was a key asset of the accelerator

A number of companies encountered technical issues with enablers or simply needed some support to use

them. Entrepreneurs having a lot to do to launch a new business may be discouraged to use a new

technology without a strong support. Having an expert on board who can provide immediate technical advice

is crucial to run a (high-tech) accelerator.

Startup selection

Selection with clear criterions by a group of experts from a variety of domains is a good

process

FI-C3 is rather satisfied with the selection process that has been used. A significant number of experts of

various domains (including business experience), preferably external to the consortium to get an independent

opinion was a good process. Getting one jury at the end of the selection process to hear the top scoring

companies pitch was also good choice, it enabled one jury to see all the best companies and pick the top ones

to get funded. The use of electronic communication to avoid the physical presence of candidates ran well. All

the selection procedure must be written to ensure fast implementation of the process.

Agile review process

Quarterly reviews is a good frequency

It was good to give the budgets after quarterly reviews. This did give us leverage over the companies

(because we were not allowed to act as a real accelerator/investor and could not take an equity stake into the

companies). In addition, the startups appreciated such regular contacts with the consortium which forced

them to concentrate on defined objectives but also to spend some time for an informal discussion. Although

distant project reviewing (by video conference) proved to be possible, physical meetings were much better to

develop good contacts between the startups and the accelerator.

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Business support

Initial business workshop is more than optional

Although the entrepreneurs that were entering the accelerator had been selected on the quality of their project

(technical/business/team) a formal course at the beginning of the acceleration process had a real added value.

Starting within the accelerator with a full analysis of all aspects of their business/ strategy provided them a

safe and realistic vision of the status of their project.

Accelerator basic business support is permanent mentoring

The basic support expected by the startups is a regular contact with, where possible, the same person from

the accelerator. Those contacts must be frequent (every month is a minimum) but can be implemented

through telephone. Physical meetings with that (permanent) mentor can be quarterly. When that mentor has

himself the experience of startup creation, another mentor is not required, otherwise an additional business

expert has to be appointed to supplement the first mentor.

Specialised mentoring has not been required by the startups

Although it was expected that very specific advices (for instance on legal, Intellectual property or similar

topics) would be welcomed by the startups, they did not request those services. An explanation could be that

such dedicated advices are available from other supporting organisations.

But startups were strongly demanding of contacts with customers/ investors

When analyzing the startups expectations in terms of business support, the most frequent request was to

facilitate the contacts with customers or investors (and in general any means to access to funding).

Startups are always interested by reactions from external experts

Entrepreneurs showed high interest to test their pitch in front of a group of advisers and where possible

investors. In FI-C3 the High Level Advisory Board (HLAB) was a good way to get the companies to test

their business model and pitching skills in front of a wide variety of experts in their field (business,

investing, etc). This is a kind of service that accelerators should propose.

Other topics

Duration of the projects

Within FI-C3 the projects lasted from 9 to 18 months. In the (technical and business) context of FIWARE

and with the acceleration process defined by FI-C3, 9 months has been considered as short. 12 months would

have been better to ensure better project support thanks to the quarterly review procedure.

At the end communication is a contact with a person

Despite many channels of communication (“e-communication”), the fact that the potential applicants were

able to reach us either by phone or mail was really appreciated.

And …startups were more serious that even hoped !

Through its quarterly evaluation process, FI-C3 ran 6 project evaluation sessions and has been impressed by

the quality of the startup teams through 130 reviews. The number of opportunistic projects was rather small.

All reviews were conducted in a very positive spirit, open to discussion, with a strong wish of making the

best use of the FIWARE technology and of the support offered by the programme.