Ray Walshe on Startup Europe Awards Jury 2017

StartUp Europe Awards (SEUA) is promoted by the European Commission, supported by the President of the Committee of the Regions, several members of the European Parliament as Ambassadors and it is implemented by Finnova Foundation in collaboration with Startup Europe.

The goal of the SEUA is to identify local role models in each ecosystem of startups across Europe. The local entrepreneurs will become inspirational examples for the new generations that will have a positive impact on changing the entrepreneurship culture in Europe. All the same, the identified local successful entrepreneurs will be very useful for local authorities to define tailored programmes to invigorate their local ecosystems. Moreover, the winners might become gateways for external investors to be active in their local ecosystems. SEUA is a extremely useful tool to build the European ecosystem connecting all the players across the continent: “The Eurovision for Startups”. 

StartUp Europe Awards is creating as well an Alliance gathering the organisers of startup awards (accelerators, incubators, universities, startup communities leaders, foundations and businesses angels associations, etc) all around Europe and beyond, being a forum for the interchange of best practices and networking amongst all the players involved in the European ecosystem.

StartUp Europe Awards recognizes the effort of European startups in ten categories (for 2016): Creative, Energy, Fintech, Green, Health, ICT, Smart Cities, Social, Tourism and Water; in five geographical levels (Local, County, Regional, National and European). It means that if there is a city/local award of a member of the SEUA Alliance, the winners of this award will automatically go to the short list of nominees for the province/county level. All the same, the winners of the county level will automatically be part of the short list of nominees to the regional award and the regional winners will become the nominees for the National award. Each country will provide one startup winner by category to represent the country at the European final to be held in Brussels. 

The awarded entrepreneurs at the European final will receive a winners’ package consisting of:

• Granted access to the Awards Ceremony to be held in Brussels, supported by European Institutions. 
• Mentoring programme in Brussels or virtual (about European funds, training, visibility, lobbying, etc.) to develop their project making it more viable at European level.
• A pitch elevator video for each of the awarded startups recorded by Finnova.

More than 20 Media Partners from all over Europe have been making more visible the progress of the initiative Startup Europe Awards 2016, as The Independent Ireland or Emprende TVE for Spain. Concerning the visibility of the entrepreneurs, SEUA has created a blog where startups have a spot to present their solution and what they have achieved.