After two years of digital pitching sessions, Fit 4 Start was back with its traditional onsite pitching event on 26 and 27 October, hosted at Arch Summit, the flagship tech event of accelerator Tomorrow Street. 67 preselected start-ups pitched their business ventures to a jury composed of experts, seasoned entrepreneurs and investors who selected the 10 digital/data-driven and 5 healthtech start-ups that together will make up the 13th Fit 4 Start cohort.
The participants will benefit from 6 months of personalised coaching, ample networking opportunities and pre-seed funding of €50,000 from the Ministry of the Economy. Successful graduates from the programme who manage to raise private capital have the possibility of receiving another €100,000.
Start-up accelerator with sustainable impact
“Start-ups have an important role to play in supporting the sustainable transition of our economy to a more digital and green economy. This edition of Fit 4 Start will therefore also include awareness raising activities and specialised coaching on how participating business ventures can have a positive sustainable impact,” says Minister of the Economy Franz Fayot.
The tagline of this year’s edition of Arch Summit, ‘innovation with impact’, perfectly reflects our ambition with Fit 4 Start.
“The tagline of this year’s edition of Arch Summit, ‘innovation with impact’, perfectly reflects our ambition with Fit 4 Start. We want the programme to have a real, concrete impact on the start-ups that take part. Our ultimate aim, as a government-funded agency and programme manager, is that their successful development in Luxembourg will help frame our economy of the future in a sustainable as well as competitive manner, with the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a point of reference,” says Sasha Baillie, CEO of Luxinnovation.
Boosting the start-up community
“After having had to run the last editions digitally due to health restrictions, we are happy to welcome the 15 selected start-ups to Luxembourg for the coaching programme. Their physical presence here will facilitate integration of our international participants into the start-up ecosystem and the wider business community,” says Stefan Berend, Head of Start-up Acceleration at Luxinnovation.
The more than 300 applications received from start-ups in 58 different countries clearly confirm the international renown of the Fit 4 Start programme.
LHoFT new Fit 4 Start partner
Fit 4 Start is initiated and managed by the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy and national innovation agency Luxinnovation with support from Technoport, the Luxembourg-City Incubator, LuxProvide and the most recent partner, the Luxembourg House of Financial Technologies (LHoFT).
We look forward to creating further value for our innovative start-ups in the field of financial technologies together with LHoFT.
“LHoFT is the expert entity of the Luxembourg fintech ecosystem, and will be a valuable partner for Fit 4 Start. We look forward to creating further value for our innovative start-ups in the field of financial technologies together with them,” comments Sven Baltes, Advisor – Start-up Acceleration at Luxinnovation who coordinates the Fit 4 Start programme.
Selected start-ups
Digital/data-driven
- 2AM – Advanced Materials & Additive Manufacturing (Latvia)
- DèsVu Stays (Luxembourg)
- DPhi (Belgium)
- Eyrene (USA)
- Fundvis ESG (Luxembourg)
- Gonuggets (Luxembourg)
- Stargate RTK (Estonia)
- U Impact (Germany)
- Warden Machinery (Latvia)
- Wiretwin (Luxembourg)
Healthtech
- Poly Diagnostics (Ukraine)
- Posture AI (Korea)
- Surge (France)
- VSPINE / MDSIM (Belgium)
- Wavymeet (Luxembourg)
Photo credit: Luxinnovation/Nathan Ernst