Vlad Andriescu
The jury included important names from the investment area: Dan Călugăreanu from Early Game Ventures, Andrei Cionca from Impetum Grup and Roca X, Valentin Filip from Fortech Investment, Alexandru Popescu from Cleverage VC, Andrei Dudoiu from SeedBlink, Nicolas Pleșea from Agista, and Bogdan Almași from Ronin.
The event was attended by more than 100 people from the business world, investors, and Commons Accel partners including representatives from Techangels, Paypoint Romania, Decalex, Emag, Dentons, ANIS, ADRVEST, Transilvania Investments, as well as media representatives.
The winners were:
CPV Lab Pro - an ad tracking platform, recognized among affiliate marketers worldwide for providing the data needed to control and optimize all marketing campaigns in one place.
WowMind - an educational content-sharing platform that aims to support children of the digital native generation with formal and non-formal education, translated in an engaging way using emerging technologies and video.
TeAsiguri.ro - Romania's first online insurance benefits platform for employees of large companies.
Special prize: Lendvolut - €10,000 from Ronin in the form of services, which will be listed for free on the crowdfunding platform
"As always, it is great to see how in less than three months, some participants who came in with an idea, now present us with a concrete business plan as well as actual achievements on the product or customer side. We have been with them since their inception and will continue to support entrepreneurship education and Commons Accel" says Utku Ogrendil, CEO of Paypoint, one of the early supporters of the programme, investor, and jury member.
Registration open for Cohort #7 Commons Accel
Commons Accel - Best Accelerator finalist at the Central European Startup Awards 2022, has started registrations for cohort #7 (which will take place in September 2022), continuing its mission started 3 years ago - to help develop local initiatives with the best business experts and turn them into successful startups.
Those interested in the programme can find out more information and apply at www.commonsaccel.ro or on the Commons Accel social media pages.
After registering, participants will have access to workshops, mentoring and advice from experts, as well as the opportunity to connect with other participants and benefit from a modern co-working space and exceptional networking opportunities throughout the programme.
Since the start of the programme, more than 200 start-ups have gone through the accelerator and more than 20 have received substantial investments reaching over €50 million. Nearly half of the participants have seen significant and sustainable growth, demonstrating the success of this programme, supported and promoted by some of the biggest names in the regional business ecosystem.
A new accelerator dedicated to the western region was announced, in partnership with ADRVEST
The team of the Institute of Excellence in Entrepreneurship, the one that has developed in recent years various entrepreneurial education projects, events, hackathons and accelerators, of which the best known is Commons Accel, has announced the launch of a new entrepreneurial project "ADRVEST Accel by IdEA".
This project created for the Western Regional Development Agency aims to contribute to the development of the region by training entrepreneurs in a modern and dynamic accelerator program with a customized learning design alongside mentors, experts, investors and the IdEA team also supported by local resources and experts.
The program will open in September 2022 with a minimum of 20 participants from Timisoara, Arad, Mehedinți and Hunedoara counties, who will be trained over three months in three modules filled with activities, workshops, presentations and working sessions on the essential topics of entrepreneurship.
"We started from the need of investors to find startups they can successfully invest in as well as the problem of lack of funding for startups. Someone needed to build a bridge between these two worlds that cannot function separately. That's what an accelerator is all about: preparing startups so they know how to run a business and manage investor money effectively. It's the link between people and capital without which a startup's otherwise low success rate goes to zero. We have indeed trained thousands of entrepreneurs in the last 10 years, but Romania's potential is to produce tens of thousands of entrepreneurs per year! The mission we set out to accomplish, to provide entrepreneurial education to all young people in Romania, cannot succeed without a scalable and replicable program, and a partnership such as the one with ADRVEST can only help us replicate the impact we have in the ecosystem in the western area" Matei Dumitrescu, founder of Commons Accel and IdEA
"I have known about Commons Accel since last year and have followed and appreciated its work and achievements. We also appreciate the willingness with which the founder of this program responded to our invitation and came to Timisoara last month where we started discussions on our future collaboration. We want to replicate the experience of this programme and help entrepreneurs in the West development region to build their businesses on solid foundations and learn how to operate a modern and efficient business, as well as how to access funding" said Sorin Maxim, General Director of the West Regional Development Agency Timisoara.
The list of finalist startups from cohort #6 Commons Accel:
- Tripis - a platform where travel enthusiasts can find a travel or outdoor/indoor activity partner, in groups or alone, in a fast and secure way.
- Medicalo - is a web-based platform and mobile app that helps private and public hospitals in reducing costs with the management of patients scheduled for surgery.
- CityPack- a mobile app that digitizes the connection between companies offering experiences with potential customers.
- Hidden Desire - offers a range of unique fragrances for bold women
- Meet Locals - a unique national platform, based on the idea of complementing holiday offers with activities, authentic experiences and local events that enrich the tourist experience while promoting local entrepreneurship.
- Drooler - is a producer of healthy, cooked, carefully selected, and highly nutritious dog food.
- microserviceNOW - microservice as a service palette, by outsourcing the secondary but essential functionalities in the overall functioning of all software platforms. The palette of microservices (functionalities) offered: Messaging - sends all types of notifications: email, SMS, push notifications, etc. Storage - stores all secure files, in one place. Identity Manager - manages user accounts from one platform.
- Smart REI (Real Estate Investment), a marketplace that aims to help you find the apartment you want, saving 90% of your time and with a 70% reduction in commission cost.
- Thrill Republica - the world's first digital country built around sports cars - home to the world's most sophisticated drivers, collectors, and car enthusiasts.
- CPV Lab Pro, an ad tracking platform, recognized among affiliate marketers worldwide for providing the data needed to control and optimize all marketing campaigns in one place.
- Uphave, a marketplace that caters to responsible fashion consumers by giving them 24/7 online access to second-hand high street stores - the largest undigested second-hand distribution marketplace - and further enables them to get rid of their unworn wardrobe by recycling or reselling within the same platform.
- Dea Medicine - aims to become the online medical hub where anyone in need of a quick medical service can video-conference with a health expert from the comfort of their own home
- Lendvolut - connects fast and 100% digital loan demand of start-ups and SMEs with growth potential, hardly funded by banks/IFNs, with the supply of money that can be borrowed temporarily by any adult and legal entity.
- WowMind, an educational content-sharing platform that aims to support children of the digital native generation with formal and non-formal education, translated in an engaging way using emerging technologies and video.
- Solmag - the first "Marketplace for Solar Panel Experts Companies" in Romania.
- Peers Portal addresses the privacy and censorship issues that social network users have with a new platform that allows everyone to post peer-to-peer only with their friends.
- TeAsiguri.ro, Romania's first online insurance benefits platform for employees of large companies.
- Ghlass - an innovative platform for the fashion industry that helps designers produce exactly those clothes that are pre-ordered by users.
