As part of my consulting practice, I have often wondered, based on my own due diligence, how it was possible for some start-ups to have secured one or other prestigious award - and even the start-ups did, once I asked them ! In order to build a robust and sustainable start-up ecosystem, it is key for prizes and awards to be based on relevant and objective KPI's assessed by experienced experts.

Accelerators have mushroomed across Europe over the past decade but few have actually achieved lasting impact. Besides their business model, the success and sustainability of accelerators relies on the quality and experience of the experts they make available to their start-up batches.

Start-up funding programmes are vital to getting early-stage ventures off the ground and it is therefore essential that funding be strategically allocated. Evaluation is the crux of the issue and one of the main mistakes made by funding programmes across the board is the misalignment between what programmes are seeking to achieve and how funding applications are evaluated..