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During the current global crisis, all Startup Commons online innovation entrepreneurship curriculum courses are made globally available for free. Dear friends of Startup Commons, As COVID-19 spreads at a rapid rate, we want to inform you on how we are addressing this unprecedented challenge. Our Startup Commons family is spread across the world: our staff, partners, contributors, clients, etc. and we know that many people in the communities in which we operate have already been affected. As a company operating globally, we have lived and faced many challenges throughout our extensive experience. And as entrepreneurs, we have lived through financial crises like dot com bust, 9/11 and 2008 in our own businesses earlier. This is an extraordinary situation that forces us to give our best at this difficult time, understanding and valuing our position in the world so far but also analysing, committing and taking action about how we can contribute to cope with this situation now and how we can positively impact the future to help overcome tragedies like the one we are experiencing now. This fight against COVID-19 has health but also social and economic implications. Many people are losing their jobs and many businesses are closing. We at Startup Commons, as a company operating in the innovation entrepreneurship scene, are here to serve individuals and organisations that are working towards promoting innovation and entrepreneurship with a target to democratise and scale entrepreneurship and innovation for new opportunities, job creation and producing more innovative companies that can also provide solutions for challenges like this terrible thread we are suffering now. While in most parts of the world, at the moment we are faced with the uncertainty and negative impacts of COVID-19, from our experience and also statistics from the past, we also know that once the world rebounds, it will always come with more new opportunities and more and more innovative companies. That’s the reason why for now, we have decided to open and make all Startup Commons online innovation entrepreneurship curriculum courses globally available for free to create an opportunity for anyone from anywhere in the world, to be better prepared for the positive opportunities during and after this pandemic. From our humble position, only by opening as fully free for everyone, we will be contributing to empower people and organisations towards building a more vibrant business environment for entrepreneurs, startups and SMEs in general, and also for individuals to create new opportunities, jobs and new businesses. Please, use the code STAYATHOME to get 100% discount for Startup Commons has developed the innovation entrepreneurship curriculum fully as an ‘open source’ resource and in the following weeks, we will work hard to strengthen our team to support in a more effective way our global open community and to reach out even further into every corner of the world, with the aim to spread this content faster than COVID-19 and eventually help as many people as possible to overcome this hard economic situation.
Finally, on behalf of our whole Startup Commons team, we want to send our warmest support to any affected family and ask that you take the necessary precautions to stay healthy by following the recommendations of the health authorities. Óscar Ramírez, CEO Startup Commons  Startup Commons launching Ecosystem Development Academy Startup Commons is launching Ecosystem Development Academy based on our over 10 years of field experience and working 'on the ground' with over 30 startup ecosystems around the world since 2014, varying from early stage to more mature levels. Ecosystem development as an 'industry' is evolving with significant impact on the economic development and prosperity of societies at large. Its performance is a key engine to generate new and more innovative companies, attract talent and investment and employment fitting the needs that digital economy demands. Startup ecosystems are the "R&D departments" of Smart Cities. It becomes more necessary than ever to understand the mechanisms and dynamics of startup ecosystems: Founders looking for co-founders, talent looking for ideas and support, investors looking to invest, companies looking for partners, lenders looking to provide working capital, corporates looking new innovations to existing problems and opportunities for their customers and markets. The list goes on and on. What is the Ecosystem Development Academy about? During our past five years, we have globally validated that those looking after the ecosystem development are missing a holistic structure and digital solutions that are able to connect all the dots and bring more efficiency to all ecosystem stakeholders. Few of the key challenges are the lack of structuring the knowledge that already exists out there are:
In our mission to scale innovation entrepreneurship globally via ecosystem development, - our commitment is to deploy the most complete globally neutral training program in the world for ecosystem development, - to educate and empower the current and future generation of ecosystem builders, developers and operators, along with any individuals and entities who focus on economic development via entrepreneurship, innovation for new job creation and to attract investments. Including actors from function like policy makers, incubators, accelerators, corporates, universities, investors, tech parks, business schools, researchers, etc. Through a series of four live webinars, we seek to accelerate the pace of ecosystem development and growth by empowering participants with practical framework, globally validated knowledge, KPI's and tools for ecosystem orchestration to better support innovation entrepreneurship and increase the likelihood of generating more innovative companies in volume. Ecosystem Development Academy include four Modules that are delivered in four separate live webinar sessions Schedule: 10th, 17th, 24th and 31st of October at 4:30 PM CET. Duration: 2.5 - 3h per module. Total price of 499 EUR per person. Price include presentation materials, tools, frameworks, documentation and live webinar session recordings. Joining the webinars as a team? Get 20% discount for groups of three or more people. For additional information and questions, leave your message here. This live webinar along with all tools and materials provided along with it, is based on our 'on-site' Ecosystem Development Workshop - format and materials (value 9 500 EUR), that we have provided, iterated and validated over past five years with dozens of ecosystems globally.
There are more than 4 500 cities in the world with population over 100 000 people and more than 500 with population over 1M people. By expanding our 'on-site' ecosystem development workshop and consulting approach into more affordable and scalable webinar series, we make this knowledge available to all ecosystems around the world, to help align, connect and accelerate more ecosystems development that we could ever be able to reach with analogue means. Don't miss out this opportunity to gain the perspective and experience you need to start making the impact that your ecosystem needs. Taking the journey with Startup Commons will give your ecosystem a more efficient way to develop and thrive.  As we are preparing for the second half of 2019, we have seen more and more requests, plans and developments around digital transformation within the startup ecosystems we are working with, where many are seeing the benefits of the open standards based digital approach to gain efficiency and to embrace common objectives to become digitally connected and truy data-driven for in their ecosystem orchestration and development. "Ecosystem Development and orchestration is complex and challenging, in digital level it becomes even more unforgiving, where any vagueness needs to become specific and clearly defined. - As such it's also very important to create a common language between the technical teams; system admins, software developers, technical project leads etc. and ecosystem development and operations teams from the non technical side; operations manager, project managers, policy makers etc." In majority of ecosystems there exists silos with steep gaps in between "tech stuff" and "business operations", where very little common understanding, language and operative development exist between these two. At the same time, if "business operations teams" don't understand how the digital world and tech stuff work in practise, what are the modern technical capabilities and how these technologies are evolving, it's hard to communicate how the digital solutions should be build. At the same time if "tech teams" don't understand what should be built, why and how it should work?, - it's close to impossible to build anything that actually works as expected in ecosystem level.  We at startup commons work tirelessly not only to build and validate such technical solutions, but also work hard in building more common language, understanding and practical collaboration to bring these two key sides to work more closely. As both sides have knowledge and skills that are crucial in successful digital transformation to be successful for any ecosystem. - And in here the Open Standard Data Model is at the very centre of this work, as data itself is key at all levels and is more easily understandable to all parties. Why is all this so important?Different ecosystems around the world have already realized that they can no longer operate in application silos as it will essentially kill real process level collaboration and trust between organizations that is needed to collaborate in practise to build strong ecosystems together. And that portals alone bring limited solutions without infrastructure underneath making the data flow between different applications and the portal. Using humans to manually move data between silos is not what digital ecosystems are about.  Solving this challenge at local ecosystem levels and beyond, require, long term, systematic development, done collectively by the entire ecosystem to drive benefits for entrepreneurs, startups, corporates and all other ecosystem actors alike.  Also by choosing to expand this ecosystem collaboration efforts for data connectivity to regional, national and global level, - to build open data model standards for how these applications can share data, all collaborating ecosystem actors in different functions functions, can start creating and collaboratively developing a common digital language to lay the groundwork for enhancing trust in data and have models for scaling their technologies and use of these technologies effectively. This Open Standards model is emerging as a fundamental prerequisite prior to be able to adopt any new technology application or solution for ecosystem management and development. Open Standard Data Models help ecosystem actors connect and enable the flow of data in any key information within and between ecosystem applications; the movement of talents, startups, activities, services, etc. extending outside their own systems. With this approach, they are taking the crucial first step toward their (eco)system interoperability, which is key to enhancing collaborations and building locally, globally and business vertical connected ecosystems. Additionally, for data to be productive in various uses within an ecosystem, open standards provide structure for consistency to the vast amount of data already available and new data being collected for various research, reporting, analytics, matching, evaluation, registration, funding etc. purposes, as well as to move any data easily between disparate, manual and/or automated systems. As ecosystem actors are evaluating the enrichment of the data they’re collecting, standards ensure that efficiency, connectivity and sharing is always an "built-in". Join Our WebinarStartup Commons is doing a FREE webinar on Tuesday, July 9th, 2019, 3 - 5.00 pm CEST where we will discuss about these topics and will launch 'The Declaration of Open Standards Ecosystem Framework Principles' -model, to ignite building a global movement that enables, supports and facilitates ecosystem interoperability. In addition we will be discussing the technical implications behind this approach and our next level effort to support volume of local ecosystems digital transformation journeys in more iterative step by step approach, but globally scalable way. If you are part of Tech Team, make sure to invite your Business Operations team members as well. If you are part of Business Operations team, make sure to invite your Tech Team members to join as well. This webinar is designed for both sides in mind!
 This week Startup Commons started a promising collaboration with the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA), the main forum for discussions and decisions of the Brazilian agribusiness. The principal goal of this project is to map the existing startups in the country that are focused on agriculture to get the “big picture” of how the entire ecosystem works. Mapping a startup ecosystem is more than just create a good map to show who is who in one city or region. It's a crucial work at different levels and in this post we shared time ago you can have more details about that. The first step has taken place already with the aim to level the knowledge about startup ecosystem development of the participants: the Regional Administrations of the National Rural Apprenticeship Service (Senar) and the Agriculture and Livestock Federations of Bahia, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and Rondônia. The representatives of these five states participated in a workshop held at the headquarters of the CNA System in Brasilia in which our ecosystems experts explained our methodology and framework that will be put in practice. "We want to map the innovation ecosystem and the workshop will serve to have a common language in order to understand how the methodology works and how the work will be done in each state", explained Paulo Araújo, knowledge Innovation coordinator and Innovation Board of Senar. The intention is to know the maturity degree of the ecosystem and, later, to extend to the rest of the Country the mapping methodology developed by Startup Commons. "We want to identify the startups structure in the country in order to foster the technology development in each region where there are favorable conditions", said Carlos Frederico Dias, ICNA technical coordinator.  Regarding the workshop program, it includes topics such as:
In case you want to learn more about startup ecosystem development, you can visit this page to get an overall view. "Our goal is to make an accurate ecosystem diagnosis to define a strategy for startups development. We understand that the promotion of startups and of digital transformation is the next revolution in the agricultural sector. " "We are starting. The knowledge acquired in the workshop is really important in order to add to the other projects that already exist a Technical and Managerial Assistance", said Kennio Freire Pessoa, supervisor of Senar Rondônia. Débora Chagas, IT and Startups coordinator for Sebrae Rio Grande do Sul, said that the country has already around 20 startups focused on the agricultural sector due mainly to the demand of the rural producer. "Mapping the ecosystem will help us to get stronger and to put in practise more effective actions, because for now we do not work for the ecosystem as a whole but only for individual units". The workshop was given by our consultants Valto Loikkanen and Óscar Ramírez, experts specialized in innovation training and ecosystem development consulting. “This is the starting point to understand what happens at different levels in Brazil, to find out what is in the sector and so plan what can be done", said Óscar Ramíres, CEO of Startup Commons. Are you a consultant or an entrepreneur?
- Learn more about Growth Academy Online Training & Certification Programs Download our startup booklet and watch our videos to learn more about our framework to help startups to grow without "reinventing the wheel" and without wasting lot of time trying to connect the dots. The framework is based on the startup development phases and aims to remove the highest universal risks on the startup journey. Following a discussion of an entrepreneur that was lacking the right idea, we came across a post where an entrepreneur was asking the community for startup ideas he could consider for his first startup venture. He quite simply wasn’t able to come up with anything that he could be that passionate enough about to pursue. What’s fascinating, but not surprising, is the community replied with ideas they came up with which could become his next startup venture! We say ‘fascinating’ because some years ago this would have been a joke. How can someone ask for innovative startup ideas expecting people to share them when these ideas could be worth millions right? We say ‘not surprising’ because attitudes towards ideas have changed and in this highly networked and collaborative world we live in connected by the web, more people realize it’s not just about ideas, but what you can build on top of them that really counts in business. This is happening also because entrepreneurship education is taken more seriously nowadays.  “Ideas” are separate from “execution” just as open source software is different from running a business using open source software. Take the concept of cloud computing for example. The hardware and resources and the concept are not only shared, but developed to allow for collaboration and co-creation of solutions and businesses on top of what exists to provide people with something more. In today’s environment, ideas, concepts, business models and even software are universally shared and available it’s more about who builds business (or something else) on top of them. While many traditional businessmen and entrepreneurs still worry about the security of “ideas” when it comes to crowdfunding or working within a community like Startup Commons, the paradigm shift in how innovation is happening and new startups are born has already begun and keeping ideas close to one’s chest is not a part of that changing trend. How many startups can you name where the idea alone was the key driver of their success? That they had to keep the idea secret and it would be truly impossible for more established actors to steal? You are probably drawing a blank here. Also as entrepreneurs should fall in love with their ideas, in order to be able to commit several years to their venture – how many entrepreneurs fall in love with other people’s ideas? Commitment is the start of the venture and if cracks appear in the commitment, it will show along the way regardless of what type of patchwork you employ to cover the cracks. It takes more than one man with an idea to make things work and build successful startups which is why building on it with the right people becomes paramount. So before we cling on to the notion that publishing an idea is the end of your possible venture remember: Being a startup is nothing else than being an architect in using existing ideas, concepts and software “legos” to solve existing market and customer problems with a great team. Building value relies on the execution and funding can be one of the enabling forces. The idea is only the beginning.  Startup Commons has released entire Growth Academy innovation entrepreneurship curriculum training materials with more than 700+ slides, along with supporting booklets for free co-development and use.
All is released under Creative Commons licensing and in editable format. The curriculum is built, designed and refined over the years to increase the volume of entrepreneurship and likelihood of startup success by focusing on removing or reducing the biggest “universal risks” and to educate about optimal methods and structures. To give more support during learning process and to train future coaches, we created a serie of training webinars and certification programs.  “Who are your main competitors?” How many times have you heard an entrepreneur tell you that “there is no competition” and that they are alone in the entire, vast market? It’s not uncommon that entrepreneurs, especially first time ones without strong entrepreneurship education, have a rosier picture of the world than the intense reality that exists. And it is even natural that as entrepreneurs have to build themselves up, boost their own confidence, it might get translated into some of the less fortunate avenues. Why is this an issue? First of all, whenever any experienced individual hears the words “no competition” and other expressions like it, it sets off alarm bells. No competition means no market, right? Or at the very least it means that the entrepreneur hasn’t realized who their competition is at the moment and who they will be down the line. But not to pick on this one case, but rather outline a broader issue of misplaced optimism. The case of competition is just one topic, but there are many other ‘little things’ that raise red flags.  There are seldom startup cases where something is unique, even though the entrepreneurs would gladly see it that way. Having an idea is great, it would be awful if people didn’t have ideas, but an idea alone is worth nothing. Execution and putting your money where your mouth is, commitment to building your venture and attracting others to join you, that’s already worth something. However rest assured you will be challenged on the journey to the top. Especially as you get to a certain point, build significant interest around you, even turn away investors and get just the right investor on board, it’s easy to fall complacent and think it will get easier. True, some things will get easier, but some things will get a lot more complicated. With entrepreneurship, it’s never over. It’s easy to think, that when I do A, B and C, then we will be successful and the stormy seas will settle down. Truth be told, sometimes that thinking is what saves the day, but in the long term that will be a fallacy that might drive one nuts. And pretending that the ride will not be bumpy, might quickly prove dangerous with more stakeholders in the venture. Entrepreneurs should always be conscious of the signals they are sending to different stakeholders, since it will affect expectations of those working with you in whatever capacity. If the expectations are not met, it will create problems explicitly and implicitly. How to solve these problems is one part, but planning for the bumpy ride and communicating it to the team behind the venture may be an instrument to keep eyes open and defuse ugly situations ahead of time. There are problems when you have no money, but there are more problems when you have a lot of money. Naturally the problems present themselves in different stages of startup ventures and are of various different characteristics, but the challenges an entrepreneur faces are the core part of entrepreneurship and doing something new. The sooner you realize that it’s not the sunny day once a year that you should look forward to, but rather learn to enjoy the storm, the sooner you’ll build a sustainable model for handling the needed growth. After all, entrepreneurs are a crazy bunch. If you want to increase the likelihood of startup success by focusing on reducing the biggest universal risks on the journey, check out our digital knowledge library:  We came across a great article in Bloomberg Business week with a topic “Why Boulder is America’s Best Town for Startups“, the article talks about Boulder and how they have build their startup ecosystem and also what is a good role for government. We think this is a very timely topic to many cities around the world, so we wanted to also cover this topic here as well. There’s no denying the power of the Silicon Valley as the global leader when it comes to startups. That said, it really does not help so much the people outside the Valley and even less the cities around the world that are trying to build their own vibrant startup ecosystem and that’s why we see the case for Boulder Colorado, much more appealing for cities around the globe to take a note. The history of Silicon Valley goes all the way back to great gold rush, so it’s easy to understand, that the model to build a such ecosystem can not really be learned from the Valley alone. There have also been many posts about this topic, like this Article by Fred Wilson “Startup Ecosystems Take Time“, where he also points to some other articles. The main point about these discussions is about “how long does it take?” If Silicon Valley have been 50 years of making, Fred and others seem to agree that for any new ecosystem it will still take decades to build and get it work, but here’s where we disagree. It does not need to take that long and that’s good news for cities that are just starting to see the undeniable change force of the entrepreneurship and are in their early days of building a functional local startup ecosystem. We think this article in Bloomberg Business week explains a great example of how long (or short) in reality it can take to build a vibrant ecosystem, when it’s driven with passionate people and the whole city is behind it. As shown in Boulder it only took about 4-5 years and that’s less that what Fred and others are thinking.  So what are the new factors that accelerate the process of building the local startup ecosystem?
Our favorite method to showcase the fast pace of online is a video by the Socialenomics author Erik Qualman, where he also describes the size of Facebook as: “if Facebook would be a country it would be the 3rd largest country in the world”. This says a lot, but at the same time if all Internet users would be a country it simply would be the largest country in the world, and there too a startup ecosystem is needed and that’s why Startup Commons is focused on Ecosystem Development.  In that article, there’s also a great side note about what governments should do and this is a very important detail to take a note:
We strongly agree, this is crucial for any government and other public organizations to understand: the best thing they can do is to facilitate, but other than that let people shape it. In global level this is very much our own position as well, as it’s not about what we do, as it is about people coming together to start great things and to solve problems of all kinds. So we too only build tools to facilitate this, by taking our role to develop and serve the needs and activities for those using our platform. But we also want to help the local ecosystems to make it easier to tap in to global resources and that’s why we are building local platforms that are globally connected, because by combining the virtual an physical worlds and activities together, that will be the real winning combination for everyone. Are you a consultant or an entrepreneur?
- Learn more about Growth Academy Online Training & Certification Programs Download our startup booklet and watch our videos to learn more about our framework to help startups to grow without "reinventing the wheel" and without wasting lot of time trying to connect the dots. The framework is based on the startup development phases and aims to remove the highest universal risks on the startup journey.  eco.sys.tem noun pronunciation /i.kəʊ sɪs.təm/ /-koʊ-/ n [C] All the living things in an area and the way they affect each other and the environment; An informal place without physical boundaries or structured organization to manage it or A place where everything has a meaning and where each function supports the overall function of the whole ecosystem. Much like our habitat, our home, the earth where nature goes by her course to ensure as people, we have air to breathe, water to drink, warmth and more. As entrepreneurial people, we too need this ecosystem or community that we can call home for the very reason that we can then work and provide to people outside this ecosystem. And when we need to, we can always come back home to our safety, take a break, share an idea, plan a next step, talk to a friend perhaps and then get back to work. Why do we need this? Largely because outside this trusted community or ‘our ecosystem’ things are different. People don’t always ‘get you’. Things don’t always play by similar rules. You can’t always bounce ideas off people and get feedback (not for free at least). People don’t even speak “startup language!” Outside this ecosystem things work in more general ways not taking into account the life of an entrepreneur and building a startup is very much different from what others are doing within the wider world. In the outside world, when your business venture fails, you are considered a failure. End of story! The startup ecosystem is different. So much so that even when you fail, you’re not considered a failure but an entrepreneur that just tried something that did not work. Perhaps the worst question you will have to encounter is “what did you learn from it?” It’s not that this community is more forgiving. It’s just more understanding because everyone there is working in a similar environment with a similar mindset and common goals.  Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Openness_and_Collaboration.png So where do you find these communities? Entrepreneurs tend to look for other entrepreneurs like themselves. Investors tend to look for entrepreneurs and other investors. Service providers that cater to startups also look for entrepreneurs and the way to find them is to ask from your fellow entrepreneurs or look for startup meetups etc. This is how communities are formed and ecosystems built. What we want to do in Startup Commons is to build one trusted community that is as close as your closest computer or smart-phone. An ecosystem or community you can always visit where ever you are and take with you where you go. What makes the ecosystem work and how do you participate? The first thing you should do is join in. Next, take some time to listen and get to know some of the people. Introducing yourself and maybe start asking some simple questions. Also offering your help to others is the currency to use. The more you look into helping others is a way you earn your position and to keep asking more from the experienced people within the community. In an ideal entrepreneurial community everyone is helping as much as they can and when they need help of others they can just ask.  Credit: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thonet_chair_balance.jpg The balance between sharing/helping others to what you will get in return grows very naturally between people with different skills and resources under one ecosystem. Everyone has something to give and it’s naturally based on what is the easiest resource you can give. For some it’s time, others it’s knowledge and for some it’s simply… money. These things develop and change with each person depending on their current stage of their own life and their business. Founders at a later stage may turn Investors. Service providers may turn entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs with more settled businesses may turn advisors. So what makes the community to function is that everyone is trying to do as much for the community as they can. In return, they just keep getting more and more opportunities or information until it gets to the point they have so much to follow up on outside, that giving back to community finds it’s natural balance. When things change, all you have to do is go back to the community and start giving again and soon enough you can find yourself in a new venture. The dictionary says an ecosystem is “all the living things in an area and the way they affect each other and the environment”. For us, that’s the environment or area where we can grow as entrepreneurs. Startup Commons is working for that. We are working to scale entrepreneurship focusing on entrepreneurship education and sharing our expertise and trainings.  Startup Commons has released entire Growth Academy innovation entrepreneurship curriculum training materials with more than 700+ slides, along with supporting booklets for free co-development and use.
All is released under Creative Commons licensing and in editable format. The curriculum is built, designed and refined over the years to increase the volume of entrepreneurship and likelihood of startup success by focusing on removing or reducing the biggest “universal risks” and to educate about optimal methods and structures. To give more support during learning process and to train future coaches, we created a serie of training webinars and certification programs.  Imagine two entrepreneurs both equally talented. With the same brilliant idea but just in two different places in the world starting up their venture. One in a Utopia for innovative startups much like the Silicon Valley and one in a place where innovative startups are not often recognized or even understood. Every time you attend one of the several technology Barcamps or startup events organized across the globe, you can’t help but realize just how many fantastic, innovative ideas people have to develop great new technologies and web products. Every one of these events and gatherings reveals new ideas, beta versions of applications and new technologies that are game-changing. Yet, how often do so many of these great start up ideas (especially in developing countries) disappear into thin air just months after they look so promising? Across developing countries which clearly have immense untapped talent the environment to nurture these startups, secure early stage funding and get the inputs required at that stage are lacking. The ideas are plenty. The potential to execute them is abundant. The support framework to help support the idea while it tries to manifest itself into a business…is a missing piece. It may exist but it’s not nearly as abundant as the talent or ideas. In these markets the entrepreneurs seem willing to take a leap but as they do, often find themselves asking “where are the angels???” Having seen a number of startups with great ideas come and go you notice there have to be some inequalities which may influence how startup-friendly or not a place is. Also having spoken with a number of budding entrepreneurs (often first time) here is what one would find if they dug into the causes of their early disappearing acts:  1) Lack of Early Stage VCs & Angel Investors – While there can be well established capital markets in these places most of these are geared towards the large investments segment and not towards early stage startups. As a result too many entrepreneurs are vying for the attention of a handful of investors which means many great ideas end without a chance to grow. (The opposite can be seen in areas which have a lot of angel investors and smaller numbers of entrepreneurs where ideas not as robust can also pass through) 2) Inexperience In Innovative Technologies Investments – In developing places investment activities are more cautious and investments into innovative or new technologies is often considered risky. Investors tend to keep away from this space and those who don’t look for higher returns as a pre-condition for financing. It’s not angel funding or seed funding but loans rather. 3) Lack of Passion & Focus – Entrepreneurs may “give up” too easily without the approval stamp of investors and this could often be a case of ‘lack of passion and focus’. Instead of focusing on results from the original plan they can be swayed to come up with new ideas trying to become attractive to investors by any means except for showing results and building value. 4) Difficulty Building A Strong Team – While talent in places can be plenty it doesn’t mean that talent will be accessible for free or even for equity. While entrepreneurs for whom funding is a challenge, securing the talent needed to build his / her core team would be an even bigger challenge as it’s hard to find the right people who have a similar belief in the idea and an entrepreneurial mindset willing to work for equity or future reward. Startup Commons has created a Shareholders' Agreement and Team Building Workshop that could be useful in this case.  5) Lack Of Guidance & Mentors – Having good guidance is critical especially for relatively less experienced entrepreneurs and no matter how great the idea is, making the right choices and sharpening the business as one goes along is important. It’s nice to have the right set of people to bounce ideas and questions off. It’s not always easy in a number of places. Without a nurturing environment where the business can get regular inputs in the form or knowledge and advice mistakes which have already been made by others in the past can be repeated. In this case, a good entrepreneurship education and training is really important. 6) Challenging Eco-system – You can’t grow grapes in the Antarctic. The conditions are just not right. Similarly, startups can often thrive in places where everything and everyone around them creates the right eco-system for them to grow. Investors who understand them, people who understand them, potential talent that understands them and knows what they are doing and how they work. It’s almost as if everyone speaks your language no matter where you are. In an environment where the needs of startups are not understood, the job of building one and growing just becomes that much harder. Two similar sets of entrepreneurs in two different places around world both with an equally great idea may not have the same journey. One could be a smooth ride and the other could be like driving down Mount Kilimanjaro on a horse-cart loaded with tin cans…going backwards! Even if the Silicon Valley can't be replicated, wouldn’t it be great if an ecosystem had the ideal conditions for growth so that every good idea has an equal chance? We are building it together right here. At Startup Commons we focus on create more equal opportunities for entrepreneurs!  Startup Commons has released entire Growth Academy innovation entrepreneurship curriculum training materials with more than 700+ slides, along with supporting booklets for free co-development and use.
All is released under Creative Commons licensing and in editable format. The curriculum is built, designed and refined over the years to increase the volume of entrepreneurship and likelihood of startup success by focusing on removing or reducing the biggest “universal risks” and to educate about optimal methods and structures. To give more support during learning process and to train future coaches, we created a serie of training webinars and certification programs.  The H2020 2018-2020 work programme recently launched a new call with application deadline 28 March 2019, aimed to:
A total budget of EUR 10 million will be distributed among ecosystems organizations who want to establish consortiums of 4-5 startups ecosystems across Europe per project, to apply together for a project for connecting activities between consortium ecosystems, with aim to building an ever closer Union of startups ecosystems. EU Commission is specially interested in organisations aiming at connecting local tech startup ecosystems supporting cross-border activities between EU ecosystems, where about half of each consortium should be located in less developed ecosystems and half from top 20 of the more developed ecosystems (on scale up index ranking). A consortium can also include international consortium member outside EU as long as it’s aligned with targets of the call to support European startups/scaleups to soft land and get access to new markets (not the other way around ie. startups to access EU). More about international aspect, see towards the end of this message. Each consortium project should look into developing:
Also additional focus will be placed on:
See also additional details from information and networking workshop organized by EC for potential applicants to the call where you will find more additional details and the official presentations related to it. The deadline for the call is 28 March 2019. Evaluation of applications Three main evaluation criteria are; excellence in form of being relevant to the topic of the call, impact, quality and efficiency of the implementation, including self sustainability (how things developed in the project can continued without support). See further evaluation criteria in more detail here.  Developing a plan for a consortium project based on call details? Building one single digital entry point for your ecosystem, actively connecting between ecosystems and to Startup Europe in a self sustainable manner, is not as simple as manually collecting information from different sources and put it on a map or some application. Key points here are “actively” (should not be only manual) and “self sustainable manner” (how things developed in the project can continued without support). The more there is manual work involved the harder it is to make connections active and self sustaining. Also as one of the new key focuses on this call is deep tech, also solutions developed and build as part of the project itself, should naturally look into utilizing deep tech approaches. Combining, these mean how to get the information (data) flow more automatically and how to make that data into high quality. If these are considered, then there will also be opportunities towards more deep tech solutions to develop later, like use of AI. What could be a focus for a project to apply funding to? Permanently fix the ecosystem fragmentation problem and begin the digital transformation journey within and between ecosystems taking part in your consortium. In startup ecosystems, founders looking for cofounders, talent looking for ideas and support, investors looking to invest, companies looking for partners, lenders looking to provide working capital, corporates looking new innovations to existing problems and opportunities for their customers and markets. The list goes on and on. Everyone and anyone trying to find what they are looking for from startup ecosystems suffer from fragmented, limited and outdated information. So easy access and use of accurate key information (data) about the things they are looking to understand and about people and companies they are looking to connect and do business with is a key for everyone. As long as any given startup ecosystem develops and grows, it has to scale its own programs, services, activities, processes, projects, people and resources in general. This rapid pace of change is compelling to provide a more transparent vision of the ongoing developing and evolving ecosystem in order to communicate in effective way to all users in the ecosystem relevant information such as what is going on in the startup ecosystem, who are doing what and why, where and when are things happening or how different parties can "get in on it all". Additionally, there’s an important speed gap between and disconnectivity with the showcased information and ecosystem performance metrics (KPI’s) with the real startup ecosystem activity that generally becomes into outdated and inaccurate information for all user roles within the startup ecosystem, generating a lot of frustration to users and inefficiency at ecosystem level. When we have been evaluating the core problem, it’s not that the information would not exist or about missing or wrong applications per se, it’s often about manual and/or non sustainable strategy and solution that is applied in projects supporting an ecosystem to increase connectedness. We have validated this problem several times globally. Instead a solution needs to focus on an application connectivity framework and not just a manually populated portal approach, with an open standard ecosystem level data model and related data sharing practices. To establish a digital backbone to enable application level connectivity that can be built step by step and API connections to share data more automatically can be added one by one with smart architecture approach. This needs to be done in a way where during and after setup is in place and any individual connection created, each connected application and data owner can separately decide from their connectivity settings in the system, what data they want to share and under what terms also taking into account GDPR compliance for users to be able to make their data portable between applications without having dependency in any single application. In such setup, a startup ecosystem one stop shop can then be added “on top” to showcase all real-time information flowing within the system about ecosystem people, startups, events, support services, development projects and beyond. Also this type of setup enable software developers or managers of any application to enable connectivity from and to their application to all other existing ecosystem applications via single API gateway connection (instead of multiple different connections directly between multiple applications), and also to build totally new ecosystem applications based on data and connections within the system. If you need inspiration, please check out Startup Commons ecosystemOS model which is especially designed based on these global learnings.  Making it self sustainable Another global key learning is that too many projects created are not designed to become sustainable beyond their initial project life. This leads to a lot of wasted efforts, resources and money. As well as to situations that many projects seem to be repeated, set up by different actors trying to fix a same problem, where often times repeating same things, facing same challenges and gaining same learnings. Also often unfortunately ending with same or similar outcome. Often time these types of unfortunate things are only visible for those who have been working with ecosystem developments for long enough time. Instead we believe there should concrete and more permanent results achieved, that any next new project could also leverage to develop further, instead of repeating projects with limited sustained benefits. As such, a key part of deploying such solution is that it needs to be designed to be sustainable, operated by and organization that is operating under local economic development policy makers and ecosystems key actors strong support and/or mandate (e.g. regional and municipal development agencies), corporations driving dedicated business vertical ecosystems internationally for innovation and key public & private startup support services that operate startup and entrepreneurship ecosystems and offer services to startups, investors, and other stakeholders. If dedicated ecosystem operator who's focused on ecosystem connectivity, systematic long term development and neutral orchestration does not currently exist in your ecosystem, this project is very well aligned for establishing such function, where learnings between consortium ecosystems can be accelerated during this project and related costs can be shared, not only between the EU funding but also between consortium members. As the whole core target is to build active connectivity and as such that also means building digital standards to be able to connect within and between ecosystems. Call to Action! At Startup Commons we strongly believe on research concluding ecosystem connectivity being the most important factor contributing for growth and since 2014 we have been part of projects trying to solve such challenges with digital solutions with 25+ ecosystems. Step by step building these learnings to build an unified network of ecosystems with a shared data platform and standards. Therefore, we couldn't be more pleased to see the European Commission focusing on this and launching this call to fund active connectivity solutions between ecosystems, with key focus on self sustainability and involving deep tech and digital innovation hubs included. Our hope is that this will encourage and contribute the creation of ecosystem operators role with a systematic step by step and data-driven development approach but with a long term sustainability and GDPR regulation in mind, to make services more automated and startups more visible, accessible and easy to reach international markets through digital means. For this to happen, ecosystem builders have to act now to get a deep understanding about what EU is requiring and to start establish consortiums and projects for plans that can be funded. Building a consortium, project plan and application For exploring different solutions and identifying potential partners Startup Commons want to support the efforts of any ecosystem wanting to establish an consortium and/or for existing consortium to find suitable ecosystem partners. You can join and announce your interest via our global startup ecosystem developers group on facebook, send us a message or simply email us. We will be more than happy to organise a video call session with you to explore and plan next steps towards building your own startup ecosystem one-stop shop to enable connectivity within the ecosystem and to support cross-border activities with other ecosystems. Other sources for you to look into:
In addition, those who seek our support, we will support in developing a project and application towards the call itself. As well as naturally communicate about the progress and learnings of all consortium projects we are involved with, to our global audience and networks. International Cooperation Guidelines Notes from the video about call presentation (in about 6 min: 40 sec)
See also:
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