Two successful camps have come to an end!
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After splitting our biggest batch ever into two and kicking off this round of startups by hosting two awesome camps, the eventful last couple of weeks have now come to an end. We believe the camps have been educational, challenging and eye-opening, but you don’t have to take our word for it. As always, we have asked our participating startups for feedback so you can learn what others have gained from joining our accelerator program. The program extends over a couple of months, and each startup is assigned a skilled business accelerator which helps each of them tailor the program to their individual needs. The two camps were merely the beginning of the program, but Accelerace still had great ambitions to ensure the startups would go home at the end of the camps, enriched by a couple of a-ha experiences, new and interesting acquaintances, and potential partners.
Get a change of view
Although the batch is our biggest one yet, we wanted to make sure that the content of the camps wasn’t generalizing or bland, and that every startup would feel enlightened and have a clear picture of their main issue, and the way to resolve it. For Aguardio, which is providing a water-saving solution, the biggest issue was money raising; “For us, it was a lot about raising money. We were already relatively good at it, but how to clarify what kind of company we are and how to approach the market was something Accelerace really helped us with, CEO of Aguardio, Thomas Munch-Laursen, says and continues: “Perhaps the most important thing of all is that Accelerace has given us a different view of how we position our product and our solution to our customers. I think it has been interesting and beneficial.”Realize what it is you don’t know
The participating startups are in different stages, which also means they need different things. Some of them are very aware of what their issues are, while others are not exactly sure. Andreas Chr. Tuxen and Victor Staalkjær, who are the two founders of June Systems, which is developing a blood sampling device to document fetal well-being during birth, learned more about the regulatory side of the industry as well as process and product development, but as Victor Staalkjær also mentions; “Generally, we found out what areas we are not strong in. So, we didn’t know our issues before we arrived, but we do now.” The two young founders were not the only ones who felt some value given by Accelerace. When asked what skills or tips he would take home with him at the end of the camp, founder of Jungle, Kristoffer Hartwig, was in no doubt: “It’s definitely how to simplify and how to target my product,” he says. Kristoffer Hartwig is referring to how Accelerace helped him look at his market completely different. His Jungle app provides playlists for urban experiences, and when Kristoffer first arrived at the camp, he was sure it was all about the number of influencers and followers. He had mainly focused on how many users the app could reach, but at the end of the camp, he realized that what was most important was what the app meant to the users who downloaded it. “I would have never realized that on my own, let me tell you that,” Kristoffer adds.Join a great program and meet committed people
This time around, there was a lot of focus on individual work with the startups, but the 4-day program also contained many workshops and presentations done by different members of the Accelerace team, all being seemingly popular;
“Another good thing was that people were very committed and very energetic about the things they had to say. It wasn’t just like someone had been forced to give a presentation. A lot of people came because they wanted to pass on some knowledge, and people were also very committed to the workshops,” founder of June Systems, Victor Staalkjær says.
Egill Masson, CEO of Akthelia Farmaceuticals, which has developed a new method to combat multi-resistance, was also very delighted with the camp;
“I think it’s been an incredible week, and I’ve gotten a lot out of it. I have participated in many similar programs before, not quite as long though, but I think this was very well executed,” he says.
Also Kamila Kunrath and Sarah Venturim Lasso, the two founders and CEO’s of BlueBenu, which is a company developing a waste conversion system that processes and converts unsorted, dirty and contaminated plastic into crude oil, both agreed on it being a great program when Sarah said, “well, it was like the best program that we’ve ever been to so far.”