Boosting start-ups

On 21st of May, 2024 Jadranka Petrovic delivered presentation titled „Boosting start-ups“. Through her presentation Jadranka shared the experience and knowledge gained during the visit to the business incubator StartLAB in Brussels as well as using the example of IMEC.istart, an acceleration program to support innovative digital tech start-up. Jadranka also presented the IMEC.istart, an acceleration program to support innovative digital tech start-ups with coaching, facilities and funding. IMEC.istart was launched in 2011 in Belgium as one of Europe’s first startup accelerators. The accelerator uses the funds from IMEC.istart fund, a 30+ million euros evergreen fund to support tech start-up. IMEC.istart helps startups to scale with intensive coaching (through workshops and mentors), with a financial injection of 100.000 up to 250.000 euro, reimbursements (office space), access to network of investors and start-up/scale-up community of 300+ startups. It also offers support in team/talent recruitment and leadership. This accelerator has helped more than 300 start-ups in their businesses as well as to create 39 spinoffs. It also helped to create more than 2800 jobs. At the end, Jadranka gave an overview of a lecture on “European policies and new support measures for SME’s in space” given by Vittorio Bava from Verhaert company, who presented how to do business with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the different programmes and opportunities available for SMEs and start-ups.