Hubble is an acceleration program that aims to find out “great ideas” and to finance them through recurring calls. Its purposes are the scouting, tutoring, mentoring and starting up/business acceleration of the best entrepreneurial ideas in Tuscany, Italy and Europe. The program is focused on projects with a significant impact on the digital market and with possible positive future consequences on the development of the Metropolitan Area of Florence, especially regarding to the following themes: sharing economy, smart city solutions, IoT, energy, Saas, mobile app, circular economy, health, bioinformatics.
Hubble program is funded by Foundation CR Firenze and it’s promoted by Nana Bianca accelerator and Foundation for Research and Innovation.
It’s addressed to physical people organized in teams or innovative startups and SMEs who want to develop and implement their products/services, facing new challenges related to the scale-up phase. The winning projects, from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 15 each year, will receive a grant, which amount varies from 10.000€ to 50.000€. The grant will be used for services and activities, such as development of business model, company foundation, marketing, employment, specialized consultancy, internal costs for employees and co-working space in Nana Bianca. Transfer of resources will be available in tranches depending on specific milestones.
Winning teams need to attend to training courses; Foundation for Research and Innovation is in charge of managing the training program. Main topics developed along the duration of the program are:
- Online marketing: managing of online campaigns
- Financial channels: how Business Angels and Venture Capitals work
- Business Modelling & Business Planning, Pitch deck: how to impress investors
- Fundraising: how to choose between private and public instruments
The Hubble acceleration program is 16 weeks long, and offers maximum 5/6 grants for each call.
Starting from the second edition, Hubble Light has been created: startups receive training and acceleration services together with the Hubble winners, but the Hubble Light ones have no grant.
“We look far and beyond to find talented entrepreneurs and support their growth”
1st call – closed – deadline April, 10th 2017
These are the winning startups and their projects:
By clicking on each startup it’s possible to deepen their businesses thanks to dedicated intervews (italian version only).
Read the news written by Luisa Lenzi on La Nazione – Pistoia, a local newspaper, about Vitamina startup from 8th January 2018 here (italian version only)
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2nd call – closed – deadline September, 25th 2017
Down below the winners of the 2nd batch:
The winners of Hubble Light:
To find out their businesses please click on each link or just read our news here (italian version only).
From December 2017 on, startups related to Hubble will attend one at the time to “Firenze nel cuore”, a Radio program at Lady Radio (102.1), from 10:30 to 11:00 AM (italian version and audio only):
- 6th December, Crowdbooks – listen to the radio episode here
- 17th January 2018, Vitamina – (1° batch of Hubble) listen to the radio episode here
- 14th February, Labsitters
- 7th March, Edgar Smart Concierge
- 11th April, Gotto – watch the radio episode here
- 16th May, Whip – watch the radio episode here
- 6th June, Shike – watch the radio episode here
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3rd call – closed – deadline April, 20th 2018
Hubble winners for the third batch are
Hubble Light winners are:
- My shinding
Find out their businesses by clicking on the link, or read our news here (italian version only)
From June 2018 Hubble startups will attendend a new radio broadcast, Controradio, where they will present themseves at “One, two, startup” program (streaming on www.controradio.it and on Controradio Firenze app) and live from web tv (Facebook page Controradio Firenze and www.controradio.it), at 9:15 AM:
- 07th June Labsitters
- 21st June Roommate
- 28th June Rifò
- 12th July Videodrome
- 4th November, Teyuto (2° batch of Hubble)
- 29th November, Gotto Wine (2° batch of Hubble)
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4th call – closed – deadline October, 12th 2018
The winners of the 4th batch:
Find out their businesses by clicking on the link, or the news promoted by StartupItalia here (italian version only).
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5th call closed – deadline April, 30th 2019
The winners of the 5th batch are:
- Bleu Eco Line
- Cinescouter
- Fakebuster
- Foodplant
- RoleEver
- Roomless
- Schoolr
- TalDeg
- Wanderoo
- Circular Wool (startup chosen by Get it!)
Find out their businesses by clicking on the correspondent links, by reading the press release from Fondazione CR Firenze here or the news from StartupItalia here.
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6th call – closed – deadline on 29th February 2020
Winners will be announced in June 2020
