Do you have an innovative idea and want to jumpstart your business?
EIT Jumpstarter
Do you have an innovative idea and want to jumpstart your business?
Creative community, advanced know-how, unique programme, expert trainers and mentors, this is EIT Jumpstarter. With the contribution of best-in-class experts, creative community, unique know-how our aim is to support idea-holders to turn their ideas into business. We help innovators and entrepreneurs build a viable business model around their innovative product or service idea, validate it and if their business idea is proven to be sustainable, we encourage them to register their company.
The strategic aim of this program is to create a sustainable impact in the Central-Eastern and Southern-European Regions by boosting innovation and entrepreneurship within this part of Europe. Countries face similar challenges; they have enormous innovation potential, with bright scientific minds, but the research results are likely to remain within the labs. At the same time, there is a significant number of needs that have been unmet from the corporate side. To overcome these challenges connecting the innovative solutions with the articulated demands from the industry and increase the competitiveness of our regions – six EIT Communities teamed up to jointly running EIT Jumpstarter.
The competition is organized by EIT Health, EIT RawMaterials EIT Food, EIT InnoEnergy, EIT Manufacturing and EIT Urban Mobility. They are six Knowledge and Innovation Communities of EIT, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. They bring together businesses, research centres and universities as partners creating a favourable environment for creative thought and innovation to flourish. EIT is a valuable, credible partner to get your business idea up and running.
Graduates of the program possess the skills and knowledge to launch their company, and as part of the alumni community, they receive further support and dedicated advisory from the EIT Communities regarding the next stage of their start-up journey. We introduce teams to partners, VCs, regulatory bodies and companies that can produce their products, their first buyer or a test site. They meet major innovation hubs in Europe, which is important when they want to enter foreign markets.
In 2019 EIT Jumpstarter won the Best Association Training Initiative Award of the European Association Awards.
Learn more
Invento team is part of this program since 2020.
EIT Jumpstarter progam engaged students, researchers, start-ups and academy representatives with interests in working on new products, devices or services in different EIT KIC’s sectors.
EIT Jumpstarter workshops contains this 3 steps during the year:
Bootcamp workshops May/June
In purpose to prepare the Pitch deck we were conducting bootcamp consist of the training and mentoring
Local Training workshops September/October
In purpose of Business Plan preparation we were conducting Local Training consist of the training and mentoring focused on topics: BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (Business Model Canvas; Customers; Market and marketing; Competition; Sales; Key partners, activities, resources; Road mapping; Finances and investments) and IPR and PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT (Team building; IP, Value proposition).
Providing mentoring in preparation of the business plan
Mentoring resulted with the Business plan prepared for 6 - 9 teams.
Dr. Sc. Manuela Panić, Research Assistant from the Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology in Zagreb, Croatia, went through the Jumpstarter programme during 2022 and prepared her 10 years of research work for the market. It's about developing 100% green biosolvents named "natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES)” that can fully replace toxic current solvents and reduce CO2 emissions. And these are her impressions after mentoring by Invento Capital Partners:
" The training was very well organized. Everything was on time. Lectures were valuable, while mentoring sessions were very useful. I feel much better prepared to deal with the entrepreneurial world after Invento Capital Partners' suggestion on my business plan. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to hear about their experience and presentation. "
One of the team member in 2022 workshop, Marek Wadinger, was also feeling thankful and send us statement:
„The online sessions of EIT Jumpstarter Bootcamp allowed us to explore new perspectives and identify our blind spots. Thanks to the coaching from Ivana Čuljak and Lidija Gruber, we could ask better questions and think about our solution systematically with a skepticism needed to find common ground between our ideals and the customer’s needs.“
Filip Koprčina, participant from 2020, today founder and CEO of Energy Shift said:
„EIT Jumpstarter connected us with an amazing mentor from the relevant VC firm, that helped us improve our pitch deck and frame our ideas in an attractive way from the investor's perspective, which proved to be successful so far.“
