Mar 21, 2023
Startup Estonia together with SmartCap have an open call for accelerator funds, submit your proposal by the 10th of November
Oct 4, 2016
Startup Estonia seeks to supercharge Estonian-bred startups possessing the potential to take on the world. For that, we are making Estonia one of the world's best places to start a company, partnering with and uniting the best of startups, incubators, accelerators, public sector and researchers into one big successful #EstonianMafia family.
However, this goal will only be achieved by developing the Estonian venture capital market - making smart money available for startups. Startup Estonia together with SmartCap, a fund manager of venture capital funds, aims to make investments into early stage funds operating in seed and early stages. The documents for the call could be found here.
Each Fund must have a specific investment focus, slightly preferred focuses include ICT, health technologies and enhancement of resources. We expect the funds to be value-adding small venture capital funds, developing innovative companies with high growth potential in technology intensive sectors in their seed and early stages, by providing acceleration services and venture capital investments in the form of equity and quasi-equity.
No negotiations with candidates will be held at the stage of submitting applications and at the stage of verifying the qualification. To obtain additional information, questions must be posed via the eRHR environment
over here. The questions must be posed in
English. All the answers to the questions will be available here.
The competitive tendering process will then proceed according to the following schedule (may include changes):
Each Fund must have a specific investment focus, slightly preferred focuses include ICT, health technologies and enhancement of resources. We expect the funds to be value-adding small venture capital funds, developing innovative companies with high growth potential in technology intensive sectors in their seed and early stages, by providing acceleration services and venture capital investments in the form of equity and quasi-equity.
We are looking for independent management teams that raise funds from a wide range of investors in order to provide venture capital to startups in seed and start-up phases. The named managers are expected to have experience in founding, developing and internationalising innovative businesses and/or acting as responsible investors in young innovative enterprises
Startup Estonia encourages highly qualified serial entrepreneurs and early stage investors to establish and operate early stage venture capital funds to help innovative enterprises to develop their business ideas, grow and internationalise. Funds play a key role in addressing one of the main problems young innovative enterprises face, helping them to build up the skills necessary for establishing a solid business concept and taking it to international markets.
We are open to different fund models which will add value for the participating startups - the Fund is welcome to use and suggest their own accelerator model, develop some other type of company builder or early stage fund strategy.
The purpose of the tender is to purchase Acceleration Services and make investments into 2 venture capital funds. The budget for the tender is the following:
- Buying acceleration services in total for 2.8 MEUR, 1.4 MEUR per service provider;
- Investment into the fund 8.4 MEUR, 4.2 MEUR per fund.
| Date of submitting the Application | November 10, 2016 |
The competitive tendering process will then proceed according to the following schedule (may include changes):
| Proposal to start a dialogue with qualified Applicants | December, 2016 |
| Submitting documents for the dialogue | January, 2017 |
| Conducting the dialogue | February - March 2017 |
| Ending the dialogue and issuing an invitation to tender | April, 2017 |
| Submitting and opening tenders | May, 2017 |
| Declaring a tender successful | June, 2017 |
| Signing public contracts | July, 2017 |