Mindspace University “Agritech & Foodtech” Autumn 2022

Are you a university student or recent alumni from North Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, and Serbia? → Idea Submission – NOT required

Accelerator UKIM has partnered with Mindspace for their We are thrilled to announce the Open Call for our online program Agritech & Foodtech” – An online educational, entrepreneurial program of virtual classrooms and peer-to-peer networking meetings to help you to discover business from scratch and collaborate with entrepreneurs from the US and Balkan region.

The best 8 teams pitch their fully developed ideas in front of a panel of judges for their chance to win 10.000€, a free spot at a Mindspace Trip to silicon valley, tools and services that will help them launch their start-up, and more.

Application due: 8 October 2022
Apply Now

Overview

An intensive online series of webinars, virtual classrooms, and 1-1 mentoring sessions on a specific thematic area (for this cycle, it will be “Agritech and Foodtech”), organized and delivered by entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, mentors from Greece and Europe, together with Mindspace
and its partners.

Target Group

University students or recent alumni (less than 2 years of graduation) with studies in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Physics, Informatics, Computer Science, Software Engineering,
Environment and Natural Sciences, but also students that are interested in the specific thematic area with marketing or business development skills, all over Europe. Students can apply in teams or as individuals and we help them to form a team towards the end of the second week of the program. It is expected that the applications will be more than 600, however, the program’s
structure focuses on qualitative results and meaningful impact for the attendees and therefore
there will be an upper limit of up to 200 students accepted.

Structure

The program will be held entirely online from October 2022 to January 2023 and includes two main stages.

Educational Part (Round A, B)

This stage is implemented via online webinars and virtual classrooms and the goal is to introduce students to an entrepreneurial mindset, make them more familiar with common terms & methodologies of entrepreneurial programs, understand the specific sector & its fundamental
economic & technological concepts and get an insight on technologies & strategies on a specific thematic area. Moreover, they learn the process of generating an idea and get trained in the
Business Model Canvas principles so as to structure their idea as they should submit a business model canvas. The best teams that will be selected from a judging committee will enter Round C, during which they are getting 1-1 mentoring sessions so as to interact with their mentors and improve their ideas.
To be more specific, each mentor joins his/her session via an online webinar for a big audience
(using our online platform through which the program will be implemented) and gives a presentation about the topic that he/she selected out of a pool of topics which touch upon the
specific thematic area. At this round, there are no group mentoring sessions nor any 1-1 interaction with the attendees is required as the audience will be big. That being said, it is upon
the mentor’s decision whether he/she would like to interact more with the audience, ask questions, do a quick Q&A or discussion with the attendees at the last part of the session or
close the session. Moreover, mentors also have the opportunity to do their sessions in the format of a workshop or work on a specific case study during their session. In that case, they can also upload the training resources or exercises for the participants to be prepared for it prior to the session and send us the material as we are responsible for uploading it to our platform and letting the students know about the session’s agenda. These two rounds will last for 4 weeks during mid-October to mid-November and ideally each mentor is asked to dedicate
(without the preparation that they will make themselves prior to their session) about 1,5 hours,
holding one session based on the selected topic.

1-1 group mentoring sessions(Round C)

The 10 best teams that were selected attend Round C to have a 1-1 interaction with the mentors so as to dive into more details and experiment with entrepreneurial tools in order to finalize their business model & create a small prototype or a pitch video. Each mentor will be
engaged for one or two mentoring sessions to help the teams improve their idea for the final pitch. Moreover, the platform that will be used in the program would allow for the mentors to interact with the teams through chat inside the platform as well. This round will last for 10 weekdays during December, and ideally, each mentor is asked to dedicate (without any prior preparation needed at this stage) about 2-4 hours in total. Moreover, each team gets a public speaking and presentation workshop to prepare their pitch for the finals.

Finals

The 3 winners are selected by a judging committee, claiming monetary prizes, sponsored Trips to the USA and access to major incubation and acceleration programs, as well as additional rewards.

Expected Impact

• Contribution to unemployment relief through new business ideas based on market needs and development of entrepreneurial & public speaking skills.
• > 150 students with different academic backgrounds will get introduced to
  entrepreneurship terms and utilize effectively their skills & knowledge based on
  opportunities that are available in that specific industry.
• Vital networks & partnerships between students – mentors & among students will be created, realizing the importance of operating in teams.
• > 150 students will be involved in entrepreneurial projects and bridge the European academic environment with business needs in that specific industry
• > 25 mentors & judges will contribute to the program, establishing new role models in the
  youngest generations.
• > 20 videos/webinars & training material will be created under this thematic topic,
  inspiring students in similar programs to innovate in their profession & tackle future challenges.

Apply Now