Founders in Europe launches a community-driven accelerator for early-stage startups in Europe

Founders in Europe is a new acceleration community for startups in Europe, which helps early-stage founders ramp up and scale their ventures at a faster pace. Startup founders who are about to launch or have recently launched their business ventures can take part in a 12 week Founders Education Program, which provides them with the skills and knowledge they need in order to ramp up towards the growth phase. The selected high-potentials graduating from this program receive pre-seed funding of 100k and more, a cushion allowing them to prepare for their seed funding stage.

The Founders of the community-driven accelerator are well-know in the European startup scene and leverage their combined 20 years of startup experience: Benjamin Ruschin founded WeAreDevelopers, Europe's leading career platform for tech talents, amongst other ventures, such as the edutech startup Codeversity; Michael Ionita is a NoCode pioneer who has ramped up a series of startups, including RealLifeConnect (exited), MobFox (exited) as well as Walls.io. The discrepancy between the track record of European startups versus their US- & Asia counterparts triggered their motivation to launch Founders in Europe: "We see a huge potential in the European startup scene and want to support as many European founders as possible to scale their startups globally."

90% of all startups fail – Founders in Europe aims to help founders lift their startup into the 10% that succeed

"A number of US-based accelerators support pre-seed startups in scaling their ventures from the ground up. In Europe, we lack such a comprehensive program. Founders in Europe seeks to close this gap" – this is the motivation driving Benjamin Ruschin and Michael Ionita in their quest with Founders in Europe. "90% of all startups fail, mainly due to the fact that their founders lack the required mindset, skills and experience. With Founders in Europe we seek to help those founders who want to make it into the 10% of startups that succeed". Founders in Europe takes a community-driven approach, leveraging the interactions between their participating founders in order to motivate and support one another.

Founders Education: Founders in Europe provides founders with the skills for startup success

Founders who make it into the Founders in Europe acceleration program will take part in a 12-week long founders education program, which will kick off in August 2021. The participants will receive access to a comprehensive video-based e-learning platform, providing them with extensive practical knowledge to ramp up their startups. At the core of the program, the participating founders will join live, video-based learning sessions every week, where they will receive feedback and guidance in order to overcome their most burning challenges. The knowledge transfer of Founders in Europe focuses on five key areas: people & leadership, go-to-market, sales, product, marketing.

According to Founders in Europe's primary market research, these are the five key areas in which founders need support in order to succeed in the early-stage ramp-up phase. Founders in Europe carried out 200 structured interviews with startup founders and startup investors in order to discover the most pressing challenges they faced in the early-stage. The result of this research emanated in the five key knowledge areas contained in the Founders in Europe curriculum:

Michael Ionita and Ben Ruschin elaborate on their curriculum: "The transferred knowledge is highly practical and can be implemented by the founders immediately, from day one. We complement the knowledge transferred with templates, tools and business models that we have designed ourselves in order to help founders make the right decisions fast and drive the growth of their ventures from day one. The real-time feedback and ongoing dialog with the founders provides them with instant answers to their current challenges, allowing them to solve their problems instantly. We act as guides and help the founders discover the fastest track to achieve their goals."

Pre-seed funding for the most promising founders

Upon completion of the founders education program, the most promising participants will receive pre-seed funding in return for equity: "Besides providing the founders in our program with practical knowledge, the motivation behind the 12-week training is to get to know the individual founders personally and screen their personalities, motivation and business models. Spending time with the founders and working with them will allow us to pick the cherries out of the high-potentials in the program" Furthermore, Founders in Europe will provide the participants with access to its extensive network of investors in order to prepare their next seed funding round in a timely manner.

Free Company Building Sessions

Before the launch of the Founders Education Program in August 2021, interested founders can join the free Company Building-Sessions via live video calls. In these sessions, the founders will receive practical knowledge from the Founders Education Programm, immediate answers to their most pressing business challenges and recommendations on which decisions to take.

Press contact: Benjamin Ruschin, (mailto:ben@foundersineurope.com)

Photo credit: (c) Katharina Schiffl, 2021

Founders in Europe
BAM & Partners GmbH
Sieveringer Str. 94/4
1190 Vienna (AUSTRIA)

Founders in Europe is the new acceleration community for European startups, helping founders to ramp up their startups at a faster pace. Startups founders who are about to found or who have just founded their ventures can take part in a 3-month Founders Education Program, which provides them with the skills and knowledge they need in order to take their startups to the first million Euros in revenues. The high-potentials in the Founders in Europe program will receive access to pre-seed funding.