After our recent announcement that Techstars is bringing the Smart Mobility Accelerator to Turin, Italy, we are now looking for 10 exceptional teams to join us and boost their businesses to the next level during our 13-week mentorship-driven accelerator program, starting in January 2020.

This is your chance to join the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed, with more than 300,000 alumni, +10,000 mentors and over +1,900 portfolio companies with a current market value of USD +23bn.

Who should apply and how do we define Smart Mobility?

If your outstanding team is working on a disruptive solution within the below mentioned markets and you have early traction, do not hesitate to apply. We’re especially looking for:

• Passionate founders

   We are looking for the best teams who can build globally successful companies. We believe that great companies are built by stellar entrepreneurs, having a balance between experience, passion and vision, eagerness to learn, and the ability to execute fast.

• Companies with a Smart Mobility angle

  When you think about Smart Mobility you might think of carpooling, bike-/car-/scooter sharing or autonomous driving. But Smart Mobility is much more than moving from A to B. It’s integration of information, combining insurance, payments, reducing pollution and climate emissions, moving goods, data and other tangible and intangible assets.

Our Smart Mobility definition includes: Transport services, IoT, Mobility-as-a-Service, autonomous transport/driving, drones and aerial mobility, logistics, sharing services, roads and traffic management, financial/insurance services, travel planning, first-and/last mile delivery, big data/AI, real-time information, virtual reality, safety and convenience as well as technologies adjacent to and related to smart infrastructure and smart cities.

Smart Mobility is a pillar of Smart Cities and a tool to achieve sustainable cities. In addition to the markets above, we are also very interested in companies within the circular economy, focusing on positive society-wide benefits and making the most of our resources.

Why you should join us in Turin

Italy is a steadily growing ecosystem with an increasing amount of investors and startups. In 2018, Italian startups raised more than EUR 520 million, a 260% increase from just EUR 136 million in 2017. Funds which started in 2018 raised almost EUR 900m for startup investments. Italy’s growing startup-scene is also supported by government initiatives, such as the National Innovation Fund that just recently announced it’s initiative to invest EUR 1bn in startups.

Turin has developed a thriving startup scene and is becoming a hotbed for tech startups. As of today, more than 300 innovative startups call Turin their home. Just earlier this month, Telecom Italia and the Municipality of Turin announced a collaboration to make Turin a cutting-edge model of the “digital city”, further creating synergies with the Turin City Lab, the Smart Road – Turin City Lab for autonomous and connected driving, and the Competence Center for Manufacturing 4.0. 

The region is home to +140,000 companies across many industries, such as aerospace, automotive, communication technologies, design, robotics and multimedia, and is recognized as an engineering tech hub with nearly 1,300 engineering graduates from the city’s 10 universities entering the job market on an annual basis. Several governmental initiatives including tax incentives, flexible labor law, and the Italia Startup Visa are additional factors that make Turin attractive for many organizations and professionals.

In the center of the beautiful Piemonte region, only one hour from the Italian riviera and the Olympic mountains, the city of Turin offers perfect conditions for a 13-week accelerator program and far beyond. 

Together with the Compagnia Di San Paolo, Fondazione CRT, Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center we will host 10 world-changing companies in the OGR innovation hub, a new 12,000 square meter tech-hub for scientific, technological and industrial research, focused on startups, in the heart of the city, providing access to the best mentors, corporates, investors and successful entrepreneurs.

What’s next?

Applications are open now! You can apply directly, sign-up for office hours if you have further questions, or read our FAQs to learn more about Techstars Accelerators.

Within the upcoming weeks, my colleague Antonio Pisante and I will travel around the globe to meet founders who are interested in joining us for the inaugural class of the Techstars Smart Mobility Accelerator. We’ll also be hosting a series of webinars, in-person and remote office hours, and Techstars Meet & Greet events all in an effort to find the best 10 companies to join our 2020 class.

Follow me on Linkedin and Twitter for the latest updates about the program and stay tuned for further announcements.

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