Imagine four successful startup hubs in Spain, Netherlands, Lithuania, and Ireland decided to pool their best mentoring, training, and networking services into one online platform — so any IoT entrepreneur in Europe could access them without moving cities. They built that platform, ran two rounds of acceleration programs through it, and plugged in Europe's largest startup social network (F6S) to connect founders with investors and talent. Think of it as a shared co-working space, but digital and continent-wide.
Most startup incubators and accelerators are stuck serving only their local market, limiting the quality of mentors, investors, and market access they can offer founders. IoT and web-technology startups especially need cross-border exposure early, but building international networks from scratch is expensive and slow.
The project delivered an integrated website and blog as a central hub, plus an online platform with proposal submission and review, education and training resources, and networking features. Two sequential acceleration programmes were run through this platform to create IoT-based companies and validate the ecosystem model. A total of 9 deliverables were produced.
If you are a startup incubator struggling to offer world-class services with only local mentors and limited deal flow — this project built an online platform that lets multiple hubs share mentoring, training, and networking across borders. The consortium connected 4 ecosystems across 5 countries and ran 2 acceleration programmes to validate the model.
If you are a corporate innovation team looking for IoT and web-technology startups ready for market — this project created a pipeline of vetted startups that went through structured acceleration with exposure to EU market access and venture capital groups. The 7-partner consortium included 3 SMEs and 4 industry players, ensuring real commercial pressure-testing.
If you are a regional development agency trying to make your local tech ecosystem more competitive — this project demonstrated how to connect geographically dispersed hubs into a single acceleration ecosystem using an online platform. The model was tested across 5 countries with 4 established entrepreneurial ecosystems contributing their best-in-class services.
The EU invested EUR 1,996,875 across 7 partners over 2 years to build and validate this ecosystem. For a single organization looking to adopt the online platform and acceleration methodology, costs would be significantly lower since the core design work is done. Based on available project data, no per-unit licensing costs are published.
The project was explicitly designed for scale — the objective was to assess which services could be offered on a non-local scale and then implement a new cross-border service model. The platform supported mentoring, networking, and training across 5 countries. The methodology could apply to sectors beyond IoT, though the acceleration content was IoT-specific.
The online platform for acceleration programmes was developed as a project deliverable. IP arrangements would depend on the consortium agreement between the 7 partners. Based on available project data, specific licensing terms are not published — contact the coordinator at Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena for details.
The project ran from 2015 to 2016 and the status is CLOSED. The integrated website and online platform were fully functional by Month 16. Based on available project data, there is no information on whether the platform continued operating post-project — the project website was at startup-scaleup.eu.
The online platform included functionality to submit and review proposals in response to the 2 acceleration programmes. Startups focused on Internet of Things and Services (IoTS) were the target. The programmes tested business skills, technological concept soundness, and market uniqueness.
The ecosystem offered business skills training, technology concept validation, early EU market access, talent matching, and connections to venture capital groups. These services were delivered through a combination of the online platform (education, training resources, networking) and the 4 physical hubs in Spain, Netherlands, Lithuania, and Ireland.
As a startup acceleration service rather than a regulated product, there are no specific regulatory barriers to adoption. The platform operates under standard EU data protection rules. The acceleration model was funded under ICT-13-2014, the EU's web entrepreneurship topic.
The 7-partner consortium across 5 countries (Spain, Ireland, Lithuania, Netherlands, UK) has a strong industry orientation at 57%, with 4 industry partners and 3 SMEs alongside 2 universities. The coordinator is Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena in Spain, which anchored the Cloud Incubator HUB. The inclusion of F6S — Europe's largest startup social network — as a partner gave the project immediate access to a massive founder community. With EUR 1,996,875 in EU funding split across 7 partners, this was a lean operation focused on connecting existing ecosystems rather than building expensive infrastructure from scratch.
Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (Spain) — search for the STARTUP SCALEUP project coordinator in their research department
Want to connect with the team behind this cross-border acceleration model? SciTransfer can arrange an introduction to discuss licensing the platform or adapting the methodology for your region.
