The European Commission named the Startup Europe Ambassadors today in Paris.

• Forty-six institutions from 23 European countries became Startup Europe Ambassadors
• The European Commission’s Startup Europe initiative named the ambassadors in Paris on 19 March 2018
• CzechInvest became an ambassador based on its long-term involvement in EU projects aimed at supporting start-ups

Through its Startup Europe initiative, the European Commission publicly introduced 46 national start-up ambassadors, so-called Startup Europe Ambassadors, in Paris today. The government agency CzechInvest, which has years of experience with supporting start-up companies, was named the European start-up ambassador for the Czech Republic.

The objective of the Startup Europe Ambassadors, which are key institutions in European start-up ecosystems, is to democratise the start-up phenomenon so that every citizen has a fair opportunity to become a successful entrepreneur regardless of where they are in Europe. These institutions help start-ups gain access to all offered opportunities at the European level and provide information and advice on the Startup Europe initiative.

“Our task will be to help start-ups with establishing the right contacts and to give them feedback on their activities, which we already do as a standard part of our work. This involves bringing communities together and sharing know-how regardless of geographic boundaries,” explains Markéta Havlová, head of the Start-ups Department at CzechInvest. “It also offers us an exceptional possibility to discuss the form of support for start-ups at the European level directly with representatives of the European Commission.”

The first 46 members of the group of Startup Europe Ambassadors from 23 countries were selected on their involvement in the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 project and their partnership in other projects financed by the EU. The ambassadors will regularly meet and coordinate their activities. Events awaiting them in 2018 include, for example, Startup Olé 2018 (Salamanca, April 2018), European Market Week 2018, which will be held across 28 European countries (May 2018), and Startup Europe Summit 2018 (Sofia, October 2018).

CzechInvest announced its intention to became a coordinator of activities supporting the Czech start-up scene three years ago. The European Commission has now officially made that ambition a reality. CzechInvest has extensive experience with supporting start-ups dating back to the establishment of its CzechAccelerator project involving incubation of Czech start-ups in 2011.

By means of four separate projects, namely CzechStarter, CzechAccelerator, CzechMatch and CzechDemo, CzechInvest currently assists Czech start-ups in every stage of their development, from the very beginning to negotiations with potential investors. The agency is also the operator of ESA BIC Prague, an incubator of the European Space Agency (ESA), in which Czech start-ups are developing commercial products and services using space technologies and systems. At the same time, CzechInvest is a consortium partner of the European H2020 MY-GATEWAY project, whose purpose is to build up the growth potential of start-ups in Central and Eastern Europe to the pan-European level.

Startup Europe is an initiative of the European Commission that falls under the priorities of the single digital market. The purpose of the initiative is to encourage entrepreneurialism and the establishment and growth of start-ups. It brings together beginning entrepreneurs, investors, accelerators, major multinational companies, universities and media through a range of local initiatives and networks. Startup Europe includes approximately 60 local ecosystems and has already aided more than 750 start-ups with their expansions. Its mission is to build up the European start-up continent by bringing together networks of talented people. Startup Europe’s priority it to create high-quality ecosystems based on talent and high-level interconnection between participants in ecosystems at the European level. Startup Europe has mobilised ecosystems in the area of technical entrepreneurship and has worked to ensure that their voice is heard in EU institutions, thus improving understating of the entrepreneurial environment and raising political awareness of this issue.

More information here.