CO-INVESTIN focuses on creating cross-border co-investment opportunities for modest and moderate EU ecosystems by leveraging promising startups in the portfolio of local investors to attract foreign investors from more advanced ecosystems in their new rounds. To achieve that, the partners will pilot the approach in 4 emerging ecosystems (EL, BG, RO, PT) where the consortium partners have a strong footprint and progressively integrate at least 10 additional emerging/ moderate ecosystems by the end of the project. The project focuses on the funding gap around the Series A, very acute in these ecosystems both from the lack of capital and investors perspective, as well as in terms of deal size with respect to more advanced ecosystems. As demonstrated by the recent experience with the EIC Fund, identifying a lead investor and co-investors is a challenging task for DeepTech start-ups, in particular the ones from emerging ecosystems. The CO-INVESTIN approach relies on 4 main dimensions, that cover in a complete manner both the analytic and the action oriented dimensions of the approach: 1. Investment gap analysis, 2. Development of Market Orientation Programmes, 3. Stimulating cross-border investments and 4. Upscaling the framework and enhancing its impacts. The main project results include: • At least 5 working groups to foster the creation of structured and coordinated networks • At least 20 peer investor match-making sessions • Establishment of local CPI and activation of the Assistance Service for foreign investors • Market orientation programmes for European investors, with emphasis on women for at least 10 ecosystems • 5 networking review sessions & VC syndication to encourage joint ventures & Cooperation with innovation agencies • 2 International business forums & conferences to attract and connect investors Particular focus will be placed on fostering the increased participation of women in both the entrepreneurial endeavours, as well as investment landscape.

The European innovation landscape is still geographically unbalanced, negatively affecting more disadvantaged business ecosystems and creating in those areas weaker entrepreneurial activity, scarcer investments and lower employment opportunities. As a consequence, the diverse innovation landscape in Europe and the strong geographical gap among the better-connected innovation ecosystems (strong innovators and innovation leaders) and the less connected ones (moderate and emerging), leads the start-ups from better-connected ecosystems benefitting from more local accelerators with greater funding opportunities and more qualified business support services compared to their counterparts elsewhere. Starting from these premises, the mission of the AccelerAction project is to lay the foundations for a reversal trend, by contributing in making moderate and emerging innovation ecosystems more attractive to international companies interested in setting up their businesses outside the established centres and generating a more balanced business activity across Europe. To this end, AccelerAction aims to create more connected and efficient innovation ecosystems in the sector of advanced technologies, supporting the scaling of companies, encouraging innovation and stimulating cooperation among national, regional and local innovation actors through a pan-European Networked Acceleration Programme. These are the AccelerAction objectives in detail: i) improve the quality and outreach of business acceleration services in developing innovation ecosystems; ii) co-design programmes of activities proposed jointly by business acceleration entities located in less connected ecosystems and innovation hubs; iii) strengthening less connected ecosystems to increase their competitiveness & connectivity, and to keep more balanced the business activity across Europe; iv) accelerate gender equality in the innovation ecosystems.