Next Step Challenge wins best accelerator award at Nordic Startup Awards

The Accelerace partner project Next Step Challenge has won the award as best accelerator program for the second consecutive year the Nordic Startup Awards 2016. The annual Nordic Startup Awards event recognizes, celebrate and connect the Nordic startup ecosystems by putting a focus on startups, founders, CTO’s, journalists, investors and accelerators who have excelled during the year in the Nordic countries. The Danish national finale was held in Industriens hus in Copenhagen and organized by WeLoveStartups for a great night of networking, inspiring speakers and celebration. Søren Lottrup partner at Accelerace says: ”It’s a great honor to win the prestigious award as best Danish accelerator at the Nordic Startup Awards and we are very proud to win the award for the second consecutive year. The last year has been eventful with the expansion of a new program track focusing on Sound & Home Integration, which makes Next Step Challenge one of the only accelerators globally to focus on scalable companies in this area. We are looking forward to the regional finale of Nordic Startup Awards where we’ll be competing against top accelerators.” Next Step Challenge won the title as Best Danish Accelerator for creating the best startup environment for growth and innovation and for fostering startups with the best financial results. The award was based upon the number of public votes and the decision of a panel of six expert judges who were looking at criteria such as funding offered in the nominated accelerators and also equity (%), success rate, knowledge, critical resources available, the startups in the program and number of public votes. Eight months of business acceleration Since the launch in 2013 the program has received 800 applications from more than 70 countries from around the world. Next Step Challenge has a 1^stprize of €250,000 with no equity taken and a startup survival rate of 90%. Fifteen high-potential startups have just joined the third batch and have begun their 8 months of business acceleration and the competition for Europe’s largest entrepreneurial prize. The winner of Next Step Challenge 2016 will be announced in the fall of 2016. “The accelerator model in Next Step Challenge is based on the hard work of all involved, both our corporate partners at Bang & Olufsen A/S, Nupark, Færchfonden and SE and not the least on the many hours of business acceleration the participants get from skilled Accelerace consultants who are entrepreneurs themselves.” says Søren Lottrup. The Next Step Challenge accelerator model offers more than 200 hours of consultancy with skilled consultants and throughout the program the startups will be taken through an intense timeline of activities with focus on testing startup hypothesis and fine tuning the startup’s value proposition & beach head, partnerships, marketing, customer discovery and sales processes. The program also includes mentoring from US based MBA’s from UNC-Chapel Hill university and pitch training to get startups ready for their investor pitch at the award show where the winner of the 1^st prize of €250,000 is found. Read more about Nordic Startup Awards here: http://nordicstartupawards.com/ Read more about the Next Step Challenge here: www.nextstepchallenge.com The Nordic finale takes place in Iceland the 30^th of May where Next Step Challenge is up against top accelerator such as STING from Sweden, Startup Reykjavik from Iceland, Angel Challenge from Norway and Startup Sauna from Finland. ]]>