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.