The BIC of Alcoy, from the Valencia Region has launched the Crowd Knowledge programme to accelerate Business Projects of Young talented entrepreneurs. The aim is to get them onto the market in the shortest time and under the best possible condition for competitiveness.
Roberto Payá , BIC Alcoy’s director and one of the drivers of this project explains that this is an accelerator in the purest North American style which offers the entrepreneur a whole range of services such as assessment, training, and financing among many others. He says: “the BIC has set as main objective to stimulate the entrepreneurial fabric of the various districts within the Valencia Community”.

The programme is organised around three main phases : 

• Phase 1. Recruitment of entrepreneurs with innovative Business ideas.
• Phase 2. Accelerator of companies: Crowd Knowledge.
  • Co-working - Financing - Learning by doing - Mentoring
• Phase 3. Preliminary round for private financing.

What are the criteria for being selected? The project idea must be innovative, with potential future, feasible, viable, scalable and fundable, but the primary condition is that these entrepreneurs have the capacity to gain the trust of potential investors in their project and look attractive to them.

In addition, these projects need to be related to the consumption, industrial, clean-tech, high-tech and ICT sectors; in line with the markets that involve future success opportunities as well as a productive diversification on the territory, a high job creation potential.  The entrepreneur or the team must show a high level of commitment and be ready to settle down in the Co-working space of the BIC for a period of 10 to 11 months during the training phase until they meet potential investors.

Once the Business model and the market are defined and the start-up is operating, we welcome financial entities with whom the BIC has signed a cooperation agreement. Those financial organizations provide support programmes to innovative entrepreneurs as well as complementary financing through participative loans made accessible through various public organizations such as IVACE-Financiación, ENISA, CDTI, etc., always with the support of the BIC.

Deadline for the submission of projects: 30 September 2014.