Horizon Europa Invest project: Connecting investors with EU-funded innovations

Type Project
Status Signed
Execution 2022 -2025
Assigned Budget 3.998.440,00 €
Scope Europeo
Autonomous community Galicia
Main source of financing Horizon Europe 2021-2027
Project website https://doi.org/10.3030/101058526

Abstract

Through the Dealflow.eu consortium, we have established business development services aimed at helping companies improve their go-to-market strategies, traction, and, most importantly, attract investors. The impact derived from tailoring solutions and support activities for each supported startup is significantly more substantial than that derived from mere information and access to webinars. By actively helping startups recruit additional talent, acquire customers, coach them on pitching ideas to investors, and facilitate access to investors, we enable them to grow.

The expected long-term results of the project include:

Increase the number of spin-offs, start-ups, and scale-ups based on digital technology or successfully transfer technology from EU-funded projects. The Dealflow consortium, its actions, and objectives revolve around the mission of bridging the gap between investors and innovators. These actions cover:
1. Prepare, advise, and present innovators to investors.
2. Helping investors discover and connect with innovators. These efforts aim to lead to a greater number of EU-funded research projects being successfully commercialized.
Facilitate innovative ICT-based companies or technologies to reach investment maturity and market readiness, and/or secure initial public contracts across the EU. Supporting companies or technologies to achieve investment maturity and market readiness is a crucial aspect of the process necessary to achieve Impact 1. Consequently, it has been one of the Consortium's core activities. The Consortium partners bring extensive experience in transforming ideas into businesses and have been providing support for research projects related to achieving investor readiness.

Description

The Innovation Radar, which identifies high-potential innovations and innovators, already connects investors and innovations. The challenge, however, is the lack of understanding between investors and innovators. Researchers lack the necessary expertise and access to scale their businesses, and investors lack sufficient information about research-related innovations. Furthermore, since approximately 50% of innovations face financial barriers, many of them never reach the market. The EU-funded INVEST project aims to overcome this problem by bridging the gap between investors and research projects. It will use data from the Innovation Radar and third-party data, along with due diligence practices, to leverage information and bring innovators and investors together. This will result in investor-ready innovations.

Description of activities

Since the project's inception, the consortium has successfully implemented and improved the entire infrastructure behind the project. During the first 10 months of the project, significant challenges were encountered in reaching RI innovators: due to the GDPR, it is not possible to receive a contact list from the Innovation Radar. Nevertheless, the partners have implemented several actions to onboard EU-funded innovators, and the number of startups receiving tailored support is increasing. The main activities carried out were: - Improving the existing Dealflow.eu platform for INVEST purposes; - Enriching RI company profiles and improving search capabilities for investors; - Implementing an integrated Technology Due Diligence (Tech DD) feature for automated ranking; - Providing tailored start-up support to RI grantees; - Preparing supported projects for presentation to relevant investors; - Developing a long list of investors and planning outreach. - Conduct a Tech DD process for the selected companies. - Organize and coordinate annual e-pitching events. - Organize multi-corporate matchmaking events. - Support commercialization by connecting companies with investors, corporates, and partners. - Define and implement outreach and public awareness campaigns. - Promote the project and its results among target groups. - Disseminate best practices and useful information. - Coordinate and manage project implementation and oversee activities. Deliverables achieved since the start of the project (updated December 2023): - New data to be uploaded to the Dealflow.eu platform - Example of an enriched RI company profile combining data from Linknovate, Dealroom and IR - Report on the first list of up to 700 selected RI grantees - Documentation on support areas and support plan - Report on a typical CxO search process - Report on the status of learning resources - Tech DD feedback report - An example of a Tech DD report as created for one of the RI companies after the first RI awards event - Report on the process of the first successful partner pitch - List of investors that will participate in the first RI event - Digital brochure - Project dissemination and implementation plan - Media Toolkit - Exploitation and Sustainability Plan - Management Plan - Risk and Mitigation Plan - Project roles and responsibilities - Year-end report 1

Contextual description

The INVEST proposal was created to bridge the gap between investors and research projects on both sides. On the one hand, by connecting investors/partners with research projects that have the greatest commercialization and market potential, and on the other, to advise projects on raising capital, identifying and refining their business models, and developing robust commercialization strategies. This approach aims to ensure scalability while addressing the wide diversity among projects and needs. This is achieved by following a data-driven selection process for high-potential projects, followed by tailored support. Providing appropriate support is essential, as ownership structures, backgrounds, market approaches, and challenges vary greatly from project to project. To achieve these goals, this Consortium has brought together market leaders in their respective domains to provide the best resources in terms of: 1) Business Acceleration Services and Partnership Development Expert, 2) Intelligence and TechScouting Platform, and 3) Technology Scouting and Technology Due Diligence Platform. The overall objectives of the project are: a) For Innovators and Innovations, to source, screen, select, and guide the most promising projects towards their chosen go-to-market path and support them in reaching investment maturity and market-readiness. b) For Investors, to resolve the information gap by expanding the innovation radar with third-party data and curation, enabling investors to discover, evaluate, and connect with truly innovative projects. This solution reduces the risk premium as well as the administrative cost of evaluation, thereby attracting new investors and increasing access to funding for truly innovative companies. The main objective of the project can be summarized as increasing the number of commercialized technologies derived from EU-funded research projects.

Objectives

The introduction of the Innovation Radar represents a major step forward in bringing investors and innovations closer together. However, it is not enough, as there is still a lack of understanding between investors and innovators. According to the Innovation Radar report, a significant gap exists: almost half of innovations consider access to funding as the main obstacle to commercializing their innovation. Currently, investors lack information about innovations resulting from research initiatives, and researchers lack the experience and access to connect with investors and scale their businesses. The purpose of this CSA and the mission of INVEST are to overcome this lack of information and reduce the gap between research projects and investors on both sides, thereby significantly increasing the number of startups created from EU-funded innovations. To bring innovators and investors closer together and reduce the information gap, it is crucial to leverage Innovation Radar data and enrich it with third-party data. This allows innovations and investors to find each other and have ways to put this information into perspective where possible (i.e., through benchmarking, pattern searching, and comparison). For this connection to be successful, innovations must be investor-ready, which will be achieved through our dedicated venture development and technology due diligence activities. INVEST brings together Europe's leading startup data platform with company founders and technology due diligence service providers to create the ideal matchmaking platform that can drive a step change in the number of startups created.

Coordinators