Startup Division.
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Open Coffee Club Vilnius is a Lithuanian NGO, founded in 2008. Originally intended to be a local chapter of worldwide OCC network (inspired and launched by Saul Klein in London, 2007), OCC Vilnius morphed into entrepreneurs-enabling organization with broad national and foreign partnerships and multifold activities.

OCC started the first Startup Weekends gathering entrepreneurship and startup enthusiasts, successful entrepreneurs, investors, mentors, and providing networking opportunities.

The main objective of this initiative was to introduce students to the business world and encourage young entrepreneurs to start their own ventures by providing all the necessary initial support. The participants were consulted in accordance to the Business Model Canvas methodology, made from 9 elements, in order to develop a comprehensive business development plan. The trainings were also aimed at allowing students to network and initiate important contacts.

This project entailed hands on consulting covering topics on business idea development, strategy development, organizational structure, work planning, business model development, marketing & PR, IT, access to finance and legal, in addition to providing a co-working space for startups.

A women enterprise focused conference aimed at young girls to motivate and inspire them to become entrepreneurs. These events introduced female entrepreneurs, investors, highlighted and shared experiences regarding entrepreneurship from a female perspective, including the challenges, opportunities, prejudices and support networks available for female entrepreneurs.

CEED Tech was a project run by a consortium of five startup accelerators building and scaling global companies from Central and Eastern Europe. Since 2011, it has launched 111 technology companies from around the world, and helped them raise over €11M in seed and venture capital. CEED Tech had over 450 mentors, who guided and connected ambitious entrepreneurs building businesses in data, cloud services, analytics, transactional technologies, fintech, e-commerce, B2B technologies, IoT, location-based services, and security software.

Startup Scaleup ran two batches of 6-month parallel IoT pre-accelerators in Lithuania, Spain, Ireland, and The Netherlands. IoT pre-accelerator focused on providing the practical knowledge and advice needed to build a successful IoT startup, such as - hands-on help on prototyping, licensing, access to mass manufacturers and IoT specific fundraising as well as an access to a pool of international mentors, including Philip Moynagh, Vice President, Internet of Things Group at Intel, Dan Marom, crowdfunding expert, Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President of Google, and Jerry Yang, investor & founder of Hardware Club. Lithuanian batches featured such startups as Nanoavionics, Sidewalk, TableAir, Factobotics, Connecty and SVA.

OCC became part of Eye On Europe project within EYE programme - A cross-border exchange programme which gives new or aspiring entrepreneurs the chance to learn from experienced entrepreneurs running small businesses in other Participating Countries. The exchange of experience takes place during a stay with the experienced entrepreneur, which helps the new entrepreneur acquire the skills needed to run a small firm. The host benefits from fresh perspectives on his/her business and gets the opportunities to cooperate with foreign partners or learn about new markets.

The long term strategic objective of HubIT is to contribute to the high level of European research and innovation and ensure that H2020 funded and further ICT related innovation is responsible, inclusive and aimed at reversing inequalities. The direct objective of HubIT is to build a hub that will activate and improve constructive and co-creating interactions between social sciences and humanities (SSH) and information and communication technologies (ICT) disciplines in developing and implementing a shared vision of inclusive ICT research and innovation.

IRIS aims to develop incubator structures to be global frontrunners, capable to address common Baltic Sea Region (BSR) challenges. IRIS main objective is to improve and strengthen management and support capacity in incubator organisations as important Innovation Infrastructures. IRIS will make the target group demonstrate higher management capacity and higher ability to support entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs in five priority areas. New support instruments will be available as a result of joint brain storming, development and practical tests. Peer reviews as method to evaluate and improve management capacity will be spread to Innovation Infrastructure Organisations in BSR.

Official launch of a new brand name - Startup Division

The problem that this project will address is that European startups fail to scale, which often is the reason why they also fail in general. To avoid this, Soft-Landing will connect startup ecosystems through numerous exchanges of key representatives that will strengthen the knowledge about EU, US, and India’s startup scene, build strong networks and trust between the ecosystems stakeholders, as well as to scale European startups by providing Soft-landing support in target destinations.

Lighthouse sets a standard on developing cross border connections within and beyond Europe. The project lights the way for startups within Europe by organizing 8 Deep Dive Weeks of matchmaking, 1-on-1 mentoring, workshops and many other activities in 4 ecosystems (Berlin, Dublin, Lisbon and the Baltics) as well as 1 week scouting missions to Silicon Valley, New York and Israel to accelerate their positioning as global players.

One of Startup Division goals among several different projects is to empower women and to encourage female entrepreneurship. Mommypreneurs is a unique initiative in the world which aims to strengthen skills of young inactive women on maternity leave or caring for children, to equip them with new digital and/or entrepreneurship skills to improve their potential in re-entering the labour market or start their own business.