ThoughtBox CEO Cristina Luminea
Cristina Luminea’s e-learning venture ThoughtBox will become the Ireland and UK partner for EuropeanPioneers, a €4.5m EU-supported accelerator.
EuropeanPioneers is one of 16 accelerators that will be distributing some €80m to support start-ups on behalf of the European Union.
ThoughtBox will promote the incubator in Ireland and the UK.
EuropeanPioneers will be looking for 25 start-ups across Europe to support over the next two years. Applications open today, with a deadline for the first round being 31 October.
The scheme targets businesses active in the areas of e-learning, pervasive gaming, smart city services, and socially connected TV.
ThoughtBox is an expert on the programme in the areas of gaming and e-learning, and the company’s CEO, Luminea, is one of Silicon Republic’s Women Invent Top 100 Women in STEM.
Other partners in the EuropeanPioneers consortium are Berlin-based start-up builder ETventure, the Fraunhofer Institute, Poland-based Weblify and Finland-based F-Secure.
Over the course of the eight-month programme, the selected start-ups will receive equity-free funding of €50,000-€250,000 each, as well as access to state-of-the-art European FIWARE and FICONTENT platforms.
Experienced coaches will also support the participants in areas including concept and business model development, user testing, team-building, marketing and financing.
This year, five companies will be accepted onto the programme. Two more application rounds in 2015 will select a further 10 participants each.
Women Invent Tomorrow is Silicon Republic’s campaign to champion the role of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. It has been running since March 2013, and is kindly supported by Accenture Ireland, Intel, the Irish Research Council, ESB, Twitter, CoderDojo and Science Foundation Ireland.
