Applications for Startupbootcamp Berlin are now closed – and more than 300 aspiring startups are now nervously waiting to see if they have made the 20-strong shortlist. They, in turn, will battle it out in August for the right to be part of the accelerator program.
Startupbootcamp is a three-month program where ten international teams are selected and given a year’s worth of knowledge and connectivity before taking part in a special investor demo day. There have already been successful programs in Copenhagen, Dublin and most recently Amsterdam.
The teams who will face the music at the Selection Days on August 10 and 11 come from as far afield as Japan and Brazil, with people from a total of 38 countries. Many are on their second or third startup, have PhDs from top universities or have worked for major international companies like Deutsche Telekom, according to an SBC blog post.
And the ideas put forward are in fields including healthcare, renewable energy and psychology, as well as the more obvious spaces such as social media and cloud computing.
The SBC team is currently in the process of interviewing the best 50 applicants via Skype in interviews which focus on each team member’s experience as well as their product or idea.
The top 20 will be invited to Berlin where they will pitch their ideas to an audience of mentors and investors as well as the Startupbootcamp team. After the top ten have undergone the program, they will participate in the investor demo day at the end of November.
And they will have the help of a group of mentors containing some of the biggest names in the Berlin tech scene.