The following post has been written by the team of one of the 16 FIWARE accelerators, EuropeanPioneers. We would like to thank them their collaboration and invite all others to share with us as many materials as they might want. 

• Today marks the beginning of the 8 month cycle for "FIWARE ACCELERATOR PROGRAMME"
• 265 applicants from 30 countries for the project areas: Smart City Services, Pervasive Gaming, eLearning and Social Connected TV
• Next round for applying opens in May 2015 at www.europeanpioneers.eu

Berlin, 8th December 2014 – The founders of twelve start-ups from 10 European countries have gathered this morning in Berlin: Today marks the beginning of the 8 month period held by the EU accelerator EuropeanPioneers which is led by Berlin based company builder etventure. During the upcoming three “Welcome Days” the entrepreneurs and their teams will be given an introduction to Lean Start-up and design thinking methods. In addition, they will be introduced to their mentors whom will support them over this cycle. This mentorship includes concept and business model development, milestone planning, user testing, team building, marketing and finance.

Each company receives financial support of €50,000 – €250,000 depending on each project’s needs. A total of €2.2 million will be allocated to start-ups in the first round. Since the fund is from public money provided by the European Union, each start-up gets to keep its full shares rather than give up some for equity. The application round closed with a total of 265 applications from countries out of which only 23 were selected to pitch in front of a jury for the top 12 spots. Interested start-ups can apply in the second round which begins on 1st May 2015. The application can be found on www.europeanpioneers.eu.

In order to be eligible for the programme applicants participating must be active in one of the following business areas: Smart City Services, Social Connected TV, Pervasive Gaming or eLearning. In addition, their projects have to use the technologies of the comprehensive software platform “FIWARE” which was developed as part of the European Union’s "Future Internet Public Private Partnership".

EuropeanPioneers is a consortium of innovation experts from all over Europe, led by startupbuilder etventure (Germany) in collaboration with the following partners: the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS (Germany), Weblify (Poland), Thoughtbox (Ireland) and F-Secure (Finland). EuropeanPioneers is one of 16 accelerators within the Future Internet Programme of the European Union "FIWARE ACCELERATOR PROGRAMME” which will distribute a total of 80 million Euros to innovative companies.

Supported Start-ups by EuropeanPioneers:

eLearning:

• eloptico (Denmark) develops glass technology software to enhance learning and innovation in dental schools and improve work flow optimization in dental clinics. 
• Konnektid (Netherlands) offers peer-to-peer learning experiences by enabling you to find skilled people nearby. 
• Livecoding (Germany) develops a peer-to-peer live streaming platform that allows the user to learn how to create production-level code writes (no URL).

Gaming:

• Zylia (Poland) has developed a system for 3D Audio Sense virtual sound-stage reconstruction through the use of Wireless Sensor Networks. 
• Muuse Labs (Belgium) build products designed to make your digital world tangible. With its first product children can interact in a natural way with technology and play.
• GameGenetics (Germany) is a leading international specialist in customer acquisition for free2play Mobile & Online Games. 
• TobyRich (Germany) develops innovative and exceptional smartphone-controlled gadgets.

Smart City Services:

• AVUXI (Spain) develops a GeoPopularity algorithm that computes in real time at the moment the most popular areas of the world and represents them visually.
• smartdrive (Hungary) builds a service platform for the fleet management of cars. The aim is to increase efficiency, reduce maintenance costs and to reward safe and efficient driving.
• 3Desk (peoplegraph) (UK) pulls disparate information of our personal network into a single profile – unlocking the dispersed value across sites and provide comprehensive profiles with multiple points of connection and contact. 

Social Connected TV:

• Appscend (Romania) provides a cloud-based mobile application platform that enables broadcasters and advertisers, to view additional information on the second screen of TV parallel to the program being broadcast. 
• usherU (Ireland) allows cinemas to sell more advance and distressed tickets by unlocking powerful data about who cinema customers are, what they like and how they rate their cinema experience. 

About etventure:

The company builder etventure identifies, develops and tests innovative digital business applications for companies and on its own behalf in multiple industries. If the market tests are positive, a new business is built out of the idea, either within the existing company or as an independent startup. Also under etventure operates the Berlin School of Digital Business and the EU accelerator EuropeanPioneers. etventure was founded in 2010 by Philipp Depiereux, Philipp Hermann and Christian Lüdtke. The etventure team consists of more than 100 digital and business experts in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Zürich offices.

www.etventure.com