Another successful Space Academy held online

The SpaceUp project recently held Space Academy Europe, its fifth to date, this time organised by EBAN – European Business Angel Network.

IASP is a consortium member of SpaceUp, a Horizon 2020 funded project that supports development of a competitive and entrepreneurial space industry in Europe, and helps European space startups to become mature companies. It does this via activities offering expertise, customised coaching services, one-to-one meetings and matchmaking and hosting a series of Space Academies throughout Europe, directly helping startups come to market exploitation.

This month’s Space Academy Europe was embedded into the EBAN 2021 Annual Congress, one of Europe’s largest international private investment and entrepreneurship events, bringing together early-stage investors; business angels; VCs; entrepreneurs; accelerators; corporates and startups, and entrepreneurs had the opportunity to attend sessions on topics related to investment as well as the SpaceUp workshops.

Both Space Academy and the EBAN Annual Congress were held on a virtual platform, which allowed companies from anywhere in the world to participate and connect with others. 172 entrepreneurs joined the Space Academy and its workshops, with 10 selected startups each receiving four personalised studies on their companies from experts on business model design, intellectual property rights, and access to finance and human resources. As well as attending open workshops, each startup participated in 6 intensive one-to-one consultation meetings with SpaceUp experts to review the report findings and ask questions business development, IPR, access to finance, HR, working with business angels and finance for innovation. Meanwhile, other participants were in workshops discussing key topics related to business, technology, investment and the European space sector.

SpaceUp held a panel session at EBAN Annual Congress on “Space as an Enabler”, introducing the opportunities offered by space technologies as enabler of innovative and disruptive solutions. It was moderated by Uli Fricke, CEO of FunderNation, and Candace Johnson, President Emeritus of EBAN. The speakers included Dr. Lorenzo Scatena, Secretary General of Fondazione E. Amaldi, Guido Baraglia, Principal Business Development Manager - Satellite Solutions at Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Ebru Kanat, Divisional Business Transformation at Bosch.

The final SpaceUp event will take place in the beginning of October 2021 and it is planned to be an in-person event. Keep an eye onhttps://www.space-academy.eu/for further details.