BUILD Solutions Accelerator Programme
At the end of the One-Year Programme, a group of investors were invited to serve as a jury to identify the best-case idea developed throughout the educational programme.
During this Final Pitch event, Epiclay was chosen as the best project group and was given the opportunity to spend one month in the Bloxhub Accelerator Programme in Copenhagen. The incubator helped Epiclay in developing their start-up business idea with the aim of commercializing a real product and service that could contribute to city resilience and its re-naturalisation.
With the assistance of City Facilitators, GreenTech Challenge and BUILDs business experts, Epiclay received tailored and exclusive training, mentoring, and networking; pitches advice; had meetings with municipalities, architect studios, investors; among other activities, that helped them launch to the market their amazing green wall system.
City Facilitator’ Accelerator Programme 2020 in Copenhagen
Copenhagen is a leading European hub for innovative climate and city solutions with a strong ecosystem of business, universities, venture capital, experts, and dealmakers. The customised Accelerator Programme is a unique path to fast track into the ecosystem with the aim of scaling an innovative business idea that will help to create a sustainable city.
The programme took place in four intensive weeks from August 31st until September 25th. With close mentoring from City Facilitator and GreenTech Challenge’ team of business experts, the students got a unique opportunity to develop their business through training, mentoring, sales meetings with potential clients and industry stakeholders, pitches to investors and business angels, networking events, interaction with other start-ups, and a number of visits to relevant hubs in Copenhagen that work with sustainable urban development and innovative solutions.
The programme was located at the interdisciplinary innovation hub and co-working place BLOXHUB at BLOX in Copenhagen which is the heart of the smart city ecosystem in Copenhagen. The Accelerator Programme concluded in a demo day, September 24th, where the participating students present their solutions in front of an exclusive audience including the partners involved along the process.
Check out the detailed schedule here.
FEEDBACK FROM ACCELERATOR PROGRAMME PARTICIPANTS
I think the intensity of the feedback we had every day (at the Accelerator Programme) from different people was something that definitely helped to shape the EPICLAY idea further and then streamline it to something probably more concrete
All the different meetings we had and all the different engagements we had with different people have helped us to define what the product is and make it more refined. It’s about processing and getting to the point where you’re close to something final. I think this has really helped us to identify how to improve ourselves as a company, but also the product itself.
What happened after coming here wasn’t a change of idea but more concretizing, making the concept or the idea of our system much stronger and to look at different possibilities of what it could be rather than what it is right now. So I think the idea just got stronger and broader
We were immensely lucky to have all these different insights and feedbacks and it’s almost like within sculptural work, where you have your block and based on what’s other think we chip the way and it comes more and more to this final product, its final vision. We were able to streamline it. It was very gratifying to know that we can go step by step, making it manageable. Now we have a clearer final objective, and this is immensely valuable to us
I’m extremely grateful to have had EPICLAY here in Copenhagen and been a part of this project. I think it’s amazing to see not just with EPICLAY but with all 30 students how much they have moved both in an academic sense but also in a sense of understanding different academic disciplines or different industries and I hope that will bring them a higher degree of freedom and prosperity in their lives as they move on
Most of the program has been designed to meet potential customers, potential partnerships, potential investors. The most important criteria to make it successful is to follow the startup from the beginning and be in a constant dialogue to design and to customize the program and so I’ve been personally in dialogue with EPICLAY from day one to figure out where are they in their start-up stage.
ACCELERATOR PROGRAMME PHOTO GALLERY
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