CROSSPRING LAB BV

Their core work

Crosspring Lab is a Dutch private organization specializing in startup and scaleup support, operating at the intersection of entrepreneurial infrastructure and digital technology commercialization. Their core work involves running or supporting incubators, accelerators, and entrepreneurial hubs that help web, mobile, and IoT startups grow through lean startup methodologies. As their H2020 involvement shows, they progressed from building European entrepreneurial ecosystems to facilitating international market entry — specifically connecting European scaleups with mentor networks and helping them "soft-land" in markets like Silicon Valley. They are practitioners in the startup support industry, not researchers, which positions them as bridge-builders between early-stage innovation and commercial scale.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their earliest H2020 engagement (2015-2016), Crosspring Lab was focused on scaling the physical and organizational infrastructure of European startup ecosystems — incubators, hubs, accelerators — with a strong lean-startup and digital-first orientation. By 2017-2019, the focus had visibly shifted from building startup infrastructure to helping mature startups (scaleups) make the leap into global markets, particularly Silicon Valley, supported by mentor networks. This trajectory suggests a natural progression along the startup lifecycle: first, they helped create the conditions for startups to form and survive; then, they shifted upstream to help the survivors scale internationally.

Crosspring Lab appears to be moving toward international bridge-building for mature European tech companies — future collaborations in programs focused on EU-US technology exchange, startup diplomacy, or global innovation ecosystems would align with their demonstrated direction.

How they like to work

Crosspring Lab has participated exclusively as a partner — never as a project coordinator — across both of their H2020 projects, suggesting they prefer to contribute domain expertise within a broader consortium rather than take on administrative and financial leadership. With 8 unique partners across only 2 projects, their consortia are relatively small and focused, averaging around 4 partners per project. This points to a working style built on targeted collaborations with a small circle of aligned organizations rather than broad network participation.

Crosspring Lab has collaborated with 8 unique partners across 6 countries, indicating a genuinely European network despite their small project portfolio. No single country dominates their collaboration map, suggesting they actively sought geographically diverse consortia rather than clustering around Dutch partners.

What sets them apart

Crosspring Lab occupies a practical, operator-level niche in the startup support world — they are not a research institute theorizing about entrepreneurship, but an organization that has run and scaled real incubators, hubs, and soft-landing programs. Their combination of early-ecosystem building and international market-entry experience is relatively rare among EU project participants, most of whom focus on one or the other. For consortia building programs that need a credible, hands-on startup support operator with European and transatlantic network connections, Crosspring offers a profile few academic or policy partners can replicate.

Highlights from their portfolio

• STARTUP-SCALEUP
  Their largest funded project (€307,125) and broadest in scope — focused on scaling entrepreneurial hubs across Europe with a wide-ranging digital startup focus covering IoT, mobile, and web technologies.
• Soft-Landing
  Marks a strategic pivot toward transatlantic startup-scaling, with Silicon Valley and mentor networks at its center — suggesting Crosspring has real connections to US tech ecosystem actors, which is uncommon among Dutch SME-scale organizations.