Startup Passion in Baltic Sea Region

Programme Priority: P1 Competitive economy

Programme Specific Objective: 1.1. New Central Baltic knowledge intensive companies

Sub-programme: Central Baltic

Duration: 01.09.2015 - 31.08.2019

Total budget: €1 761 262

ERDF: €1 392 073

Project Summary:

While it is widely acknowledged that an entrepreneurial career path is a viable avenue for employment in the times of economic restructuring, many Central Baltic regions have limited resources and knowhow to support the creation of cross-border companies. The project STARPABS aims at raising awareness and interest towards entrepreneurship among university students and helping them to build international teams around their business ideas. The project will also attract new entrepreneurial talent into the Central Baltic region as well as create a model for supporting creation of student-based international companies.

The project combines competences of higher education programmes, student populations and enterprise development agencies to encourage the best students to take up international entrepreneurship. This is done by organising e.g. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) of entrepreneurship, hackathons and business idea development workshops for students. The training process is based on proven business development models and tools including a business idea competition.

By the end of the project 10-15 new knowledge intensive cross-border companies and 5-6 cooperation agreements have been established. Additionally, wide idea of a student-based entrepreneurial ecosystem is disseminated and a competence and network model is created for supporting the creation and growth of knowledge-intensive cross-border companies in cooperation with universities, enterprise development agencies and private actors.

View this project in

Lead Partner

Cursor Oy,

Country: FI

www.cursor.fi

Partner budget: 510.000 EUR

Amount of ERDF funding: 382.500 EUR ERDF

Project Partners

Tallinna Ülikool

Country: EE

www.tlu.ee

Partner budget: 412.982 EUR

Amount of ERDF funding: 351.035 EUR ERDF

Kymenlaakson Ammattikorkeakoulu Oy

Country: FI

www.kyamk.fi

Partner budget: 540.000 EUR

Amount of ERDF funding: 405.000 EUR ERDF

Stockholm School of Economics in Riga

Country: LV

sseriga.edu

Partner budget: 298.280 EUR

Amount of ERDF funding: 253.538 EUR ERDF

Achieved results

Project result in category -

Joint student company

STARPABS – Creating start-up passion among university students

The overall aim for the project “Start-up Passion in Baltic Sea Region” (STARPABS) was to raise interest towards entrepreneurship among university students, and help them to build internationally competitive teams. Three universities from the countries Finland, Estonia and Latvia participated.

The main objective was to create student-based knowledge intensive cross-border companies and cooperation agreements.
The project organized 18 events. In total about 800 participants were involved in the project activities. From initially 50-60 teams formed, 23 teams became operational, out of which 16 companies were registered, and 2 of them are joint cross-border companies. The established companies have prepared export and expansion plans for the next few years.

After the project had ended, some of the teams were currently working on the development of their business idea, and some of them were in the seed funding stage. Other teams were “on hold” until graduation and planned to continue afterwards.

Furthermore, the aim was to create a cross-border model to support start-ups in the Central Baltic region, and to enhance the attractiveness of CB region as a start-up platform for entrepreneurial talents. This was also achieved in the project. The training program “6-step to success” will continue in the form of our MOOC (“Massive Open Online Courses” consisting of hackathons and business idea development workshops for students), which can be used by new start-up teams after the end of the project.

Project page in database

Startup Passion in Baltic Sea Region

At a glance