Luxinnovation business development director Jean-Michel Ludwig gave Silicon Luxembourg the inside story on the agency’s new scaleup programme.
Startup Genome’s survey on the Luxembourg ecosystem was published in December 2022 with little fanfare. Perhaps that was to give the country’s innovation agency time to respond to the three priorities it highlighted: sourcing talent, strengthening connections and assisting startups as they scale. Work on the latter appears to be well underway.
On Thursday, Luxinnovation CEO Sasha Baillie announced plans for a pilot scaleup programme.
“We got the green line to implement a pilot over the next 12 months.”
Jean-Michel Ludwig, Business Development Director at Luxinnovation
“Over the last two to three months we have been discussing with various stakeholders what this would look like,” Luxinnovation business development director Jean-Michel told Silicon Luxembourg, adding: “We got the green line to implement a pilot over the next 12 months.”
Currently, the agency is defining the content and the size and composition of the pilot cohort, which will likely be announced at a planned two-day, multiplatform startup event in October. Similar to the successful Fit 4 Start, the scaling programme will include high level mentoring from other entrepreneurs who have successfully scaled a business. The startups selected will be supported on their fundraising journeys for Series A, B and beyond.
After the pilot, Ludwig reckons that the programme could accommodate 10-15 startups, selected following a call to startups which are already present in Luxembourg.
“We want to make sure we serve our local ecosystem but the process will be open and transparent,” he said.
