In a blink of an eye, we reached the middle of X-Europe. Three cohorts and 15 months later, it’s time to share the numbers behind our growth programme. Buckle up and check out some of our achievements so far.
It’s always important to remember why we started – our team was inspired by the idea of building bridges between regions and deeptech stakeholders across Europe through matchmaking, events, media, training and acceleration and now, we're proud to say that we are contributing to more connected and developed startup ecosystems. But let’s go for the numbers!
To date, 565 startups applied to X-Europe and the most promising 80 were selected to the programme. We are currently covering the following deeptech trends: HealthTech, AgriTech and AI & ML. To facilitate their growth, we provided 300 trainings and 200 one-on-one mentoring sessions.
We didn’t do this alone. X-Europe heavily relies on open innovation and having corporations and investment firms in the programme facilitates our startups and SMEs achieving their business, networking and funding potential and ultimately enable them to scale innovative ideas. With that being said, the programme has onboarded more than 180 investment firms and over 30 corporates, including Vodafone, Nestlé, Cargill, among others.
X-Europe’s market-oriented growth programme and the proactive and innovative mindset of the selected startups and SMEs is paying off and we’re happy to share that our startups from cohort 1 (HealthTech), have collectively raised €11M funding from private and public sources since joining X-Europe.
Not everything is a bed of roses, and in a year where COVID-19 affected all of our lives, we had to change a programme that had been set to take place in Amsterdam, Budapest and Riga to continue giving the companies the best of us all through remote connections. It was a challenge, we will not deny it, but we managed to adapt and deliver awesome services!
With that in mind, we brainstormed, came up with solutions, and, until now, we had two tech flagship events in a hybrid format: TNW Conference 2020 and Future of Agritech online summit - powered by Design Terminal, where cohort participants (founders, investors, corporates and ecosystem builders) get together for showcasing their solutions, training and social activities, and matchmaking that generates business partnerships. Also, we organised one acceleration week for two cohorts and seven innovation challenge meetups between startups and corporates.
The programme startups and SMEs generated more than 22 job opportunities (feel free to connect!), showing that they are taking their businesses to the next level. Furthermore, 60 X-Europe media articles were published, giving spotlight to the startups, and, with our promotion efforts, we have reached more than 11 million engagements on our social media accounts. All things aside, 96% of the startups that join X-Europe recommend the programme, we admit, we’re really proud!
Behind the scenes, we also have great stuff to be proud of, like the teamwork we developed in 15 months, not only among the project partners but with the external partners that onboarded this journey with us. Between team members, we have Slacked daily and met online every other week (our cats as well), which has been key to continue improving and developing X-Europe to our applicant’s needs.
For now, these are the numbers we have to share, but we are excited to see what the future holds. We can’t wait for the next three cohorts to start (Smart Cities & Sustainability, SpaceTech, and FinTech) so that we may continue helping companies overcome their borders, and to have the chance to meet again and celebrate with a much-deserved drink face-to-face!
Join us at our third flagship event: TechChill on 7 to 21 May! And register as a startup, ecosystem builder, corporate partner or investor: www.xeurope.eu
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