Three more years of Founded!

Founded in Groningen

We’ve got some exciting news to share with you all. This afternoon, the City and Province of Groningen announced Founded in Groningen will continue for the next three years! We wanted to take the opportunity to share some of our highlights of the past years, as well as give you a sneak peak of cool things to come.
 

It all started after a visit from former EU commissioner and StartupDelta Special Envoy Neelie Kroes. She was impressed by the startup scene in Groningen and surprised nobody in the rest of the country knew about it. That needed to change. During a trip to Berlin, Koen Atema (Launch Cafe), Mark Vletter (Voys, Spindle), Rutger van Zuidam (Odyssey) and former City Alderman Joost van Keulen decided to put Groningen on the map once and for all. And in 2015, Founded in Groningen was born.

 

Highlights we’re proud of

The years have flown by and it’s really hard to pick from all the things we did. Nevertheless, here are a few accomplishments of the past years that we look back on with pride:

 

Kickass portal

In 2017, we launched our new portal, with a redesign and cool features that allow you to post your own news, events and jobs. We’ve got some new features coming up and we’ll keep you posted.

 

Founder Talks

Our event where entrepreneurs are given a podium to share successes, fails and their personal journey. In just a few short years, we hosted a whopping 9 talks with 18 entrepreneurs in total. Our 10th edition is November 26, so be sure to drop by!

 

Workshops and community meetups

To help both established and new entrepreneurs, we’ve organized several workshops and deep dives about all the ins and outs of building a successful business. We also host regular meetups with community facilitators, to talk about awesome plans, initiatives and ambitions, to strengthen the ecosystem together.

 

Startup in Residence

To help startups, corporates and governments to collaborate and co-create and find solutions for local societal and environmental issues, we launched the Groningen version of Startup in Residence last year. The second edition is just around the corner and will kick off on December 13.

 

National collaborations and startup missions

We’re actively working together with Techleap.nl (formerly StartupDelta) to represent Groningen and to help create the optimal climate for tech companies to scale with programs and initiatives for improving access to capital, market and talent. We also organized startups trips to Bremen and Slush in Helsinki and a bus trip to the Fast50 awards for the winning companies from Groningen.

 

A visit from Silicon Valley

In January this year, we welcomed Silicon Valley investor Neal Dempsey from Bay Partners, one of the oldest investment funds in San Francisco. Neal met with a few promising startups and successful scale-ups from Groningen and gave tips on creating a successful and sustainable startup ecosystem like Silicon Valley.

 

A sneak preview of future plans

Aside from all of the cool things we’re currently doing, we also have some new plans for the coming years. We want to focus more on diversity, capital and market, because finding the right kind of funding, hiring diverse talent and finding new markets are still things startups and scale-ups are struggling with. We also want to focus on helping international startups settle and grow here in Groningen.

 

A special thank you

The list of people who’ve helped and supported us is very long, but we wanted to thank a few people personally. First, Koen Atema for setting up Founded in Groningen and getting us to where we are today! Jessica Mills, who made Founder Talks a success and Bart Breij for being a great host and interviewer.

And of course we’d like to thank the City and Province, all our partners, ambassadors and awesome entrepreneurs who’ve supported us along the way.

 

Grab a drink and celebrate with us

We’re going to say cheers to the next three years on November 26, during the 10th edition of Founder talks. Tickets are free of charge, so sign up, drop by and grab a drink with us!