EstLat-Accelerate

The pre-acceleration program was designed to support first-time entrepreneurs, who has new ideas and are gearing up to join a full-time acceleration programme or who are looking for other forms of seed investment but are just not yet ready for it. The pre-acceleration program focused on the pre-seed stage, taking people from having an initial idea of having a fully formed and committed team and raising the quality of their startups and chances of survival.

Each round of the pre-acceleration program had four distinct phases – involvement, hackathons, mentoring, and graduation. In the involvement phase, efforts were focused on engaging potential entrepreneurs from both Estonia and Latvia in the program. The hackathon phase was designed to encourage cross-border team creation and to narrow down the circle of participants to teams with the most promising ideas. The teams who passed the application evaluation round were admitted to the mentoring program, which was a series of individual meetings and joint events with highly experienced entrepreneurs and business coaches. After getting feedback on their business ideas and advancing their business models with the help of mentors, the startup teams graduated from the program by pitching their work to potential investors on their graduation day.

The pre-acceleration program was repeated in three rounds and was supported by various communication and dissemination activities.

Main achievements:

• 28 joint pre-acceleration events organized (including 7 ideation workshops, 3 hackathons, 6 mentoring workshops, 3 mentoring academies, 6 graduation days, 2 study visits and 1 alumni event)
• 38 teams pre-accelerated through mentoring programs
• 434 participants at project events
• brochure “Quick guide to acceleration” published

The EstLat-Accelerate demonstrated the partners’ joint effort to:

• increase the attractiveness and mutual synergies of the Estonian-Latvian startup scene
• provide hands-on support to potential entrepreneurs in their effort to “start-up”
• promote the willingness to cooperate across borders by supporting the creation of cross-border companies
• raise general awareness on how to do business across borders
• provide follow-up support to the participants for creating long-term cooperation opportunities

The main dissemination channels:

EstLat-Accelerate project website

EstLat-Accelerate Facebook page

Project materials
 

QUICK GUIDE TO ACCELERATION

Impact assessment, replication potential, and recommendations