At this year’s PowerUp! competition, organised by Europe’s leading cleantech Accelerator InnoEnergy, more startups applied than last year, and their solutions were even more advanced, said Jakub Miler, the CEO of InnoEnergy Central Europe and the Chairman of the Jury. He added that InnoEnergy is working very hard to make sure that the participating startups which manage to obtain the necessary funds use them as efficiently and as prudently as possible. At the event in Prague, which Energetika.NET attended as a media partner, Jury members and representatives of prominent European energy companies discussed the most common “pains” of startups, as well as their potential investors.

Michał Maćkowiak, Head of Innovation at Rafako S.A., a PowerUp! partner, was very pleased to see that the competition included startups with solutions from a broader field of energy-related cleantech. Zsolt Winkler, Head of the Open Innovation Hub at MOL Group and a Member of the Jury, agreed.

During the grand final in Prague, 15 startups presented their solutions before the Jury, investors, and media representatives. These were the winners of the country finals which took place in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Greece. The finalists were selected from 299 teams from the 24 Central European countries who applied to the PowerUp! competition.

This question was tackled by Alex Hunter, a digital brand and customer loyalty expert, as well as a keynote speaker at this year’s grand final in Prague, which Energetika.NET attended as a media partner. He said that if he had a concrete answer to this question, he would be a millionaire, adding that generally, in the first phase, startups need to believe in their work, and then work really hard. He went on to say that he invests in people, and not only in ideas, as ideas – and Zsolt Winkler agreed – are generated all the time. “It is the people who ensure, through their passion and their commitment, that their ideas truly come to life,” said Alex Hunter.

Zsolt Winkler added that startups and traditional companies definitely do not speak the same language, however, since startups create a disruption in the traditional markets, they simply must form connections, that is, traditional companies must have promising startups “on radar”, with which they can develop closer co-operation.

With their solutions, startups need to solve concrete issues, said Gul Erol, stressing the importance of “real energy” between partners (startups and traditional companies; author’s note). She added that traditional companies often have to follow established procedures, whereas startups, on the other hand, are much more agile.

Jakub Miler said that because of this, startups often offer solutions to problems which have not yet occurred, as they assume that these problems will emerge in the future. Michał Maćkowiak added that although startups often have good ideas, it can be a problem when a solution is already fully developed before the startup reaches out to companies, such as Rafako, to ask for funds – this leaves potential investors very little time to make a decision on a possible investment, effectively putting at risk the startup’s own efforts and the entire solution, which it worked so hard on and which could, with a different approach, really come to life.

Read also Energetika.NET’s article on the winners of this year’s PowerUp! competition!