Imagine you've built a successful small business in your hometown, but to really grow, you need to be where the big players are — Berlin, Amsterdam, or even Silicon Valley. This project built a network of landing pads across Europe and beyond, so startups could spend a month in a new city with mentors, office space, and local connections already set up. Think of it like an exchange program, but for companies instead of students. Over two years, they sent 96 startups on soft-landing stays and organized 40 discovery missions across six destinations.
European startups struggle to scale beyond their local ecosystem. They lack connections, market knowledge, and soft-landing support in larger startup hubs where growth opportunities are concentrated. This isolation causes many promising companies to plateau or fail when they attempt international expansion.
The project built a cross-border soft-landing program that organized 40 discovery missions with 200 participants, placed 96 startups in 1-month stays across destination ecosystems, exchanged 60 mentors/speakers, and produced a White Paper with policy recommendations. The soft-landing.eu platform served as the community hub.
If you are an incubator or accelerator looking to offer your startups international expansion support — this project developed a proven soft-landing methodology with 40 discovery missions and 96 startup placements across ecosystems in Germany, Netherlands, France, Lithuania, Silicon Valley, and India. You could license or adapt this model to add international scaling programs to your own portfolio.
If you are a regional innovation agency trying to attract foreign startups or help local ones expand abroad — this project built a repeatable model for cross-border startup migration with 200 participants from 4 hubs. The methodology, White Paper with policy recommendations, and community platform at soft-landing.eu provide a ready-made blueprint for designing your own soft-landing programs.
If you are a corporate innovation team searching for promising scaleups from across Europe — this project created a network connecting startup ecosystems in 5 countries plus Silicon Valley and India, exchanging 60 speakers and mentors. Tapping into this network gives you a curated pipeline of startups that have already demonstrated readiness to scale internationally.
The project operated on a EUR 1,499,975 EU contribution across 5 partners over 2 years. Individual soft-landing stays were 1-month placements, and discovery missions were 1-week programs. Licensing the methodology or partnering with consortium members would need to be negotiated directly.
The project was designed for scalability — it connected ecosystems in Germany, Netherlands, France, Lithuania, Silicon Valley, and India with 40 discovery missions and 96 startup placements. The White Paper with policy recommendations was specifically intended to enable replication by other regions and organizations.
As an EU-funded Innovation Action, project outputs including the methodology, White Paper, and platform content are generally accessible. The soft-landing.eu platform and community assets were built as open resources. Specific licensing terms should be discussed with the coordinator.
The project delivered 40 ecosystem discovery missions with 200 participants, 40 follow-up events, exchange of 60 speakers/mentors, and 96 startup soft-landing stays of 1 month each. It also produced a White Paper with policy recommendations and the soft-landing.eu platform and community.
The soft-landing model is designed as an add-on to existing incubator and accelerator programs, not a replacement. It specifically addresses the gap between local success and international scaling — the point where many European startups stall. The consortium partners had prior experience from three previous Startup Europe projects.
The project officially ended in December 2019. Based on available project data, the soft-landing.eu platform and mentor network were built to sustain beyond the funding period, but current operational status should be verified directly with the consortium.
The Soft-Landing consortium has 5 partners from 5 countries (Germany, France, Lithuania, Netherlands, UK) with a strong 60% industry ratio and 2 SMEs. The coordinator is VSI Startup Division from Lithuania, a startup ecosystem development organization. Three consortium members had already worked together on previous Startup Europe projects (Startup Scaleup, LIFE, Digistart), which means this team had proven collaboration experience before even starting. With 3 industry partners and 1 university, the consortium was heavily practice-oriented rather than research-focused — fitting for a project that needed to organize real missions and placements, not write academic papers.
VSI Startup Division (Lithuania) — contact via SciTransfer for introduction
Want to adopt the soft-landing model for your region or connect with this network? SciTransfer can broker the introduction and help you evaluate fit.
