BlockStart aims to increase adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) among SMEs, build DLT capacity into Europe’s ecosystem builders and remove obstacles to DLT adoption at the highest level. BlockStart will match SMEs with high DLT potential (as determined by the BlockStart DLT Assessment Tool) with pioneering DLT developers capable of developing the right solutions for their specific needs. BlockStart mentors these DLT developers through the Engage->Prototype->Pilot acceleration programme with the final objective of testing a DLT solution in real conditions together through pioneering SMEs. BlockStart achieves this by working together with intermediaries close to the SMEs (e.g.: industry associations, clusters, networks) and building their capacity to run their own DLT support services. Furthermore, BlockStart produces know-how on sector-specific DLT maturity, intermediary capacity and policy recommendations to be used as the basis for workshops and roundtables to discuss sector-wide improvements to the framework conditions for DLT adoption across Europe. BlockStart is constituted by BRPX, a DLT Company Builder that has bet on these technologies to be the future, CIVT, innovation intermediaries who are building DLT know-how across Europe and F6S, one of the largest platforms in Europe for engaging SMEs and startups into new and exciting opportunities. By combining these capabilities, BlockStart will demonstrate the potential of DLTs by developing 15 DLT solutions ready to be piloted to 60 SMEs, train over 30 intermediaries on DLT innovation support services, who in turn will reach over 600 SMEs during the duration of the project - and finally bring together 100 participants to a policy conference - setting the stage to continue the work achieved by the project.

The NGI Explorers Program vision is to leverage the EU-US researchers exchange and foster “made in Europe” NGI products and services, through the engagement of Internet researchers in understanding US different perspectives, vision, values and technology approaches, for an uplifted research mindset. The objective of the programme is to support the integration of the EU-US communities, exchange of Internet researchers and innovators, share of experiences and best practices and organize community events. Therefore, we have (1) designed an agile 2-step fellowship programme to favour the growth of high potential Internet researchers from hi-tech startups, SMEs, mid-caps, research centres or academia, to gather and exchange Next Generation Internet knowledge, experiences and concepts, and develop projects with the goal of creating concrete NGI services and products 'Made in Europe'; and (2) integrated this with a dynamic and captivated NGI community through an ecosystem building methodology, developed to attract the key European and US NGI players and build/ exploit synergies. We start the project with 16 US Exchange Nodes engaged (all signed Letter of Commitment). At the end the programme will have supported 30-50 fellows (3-6 months programmes), through >25 US Exchange Nodes, engaged more than 1000 participants in its activities and build the structure for the successful EU-US collaboration in the development of NGI products and services. The NGI Explorers consortium is a fusion of: Tech founders and startups community (F6S), an International innovation and Tech-transfer specialists (IINV) and R&D consultant (ZABALA).

European startups fail to scale, which often is the reason why they also fail in general. To avoid this, Startup ecosystems have to be connected and support the flow of startups from one ecosystem to another. Like nature‘s ecosystems, startups follow the path of least resistance or rather of the biggest opportunities, flowing like rivers downstream, from smaller ecosystems to the larger ones. Following such logic, this Project will connect smaller startup ecosystems to the larger ones through building awareness and capcaity for scaling and providing Soft-landing support. Soft-Landing Project will: (1) organize 40 1-week Startup Ecosystem Discovery Missions with 200 participants from 4 Consortium hubs to Germany, Netherlands, France, Lithuania, Silicon Valley, and India in order to build awareness about the ecosystems and build bridges between them; (2) organize 40 ecosystem discovery mission follow-up events; (3) support the exchange of 60 speakers/mentors for Consortium hubs‘ events; (4) send 96 startups and scaleups from the 4 Consortium hubs for 1-month Soft-landing stays in the Destination ecosystems; (5) organize the European Soft-landing conference on startup migration, connecting startup ecosystems and soft-landing support; (6) produce a White Paper with policy reocmmendations; (7) provide practical advice on scaling and the available soft-landing support on the project‘s website www.soft-landing.eu and build the community around it. Consortium partners are veteran startup ecosystem development hubs, 3 of them have worked on the same Startup Europe projects before (Startup Scaleup, LIFE, Digistart) all of which have been succcessfuly implemented. The Consortium members understand the Call‘s objectives fully and drawing on their previous Startup Europe‘s project implementation experience have designed a practical, realistic and at the same time ambitious project that will connect European statup ecosystems and help startups and scaleups to scale.

The I3 Impact Innovation Invest is a 33 months CSA that addresses the topic ICT 19 -2015 Technologies for creative industries topic c) Coordination and Support Actions on Convergence and Social Media. I3 will support research results from lab to market making innovation happen. I3 will promote a closer relation between researchers and entrepreneur providing mentorship and tutorship support to researchers and providing access to business angels and investors. The objective is to identify the emerging promising solutions and their feasibility in the Convergence and social media sector within the European research ecosystem. I3 aims to connect them with investors, corporates, institutions and media and with Startup Europe Initiative, in order to help them in accessing the market through selected events and exploitation activities. Living Lab approach will be used to allow business ideas and new technologies to be validated with users and community. I3 will implement a systematic policy review and analysis, applying methods that can effectively be used to solve issues in the domain addressed by the specific ICT19 topic, applying data and evidence methods. A Policy dialogue will be run to identify areas in need of further exploration, in order to advance consensus and bring together key stakeholders from public and private sector, civil society, academia and the media to discuss key policy issues. The dialogues will provide a forum for multi-directional dialogue, strategic coordination for the development of new research agendas, issues on regulatory framework and coordination of policies in Convergence and Social media. I3 will be dedicated to increase the projects outreach and impact bridging the gap between the technologies developed and the access to the market, increasing cooperation within the convergence social media ecosystem and liaising with related Innovation and R&D programmes both at the European international and national levels.

Online Businesses are significantly different from traditional businesses due to a variety of factors such as relatively low entry costs, high word of mouth, low incremental costs, high efficiency of viral marketing strategies amongst others. Quick deployment, rapid prototyping, low cost of market tests and introduction along with the right business model and pricing strategy are some of the vital elements that can ensure success or failure. These challenges are quite daunting to cope even for seasoned entrepreneurs but much more challenging for younger entrepreneurs. While several startup initiatives, business accelerators and localised business support ecosystems have come up to provide these specialised skills and support services, the main barriers to a large scale web entrepreneurship ecosystem in Europe are: i) A significant gap between University Students who form the largest pool of potential young entrepreneurs and the business accelerators providing support to such initiatives. ii) Lack of internetworking between the various business accelerators, investors, mentors to coordinate their activities to reach a much wider audience across the widely dispersed European communities. iii) Lack of Business Analytical Tools that can help digital startups optimise their business models and pricing decisions. There is a strong need to develop an ecosystem of web entrepreneurship, where budding entrepreneurs can find the right support to let their ideas blossom into viable business models, with access to the necessary inputs such as funding, mentoring, and access to the necessary technical resources and IT skills. That is why 2 business accelerators from 2 different European regions: Portugal and Scandinavia came together to develop a coordinated set of support actions with the coordination of an academic partner (UNIDEMI) to leverage the use of the largest European Startup Web- Platform F6S for a range of activities that support web-startups.