Boosting pan-european Exchange between acceleration ecosYstems for improving quality and Outreach of business acceleration services in Developing innovation ecosystems

BEYOND aims to achieve a more interconnected European business acceleration industry in between ‘modest’ or ‘moderate’ and ‘strong’ or ‘leading’ acceleration ecosystems in Europe, and therefore directly contribute to foster the rise of investment flows from net contributor regions (leaders) towards ‘modest’ and ‘moderate’ regions as net beneficiaries, which might provide one effective solution against the above referred undesired geographical gap.

BEYOND project will focus on: 1.- Testing a Self-Sovereign Digital Identity scheme (funding passport) that start-ups get no matter what accelerator they join.

Through the funding passport start-ups can document their journey and get access to additional funding; 2.- Building a joint platform for the core acceleration enabling online acceleration and a joint framework for how start-ups are most efficiently developed; 3.- Sharing specific offers from the different project participants and resources to increase the value for start-ups; 4.- Developing an incentive structure where all partners benefit from providing high quality start-ups and develop their services; 5.- Creating a cross-region marketplace for raising funding to start-ups so start-ups are not as dependent on the local investor landscape.

These 5 elements constitute the backbone of BEYOND’s Virtual Accelerator Marketplace (VAM) a trust framework to support joint business acceleration activities that will contribute in a sustainable manner to enhance a balanced interconnectedness of private investment flows and thus, contribute to dramatically improve quality and outreach of business acceleration services in developing innovation ecosystems.

The VAM will be tested through 2 editions of a joint acceleration program co-designed by 5 business accelerators backed on their own VC Funds, representing moderate (BG, LT, PL) and leading regions (DK, ES), that will select and support 2 cohorts of 20 Startups that will receive access to mentoring and VC investors.