Fifteen startups from seven different countries have been selected to participate in the 11th edition of Fit 4 Start, Luxembourg’s flagship accelerator programme.
Launched in 2015 by the Economy Ministry and managed by Luxinnovation in collaboration with Technoport, Luxembourg City Incubator and the Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA), the Fit 4 Start programme helps young innovative companies to launch their business from Luxembourg, transforming innovative ideas and the entrepreneurs’ will to succeed into companies with high growth potential.
After a series of digital pitching sessions in front of a jury composed of entrepreneurs, investors and other startup experts, ten ICT and five space startups received the good news that they have been selected for participation in the 11th edition of Fit 4 Start. They were selected from a total of 255 applications submitted by startups in 35 countries.
The selected start-ups will benefit from six months of specialised coaching, as well as €50,000 of funding each from the Ministry of the economy, with the possibility of receiving an additional €100,000 if they graduate successfully from the programme and manage to raise some private capital.
For this edition, the programme has been extended to cover six months instead of four.
“Experience has taught us that four months is not really enough to cover all aspects that would help the startups move forward in their development,” explained Stefan Berend, Head of Startup Acceleration at Luxinnovation. “Participants in previous editions have also indicated that they would have welcomed a longer programme in order to have time to benefit even more from the skills and experience of the coaches”.
The programme will also focus more strongly on participating startups’ market launch phase and notably intensify its networking activities in order to help them find relevant partners such as research centres or larger companies.
Fit 4 Start #11 will kick off in mid-June and will initially be completely digital. However, Mr Berend has hopes that this situation will evolve. “Hopefully, we will be able to move to a hybrid mode in the coming months, and if the health situation allows we might even conclude with going back to the face-to-face meetings we used to have before the pandemic", he noted.
Selected startups
ICT: AiVidens (Belgium); Cascade Lab Sàrl (Luxembourg); ChemChain (Luxembourg); Divizend (Germany); Kodehyve (Luxembourg); LetzMath (Luxembourg); No Big Deal (Luxembourg); The Kindness Group (Luxembourg); The Privacy Office Luxembourg S.A. (Luxembourg); to Stories (Luxembourg).
Space: Blackswan Technologies (Lithuania); Clutch Space Systems Limited (UK); Mission Space (Latvia); Novo Space, Co. (US); Plus Ultra Space Outposts SL (Spain).
