For 10 weeks, the teams went through an intense program, filled with enriching content, workshops and mentoring sessions. The program is structured in four phases:
Validation: The founders started by validating their value proposition and gaining a better understanding of what could be their target audience and their potential needs.
Product And Tech: This phase meant a deep-dive into the startups’ solutions and the technology behind them, defining how is their project solving the clients’ needs better than any other out there, and designing a roadmap for product market fit.
Growth: At this third phase, founders learned how to talk with customers and make sure they don’t leave after trying the product – in other words, it was all about client retention and which metrics should be analyzed in order to figure it out.
Investment: The teams learned to understand investors, and what they are looking for. But also, what to say to investors to tell their story and secure investment.
People-centric approach
The value proposition brought by Lisbon Challenge it’s its unique people-centric approach – a Beta-i landmark.
This approach is about bringing a people-centered vision to the founders’ businesses, keeping in mind: Who are they building a solution for (getting to know their consumer), who are they building a solution with (building a team and company culture) and who they are as entrepreneurs (preparing founders’ for the future ahead).
Mentor-driven program
The Lisbon Challenge journey, taking them closer and closer to a product-market fit, is only possible thanks to the strong network of mentors, who have been through the same processes and similar experiences as entrepreneurs themselves.
Our 88 mentors, from different specialties – from branding and product to growth, from personal development to investment, have clocked in over 450+ hours of mentorship, giving the founders’ the tools they need to succeed.
The big stage at #LIS
The journey led the founders to the biggest stage in the investment arena: Lisbon Investment Summit – to an audience on national and international investors and innovators, in an event with over 1500 attendees.
Originating from very different countries – this international cohort had startups from Portugal, UK, Italy, Ireland and USA – they took to the stage: OUTBOUND, VAIRT, FLOCK, CROWDBOOKS and SKOACH were the startups pitching.
The crowd had a say – they gave feedback live, through a form vote – and it was positive: over 50% of voters said that they wanted to meet and talk with the founders.
It’s only the beginning
For our founders, this is just the beginning – they are now ready to jump to the next stage: scaling. In the words of the team: “We’re really proud of what we saw today. And today is just the beginning for these teams. They are already doing pilots with big corporates – all companies looking for innovative solutions should talk with these startups. They are a group of trusting, capable founders, with impactful solutions and a growth mindset. We’re excited to see the global impact they will bring in the future – we know they are ready to jump into scale.”
One of the characteristics that make Free Electrons a huge opportunity for startups is that it is truly global: the startups joining the program will get a chance to work with 10 global utilities, with experience and big markets under their belt.
Let’s get to know two of the utilities that are part of the Free Electrons utility alliance.
Electricity Supply Board (ESB)
ESB is Ireland’s leading energy company, operating across the full spectrum of the electricity market: from generation, through transmission and distribution to supply. In addition, ESB extracts further value at certain points along this chain: supplying gas, using their networks to carry fibre for telecommunications, developing electric vehicle public charging infrastructure and an international consultancy arm which has worked in 120 countries globally.
We spoke with John Mckiernan, Head of external collaboration at ESB, who gave an overview of ESB’s participation in Free Electrons: it’s their third edition, and they are still working with the startups they piloted with in the first two editions – working with both towards low-cost, low-carb energy – as their customers expect.
John highlighted the sharing of information between all the utilities as a key factor to the success of Free Electrons:
No utility has a monopoly on wisdom. So, we’re actually comparing and contrasting, shoulder to shoulder, with the other utilities. It’s the proof of the pudding. It’s another facet of Free Electrons that is allowing us to see more and understand more.
As an advice for startups joining open-innovation programs, John advised them to “learn as much as possible about the partner” and their needs to make the matching easier and “keeping it simple”.
Watch the whole interview here:
Energias de Portugal (EDP)
EDP is an energy producer, distributor and retailer with around 12 million customers in Portugal, Spain and Brazil. EDP is also the 4th largest wind power producer in the world. The renewable power business is present in 14 countries including the US, Brazil, Spain and the UK.
We spoke with Luís Manuel, Executive Board Member at EDP Innovation, who told of EDP’s journey at Free Electrons. In the first edition, they were still learning the process, but by the second edition, they had doubled the number of deals made in the program – they amount to over 12 pilots by now.
What he says has been consistent in the editions is the fantastic community spirit that is lived in Free Electrons, that they have embraced fully:
I think, above all, what we try to make sure is that as much opportunities as possible for our business units’ people to interact with the startups. We believe that is key – engaging people is really what makes business happen.
He believes that what is changing in the industry is that is looking towards things that are not usually associated with the energy sector: data management, artificial intelligence and digitization processes. So, EDP is looking for a mix of solutions – between traditional energy fields and this technological revolution.
Watch the whole interview here:
The second module of Free Electrons is arriving – it will happen on the 25th – 28th of June in Hong Kong. In this module the teams will deep dive into the details of each others’ solutions.
We also expect to see a better definition of the scope of potential pilot projects, and a strong connection with the local ecosystem as the module offers an immersion in the world’s leading cleantech innovation ecosystem, connecting startups to the epicenter of the technology world.
Last Friday, at our weekly TGIF (you should come!), I spent some time talking with Lisbon Challenge teams. We exchanged some feedback about the program, and at a certain point one of the founders mentioned it to me: “I feel like you really care”. And I thought about it for a minute and realized – we really do.
Lisbon Challenge is Beta-i’s flagship accelerator program, and one of the most recognized programs in Europe. It inherited Beta-i’s people-centric approach – we are “humaniacs” at heart and we convey our approach in Lisbon Challenge program as well.
Lisbon Challenge’s people-centric approach
The people-centric approach is not about just about caring about the founders (which we do!), is about how a human-centric perspective applies to their business in order for it to be the best it can be.
In the 10 weeks of the program, we contaminate the founders with this human-centric perspective and help them better understand and develop:
Who are you building a solution for
The starting point of a good startup is the will to solve a problem you identify – and also the will to know the people whose problem you’re solving. That means gaining a deeper knowledge of your audience through an ethnographic mindset in order to find a product/market fit.
Who are you building a solution with
The road is hard – but you won’t be doing it alone. The culture you build for your company will be determinant to the success of it. The core values you choose and the expected behaviors that embody them will be your guide to decision making, hiring people, dealing with users and other business partners, so building a culture from scratch is the foundation of a winning team.
Who you are as an entrepreneur
Having a startup is probably the toughest business there is. You’ll be constantly challenging your own assumptions, facing inconvenient truths and constant “no’s”. Our methodology is focused not only on growing your business but also in preparing you to transform difficulties into learnings and to see problems as opportunities. As your business grows, so will you – we’re here to get you ready to face the demands of different startup stages.
In the words of Eduardo Sette Câmara, our Head of Acceleration:
“The legacy we’re trying to build with Lisbon Challenge is to find and help founders that can build their companies while taking into consideration everyone that revolves around them.”
What does our people-centric approach mean? Here's what Eduardo Sette Camara, our Head of Acceleration had to say!
Publicado por Lisbon Challenge em Sexta-feira, 24 de maio de 2019
By the end of the video, Eduardo lets us know that as long as founders put in the work, we’ll always be here, doing our best to help them. And if you ask any other Lisbon Challenge alumni, you’ll realize it’s true.
It was during SIBS Payforward Bootcamp, the fintech accelerator powered by SIBS and Beta-i, that ReThink met with Maria Antónia Saldanha, SIBS PAYFORWARD’s Program Director and Head of Brand & Communication at SIBS, to speak about the fintech ecosystem and what are the challenges it wants to tackle.
SIBS is now a major player in the market, with 300 million clients and present in Iberia, Africa and Eastern Europe, but how did it all start? SIBS was created 30 years ago, with the help and collaboration of different companies from different industries. The goal was to serve the digital economy, which didn’t even exist yet.
“SIBS grew up as a fintech in a time where the word fintech didn’t even exist.”
According to Maria Antónia, a collaborative and cooperative model is the only way to “do things”, so SIBS has created an ecosystem of a lot of companies, all the banks, and different industries from different countries. Because of this, the payment services provider still moves with the same spirit as a startup: “SIBS grew up as a Fintech in a time where the word Fintech didn’t even exist. We were brought up as a Fintech, we work as a startup – we’re very agile, dynamic and innovative, launching every month a new service or product.”
It was their own history and this understanding that it takes collaboration to innovate, that made SIBS decide to keep the circle going, by fostering innovation inside and outside their walls: “Well, SIBS was created with the help and collaboration of different companies from different industries, so it’s time to pay it forward. It’s our chance to do for others what they did for us. To help, to share knowledge, to share expertise. It’s a way for us to help other companies to grow and to accelerate in order to become as big as SIBS”, said the program director.
The program looks for scalable, innovative solutions that can complement SIBS offer or grow exponentially from it, by taking advantage of SIBS large user market: “When we launched the accelerator for Fintechs it was the first national accelerator focused on payment solutions. The main goal was to attract fintech startups that have solutions for payments, or financial services, or complementary services around financial services so we can boost them in order to provide services either in Portugal or in other geographies where SIBS is, mainly in Africa for instance or Eastern Europe.”
The challenges that the accelerator proposes to solve in collaboration with the startups are, according to Maria Antónia, “the challenges that society faces every day. We’re focusing on Client behavior and Analytics, Security and Authentication, Payment Processes and Payments and Future Stores.”
The accelerator is committed to solve these challenges by working in complete collaboration with the startups – for the four days of the Bootcamp, the startups worked in groups with SIBS mentors – collaborators that could give them insight into the processes that go into SIBS services and technical experts who can help the startups incorporate their technologies in practical terms – and ultimately help them propose more viable, interesting and profitable pilot projects. All this is done within SIBS environment, to allow for better sharing of knowledge and understanding of the business: “We’ve acknowledged that they want to get to know us where we are every day, where we are working on innovation every day – where we have our terminals, our ATMs, our POSs, and all of our teams. So this is something that we’ve managed this year, to bring startups inside SIBS, so they’ve been working during these days in our premises, alongside us, where we work every day.”
When questioned about the future of fintech, SIBS concedes they cannot guess it, but they can be a part of it by keeping innovating inside their business and fostering innovation in the financial market: “We don’t know how the future is going to be, we don’t know how fast the future can grow, but we know that if we work together – startups, corporates, associations like Beta-i, we can move faster, we can grow faster, and we’ll probably have more products, more solutions that make us brighter and our lives more efficient.”
On its third edition, SIBS Payforward is the fintech accelerator powered by SIBS and Beta-i. You can follow the news and the projects being developed by following SIBS Payforward on Facebook and subscribe to Beta-i’s newsletter.
Jungle is an innovative startup that is on a mission to reduce uncertainty. Wind turbines, power transformers, and heavy industry machinery – they use tailored AI models to identify when assets are underperforming and predict when they will fail.
They started out in Delft (Netherlands) in mid-2016, where Alexander Helmer and his co-founder, Tim Kock, were trying different AI technologies – they didn’t wanna focus on a single-purpose product – looking for something that could serve a broad spectrum of applications. Through their network, they landed on a case where they ended up developing their predictive system – that blew their minds and found a place in the world for the Jungle.
Looking to scale their business outside of the Netherlands, they looked into Portugal as a talent-filled pool and a great place to unleash the Jungle. They met Beta-i when they casually walked into a TGIF one day – and liked it so much that they decided to stay.
They’ve been in our hub since April 2017, so we went to talk to Alex Helmer, co-founder of Jungle, them about their experience in Free Electrons.
ReThink: I heard you were not big fans of accelerators or open innovation programs before FE. Why was that?
Alex: (laughs) You’re talking to the right person. The other team members were a lot more open-minded, I was the one that was a bit against accelerators. I think many accelerator programs focus on the first stages of starting a business: defining a product, defining a customer, validating your idea, business model canvasing, these types of things. That was my association with accelerators, that it focusses on early stage – on validation of your concept. So I was not too excited.
RT: So, what made you join Free Electrons?
A: It was actually Rodrigo Zwetsch [Beta-i’s community manager] that came into our office and said that maybe we needed to look into this. I was not fully convinced, I thought that we should keep with our existing customer database and spend time on building it out more. Tim and Silvio were actually more open-minded so we decided to dig a little deeper into what the program consists of. Turns out that, at that moment, it was a very different accelerator than what we thought, and there was actually a really good balance between the time you put into it, and the alignment that it had with the company that we were at that moment. Because we were still validating some of our ideas back then, we wanted to try it on different customers, we wanted to see how our solutions scale from one customer to the next. And this was actually a great opportunity to start testing that because there were a few very big and important utility companies globally present at the event. And we could see how long it takes to turn a solution if we go from A to B and also test it on C, how long does that take.
Turns out that, at that moment, it was a very different accelerator than what we thought, and there was actually a really good balance between the time you put into it, and the alignment that it had with the company that we were at that moment.
RT: So was that your main goal going into the programme, to test?
A: To test our solutions technically for sure, but also to test commercial viability. There are some areas that we work in where the way the stakeholders work together is fairly complex and closed, so we needed to understand better how we fitted in into that. And I would also say, to just create a network worldwide because if you serve, for example, utility companies, or factories of heavy industries as a customer, you can only grow so far within Portugal and the Netherlands, so you need to start looking beyond borders.
RT: You partnered up with EDP and also innogy. What were the pilots you worked on about?
A: At Jungle we currently have 3 products/verticals that we’re working on: one is on wind energy and wind turbines, one is more generic electrical assets like power transformers and circuit breakers, things typically in the electrical grid, and the third one is heavy industry, which is factories of basic materials like steel. The technology and the predictive capabilities that we build, they work pretty much the same for all three of these, so that’s why we have this big approach.
With innogy we worked in wind. The pilot was basically to show them what our predictive technology could do in an offshore farm and what it could do in an onshore farm, and given that result, how can we integrate it to make commercially viable for them.
With EDP, it has been a longer trajectory with them. They have a very big portfolio and different business units and all of them have transformers. And these things may fail – not that often! – but if they do they can fail pretty catastrophically and they’re expensive. We’re taking a look at a big spectrum of data and when you’re able to grab all this data and put it together in a logical way, you can start predicting when these failures might happen and also, with that, how you should operate them to extend their lifetime. So, it’s maintenance and also operations, in the sense that how do you operate them to have less maintenance.
[wonderplugin_carousel id=”2″]
RT: What was it like to work directly with corporate partners?
A: We had worked with utilities before in the Netherlands, on smaller projects. I think it’s a very interesting trajectory to go through. At Jungle, we’re all quite young – the oldest person is not even 35. So what we see of the world is how we operate. And this is the way we expect companies to work. Of course, we know that a utility company works differently than we do, especially big organizations. But, it is still interesting to observe the dynamics of how a company like that works and how you interact with them and what are the steps that you need to take in order to get a partnership with them.
RT: There must be a big gap between the way they work and the way you do. Did Free Electrons help you bridge that gap?
A: Yeah, there is a big gap. I mean, if you look at the footprint of the company, it’s completely different, it has to be different.
I think the interesting thing is that most of the people in the Free Electrons programme that are from the utilities’ side are from innovation departments, so they’re sort of in-between the two, and I think that’s a really good bridge because without that bridge it would very difficult for us to partner with the utility.
We’ve had really good relationships with the innovation people of the [Free Electrons’] companies we’ve worked with. EDP, obviously, because they are also an investor of ours, we’re next door, we’ve got a good relationship. But also with innogy – I mean, Tim went to Hamburg in October for an update, and he stayed at the Innovation Manager’s house – crashing in his guest bedroom – and he even picked him up at the airport at midnight. It was a very funny dynamic for sure, but without those people, it would be very very difficult.
RT: You developed a long term relationship with the utilities there, they are still your partners and your clients, right?
A: Yeah, of course! But I think this is also a bit of a given – as a startup, at least in the area we are, you have to develop a long term partnership with a company like that because the projects that we do are so big that it doesn’t make sense to do this in the short-term. In these projects, we only worked on a couple of wind farms for them, but they have dozens of wind farms, so we need to push for that.
I think it’s something that outside of a programme like that, it would have taken us just so much time.
RT: What surprised you the most in the program?
A: I think what maybe surprised me, and this is given my perspective of accelerators earlier on, it is how effective the time was that we spent during those four weeks. It was an intense programme for all four of the phases, but just putting all of these people in the same room, having a decent schedule, knowing what the goals are… I think it’s something that outside of a programme like that, it would have taken us just so much time. So, I guess, that’s the thing that surprised me, being against accelerators (laughs)!
RT: In the end, did it change your mind about accelerators?
A: (laughs) Yes, totally. I’ll confess to that!
In the end, we just asked Alex if he would recommend Free Electrons to other startups looking to go global. Here is his video reply:
