Last week was the culmination of two months of feedback and coaching, pivoting, and pitching where 17 teams from 10 universities competed for placements in incubators in the USA, Canada, Russia, Nepal, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Austria, and Germany.
eBridge Alliance is an international network of entrepreneurial universities and incubators towards the development of innovative and impactful startups and solutions. In the alliance, talents and teams with innovative business ideas and a strong entrepreneurial mindset are given resources to further foster their business concepts and incubate them in startup ecosystems where they can thrive and find appropriate partners for co-creation and growth. The eBridge innovation process is inspired by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals because it is impact-driven and fosters responsible entrepreneurship. Based on challenges defined by these goals, teams and talents develop solutions that have an impact on society as a whole.
The two-month sprint program develops startup teams by using domain experts to mentor and coach startups about their investor pitch, their business model, their go to market plan and seeks to connect teams to their first customers or corporate partners. The program is also open to individual talents seeking to build up their team or join an existing team.
As a result of the program our incubator team H&Y d.o.o. led by our former student Sahar Yosef was placed in the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship Incubator at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. She has been building her prototype of a nano air conditioner this last year and filed a global patent recently. She will now work with partners from Germany and the Gulf to begin specking out the manufacturing process and testing her first unit.
In addition, our Start Me Up Incubator at IBU was matched with Mindtrack, a team who has members who are from BiH but reside in the EU. Team Mindtrack was the second place winner in the recent IEEE Innovation Nation competition in December 2020 and now completed the eBridge Alliance program and chose to be co-incubated by IBU and JA Romania. Mindtrack is developing an app to help therapists connect with and treat more clients remotely. IBU looks forward to starting on a custom designed 6-month incubation program for them very soon.
Also, our professor dr. Malcolm Duerod helped design this program with our partners in the alliance. He was a sparring partner to three teams meeting with them weekly, mentoring them and checking their progress. He gave two workshops on business modeling where all participant teams received feedback on their approach to making money.
Watch this video for eBridge Alliance Startup Sprint experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVF5ikXajZo