During the last year, we’ve had heaps of exciting programs aimed at bringing startups and corporates together. These programs are vastly different, operating in different industries, with different companies and a variety of startups. What they have in common, is a curated scouting phase to ensure we find and attract the best startups with the perfect fit for the program.
Here are some insights into the applications for our programs in 2016/17.
Numbers matter
In total, the 2016/17 programs received 975 applications, with an average of 82 complete applications per program. 219 startups entered Beta-i programs, with 101 moving to the final stage and 79 developing pilots with our corporate partners.
We will choose Quality over Quantity any day of the week. Still, having access to a large pool of startups in programs where the goal is to reach up to 10 pilots, it’s vital to ensure that those selected few were chosen from a competitive batch.
The vast majority of the applications were made by startups founded less than 4 years ago (94%). More than half of the startups were founded in 2016 (35%) and 2015 (23%). These are early stage, pre-seed and seed startups with ⅓ having received some funding prior to applying. Yet, the stage of the startups depends largely on the programs’ end goal in terms of intended collaboration.
Global reach
The startups who applied originate from 59 different countries, creating an international environment of startups that, with the right partnerships, can translate into an opportunity for all parties to reinforce their international networks and reach. Continually pushing for a global mindset.
In total, more than ⅔ of the applications came from outside of Portugal. The countries with the most applicants (in descending order) are Portugal, USA, France, Spain, UK, Germany, Italy, India, Switzerland, and Ireland.
ProTechting is based on an incremental model of collaboration between startups and corporates. A startup program designed specifically for Fosun, Fidelidade and Luz Saúde, already running for two editions with a third one coming up.
The start of something new!
The first and second edition of ProTechting attracted 180 startups. The vast majority of them international, originating from more than 30 different countries. The applications were narrowed down to the ‘Top 25’ startups, which were put to the first test: the Bootcamp week. During the Bootcamp, representatives from Fosun, Fidelidade and Luz Saúde advised the startups to help polish their proposal. Whilst advising, they were searching for the best possible business models for potential integration.
This type of mentoring is crucial to the startups, allowing them to better understand the true potential of collaborating with large companies. At the same time, the corporates can evaluate the potential impact of future collaboration and tap into innovative solutions quickly.
What is the role of Beta-i?
At Beta-i, we believe the magic of corporate accelerators happens when innovation takes place at the intersection of successful corporates and ambitious startups. But the process is far from simple.
One of our key responsibilities is to manage the differences in “languages”, processes and viewpoints between the corporate world and the startup world. Large corporations, such as Fosun, Fidelidade and Luz Saúde, manage already profitable, established businesses. The startups’ sole purpose is to disrupt the established market, by introducing innovative approaches quickly, with few processes and limited control. The polar opposite to the corporate.
To foster collaboration, both actors need to adjust their approach and communication. Beta-i attempts to bridge the two worlds to build an open platform for innovation.
What was the outcome of collaboration?
ProTechting was a great success. The first goal was to have 2 to 3 startups working together with Fosun to test their solutions. Currently, we have 9 startups working together with Fosun, Fidelidade and Luz Saúde in different areas.
Another metric of success was to achieve a change within the internal structures deeply enrooted in Fosun, Fidelidade and Luz Saúde. They wanted to adapt some of the spirit, attitude, and processes of the startups, to better respond to the challenges they face, stimulate a culture of innovation and integrate new solutions into their offering. This goal, we achieved and surpassed.
The positive media attention and public notoriety that ProTechting generated were also important. The ProTechting brand and media coverage generated, reinforced the values of innovation associated with Fosun.
The grand prize: Successful collaboration
At the end of the program, the top startups were chosen to go on a roadshow to China to meet global investors, in addition to winning a money prize. But more important than the prizes, they are developing meaningful collaborations with Fosun, Fidelidade and Luz Saúde.
Winners of 1st edition
Ectosense leverages mobile technology to measure and analyse the user’s sleep quality in their home environment to improve quality of sleep, particularly for those that suffer from sleep disorders.
Lifesymb is a high-tech startup with a software that uses multiple sensors to analyse a person’s posture and provides insights about ideal movements using machine learning.
Winners of 2nd edition
Amiko is redesigning respiratory care through the use of Quantified Medicine. The pilot consists of two qualitative studies, one with healthcare professionals from Luz Saude and one with patients living with a chronic respiratory condition.
Bdeo has developed a visual claim solution for the insurance industry.The pilot aims to test the platform for carrying out damage assessments remotely using the mobile camera.
Visor.ai offers a virtual customer support advisor by using artificial intelligence. The pilot aims to analyse historical data of queries made on Facebook, determine how many can be answered automatically and automate these responses through visor.ai’s chatbot solution.
What were the key takeaways for the corporates?
Fosun understands that it is only possible to thrive in the next 100 years through constant innovation. At the closure of the program, Júlia Gu, Global Partner and Vice-President of the Fosun group, expressed: “ProTechting was born due to our will to contribute to the development of a new generation of entrepreneurs. The Fosun Group itself is a great example of how a small business can go global. We were founded 24 years ago, by a group of students, and grew to a point where we are today the biggest Chinese private investment holding, present in the four corners of the world. We are very pleased with the success of the first edition, which raises the bar very high for this one.”
According to Jorge Magalhães Correia, President at Fidelidade,“this project represents a validation of the bet that Fidelidade has been making in the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Portugal. We believe this type of dynamics brings added value to society as a whole and, as the big company that we are, we fully embrace the role of invigorating this ecosystem, by promoting the creation of new ideas and solutions”.
At Beta-i, we are surrounded by awesome startups and incredible founders, day in and day out. Change is a constant in the daily life of an entrepreneur, which is why we want to update you on some of the startups at our Hub.
Petable
The founders of Petablemade their vision a reality, a networking platform for veterinarians. In 2015, Petable participated in several acceleration programs, including the Lisbon challenge and Deloitte Digital Disruptors. After obtaining feedback directly from veterinarian clinics, they realised the need to adjust their idea. Several tweaks later, Petable became what it is today: a platform for pet owners to keep their pets healthy. It contains medical incidents, appointments, body condition record, vaccines and deworming-health plans. Petable advocates the importance of being part of an entrepreneurial hub, highlighting the sharing and support within the community and avoiding ‘tunnel vision’. Today, their platform has 60k pet owners and 300 veterinary clinics.
Visor.ai
We first got to know Visor.ai in our flagship program, Lisbon Challenge. Their idea was lacking in several areas, forcing them to pivot. With new learnings in their pocket, they applied to another program of ours, Smart Open Lisboa. In the program, they addressed the large quantity of requests and questions facing Lisbon Municipality (CML). The result was a platform combining a ChatBot with human messaging. The project was a success and CML is still using the system today. The founders realised, “if it works for CML, it should work for others too”, and long story short, Visor.ai was born. Their selling point is high-quality, automated responses. Decreasing company costs and increasing customer satisfaction through lower response times. Since then, Visor.ai has participated in several other acceleration programs such as Protechting, The Journey and Startup Chile. Recently, they have received funding, grown to a team of 6 talented people, and consider themselves on the right track to break even.
Future Fuel
Future Fuel was born in Boston, US, and is currently operating from there and from Lisbon. Future Fuel addresses one of the major problems facing young career starters (particularly in the US) – a huge amount of debt accumulated from their time at university. They offer students debt repayment as a service, empowering employers to offer it as a new employee benefit. Being located in Lisbon offers several benefits to Future Fuel, allowing scalable and cheaper hiring. Moreover, being part of accelerator programs such as the Startup Bootcamp and Lisbon Challenge has helped the team in terms of networking and exposure to partners and sponsors. Future Fuel has already had two investment rounds and is continually raising capital for future expansions.
At Beta-i, we are counting down the days until our flagship event the Lisbon Investment Summit takes place. Personally, I am particularly excited about the wealth of knowledge and expertise that will be present at the event. We have an exciting guest list of investors and entrepreneurs, visionaries and tech experts, all coming together in our slightly informal and unexpected, two-day event. Our goal is to bring people from various backgrounds together, creating a unique arena for establishing new relations and partnerships within our global, entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The list of venture capitalists attending the event is nothing short of impressive. Here’s a sneak peak into a couple of the notable VCs you can expect to see at #LIS17. Before you reach out to the investors, be sure to learn more about their previous investments and the areas they focus on to be sure you align with their investment strategy, all of which is provided below. Happy networking!
1. Accel Partners
The Accel team
Accel is an American, early and growth-stage, venture capital firm with over three decades of experience in building world-class companies. It is based in Palo Alto, California, to afford close access to its main target: tech startups. As one of the most active VCs in Silicon Valley, Accel might be most known from its early backing of Facebook, which made them one of the largest shareholders in the social network. The VC has backed several champions, funding more than 300 companies, with most investments made in early stage startups. The team manages to raise new funds every two to three years. Just last year, they announced a $500 million seed fund, a $1.5 billion growth fund, and a $500 million London Accel fund.
Not only do they showcase a remarkable portfolio of companies, the team boasts of impressive partners and investors (it seems attending an ivy league school is a minimum requirement for working there). One of these investors is Laura Grimmelmann, who will be representing Accel at #LIS17. She combines an academic background from London School of Economics and Harvard Business School, with a varied work experience from Bain & company, Team Launch and she also co-founded an e-commerce startup.
Accel has invested in the following companies:: Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, DJI, Dropbox, Dropcam, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Lookout Security, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, and Vox Media.
Renaud Visage, founder of Eventbrite, who has recently joined Index
Index Ventures is a multi-stage international venture capital fund. It was founded in Geneva with offices in London and San Francisco. The team invests in companies across verticals, in both technology and healthcare. They have funded over 160 companies with past investments favoring a broad range of areas, such as infrastructure, business services, FinTech, and entertainment. According to a former Dropbox employee, Ilya Fushman, now a current member of the team, the Index partners were available ‘around the clock’, offering advice, expertise and critical feedback to the team when needed.
Just last month, Index announced a new addition to their team, Renaud Visage, the co-founder of Eventbrite. As an entrepreneur who established the world’s largest event technology platform, he can offer unique know-how to help founders scale their technology and operations. Renaud will also be present at #LIS17 as one of our speakers, representing the unique perspective of being an entrepreneur and an investor.
Index Ventureshas invested in the following companies:: Dropbox, Etsy, Sonos, SoundCloud, Flipboard, King, BlaBlaCar, Squarespace, Just Eat, Lookout, Nasty Gal, Pure Storage, Supercell, and Criteo.
Index Ventures specialises in: technology and life sciences.
3. Notion Capital
The founders of Unbabel, a startup from Lisbon who closed a Series A with Notion Capital
Notion Capital is a British venture capital firm specialising in enterprise software entrepreneurs who aim to transform global markets. They invest narrowly, in SaaS and cloud service solutions, at seed and series A stages. The team can offer extensive support to their entrepreneurs, due to this specialisation with accumulated knowledge and expertise. Notion capital is not only concerned with funding, their strategy is to be value-adding investors. Thus, they have built Notion Platform so that everyone within the Notion ecosystem can access information about their portfolio of companies, partners, experts, ambassadors, future execs, NEDs, chairs and the team itself. Notion Capital also lead the funding round of Unbabel, a Portuguese startup from our accelerator, Lisbon challenge, raising $5 million alongside Caixa Capital. Unbabel were also present at the Lisbon Investment Summit last year.
Notion Capital is sending Alexandre Flamant to represent them at #LIS17. He focuses on machine learning and is looking for solutions in enterprise software.
Notion Capital has invested in the following companies: Trustev, Currencycloud, Dealflo, Duedil, Glow, Shutl, Smartpipe, Scoota, Triptease, and Unbabel.
Notion Capital specialises in: B2B Saas specifically in FinTech, Digital marketing and AdTech, Customer management, Human capital management, Commerce enablement, Dev tools, BI, Big data, Cybersecurity, Productivity, and collaboration.
4. Balderton Capital
The Balderton Capital office in London
The London-based VC started as the European extension of the Silicon Valley Tech fund, Benchmark Capital in 2000, before going independent in 2007. Balderton Capital focuses on early stage, European tech companies, with each investment ranging from $775,000 to $15 million. It is the largest fund in Europe, totaling $2.3 billion, with most of the capital coming from university endowments, charitable foundations, and pension funds. Balderton is recognized for its deep operational experience and international scope. They look for entrepreneurs with direct experience from the problem they are trying to solve, as well as passion, conviction, and a vision of the world that is different to most people. As a result, they only focus on a few deals each year, which they believe to be of huge, global potential.
At this years’ Lisbon Investment Summit, Anna Boffetta will be speaking on behalf of Balderton. Prior to joining Balderton Capital, Anna worked with a business angel investing and advising early-stage UK startups. She is particularly enthusiastic about SaaS, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Media, DigitalHealth, AgTech, and New Space.
Balderton Capital has invested in the following companies: BetFair, Kobalt, Lovefilm, Bebo, Citymapper, Wonga, Yoox, Talend, Sketchfab, MySQL, Sunrise, Big Fish Games, Magic Pony Technology and Tictail.
Balderton specialises in: technology, media, and e-commerce.
5. Atomico
Carolina Brochado from Atomico is joining us in Lisbon this June
Atomico invests in disruptive technology startups from Series A to later stages. It was launched by Skype co-founder, Niklas Zennström, in 2006 with the intention to focus exclusively on tech. Although the main focus is on European entrepreneurs, with its headquarter in London, they also have offices in Beijing, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, and Istanbul. Atomico focuses on scaling companies, consisting of a team of experienced entrepreneurs and executives of successful tech firms who have managed to scale companies before. Atomico’s manifesto is based on the belief that entrepreneurs are the ultimate agents of positive change in our society and economy. Furthermore, they believe that many of the next transformative companies will come from Europe, and that is where their focus lies. Over the last decade, they have made a total of 89 investments in 60 companies, including Uniplaces (a startup from Lisbon Challenge who attended the Lisbon Investment Summit last year) who raised one of the biggest Series A in Europe.
Carolina Brochado is a Partner at Atomico and will be speaking at #LIS17. She works directly with Atomico portfolio companies including Lendinvest, Farmdrop, and Uniplaces, and sits on the boards of Gympass, Chemist Direct and Bebestore. When scouting for new opportunities she is focused on solutions in Fintech, consumer/retail, and marketplaces.
Atomico has invested in the following companies: Supercell, Klarna, Farmdrop, Pipedrive, LendInvest, Uniplaces, Knewton, Wunderlist, Fab, and Jawbone.
Atomico specialises in: European technology firm, in sectors such as curated web, e-commerce and mobile.
6. Cherry VC
The founders and partners of Cherry Ventures
Cherry Ventures is a newly founded (2012) Berlin-based VC built for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. The team has substantial experience in building fast-scaling companies, which potential entrepreneurs can leverage in their pursuit of building sustainable businesses. They focus on seed stage companies across Europe, with 32 companies invested in so far. Cherry ventures provide support for their founders along the evolution of the company, offering advice, supporting the build-up of functional units, provide access to networks, coach the founder and connect them to others.
Filip Dames, the founding partner, founded his first company in 2008, before joining Zalando. He is looking for product-centric companies that disrupt the way consumers behave today. This June, he will be coming to #LIS17 to speak at the summit, along with Ricardo Sequerra, who has recently moved from Lisbon to Berlin to join Cherry Ventures.
Cherry Ventures has invested in the following companies: Flixbus, Smacc, Amorelie, Move24, Quandoo, and Aloha.
The Formlabs team, a startup which was invested by Kima Ventures
Kima Ventures is a unique venture capital firm, headquartered in Paris with an additional office in London. They move with startup speed, investing in 2 to 3 startups each week, globally, making them one of the world’s most active early-stage investors. They provide founders with funding, network, and support, investing in all stages, from seed to series A, totaling over 330 companies invested in. Their ultimate goal is to make the fundraising process as smooth as possible so that the founders can focus on building their business and not get distracted with the problems of obtaining investments. The investment firm has several initiatives that differentiate them from the traditional investor firms. Although recently closed, Kima ventures offered Kima15, an investment structured as a fixed offer of $150,000 of funding for 15% of the company, where startups could apply directly from AngelList, to increase the speed of investment decisions, which were made within 5 days. Now, they typically invest $100,000 to $200,000 per company in the early stages, still with the priority of speed and reducing complications around obtaining the investment. For the startup to track their position in the funding pipeline, real-time, they have launched Kima Status. In addition, they have also launched a portfolio platform, Kima Forward, to further enhance the value to their entrepreneurs.
Jacob Vincent joined Kima Ventures in 2013. Before joining, he worked for Smarkets (an early-stage startup) and Seedcamp (seed stage acceleration fund). Kima ventures have some specific characteristics they are looking for. Thus, at #LIS17 he will probably be looking for seed stage companies, with a complete and cohesive team with stellar execution curves, typically with some initial product or prototype.
Kima Ventures has invested in the following companies: Bluevine, Formlabs, Leanplum, Transferwise, ZooZ, Zenly, Spendesk, PromisePay, Front, Aircall and Payfit.
Kima Ventures invest in all sectors, but mainly considers companies in the internet industry and avoids capital intensive and heavily regulated industries.
The Lisbon Investment Summit offers a unique opportunity to meet these top VCs in an informal and relaxed setting to create unique networking opportunities. You have been quickly introduced to some of the exciting VCs coming to Lisbon, but this is only the cherry on top. We’ve got heaps of other investors and angels lined up for #LIS17.
If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s time to get those pitch decks ready. If you’re an investor, it’s time to brush up on those much-needed networking skills, because #LIS17 is just around the corner.
The healthcare industry is in dire need of disruption. The healthcare industry is facing increasing pressure for change due to external forces such as an ageing population, the prevalence of chronic diseases, and rising numbers of unsatisfied consumers who are expecting more from health care services. So far, incumbents have failed to deliver on the potential of technology and digital information, but the change towards a digital future has gradually begun to pick up the pace. At the heart of this disruption is technology. The digital revolution is enabling change by addressing unmet needs, enhancing the patient experience, progressing diagnostic tools, facilitating the delivery of healthcare and placing the tools of participation in the hands of the patient. To tap into the opportunities presented by the digital disruption in healthcare, Beta-i is powering a startup accelerator for Fidelidade and Fosun called Protechting.
Imagine a healthcare industry where artificially intelligent robots would care for you in the comfort of your own home. Imagine printing medicine tailored to your individual needs as the new norm, ambulance drones to deliver patients to hospitals and the use of AR in medical education. Sounds far fetched? This might be the reality sooner than you’d expect.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence can provide better diagnoses by monitoring and analysing test results and live health data, as well as facilitate personalised care and patient interaction. Intuition robotics recently announced ElliQ, a social robot acting as a social companion for elderly. The technology aims to keep seniors active and engaged to mitigate loneliness and social isolation. Although a robot companion may seem quite dystopian, the technology and user experience is developed to feel natural and encourage the development of a bond between the consumer and the robot. The robot facilitates interaction with family members on social media and video chats and suggest online activities to help overcome the complexity of the digital world. IBM believes AI has huge potential outside of robotics, specifically they believe it can transform mental health care by better predicting, monitoring and tracking medical conditions. By analysing a patient’s speech or written words, what used to be invisible signs will become clear indicators of a patient’s mental state. This can be applied to other medical conditions as well. Ectosense, one of the startups in the first edition of Protechting, uses machine learning for automated diagnosis of sleep disorders which remains widely undiagnosed. The ability of AI to facilitate analysis of enormous data sets also has a huge impact on Genomics and the development of pharmaceuticals. By analysing and identifying patterns in huge data sets of genetic information, mutations and linkages to diseases can be identified. Next step is to develop pharmaceuticals to treat the identified disease, which traditionally has been associated with vast costs. AI can enhance the efficiency of this tireless process by examining various combinations of molecular structures from existing medicines to determine if it would be effective. Atomwise is a company that used this method to create a virtual search on medicine for the Ebola virus. If AI’s would get access to medical records and live health data it could lead to important breakthroughs in the industry.
Drones
Drones are already being used to deliver drugs to remote areas and disaster zones. Matternet has been using its drone delivery system to deliver medical supplies in Haiti to inaccessible areas. The system consists of drones, landing pads, charging stations and cloud software, with the aim to aid delivery to those 1 billion people around the world who do not have access to reliable roads. Rwanda was the first country to launch a national drone delivery network, building a central airport that would allow for the delivery of blood to remote areas within the country. Another potential use of drones in the health industry is ambulance drones. The Technological University of Delft has developed a drone to deliver defibrillators, decreasing the response time from 10 minutes to 1 minute, thereby increasing the survival rate from 8 to 80% in the case of a cardiac arrest. Argodesign, a company based in Austin is designing a more advanced version, where the purpose of the ambulance drone is to actually transport the patient within the drone with a GPS pilot. However, this concept will take some more time to perfect. In the future, drones may also be used more extensively in health care, not just to deliver drugs in remote areas, but also in crowded cities reducing the time and costs of transporting samples across towns during rush hour when a quick diagnosis can be the difference between life and death.
AR & VR
Augmented reality (AR) can show us additional information in a real life setting, presenting a plethora of uses in medical and health care. Augmented reality can simulate the impact of specific medical conditions, showing patients the long-term effects and thereby encourage positive changes in lifestyle. AR technology can significantly facilitate doctor’s and nurses’ jobs, by projecting important information onto the patient’s body. For nurses finding the patient’s vein can sometimes prove difficult, with an estimated 40% of intravenous injections missing the first stick. AccuVein, AR technology, can show the patient’s veins directly on their body. For surgeons, the potential of AR can have drastic implications by presenting vital information in front of the surgeon’s eyesight, instead of on a monitor on the side. AR is also seeing uses in medical education, for students to learn anatomy and understand the 3D relation. Virtual reality (VR) can provide similar use cases, for example by aiding medical training, by transforming the student or professionals to a trauma incident in the emergency room to train their ability to deal with stress and discomfort. Patients can also benefit from VR, by improving the hospital experience. It can help release pain by transforming burn victims to a snowy mountain or transform a young cancer patient to the comfort of their own home.
Internet of Medical Things
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is the connected infrastructure of medical devices and applications that communicate with various IT systems. By connecting patients, healthcare providers and patient’s families, the provision of health care is optimised for better treatment and diagnosis and a faster and improved environment. Imagine, instead of using wearables such as the fitbit externally, one can implant a device internally. The device is then able to send electrical signals to the nervous system to disrupt the diseased pathways to restore the patient’s health to normality. ‘Implantables’ like this is already being experimented on to track the patient’s health and release drug doses when necessary. Through the data manufactured from the various connected devices medical professionals will be better able to diagnose and treat patients by delivering targeted stimulation optimised for the individual, also known as precision medicine. IoMT is optimal for remote patient monitoring for patients with chronic diseases to reduce the times for the patient travelling to the hospital for monitoring or other health related issues. Several devices to add to the IoMT are being developed. One such example is sensor technologies, where Novartis and Google are working on a smart lens, a wearable device to measure blood glucose levels in diabetes patients.
Personalised Medicine & Bioprinting
3D printing allows for the creation of highly customised products at a low cost, allowing for the creation of healthcare customised to the individual. In the future, this may imply medicine tailored to individual’s needs. An example of this is Multiply Labs, a company developing personalised vitamin supplement depending on your dietary needs. They allow you to control the dosage of each vitamin and when each component is released into the body depending on the time of the day you need the particular boost. The use of a 3D printer allows the ingredients to be customised with various compartments in the pill and varying wall thickness for different times of release. This technology can extend well beyond vitamin supplements. 3D printing has also been used to develop self-forming blood vessels, skins and various organs to be used for surgery. This is done by printing layer upon layer of living cells, constructing living tissue within less than a day. Organovo, is a company which has used this method to successfully bioprint blood vessels using cells cultured from one single person, and hope to later use them in heart bypass surgery, once sufficient trials have been completed.
Most of the technological innovations discussed have recently been developed, yet they remain to be used by mainstream health care providers. If you are a startup with innovative solutions within the health sector, click here to apply to Protechting and be a part of the digital disruption in health care.
It may take some time to overcome the inherent inertia associated with the use of technology for treatment and care of patients, but as soon as we figure out the best way to implement these innovations we will see some incredible changes. I can’t wait to see how it will unfold.
