Giving Dutch young startups a stage
A competition where innovative start-ups get a chance to accelerate the growth and scalability of their current business
Challenge
Finding the hidden talent
The primary challenge for the ASC event is to locate and bring together promising academic startups, guiding them through a process of recruitment, training, and evaluation, leading up to a grand finale where the top ten Dutch academic startups are chosen by a renowned jury of experts.
Solution
Academic Startup Competition
To discover all these startups, we activated our network within the academic and entrepreneurial communities in the Netherlands, enabling us to identify the best young academic startups. Throughout the training and evaluation process, we engaged scientific and entrepreneurship experts, all of which was executed with a focused, project-based approach characterized by high energy and exceptional attention to impact.
Impact
Everyone is a winner
In the Academic Startup Competition everyone emerges as winner. During this transformative journey, the startups received coaching, access to a valuable new network, and insightful lessons from industry experts to flourish into successful companies. Consequently, all these startups have been provided with a solid foundation to grow into successful companies.
“Winning the ASC and the US trip that followed really boosted awareness for our company. So I'm really happy we participated and won. I really hope that the ASC will be continued, it's worth the effort espcially for start-ups."
Continuation
Promoting to collaborate
The ASC event proved to be a success, prompting THRIVE to collaborate with ASC partners to advocate for academic entrepreneurship more prominently in both the public sector and the business community.