It’s getting crowded: with roughly 100 startup accelerators across Europe, how many are enough?

By our count, there are approximately 100 startup accelerators operating across Europe today, with presently close to 140 active programs. Are there too many accelerators in Europe – or not enough?

Hang up a map of Europe on the wall. Throw a dart at it. If you’ve managed to hit land, chances are pretty high that you’ve hit upon a region where there’s an active startup business accelerator.

To wit, there’s an ever-growing number of seed acceleration programs popping up across Europe, to the extent where it’s getting difficult to keep track of all of them. In fact, even doing a headcount is a challenge.

It doesn’t help that there are different types of business accelerators, and even the definition of an ‘accelerator’ isn’t set in stone. We gave it a shot anyway, and wonder out loud whether there’s an over-abundance of startup accelerators operating in Europe today – or vice versa.

Y Combinator blazed a trail that has been walked by many, including in Europe

Inarguably, Y Combinator was the first of its kind when it started in March 2005, and its success has inspired many to follow into its footsteps, often by outright copying its modi operandi.

In Europe, the biggest names are international startup accelerators like Seedcamp, TechStars London(formerly Springboard), Founder Institute and Startupbootcamp. Other notable pan-European initiatives include Startup Weekend, Launch48, GameFounders, Garage48 and StartupBus Europe.

Then, there are an increasing number of big corporation-backed accelerators such as Wayra(Telefónica), hub:raum (Deutsche Telekom), Orange FAB (Orange), the ProSiebenSat.1 Accelerator, theAxel Springer Plug & Play Accelerator, Bonnier’s Accelerator, BBC Worldwide Labs, Mediafax’sM.incubator, Pearson’s Catalyst for Education and Yandex’s Tolstoy Summer Camp.

Perhaps not a big surprise, but notable nonetheless: Europe’s telecom and media companies are seemingly most keen to set up accelerators and incubators of their own.

And then, there’s a plethora of regional startup acceleration programs, some private and some government-backed. A hopelessly non-exhaustive list includes the likes of Startup Wise Guys andBuildit (Estonia), Ignite100, Bethnal Green Ventures, dotforge, Beta Foundry and Oxygen (UK),Rockstart (The Netherlands), OpenFund and The Accelerator (Greece), Le Camping and Nextstars(France), betaFACTORY (Norway), DCU Ryan Academy’s Propeller Venture Accelerator and NDRC Launchpad (Ireland), Black Forest Accelerator, German Silicon Valley Accelerator (Germany),TechPeaks, SeedLab and H-Farm / H-Camp (Italy), Huge Thing and Gamma Rebels (Poland), Startup Sauna (Finland), SICS (Sweden), Startup Yard and StarCube (Czech Republic), StartupHighway(Lithuania), Beta-i (Portugal), Startup Reykjavik (Iceland), Tetuan Valley and SeedRocket (Spain), ZIP(Croatia), Eleven, LAUNCHhub and 3Challenge (Bulgaria), Idealabs and NEST’up (Belgium), Garage(Moldova), TexDrive and Farminers (Russia), ACME Labs and iCatapult (Hungary), Eastlabs (Ukraine),Elevator, 8200 EISP and UpWest Labs (Israel), Inovent, Etohum and Fit Startup Factory (Turkey).

In case we’ve lost you there: we’ve listed about 70 active startup accelerators above, and by our count, that’s not even close to the total number of accelerators operating in Europe today.

First things first: what makes an accelerator?

Startup accelerators are a relatively new, ‘modern’ breed of for-profit business incubators, which typically attract small teams through an open application process and provide a select number of fledgling technology companies with seed funding, mentoring, training and more, for a limited time.

While anyone with an idea can theoretically apply to an accelerator, the chances of actually getting in are very slim indeed: U.S.-based accelerators like Y Combinator and TechStars boast application acceptance rates between 1 percent and 3 percent.

Usually, a program lasts about 3 months, though some accelerators’ programs run longer, up to 6 months and even a full year for some. Your average accelerator doesn’t charge for the privilege, but takes an equity stake in participating startups, typically between 6 and 12 percent.

After ‘graduating’, startups are supposed to have used the capital, mentorship and feedback to gradually evolve into a viable business, or at least to a point where the team is able to convince more deep-pocketed investors to make a bet on them.

Who’s keeping track, anyway?

Let’s take a look at the available resources out there to get an idea of how many active startup accelerators currently operate in Europe.

In March 2012, there was a noteworthy attempt to create a comprehensive list of European accelerator programs called Startup Factories – which grew out of an eponymous NESTA research reportpublished the year before – but it hasn’t been actively maintained, and thus no longer gives us a full picture of just how many startup accelerators there are in Europe.

Another helpful but waning resource is Seed-DB, founded by Jed Christiansen, a member of Google’s EMEA Channel Sales team in London. Much like Startup Factories, Seed-DB offers a great but hardly complete overview of accelerators, and efforts to keep it up-to-date seem to have dwindled in recent times. In an email conversation, Christiansen tells me that this boils down to how one defines an accelerator, but we think the Seed-DB list is missing out on quite a few programs in Europe either way.

Startup community F6S, meanwhile, lists more than 600 accelerators and programs across Europe, but that’s counting many separate programs and there’s no way to filter down to accelerators only.

GigaOm once created a list of startup accelerators as well, but it, too, has become outdated.

Earlier this year, the European Commission set up a Startup Europe Accelerator Assembly in an effort to connect accelerators with policymakers, and to strengthen the support environment for Web entrepreneurs in Europe. While laudable, it’s a far cry from representative for the time being: clearly, the forum could use more active members and supporters from all across the EU to bring it up to speed.

In the interest of being complete, there’s something called the Global Accelerator Network, but it’s a rather selective community and filtering down to Europe currently shows a mere 8 startup acceleratorsthat apparently meet the criteria.

That leaves us without a clear answer, so Tech.eu decided to have a go at it and come up with a new, comprehensive list of active startup business accelerators in Europe.

Making it count: how many startups accelerators are in Europe, and how many are enough?

Using the above definition of an accelerator as a guideline, we found that there are currently approximately 141 active European acceleration programs, although some are put on by the same accelerator in different locations. Taking that into account, we ultimately listed 94 organizations that we would classify as startup accelerators operating somewhere in Europe.

For the sake of clarity: we included corporation-backed, government-funded and vertical accelerators, as well as U.S. accelerators with operations in Europe, and opted not to include clear-cut company incubators or ‘startup studios’ such as Team Europe or Rocket Internet.

As stated, there is a degree of subjectivity to the definition of ‘accelerator’. Consequently, there are many fine progras that do not fulfil all specified criteria.

The Israel office of Exodus Hub, for example, rents its space to startups. Novelook, also situated in Israel, invests in an idea and seeks the right entrepreneurs to become founders, rather than focussing on established company. Bento doesn’t take any equity in its companies. Latvia’s Eegloo doesn’t offer office space to the startups, while the University of Surrey 100 Club is an angel investment fund, with close ties to other programs, but does not really run an in-house accelerator.

Furthermore, there are many accelerator-like initiatives that do not fit all the criteria for inclusion in the list. Organizations like Startup Weekend and Startup Bus, mentioned above, are programs that last only a few days, and are designed more as a platform for entrepreneurs to meet, create ideas, and form teams for the future. Neither actively invests in ‘graduates’.

Still, if you think there’s an accelerator missing, please let us know.

In such a relatively small part of the world, a total of just under 100 active startup accelerators appears to be an extremely high number and the number actually runs much higher if you define the concept more loosely.

Still, there are some who argue that there aren’t enough accelerators in Europe, and that will likely never be, just like there could never be enough business angel investors to go around. There’s something to be said for that, as the possibilities for attracting early-stage capital are scarce in many a European country or region, and accelerators are one possible way of meeting founders’ needs.

Ultimately though, the quality of the accelerator in question is what matters, and whether entrepreneurs are better off joining them rather than going it alone or by other means (e.g. crowd-funding). Next week, we’ll go deeper into what differentiates accelerators from one another, and add some industry perspectives from insiders to the mix.

But let’s hear from you.

Do you think 94 startup accelerators is far too high a number for Europe? Or not enough?

Robin Wauters

Co-founder and editor-in-chief of Tech.eu, with previous stints at The Next Web and TechCrunch under his belt. Deeply in love with his family, technology, traveling and Belgian beer.

This is a repost of a blog post that appeared on tech.eu website on November 29, 2013

Creating Startup Communities Everywhere

By: Brad Feld | Managing director of Foundry Group and co-founder of TechStars

As Global Entrepreneurship Week continues, entrepreneurship is in the air and it's everywhere. As our world and society continues to rapidly evolve and change, entrepreneurs and innovation are at the core of it. And creating startup communities, in every city in the world, is an essential part of this evolution.

In 2010, when I started thinking about what had happened in Boulder, Colo., to make it one of the most visible and powerful startup communities in the world, I began with the premise that you could create a startup community in any city. During the past 45 days I've been in Boise, Oklahoma City, Chicago, Des Moines, San Francisco, Seattle, Detroit, Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Lexington, and Louisville meeting with entrepreneurs, seeing what they are up to, and exploring how to create vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems in these cities.

This experience, along with the response to my recently published book, Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, supports my view that a thriving startup community can be created anywhere.

Most net new job creation comes from young, entrepreneurial companies. The age of a hierarchical society stemming from the industrial revolution is over, as we aggressively shift into a network society that is a product of the post-information era. And startups, and entrepreneurs, are at the core of this reinvention of the way we work and live.

Building a vibrant and sustainable startup community is not easy and takes a long time. I believe there are four fundamental principles, which I call the Boulder Thesis. They are:

1. Entrepreneurs must lead the startup community.

2. The leaders must have a long-term commitment.

3. The startup community must be inclusive of anyone who wants to participate in it.

4. The startup community must have continual activities that engage the entire entrepreneurial stack.

While there are many participants in startup communities, including government, university, investors, service providers, and large companies, the startup community must be led by entrepreneurs. Not every entrepreneur needs to be a leader, but there must be a critical mass of them or the nothing significant will be sustained.

These entrepreneurs must have a long term commitment — at least 20 years. Startups take a long time to build, and it follows that startup communities do as well. There are no quick solutions here — if you are focused on "How are we doing as a startup a community?" in a year, you are focusing on the wrong thing. Go on a 20 year journey — dedicate yourself to creating something amazing where you live.

The startup community has to be inclusive of anyone who wants to engage in any way. Welcome newcomers with open arms. Let new leaders emerge — there is no "president" of a startup community — no one can control it. Use a "give before you get" approach, where you contribute energy and resources to the startup community, without a clear expectation in advance of what you are going to get back.

Think of the power of a network instead of a hierarchical organization, and encourage more and more nodes on the network. Sure, there will occasionally be bad actors in a startup community, but as the network grows, the organism will reject or reform the bad actors. And you'll be pleasantly surprised that you get much more out of the startup community then you put in.

Fundamentally, every city was once a startup. There was a reason that people decided to put a stake in the ground and start each city on this planet. Each city has unique characteristics and strengths, which I refer to as "natural resources," and they go well beyond the physical natural resources that were the motivation for the creation of many cities. So the essence of "startups" is in the fabric of the formation of every city. Build on this and help create an amazing startup community wherever you live.

This is a repost of an article that appeared on CNBC website on November 14, 2012

The Benefits of a Diversified Polish Landscape: More Investments from China

By Paul Chen

On November 20, 2013 Inkubatora Technologicznego KPT held a event called Made (IT) in China.  That got me thinking...

Diversity initiatives can have important and interesting social justice benefits, but the real reason you want to pursue diversity programs is for innovation. You want diversity of thought. Here’s the key: If you want diversity of thought, you have to bring in people around you who have diverse experiences. Differences in race, gender, and socioeconomic background are three characteristics, but so are differences in learning style or differences in professional field. And I’m not suggesting that any one of those points of diversity is more potent than others.

David Thomas
H. Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

During Poland’s Golden age of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poland had it’s greatest amount of diversity in terms of demographics and religion.  It contributed to its influence as an important European center for the development of modern social and political ideas.  During the Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad was the center of the exchange of goods and scientific ideas.  All of this came from the diversity that was allowed and encouraged by the people and the institution.  Unfortunately, all of these ended when things started to become too homogeneous.  In Poland’s case, all the power started to accumulate in the hands of the nobility.  In Islam’s case, the power started to accumulate in the hands of the radical conservatives.   

Poland and China Trade

At the moment, Poland is a relatively homogenious society.  This could be a limiting factor in its need to grow and innovate towards a more competitve economy.  In recent years more and more attention has been directed towards the Asian tigers.  India and China has become a dominating force on the world economic stage.  Although the rate of growth is slowing down quite a bit, China is still growing faster than its Western counterparts.  It is easy to see why so many countries have become very interested in getting their hands into the new honey pot. 

In 2011 Hungary was successful in the procurement of a $3.6 Billion investement agreement with the Red Dragon.  The origins of this deal can be traced back to a 1988 bilateral agreement easing visa regulations of Chinese citizens who want to enter Hungary.  This started a large amount of trade between the two countries.  It is obvious that Hungary has learned its lessons from about 700 years prior when the Golden Horde mercilessly took over the Hungarian territory in a matter of two months.  It is better to do business with those from the East rather than fight them.  I had been in Budapest during the time of Premier Wen’s visit.  The  Parlament Building and the Széchenyi Chain Bridge were festooned in Chinese Flags. 

Poland has never been in the radars as far as the Chinese are concerned in terms of trade.  Poland as some Chinese residents have said are rather under developed.  Their visa policy are too restrictive and prohibiting.  The border guards often try to cause trouble for Chinese businessmen.  Although there are some the current efforts of the Polish government to get China to become interested in investing in Poland it might not be enough to make much of a difference.  The COVEC debacle only made it worse.  China has already found a „port” into the European market in Hungary.  The Polish market is simply not big enough to warrant a major effort.  It is enough to establish a small hub in Jaworzno as a distribution point and to make the deals with the local telecoms to get their Huawei equipments into Polish hands. 

Another reasone to the lack of warmth between China and Poland is the general Polish attitude towards Chinese culture.  Being a ethinc Chinese here in Poland, I sometimes feel like a social pariah.  I can speak Polish and I do engage in some Polish cultural activities, and I do have some Polish friends.  I still cannot shake the feeling that Polish people seem to think they are better than the Chinese.  I have taught Chinese in many instances, and when I try to bring some Chinese cultural components into my lessons, I do not get any sense of enthusiasm.  Polish people are generally enthusiastic in learning languages.  However, this is generally where the interest seem to stop.  They don’t really try to get deeper into another’s culture.  The first thing that any good sales man tries to do is to make a human connection.  Then they can try use emotions to create desire and need for their products.  One of the ways is to express interest in another’s cuture.    

I have been to enough Chinese Polish conferences to see that most of the topic has to do with due dilligence and intellectual property.  And most of the so-called experts try to give some magic pill tips in doing business with the Chinese.  Most of them still focus too much on the differences between Poland and China.  Wouldn’t it easier to focus on the similarities first.  Then, I believe the differences will work themselves out.  First of all doing business in China is plagued with a massive amount of beauracracy, well so is doing business here in Poland.  Poland can use its experience dealing with communist governments to deal with the Chinese government.   The Polish pierogi is quite similar to the Chinese jiao-tse.  In many of these conferences, the experts seems to adopt this „us vs. them” mindset.  And most of them are Polish.  Why not let the Chinese into the conversation?

Here is what the experts are missing.  The Chinese is a very tight-knit community.  Word travels fast.  Once you get a bad reputation, it is very hard to live it down.  Chinese people hold grudges.  There are a lot more of the Chinese then Poles.  Chinese people don’t open their purses so easily. (Think Jews and Scots)  China has access to a vast amount of wealth due to the fact that they don’t over spend and possibily currency manipulation.  Chinese IT talent is high in quality and cheaper than Poland.  China has more to offer than gadgets, cheap household wares, and cheap clothing.  China is filled with well qualified talented individuals. 

Currently,  there are some Chinese-Polish cooperative efforts which is a start.  And universities like AGH, Jagiellonian and University of Warsaw are trying to attract more Chinese students.  They are among the universities recognized by the Chinese educational authorities.  Perhaps through these activities, they can turn things around.  

Newsflash: OpenCoffeeKRK #24

Wojtek Borowicz

Thank you all for coming to our birthday meetup today! We had baloons, a cake, and probably the highest attendance up to date. We don’t have officially confirmed data, but from the looks of it, there was about half billion people at Google for Entrepreneurs this morning… well, more or less, that is.

This time around we heard a lot from students and student organizations who want to engage in the local startup community. There were people from AIESEC Kraków, AIP Academic Business Incubators, and AGH, where they keep working on AGHacks, the biggest hackathon Poland has ever seen. We also have some good news for people interested in video games. Nicholas Holden told us that he wants to do gaming business here, and he already has secured a lot of cash in funding for his project, so if you want to know more or participate, find him on LinkedIn. And for those who want to promote their new apps and websites, Daniel Kassai’s Sharker might be a place for you. When you will be doing the inevitable winter clothes shopping, check out Not Just Shop - Łukasz Kaliciński and his team are giving a share of their revenue to children in need. Also, autopromotion: at Contentio I’m co-creating a platform for Polish journalists, where they could publish their articles and sell them directly to their readers. We are working with some of the best authors in Poland and are preparing to launch, so if you want to help (webdesign, funding, legal advice, any kind of feedback) drop me a line at wojtek@contentio.co.

And if you’re looking for a job, don’t forget to reach out to Rahim Blak from Clickcommunity - they’re currently on a hunt for a social media-wise community manager. Those with more scientific talents may want to speak with Agnieszka Żarnowska who is currently looking for mentors for Uniwersytet Dzieci. You should also get in touch with Andrii Dorofieiev, who is looking for webdevs to help him create a start-up for lingerie retail.

We also had special guests today: Oliver Kempkens, the founder of Adapt or Die Ventures, and Tyler Crowley, the man behind Skweal and start-up communities animator. But if you didn’t manage to catch them this morning, don’t fall into the darkest pits of despair just yet, because not everything is lost! They will be at the Startup Stage today to talk about design. The event is organized by our friends from Innovation Nest and it kicks-off at 7 PM. if you prefer more creative forms of networking, be sure to contact Bart Czarnecki, who is planning a skiing/snowboarding meetup.

And one more thing. Don’t forget to vote for Kraków here if you want our city to organize the Agile Lean Europe 2014.

That’s it, see you in two weeks at OpenCoffeeKRK #25!

A Viral Video Encourages Girls to Become Engineers

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Who said girls want to dress in pink and play with dolls, especially when they could be building Rube Goldberg machines instead?

That is the message of a video that has gone viral since it was posted on YouTube this week — an ad for GoldieBlox, a start-up toy company that sells games and books to encourage girls to become engineers.

In the video, three girls are bored watching princesses in pink on TV. So they grab a tool kit, goggles and a hard hat and set to work building a Rube Goldberg machine that sends pink teacups and baby dolls flying through the house, using umbrellas, ladders and, of course, GoldieBlox toys.

It all happens to the tune of “Girls” by the Beastie Boys, a decidedly anti-feminist ballad that the ad’s creators rewrote.

The Beastie Boys sang, “Girls to do the dishes/Girls to clean up my room/Girls to do the laundry/Girls and in the bathroom/Girls, that’s all I really want is girls.”

One of the actresses in the ad sings: “Girls build a spaceship/Girls code the new app/Girls that grow up knowing/That they can engineer that/Girls, that’s all we really need is girls/To bring us up to speed it’s girls/Our opportunity is girls/Don’t underestimate girls.”

“I thought back to my childhood with the princesses and the ponies and wondered why construction toys and math and science kits are for boys,” Debbie Sterling, founder and chief executive of GoldieBlox, said in an interview. “We wanted to create a cultural shift and close the gender gap and fill some of these jobs that are growing at the speed of light.”

She started the company two years ago, after graduating with a degree in product design from the mechanical engineering department at Stanford, where she was disappointed that there were not more women in her classes.

Women are vastly underrepresented as engineers at tech companies, largely because of a supply problem. In 2010, women earned just 18 percent of computer science degrees, down from 37 percent in 1985, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. The problem, many analysts say, starts in childhood, when teachers and parents do not encourage girls to pursue engineering.

GoldieBlox is one of several efforts to change those percentages. The program Girls Who Code teaches girls software programming, and Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook executive who advocates for women in business, often encourages parents to let their girls play video games so they get excited about computer science.

Brainstorming over Mexican food a few months ago, Ms. Sterling and the GoldieBlox team came up with an idea to make a video that made engineering seem cool to young people. They were inspired by the Rube Goldberg machine in an OK Go music video and the creator of that machine, Brett Doar, agreed to build one for the GoldieBlox ad.

This is a repost of an Article that appeared on the New York Times on November 20, 2013

Startups Gaining Luster in the Golden City of Prague under the Guidance of Wayra: A Telefonica Venture

By Paul Chen

In December 1890 a group of outcast artists from Paris decided to revive the SociétéNationale des Beaux-Arts because their art were considered not up to the standard of the them prestigious Salon de Paris.  Rather than having their paintings and sculptures exhibited among the many at the Louvre, they opened a smaller exhibition where its members can show off more of their craft.  These days, paintings and sculptures of Manet, Delacroix, and Rodin are worth millions each.   

The moral of the story is that it is sometimes better to have the big fish in a small pond approach in startups.  In recent years, telecoms like Deutsche Telekom and Spain’s Telefonica while being giants are giving some very talented individuals and teams chances to do just that.  In Krakow and Berlin, Deutsche Telekom formed branches of the accelerator hub:Raum.  In many Latin America capitals as well as some selected European cities, Telefonica opened branches of the accelerator Wayra. 

While some telecoms and corporations are resistant to the idea of outsourcing research and development to startups.  The reasons are understandable.  The low level of control over product development and the high up-front pre-seeding fee can be concerning to some middle level managers and accountants.  However, in the end both the sponsoring company and the startup can benefit from this model.  Because they are startups, they can concentrate on developing a good solid product and service while being nimble enough to make necessary pivots without having to answer to some mid-level managers.  Additionally, the startups, if successful, will be providing the community with jobs and improving the local economy.  And they will keep the market competitive providing better products and services to the customer.  The startups will also have access to the sponsors’ large portfolio of pre-existing clients. 

The sponsoring company wins by being the first in line to acquire the rights to use the products and services.  The sponsors are also able to add more variety of services to their menu.  If the startup does badly, they can distance themselves from the product and service as the startup is considered a separate entity.  As a result the company brand doesn’t get damaged.  There is probably a tax incentive in having these ventures. 

In the center of the golden city of Prague on the magnificent Wencelas Square sits the Czech office of Wayra.  I caught up with Ms. Linda Kajzarova the branch manager.  This is what she has to tell us:

This is certainly a really great location, why here, rather than outside the city center like other coworking spaces in Prague?

There are two reasons:

• It is better for the startups to have many varieties of food options within walking distance so they can eat and get back to work without having to travel long distances. 
• It looks wonderful for investors to visit a more upscale office in the middle of the city.  That way they can feel the energy as well as the hustle and bustle.   

How does the Wayra Academy work?

In our first round of recruitment, we received over three and half thousand (3,500) applications for ten (10) spots.  A startup can reapply as many times as they wish.  We will always provide them with good honest feedback without any sugar coating.  During their time with us they will have access to the following:

• Fully equipped (internet, furnished workspace, kitchen use, a shower) coworking space in the heart of the city.
• Infrastructure for growth
• Access to our global team of experienced mentors
• Six (6) months of training focused on the topics of: pitching, negotiating, product and customer dev.
• Insider information on all the markets that Telefonica serves
• 40,000 Euro of pre-seed funding given in installments provided certain KPI’s are met.
• Access to our global network of offices, personnel, and community

What does Wayra want in return?

We would ask for 10% equity, first right privileges.

What are you looking for in a startup?

We are looking for startups with a focus on telecom products and services.  We are looking for hard-working, passionate people who believe in their idea.  We are looking for startups that will be able to make contributions to our global community and believe in the system. 

Some cities will try to compare their startup community to those in Silicon Valley.  How do you think Prague compares to the Valley?

There are a huge number of success stories to come out of Silicon Valley, which is wonderful for them.  However, as you have heard from other places in Prague earlier, here in Prague, we would like to create our own pond and success stories.  We don’t really need validation from the Valley.  We know we are good and we believe in ourselves. 

Any early successes?

One of our startups,Datamolino,  was invited to make a pitch at the Wayra Global Demo Day.  They were able to make their pitch to over 300 global investors.

How do you think the Prague Startup Community could improve?

I would like to see more girls involved.  I would like to see more people be courageous enough to take a chance and put themselves out there.  It’s OK to make mistakes, as long as you can learn from it and it improves your idea or product in some way.    I would like to see more people apply to our accelerator program.

Wayra just closed the next round of global recruitment.

The current cohort of startups:

Mapilary – Tracks people in real time as they meet up.

Lion Expo – One-stop shop for commercial exhibitions and exhibitors.

Data Molino – Enterprise quality software and ’back office’ support for small accountancy practices.

Linxy – Offline app that uses your phone camera to look up words for explanation and definition.

Big Launcher (the only Czech startup) – An alternative interface for Android smartphones that simplifies functionality.

TrashOut – Allows users to report illegal waste dumping sites to relevant authorities.

Excalibur – Allows secure login without passwords using your phone as a universal ID.

Remote Assistant – Uses a mobile phone’s camera to deliver real time assistance to the visually impaired.

Networker – A "mobile LinkedIn" for business functions.

WOPPA – Resource for connecting students with opportunites  and grants offered by government and agencies.