Southern European Entrepreneurship Engine (South3E) project: first call open for research teams, start-ups and SMEs

The EU-funded project Southern European Entrepreneurship Engine (South3E) aims to accelerate deep tech projects and solutions coming from research teams, start-ups and SMEs, which can positively affect social development and economic growth for a more sustainable future.

South3E is a joint initiative funded by the European Commission under the European Innovation Ecosystems SCALEUP call, part of the Horizon Europe Programme. The project will take 30 months and it will be managed by 4 partners from Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Spain. The team consists of experts from the research, innovation and acceleration ecosystem, together with policy and community building experts.

The first South3E open call

Today, the consortium of S3E – Southern European Entrepreneurship Engine has launched its first open call as part of the development of an engine of growth that will improve the connections and efficiency of the entrepreneurship ecosystems in Southern European countries.

In the framework of this open call, the South3E project will develop disruptive solutions built around unique or hard-to-reproduce breakthroughs, and products, processes or services capable of fulfilling currently unmet (or ill-met) market needs. This new engine will unlock the untapped innovation potential of Southern European deep tech, targeting scientific and technical excellence in the fields of agriculture, natural sciences, health, engineering and technology. 

The call is built around 3 tracks of services tailored to start-ups’ varying levels of maturity (i.e., early, growth, and scaling stages).

• S3E Start: for research teams and tech transfer offices, S3E offers a hands-on training programme to hone their commercial skills and secure early funding for development.
• S3E Charge: for grown start-ups, S3E provides mentoring and networking to develop an investment-ready business plan and facilitate access to non-dilutable and dilutable funding.
• S3E Reverse: for scaling start-ups and SMEs, S3E will set up an Open Innovation ecosystem to broker, connect and match corporates to scaling start-ups through a challenge-solution duality.

The deadline for applying to the S3E Open call is 10 February 2023, 17:00 CEST.

For more information about the project and the open call, check the S3E website.