€15m to support ICT entrepreneurship
The Commission has announced over €15m is available to help transform the Union’s entrepreneurial culture, give students the confidence, knowhow and support to set up their own businesses and to help promising web start-ups launch in Europe and go global.
The first €5m is available to help develop and promote ICT entrepreneurship, in particular to students. The call for funding is particularly targeted at accelerators, incubators, hubs and clusters and other actors of the entrepreneurship community.
The Commission also wants to support ICT entrepreneurship labs to bring students, entrepreneurs, designers, universities and professors together in experimental spaces to foster innovation driven entrepreneurship. Finally, the Commission hopes to support a pan-European campaign to change the culture of risk taking in Europe by identifying role models.
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, said: “We need to build a thriving web and app economy which embraces and accelerates the digital revolution. We need to support the entrepreneurs who will launch innovative online businesses which will change the world, and create jobs for our young people, and this Horizon 2020 funding will go a long way to help.”
The remaining €10m is earmarked to support those who have already established their own start-up. The call is focused on entrepreneurs who use web and mobile technologies as the main part of their business model. Services which can qualify for support are those provided by accelerators, co-working spaces, investors, crowd-funding platforms, tech blogs and other players from the start-up ecosystem.
Under this call, the Commission will support projects which develop new services for entrepreneurs in Europe connecting existing local web entrepreneurship ecosystems and hubs, complemented with other relevant activities, and activities to increase the impact, accessibility and reach of the online support platforms and the new services which they offer, as well as their link into other relevant initiatives, notably the Start-Up Europe Initiative.
Both calls opened on 11th December and applicants have until 23 April 2014 to send their proposals to the EU.
