Three budding startups receives a “wise” grant
Today the association WeLoveStartups has awarded its first grants. The non-profit association has selected three promising startups from extremely diverse fields.
After a long selection process, where 50 applicants were narrowed down to only 9 finalists WeLoveStartups‘ expert jury has now selected the three final recipients of the association’s grant.
A wide diversity of scholarship recipients
The three startups that have received grants, operate in three different industries.
UniPegma works within education to gather study books in one place making them available from a computer or tablet.
“The grant enable us to pull some super competent resources into the project to ensure the future and optimize the architecture as much as possible,” says founder of Unipegma, Camilla Hessellund Lastein.
Another grant recipient DOT is a game app playing with combining the virtual and physical world in their games inspired by the children’s game tag. The team’s ambition is that the game can get children to move more.
Lastly a grant has been awarded to the startup FarmBackup, who has developed a platform that facilitates local rental of unused machine capacity in agriculture. The platform connects farmers or contractors who wish to perform agricultural tasks with farmers who demand specific machines.
“The grant from WeLoveStartups will serve as the critical seed capital to facilitate rapid development and validation. Furthermore, the allotment of a mentor add the necessary experience to help us to make informed decisions in a phase where things move quickly, “says Søren Knudsen, CEO and co-founder.
The association distributes “wise money”
The newly formed association WeLoveStartups is based on the so-called “pay it forward” mentality, which is about to passing on, what you have received. WeLoveStartups expresses this by giving the opportunity for startups, that have grown into established companies, to sponsor the association, which then pass on the amount in the form of grants to new startups.
There are currently 40 ambassadors for the association, who contribute through membership or by offering advice, mentors or the like.
“We are seeing a new movement in the Danish startup environment. It shows, for instance as a great drive for, and commitment to WeLoveStartups and the idea of “pay it forward”. We see it in the established organizations and companies as promoters have chosen to make the distribution of grants available. We have also received a ton of requests from the entrepreneurial environment to contribute to voluntary work by becoming an ambassador or mentor,” says a happy Sussi Bianco, Vice President of WeLoveStartups.
The association emphasises that the grant recipients get the most out of the money. Therefore, the jury’s task is to assess applicants individually to find out how far it has progressed in the development of their product or service and what the grant is to be used for.
Therefore the amount allocated to the grant recipients varies, as it will depend on the individual applicant. CEO of WeLoveStartups, Jakob Breddam calls this handing “wise money” as opposed to, for example, crowdfunding, which otherwise has gained ground rapidly in Denmark in recent years.
In addition to the grant recipients will get access to a capital coach to advise businesses on how they can raise additional capital.
