Project Europe has unveiled the first cohort of startups selected to take part in its debut accelerator programme.
Launched in March, founders from some of Europe’s top tech companies — including Klarna, Mistral and Delivery Hero — signed on to support the project, in the hopes of helping build the continent’s next €100bn companies.
On Wednesday, Project Europe announced the first group of six startups from across Europe, which will receive €200k cheques and will receive mentoring from leading industry figures like 20VC podcaster-turned-investor Harry Stebbings and Synthesia CEO Victor Riparbelli.
In exchange, Project Europe — which is funded by 20VC, Berlin-based Point Nine and New York-based Adjacent — gets a 6.66% stake in each company.
The deal
“We try to give access to resources, access to feedback, access to hard conversations with Harry Stebbings. The teams who really pick up on that and push us forward will be the ones we expect to do best,” says Project Europe CEO Kitty Mayo, who cut her teeth working for talent accelerator Entrepreneur First.
As part of the programme, chosen startups will meet for “coworks” in different cities across Europe every two months, where founders workshop their ideas, meet high-profile guests and network.
“It’s designed to have a regular cadence, with regular check-ins with their mentors, but we expect to work with each company for about six months as they raise their seed round,” Mayo tells Sifted, adding there is no “apocalypse date” for struggling startups.
“If they’re not going to make it or momentum is slowing then they’ll elegantly exit, but we don’t have an end-date where we say, ‘If you haven’t raised your seed fund by this date, goodbye!’”
Of the six companies selected, two specialise in robotics: Greek startup Philon is building robots capable of performing unsafe or boring tasks; while Norway’s Cerebionics is building a brain-computer interface to enable “mind-controlled robots”, according to founder Agnessa Pederson, the sole female founder selected as part of the first cohort.
Another two specialise in AI agents for cybersecurity: Hacktron, which has staff in the UK and US; and Haicker, which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Rounding out the cohort are defence tech Zero, which has employees in France and Portugal and is building fully autonomous drones for the battlefield; and Stockholm-based Zellify, which helps developers avoid fees incurred via Apple and Google’s app stores.
Applications are now open for startups to join Project Europe in time for its next meet-up, in Stockholm on October 8-10.
The cohort
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/project-europe-startups-harry-stebbings-20vc/
