After 9 months of constant planning, preparations, several postponements, moving online and adjustments for the local selection events – THE event is approaching fast! If you had not done yet so, book your ticket now, as it’s only three weeks until the eight most-promising smart mobility startups from across Europe will get on (the online) stage again to pitch for potential investments and to become the ultimate champion of this year’s Invest and Connect exclusive startup award series in the field of smart mobility.

The European Final is hosted online together with our long-time partner e& Co. AG from Berlin on 3rd December, starting at 17:30.

e&Co. is an agile management consultancy and investment company based in Germany, focusing on mobility. With a credo of: “the most exciting time in automotive history is still ahead of us”, it’s no surprise that the team is dedicated to shape the future of mobility and driving digital transformation in products and new sales models.

As we are reaching the finish line, let us summarise the most-important information about the grand finale.

All the eight national finalists are busy, fine-tuning their pitches – in line with the feedback from the local qualifiers -, to make sure they impress the European network of investors that will attend the final event. The winner of the last local selection event sums up well the ambition and quality of the final contestants.

“We at Unmanned Life are very pleased to be winners of the ESAC – Invest and Connect Scotland round. It was a fantastic experience to participate along high-quality fellow startups from the UK and great to interact with such knowledgeable and experienced jury members. With offices in London, Brussels and Barcelona in Europe and the aim to focus more on the DACH region next year, and hence, we are looking forward to the finals on 3rd December.” 

Our analyst team has screened over 1000 startups this year, looking for the latest disruptive solutions on a broad scale. Concrete areas included shared-economy, traffic reducing measures, wireless communications, real-time data analytics and machine learning used in autonomous vehicles, solutions related to parking and traffic signals, various sensors used in transportation, logistics, connected vehicles and related marketplaces.

The final eight and the countries they will represent are as follows:

• Austria – Ubiq
• Germany – Carfellows
• Switzerland – fastree 3D
• Finland – Maas Global
• France – konboi one
• Spain – iomob
• Sweden – Uniquesec
• UK – Unmanned Life

This year is the seventh time we organize the ‘Invest & Connect’ series, which is an exclusive, investor-only event series, focusing on pre-assessed investment opportunities, presented in form of startup pitches, and networking. Every season the focus is on a different topic; previous years we covered areas like AI, digital health, regtech, sporttech. Our members – business angels, high-net-worth individuals, family offices and corporates venture capital units -, combine their individual financial strength, network and know-how to invest in high-growth European startups in rounds of €1-10m.

The final event will centre around the same goals – to boost collaboration between participants, connect you with partner funds (venture capital) and leading corporates all over Europe as well as great European talents, as we believe in pan-European growth stories.

And in this we unite forces with great partners like Deutsche Börse Venture Network, KPMG Austria, motec ventures, Binder Groesswang Attorneys at Law, Zürcher Kantonalbank, Liechtensteinische Landesbank (Österreich) AG, Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP, European Startup Prize for Mobility, Connected Mobility Hub, Drive Sweden, Helsinki Business Hub, ITS Finland ry, Novalog or Neoma Mobility Accelerator.

To plan your time and focus well, and to maximise opportunities the event offers, here we share the preliminary schedule of the evening:

17:30 – Welcome & Overview by the President of the ESAC, Berthold Baurek-Karlic

17:35 – Keynote by Geza Brugger, Co-Founder and Chief Venture Officer AG of e&Co. AG

17:40 – Startup pitching (8x10min)

19:20 – Winner’s Announcement

19:25 – 20:00 – Online Networking Sessions in Groups

20:00 – Closing

For more insights or additional point-of-views about the current investment sentiment in general and related to smart mobility, you may check out the interviews series we conducted over the last months and weeks with some of our key partners and jury members of the series. The interviews covered selected countries where the ‘Invest and Connect’ local selection (online) events took place in 2020. This includes the UK, France , Spain and Germany. And stay tuned – there is more to come!