Over 100 participants attended the EIT Digital’s ARISE Europe pitching event that took place on 8 December 2015 in Budapest at the Eötvös Lorand University. The event featured start-ups from the six partner innovation centers of EIT Digital’s ARISE Europe program, keynotes by world-known start-up trainers and speed networking with some of Europe’s best start-up accelerator programs.
The pitching day organized by EIT Digital focused on bringing together ARISE Europe’s freshly built network of CEE start-ups and innovation centers with the EIT Digital Accelerator. It contributed to promote visibility to EIT Digital, to its Accelerator and to its Budapest APG as well as to its selected partner innovation centers and their pre-selected startups.
After the opening remarks of Zoltan Horvath, Director of EIT Digital’s Budapest APG, the participants had the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the ARISE Europe program by Fabio Pianesi, Research Director at EIT Digital, and of EIT Digital Accelerator by Dolf Wittkämper and Daniel Michel, Heads of the EIT Digital Accelerator.
Two successful entrepreneurs were invited as keynote speakers to the event. Sabie Valner, E-commerce Expert, and Accelerator Founder who started eight companies and founded/worked for various early-stage VC formations gave a presentation on Start-up Accelerator Models, and Patrick Vlaskovits, New York Times bestselling author, mentor of 500 start-ups made a speech on Growth Hacking mentor.
Following the world-known trainers eight start-ups had the opportunity to pitch:
- Sorel (Vienna)
- Tourismart (Athens)
- Velmenni (New Delhi/Tallinn)
- WattIS (Athens/Boston)
- Comodule (Tallinn/Berlin)
- NervTech (Ljubljana)
- Movvo (Lisbon)
- Pygmalios (Bratislava)
- Simplewish (Vienna)
As a result of the high-quality pitches, the jury selected the top three winners: Movvo, Simplewish and WattIS, but decided that all of the pre-selected start-ups were admitted to the EIT Digital Accelerator programme. The pitch competition was followed by an intensive half-day workshop the next day where the EIT Digital Business Developers and the start-ups sat down in the Budapest Co-Location Centre for a one-on-one speed mentoring.
Click here to read the detailed agenda of the event.
