S3E is proud to have supported its first cohort of South European deep tech innovations
In July 2023, the South3E consortium hosted the two most important events of the year — the Open Days for our S3E Charge and S3E Start programmes!
Two successful online events that brought together more than 200 attendees from all across the European innovation ecosystem — including international investors, business angels, innovation hubs, higher education representatives and the general public — to showcase the deep tech solutions and ideas developed by the startups, research teams and TTOs selected to participate in these EU-funded programmes co-developed and led by the S3E partners.
For those who couldn’t join us on the events of 6th and 20th July, we have prepared two booklets where you will find all the key information about the teams who pitched during the open days and their innovations. Follow the links below to grab your copy!
S3E Charge booklet
to download the S3E Charge booklet and meet the 12 startups who pitched their deep tech businesses during the open day on 6th July 2023.
S3E Start booklet
to download the S3E Start booklet and meet the 13 research teams who presented their deep tech projects during the open day on 20th July 2023.
During the following weeks, we will be sharing detailed articles to highlight the research projects and the startups who pitched during both open days, including the video recordings of their presentations. So stay tuned! Make sure you're following us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and sign up to receive our .
Press Release: S3E celebrates the Start Open Day to present the deep tech projects of the selected research teams
The EU-funded project S3E is hosting the Start Open Day on Thursday 20th July 2023, at 10.00 CET, where the participating South European research teams will pitch their deep tech projects.
The consortium of S3E–Southern European Entrepreneurship Engine is pleased to officially announce the celebration of the S3E Start Open Day. During the last months, the S3E project has deployed the S3E Start program: an 18-week hands-on training program on science-based entrepreneurship, designed for research teams that want to explore the path from the lab to the market. Paired with these teams were technology transfer offices (TTOs) that learned the methodology to foster science-based entrepreneurship and technology commercialisation within their organisations.
Read the official press release
On this virtual pitching day, the selected 18 research teams and 12 TTOs from all across Southern Europe (including Italy, Spain, Greece, Slovenia, Romania, Portugal and Turkey) will introduce their deep tech projects to the entire EU innovation ecosystem.
When and where
The event will take place virtually on Thursday 20th July 2023, at 10.00 CET
How to participate?
The S3E project kindly invites Investors, Business Angels, Business Support Organisations, Innovation Agencies, Accelerators and Innovation Hubs to register to the event via Eventbrite.
Programme
- 10:00 Opening session by Daniel Gassmann, Head of Sector Ecosystems and EIC Prizes at EISMEA - European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency
- 10:10 Welcome to S3E Deep Tech Revolution with Pedro Vilarinho, Managing Director at HiSeedTech
- 10:20 Deep tech projects presentation I
- 11:20 Industry talk: ‘Deep tech entrepreneurship’ by Roger Debo, former Director of the Collaborative for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (CTEC) at Rutgers University
- 12:30 Lunch break
- 14:00 Welcome back
- 14:05 Deep tech projects presentation II
- 15:15 Closing remarks by Mário Freire, President Board of Directors at HiSeedTech
Register now!
Research teams participating in S3E START test their business skills during the Value Proposition Pitch
On May 30, from 15:00 CET to 18:30 CET, the research teams participating in the S3E START programme had to present their deep tech projects value proposition in front of a panel composed of the HiSeedTech team - Cláudia Barbosa, Cristina Simões, Nuno Falcão e Cunha and Pedro Vilarinho. The event took place online with an audience of 50 people and was open to participating teams and the technology transfer officers, mentors, and S3E partners (AUSTRALO, EPLO, and IDI).
The session was held midway through the programme implementation and was intended to: (i) serve as a proxy for the Open Day that will take place on July 20; (ii) provide feedback to the teams and test the robustness of the work done to date; (iii) improve their business skills and familiarise them with the types of questions that might arise during real presentations to investors or other stakeholders.
Each research team had 5 minutes to present their value proposition, which included: defining the problem they are solving and the need behind it, defining the technology, the solution they have and identifying the market, the competition and the team behind it.
The pitches were made in the following order:
- BioMEMs: Júlio Rocha, Aveiro University (PT), , Portugal
- BUCKS: Kun V Tian, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
- Cancer Therapeutics: Kanwal Asif, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy
- CAVI: Jurij Gostisa, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
- CE4Land: Ivana Pajčin, Faculty of Technology Novi Sad, University of Novi Sad, Serbia
- DVS: Rossela Zaffino, ICREA/ICMAB-CSIC, Spain
- EditUp: Davide Ederle, Fondazione Hub Innovazione Trentino (HIT), Italy
- HTS-INKS: Mar Tristany, Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), Spain
- MARCIA: Clotilde Costa, Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
- MET LAB: Diogo Silva, ITQB NOVA - Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier, Portugal
- Nano-ink: Elif Begum Elcioglu, Eskisehir Technical University, Turkey
- Sumatrix Biotech: Semra Unal Yildirim, Sumatrix Biotech, Turkey
- Breast 4.0: Tiago Marques, Champalimaud Clinical, Portugal
The teams are doing great progress and they still have the following seven weeks to focus on improving their value proposition and presentation to have the business model ready for the S3E START Open Day!
Looking forward to exploring synergies and creating a long-lasting collaboration.
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S3E at WARM, the Worldwide Accelerators Rally at Matosinhos
WARM, the Worldwide Accelerators Rally at Matosinhos is an event that brings together innovation acceleration programs, incubators and TTOs with investors, companies, and startups.
This year edition was organized by RESOLVE-Health. RESOLVE-Health is a technology-based acceleration program designed to provide support and management tools to early-stage projects and start-ups in the health sector, focused on transforming innovative research into profitable ventures. The aim is to foster knowledge transfer, ultimately leading to licensing patents or launching start-ups. This is done by teams of researchers and entrepreneurs involved in this area. RESOLVE-Health is an initiative from I3S - Institute for Innovation and Research in Health in Porto.
WARM goal was to foster a collaborative movement in the health innovation ecosystem and took place on May 25, at Terminal de Cruzeiros do Porto de Leixões, in Matosinhos.
Our team member HiSeedTech had the opportunity to participate and present the S3E program with the focus on S3E Start and share some testimonials of researchers that have already been impacted by our methodology during the panel "Testimonials from Teams Supported by Acceleration Programs!". Claudia Barbosa, S3E Project Coordinator received valuable feedback from the audience and especially from researchers who have seen a change in their lives and the way they look at science, which was truly inspiring. Claudia invited the more than 100 participants to join the S3E community and to be alert for the upcoming Open Call after summer, which will bring new opportunities for researchers and startups from Southern Europe to bring their deep tech ideas into the market.
More info about the event: click here,
Looking forward to exploring synergies and creating a long-lasting collaboration.
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Five projects, one mission: Expanding Acceleration Ecosystems in the European Union
Five projects, one mission: Expanding Acceleration Ecosystems
Incubators, accelerators and different types of ‘company-builders’ play a crucial role in providing start-ups with growth support. Due to the diverse innovation landscape in Europe, start-ups from better-connected innovation ecosystems benefit from more local accelerators with greater funding opportunities and more qualified business support services compared to their counterparts elsewhere.
This geographical gap often requires start-ups from less connected ecosystems to move to more established hubs elsewhere in Europe. Consequently, there are fewer scale-ups in less connected innovation ecosystems, creating unbalanced business activity and employment opportunities. The European Commission, launched the ‘Expanding Acceleration Ecosystems’ mission, as part of the European Innovation Ecosystems (EIE) work programme, with the purpose to reverse this flow by making ‘modest’ and ‘moderate’ innovation ecosystems more attractive to international companies interested in setting up their businesses outside the established centres and tapping into the potential of local ecosystems.
In light of this, around one year ago, five projects kicked off to support the European Commission fulfil this mission: sharing business acceleration related best practices, knowledge, tools and methods; exchanging promising start-ups and SMEs; exchanging accelerator programme experts; establishing links between local actors in developing ecosystems, among others, and one of these projects is S3E – The Engine for South European Deep Tech.
S3E has developed an engine of growth to contribute to improving the connectedness and efficiency of the southern European countries’ innovation ecosystems. Our focuses on the acceleration of deep tech research projects, growth startups and scaleups, contributing to closing the innovation gap between these countries and more advanced innovation ecosystems. S3E is supporting south European innovators to develop into deep tech and procure funding for the early stages of development through three innovation programmes: START, CHARGE and REVERSE.
However, S3E is not alone in this mission and four other projects were selected with complementary action plans to expand acceleration ecosystems. Let’s discover them in this blog’s post!
AccelerAction: A pan-European Networked Acceleration Programme to expand acceleration ecosystems and foster the scalability potential of European business
The diverse innovation landscape in Europe and the geographical gap among the "innovation leaders" and the less-connected ecosystems highlights that the latter suffer from weaker entrepreneurial activity and scarcer investments. The EU-funded AccelerAction project aims to improve the quality and outreach of business acceleration services in weaker innovation ecosystems in the field of DeepTech by creation of new pan-European Networked Acceleration Programme (EU-NAP) that will be tested in 3-months blended exchange programme for 10 promising start-ups with special focus on gender dimension. To its end the project will encourage entrepreneurial activities, stimulating cooperation among innovation actors generating alliances and strengthening less connected ecosystems to increase their competitiveness & connectivity also thanks to the creation of the virtual platform with match-making feature.
ACCELERO: Accelerating Local Innovation Ecosystems in Europe
ACCELERO has the ambition of creating a pan-European community of business support organisations (BSOs) as the onestop shop for all BSOs and its “customers”, the startups and SMEs, as well as for peer-to-peer exchange, networking and connectedness for all stakeholders engaged in the broader innovation ecosystem. This will be achieved with an initial ACCELERO extended community apart from consortium members to co-create and pilot-test high-quality business acceleration services with European BSOs from emerging and moderate innovators together with experts from strong and leader innovation regions or Member States, followed by the launch of the community inside Euroquity platform.
Food-scalEUp: Expanding the European digital agri-food acceleration ecosystem
Expanding the European agri-food digital innovation ecosystem’s capacity is a priority for 10 organisations that form Food-scalEUp, an EU-funded project that is focusing on emerging and moderate innovator regions. Its objective is to help these innovator regions become better connected, effective, impactful, resilient and recognised around the globe. To succeed, it will develop optimal business acceleration services in agri-food digital innovation ecosystems; foster connections and transfer knowledge regionally and beyond; and balance the capacity of agri-food digital innovation and acceleration ecosystems in the regions in question.
BEYOND: Boosting pan-european Exchange between acceleration ecosYstems for improving quality and Outreach of business acceleration services in Developing innovation ecosystems
Introducing the new Virtual Accelerator Marketplace (VAM), designed to support joint business accelerator activities for Europe’s startups. It also aims to advance investment flows from net contributor regions towards ‘modest’ and ‘moderate’ ones. Developed by the EU-funded BEYOND project, VAM will test a self-sovereign digital identity scheme (funding passport) available to startups independent of which accelerator they join. Moreover, a joint platform will allow online acceleration and provide a framework for the efficient development of startups. BEYOND will also focus on sharing specific offers from the different project participants and resources; it will develop an incentive structure where all partners benefit from high-quality startups developing their services, and create a cross-region marketplace for fundraising.
Looking forward to exploring synergies and creating a long-lasting collaboration.
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S3E at the Danube Lighthouse Conference of the EU Ocean Mission!
Last week, our team members Christina Deligianni and Spyros Kouvelis from the Institute for Sustainable Development at EPLO travelled to Bucharest, Romania, to attend the Danube Lighthouse Conference of the EU Ocean Mission.
The Danube lighthouse, which is part of the EU Mission ''Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030'' 🌊
With a 2030 target, this EU Mission aims to protect and restore the health of our ocean and waters through research and innovation, citizen engagement and blue investments. The Mission’s new approach will address the ocean and waters as one and play a key role in achieving climate neutrality and restoring nature.
Cross-cutting enabling actions will support this objective, in particular broad public mobilisation and engagement and a digital ocean and water knowledge system, known as Digital Twin OceanEN.
The Mission supports regional engagement and cooperation through area-based “lighthouses” in major sea/river basins: Atlantic-Arctic, Mediterranean Sea, Baltic-North Sea, and Danube-Black Sea. Mission lighthouses are sites to pilot, demonstrate, develop and deploy the Mission activities across EU seas and river basins
During the short trip, Christina and Spyros had the chance to visit the Polytechnic School of Bucharest and participate at the launch of the EcoDalli Project. We are grateful for having had excellent meetings with ICLEI, Danube and Black Sea Stakeholders, Romanian National Institute of Marine Geology, Uni of Zagreb, amongst others, and spread the word about the South European Deep Tech Revolution 🚀 🔥
You can also join our MISSION!
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S3E CHARGE acceleration program kicks-off to support growth startups
S3E team kicked off the CHARGE Acceleration program with an onboarding session with the growth startups selected through the Open Call #1.
The growth startups introduced themselves and their deep tech innovations. They all had the chance to meet each other creating a perfect atmosphere for collaboration, networking and opportunities to grow. During the following 14 weeks, S3E team and the assigned Mentors will be supporting the selected participants defining their business plans and go to market strategies.
About S3E CHARGE acceleration program
S3E Charge offers a 14-week tailor-made mentoring and networking program to develop an investment-ready business plan and support the access to non-dilutable and dilutable funding.
The mentoring process will guide the growth start-up teams in the development of a business plan for a product, service or process that makes them investment ready and takes their validated business case to an investor attractive level. So, they will acquire skills in technology commercialisation, science-based entrepreneurship, business development and intellectual property protection using their own business offerings through tailor-made mentorship.
When the selected startups finish the program, they will have developed a business plan for a product, service or process and acquired skills and be investment ready to:
- link their product/service/process product with market needs,
- better communicate their offerings to potential clients and investors,
- become market ready to pitch, persuade and readapt their business offerings to different audiences, depending on market needs
- connect to ‘Innovation Leaders’ and ‘Strong Innovators’ Ecosystems
- better understand to protect IP
- prepare an investment ready business plan
- get access to funds and funding
The outcome of the S3E Charge will better position them to apply for public or private funding and programs, because it will help them link their business offerings to market needs and become market ready to pitch and attract investments whilst having validated and honed your business plan and your value proposition.
Stay tuned for further communications!
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S3E START acceleration program kicks-off to support deep tech researchers
S3E team kicked off the START Acceleration program with an onboarding session with the 16 research teams and tech transfer offices selected through the Open Call #1.
The research teams presented their deep tech innovations and the tech transfer offices their research work. They all had the chance to meet each other creating a perfect atmosphere for collaboration and networking opportunities. During the kick off meeting, held virtually, we celebrated the first webinar of the training series called “War Stories'' with Joana Simões Correia and Thiago Gomes, former participants of the HiEngine program that inspired S3E START.
Joana Simões Correia is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Exogenus Therapeutics. With a PhD in Human Biology, she dedicated more than 15 years of her career to research in the area of human diseases, including cancer genetics and regenerative medicine. Author of several high impact papers and patents, she has been a pioneer in exploring the therapeutic potential of umbilical cord blood derived exosomes as a therapeutic tool. Since 2015 she has been leading Exogenus Therapeutics research and development team and activities and has been recognized several times for the excellence of her work, nationally and internationally (eg. ANJE Young Entrepreneur Award 2015, Everis Foundation Award 2016, Prémio Empreendedor XXI 2019). Under her leadership, Exogenus Therapeutics has conquered a distinguished position in the field and is recognized has a leading company harnessing the potential of exosomes as a therapeutic tool for diseases of high unmet need.
Thiago Gomes is the Co-Founder & CEO of a StartUp called BioReboot. BioReboot is a Startup that focuses on reusing and transforming agricultural waste into a biomaterial that has the potential to replace single-use plastics in the agriculture sector. It was the winner of the StartNOW 2020 acceleration program powered by StartUP Madeira. It represented the Autonomous Region of Madeira in the first phase of Climatelaunchpad 2021, the Global Green Business Ideas Competition. Currently, it represents the University of Madeira in the Born from Knowledge 2021 Competition.
Joana and Thiago gave participants an inspirational speech about their drive to be entrepreneurs, their successful experiences, sharing advices and learning, and the reasons behind their participation in the program that inspired S3E START.
During the following 18 weeks, S3E team and the designed Mentors will be supporting the selected participants defining their pathways from the lab to the market.
About S3E START acceleration program
The S3E Start includes online classes (mainly on the topics related to the development of a business case for deep tech projects) and webinars (on diverse topics pertinent to the development of the relevant skills). These in-class tutorials will account for less than half of the total workload of the Program, the remaining time being allocated to group meetings facilitated by the mentors. There are deliverables to be fulfilled each week and these deliverables will guide the participants throughout the three phases of the Program, namely:
IDEATION PHASE: In this phase a set of clearly defined product concepts will be developed and prioritized considering the linkages between the unique capabilities of the technologies and customer/market needs (Technology-Product-Market linkages). Each team is required to generate multiple product concepts that can be enabled by each technology. Then research teams will have to identify diverse market opportunities for each product concept to further specify product attributes.
DEVELOPMENT PHASE: In this phase teams will refine, improve, validate and select among the product concepts devised in the ‘ideation’ phase using a guided approach that will force them to contact the ‘market’ to challenge and sustain each of the T-P-M linkages proposed in the ideation phase. In the early stages of this phase, teams will be looking for ‘fatal flaws’ (product or market) that will justify ‘dumping’ one (or more) T-P-M linkage(s). With the information gathered from the market teams will develop “value propositions” for their products using a standard format that will force them to (i) clearly define the product, (ii) tie customer needs to the benefits of using the product in economic terms and (iii) differentiate the product from competitors based on unique product features. Additionally, they will build a business model that, for the product moving forward, describes the rationale of how the company will create, deliver, and capture value. Throughout this phase participants will have to use a set of management tools (e.g., 5 Forces Analysis, SWOT Analysis, Industry Mapping, “Voice of the Customer”, etc.) to gain a much better understanding of the way the market works and will be supported by the tools embedded in the approach, thus fine-tuning their product concept choices.
COMMERCIALIZATION PHASE: In this phase teams put the pieces of the puzzle together by building a strategy to bring the product to market. This phase begins with the definitions of the pricing point and the sales plan answering strategic questions such as market traction and market entry point(s). Additionally, drawing on the business model previously designed teams will define their development roadmap that will allow them to build the financial projections and risk analysis. At this stage teams will have all the elements needed to produce a business case and a final pitch that will be the final deliverables for the Program.
Stay tuned for further communications!
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S3E CHARGE: meet the selected growth startups
S3E CHARGE Open Call results are out!
Between November 7, 2022 and February 10, 2023, growth startups from South European countries submitted their deep tech innovations to the S3E Open Call #1 to participate in our S3E CHARGE Program.
S3E CHARGE is a program that we have designed for growth start-ups with deep tech products, services, or process concepts, grounded in a scientific discovery or meaningful engineering innovation and at a growth development stage, that are already in the market. The program will facilitate selected growth startups to be better aligned with Horizon Europe’s goals, namely by better positioning them to apply for public or private funding and programs, assisting them in linking their business offerings to market needs and becoming market ready to pitch and attract investments whilst having validated and honed their business plan and value proposition.
During the open call period, we received a total of 33 applications and after running and independent evaluation process (counting on external experts) we are very excited to share the selected growth startups that will take part in the first edition of our S3E CHARGE program.
12 GROWTH STARTUPS INVOLVED
| Project name | Team member | Country | Science field | SDG |
| RespiBit | Christodoulos Spagakas | Greece | Medical and health sciences | Good Health and Well-Being (SDG 3) |
| Distinkt | Luca Venza | Spain | Engineering and technology | Industry Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9) |
| Grawindy Renewable Energy INC. | Atilla Öztürk | Turkey | Engineering and technology | Industry Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9) |
| Bluana Foods | Florin IRIMESCU | Romania | Other | Good Health and Well-Being (SDG 3) |
| Inteligg Private Company (P.C.) | Christos Ioakeimidis | Greece | Engineering and technology | Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11) |
| Digital Bites | Theodoros Sofianos | Greece | Engineering and technology | Industry Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9) |
| Psychomeasure | EDUARDO SAMPAIO | Portugal | Medical and health sciences | Good Health and Well-Being (SDG 3) |
| ThetaBiomarkers | Olga Begou | Greece | Medical and health sciences | Good Health and Well-Being (SDG 3) |
| Water2Wk | Juan Suárez | Spain | Medical and health sciences | Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11) |
| Freshwater | Naeria Navarro | Spain | Engineering and technology | Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11) |
| IIO
Arcan |
Pasquale Bombino
Ilaria Pigazzini |
Italy
Italy |
Engineering and technology
Engineering and technology |
WHAT NEXT?
S3E CHARGE offers selected growth startups a 14-week tailor-made mentoring and networking program that aims to provide skills to growth startups to enable them to:
- link the product/service/process product with market needs,
- better communicate their offerings to potential clients and investors,
- become market ready to pitch, persuade and readapt the business offerings to different audiences, depending on market needs
- connect to ‘Innovation Leaders’ and ‘Strong Innovators’ Ecosystems
- better understand to protect IP
- prepare an investment ready business plan
- get access to funds and funding
We congratulate the selected participants and we are looking forward to supporting their deep tech projects!
Deliverable 4.1. Implementation & Deployment of the S3E framework
Deliverable 4.1. Implementation & Deployment of the S3E framework
Submission date: 20 March 2023
The purpose of this deliverable is to present the S3E framework that includes all processes, tools and activities that were designed and are being implemented as part of our Engine programme. In essence, the document is a reference guide with explanations and references to all other documents that have been prepared as part of our project.
Its aim is to serve as a guide in the implementation of our Engine programme.
This Deliverable concludes the results of T4.1 (Connect) and continues with T4.3 (Boost). It will offer to test and pilot the use of the basic features for S3E users to deploy the offered services.
Looking forward to exploring synergies and creating a long-lasting collaboration.
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