FundingBox 2019 Challenges

FundingBox is the guide for any entrepreneur in the quest for growth. Through specialized communities we provide access to funding opportunities, knowledge and connections. Over the last years, we have engaged in the following challenges:

Published in

FundingBox Blog

5 min readJan 30, 2019

Fact: €60M Equity-free Funding For Venture Readiness

We will help top performing startups raise their first 2 million euros in 2 years

FundingBox will distribute a minimum of 60 million euros to 400 entrepreneurs, researchers, startups and SMEs in equity-free funding tickets between 50 and 250 thousand euros over the next 3 years.
At FundingBox we engage with Venture Capital (VC) companies in the design of the acceleration process. VCs help us connect the technological challenges that Governments want to push with the market trends that investors want to invest in. The top ten percent performing startups in our first acceleration batches raised 20 times in private investment from VCs and corporates the public funding they got.
We have challenged ourselves to increase the percentage of startups that raise a minimum of 2 million euros of private investment in seed and series A rounds in the next two years after they finish our acceleration programmes.

We will engage 50.000 Tech Disruptors before 2020

FundingBox has attracted more than 17.000 entrepreneurs, researchers, startups and SMES to our platform. More than 10.000 have applied for funding and close to 4.000 joined the tech dialogue in our community spaces.
At FundingBox we want to grow the community in our platform to 30.000 members soon and to 50.000 before the end of 2020. In Europe, there are 20 million SMEs of which 2 million are manufacturing companies. 1% of them (20.000) are early technology adopters but only 1 % of the latter (200) will disrupt technology.
We believe that if we manage to grow our community to 50.000 members, there is high chance that for a given tech challenge, our platforms will attract a relevant share of those 200 potential tech disruptors.

Fact: €75M For Smart Sustainable Factories

We will accelerate tech transfer in robotics for industry 4.0

FundingBox is partnering with more than 50 research and technology organizations, universities, corporate labs, clusters and innovation agencies on tech transfer challenges.
More than 40 million euros from EC funding are dedicated to help convert research results in minimum viable products that seek product market fit. Also, in matching researchers with entrepreneurs that can become a team and build a company.
We believe that deep Tech will play a key role in the next generation of startups. This will only be possible if designers and researchers in-residence connect better with entrepreneurs. In FundingBox, we are testing tech transfer approach to bring research out of the lab and into the market.

We will help bring “Plug & Produce” to manufacturing

FundingBox is participating in digital platforms investing 30 million euros in smart manufacturing. After the smartphone one, the next digitalization battle will happen in the factories. Robotics and Logistics are key pillars of this digital transformation in cyber-physical environments.
We are partnering with digital platform solution providers and manufacturers to help SMEs benefit from the efficiency improvements that only large Corporations can currently afford.
At FundingBox, we believe that Europe has an opportunity to win the smart factories battle if manufacturing SMEs can access the solution, skills and funding that the Digital Innovation Hubs are putting together for specific verticals and regions.

We will pioneer the Circular Economy adoption by SMEs

FundingBox is committed to building the Circular Economy, an economy that is “restorative and regenerative by design”.
FundingBox is combining design thinking and technology to support SMEs on their way towards circular economy. 24 SMEs will join a ‘Circularity Programme’ with up to 60 thousand euros and Designers-in-Residence.
At FundingBox, we are focusing on the agri-food, textile, health, sea industry and manufacturing verticals to demonstrate the value of Circular Economy approaches.

Fact: €30M For Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Ledger Technology

We will promote an AI ecosystem based on ethical data treatment and GDPR

FundingBox is partnering with 80 organizations to build the AI on Demand Platform (20 million euros EC funding) with a human centred approach with an ethics approach to data and built on European values. We are also part of a compliance platform to help SMEs with their GDPR challenge.
More than 100 AI bottom up experiments and thousands of SMEs will improve their compliance on GDPR will be supported through the FundingBox platform.
At FundingBox, we believe Europe can compete at a global scale in AI if we build an ecosystem of citizens, researchers, entrepreneurs, startups, investors and government agencies.

We will use Distributed Ledger Technologies solutions to develop human centric solutions

The distribution of funding through independent platforms such as FundingBox has resulted in a dramatic increase on startups and SMEs participating in research projects from the EC. Thousands of new small companies, entrepreneurs and researchers are now benefiting from the collaborative research funding from the EC.
The EC is now betting 7 million euros on Distributed Ledger Technologies, blockchain and peer-to-peer to decentralize the distribution of public services and public funding even further. More than 30 startups will build their Minimum Viable Products with up to 200 thousand euros each with the support of partners, mentors and coaches from the FundingBox platform.
At FundingBox, we will build software pieces on Distributed Ledger Technologies for identity management, time stamping, voting validation and payment transparency.

Join our community at FundingBox!