Rural Spain ClimAccelerator

Rural Spain ClimAccelerator is supported by EIT Climate KIC.  Dedicated to tackling the urgent issue of climate change by advancing innovative sustainability solutions in rural areas.

We are looking for changemakers innovators that can help us to make more sustainable and connected Rural Areas. We will lead you to crystallises solutions into fundable, scalable, and impactful start-ups.

be part of the rural spain climaccelerator

Why rural spain climAccelerator

Rural areas within Europe are fundamental to our way of living. However, the vulnerabilities of these areas have been exacerbated during the last few years. Issues related to the decline of rural infrastructure and services, internet access, and transportation also loom large, and have reduced the population in these areas. 

We firmly believe that innovations and technology can not only turn these vulnerabilities into opportunities but also secure the future of these areas.

The Rural Spain ClimAccelerator is dedicated to tackling the urgent issue of climate change by advancing innovative sustainability solutions in rural areas.

About Our ClimAccelerator

Startups
1

You and your startup can be part of the firts cohort of promising startups contributing to a more sustainable future in rural areas

Topics
1

Bigger Impact – get elevated onto a trajectory leading your innovation to create a significant difference in the rural ecosystem

Weeks
1

Tap with other change makers expertise and contacts during  our intensive 16 weeks  climaceleration programme. 

Our Thematic Areas

3. Ima

Service of Nature

  • Sustainable and regenerative land use
  • Preserving and restoring biodiversity
  • Preserving and restoring Ecosystem services 
  • Nature Carbon Capture
  • Bioindicators

Rural Connectivity

  • Equal access to emerging technologies
  • Widespread digital literacy
  • Digitalization  for rural areas evolution
  • Managment of footprint indicator, like: water usage, land use, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution

Rural as a service

  • Bio-based materials and bio solutions for goods and services
  • Community based high quality products
  • Energetic communities
  • From farm-to-fork solution
  • Biophilic design, biomimicry, and naturalization

Wellbeing & growth

  • Valorization of the cultural heritage 
  • Attractive Tourist spaces
  • Harmonious territorial development
  • Enhancing the quality of indoor and outdoor environments
  • Rural innovative entrepreneurship

Our commitment is to provide your team with the best possible support, helping you to navigate through the challenges of entrepreneurial journey, reduce risks, and increase opportunities for your success.

Welcome on board!

Our Support

Mentoring

Our personalized guidance and support, combined with an international network of world-class mentors and experts, will ensure your success. You will have an assigned mentor who together will develop the outcomes and milestones you need to improve your business

Experts FeedBack

The duration will be 16 weeks, with the opportunity to receive stakeholder's experienced feedback that will guide you to validate your product, study your scaling strategy, improve your fundraising approach, sharpen your go-to-market strategy

Visibility and Networking

Marketing, brand promotion, and visibility on our web and our partner's social media. Entrance and participation in worldwide startup events, like 4YfN, this edition, participants will be part of the launch of the Green Tech Space.

Workshops

You will be exposed to actionable insights from our pool of international and national experts, that will lead you with workshops to valuable insights, and actionable recommendations, that help you move forward to your business's next level

Support network

We will ensure to provide you with the opportunity to meet a wide range of potential partners, stakeholders, and investors to build a strong network and receive valuable and relevant feedback.

EIT Climate KIC Support*

Possibility to access to the EIT Climate-KIC ecosystem to boost your start-up Access to EIT Climate-KIC financial sustainability tool: Climate SAFE (Special Consideration) *More in FAQ

Meet our Change-Maker?

Meet our first cohort impact - Driven Innovators

Our Program

We offer a custom hands-on program to help you succeed!

Building an impact-driven start-up requires a combination of different skills and competencies: refining your Climatech solution developing a Minimum Viable Product, validating your business model, designing an estrategic scaleup plan, and generating considerable impact in our modern society.

Duration: 3 weeks. We will be reviewing, validating and improving your business model proposition, with 1 o 1 mentoring and masterclass

During 3 weeks we will be talking about sustainable business models, and how you create and measure the impact you are creating

Duration: 3 weeks. We will be improving your porduct development, your prototype, making validations of your demo with user experiece

Duration: 4 weeks. Through workshops and masterclass, we will design a financial plan, that includes private and public fundraising, developing a profitable revenue model, connecting with the rigth partner

Duration: 3 weeks. We will be guiding you to develope a scale up strategy, thanks to our experts mentors and keynote participation.

Eligibility Criteria

Rural Spain ClimAccelerator is for aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators from diverse backgrounds in the fields of bioeconomy, biomaterials, decarbonisation, energy, efficiency, green hydrogen, circularity, water use and treatment, and agribusiness, with answers and solutions to the current environmental and societal-related wicked problems

Business stage

SMEs and start-ups with advanced business models, MVP / prototype, and at least TRL 6 will have preference

Registration Status

SME’s or startups that are already registered will be prioritised. You must at least be in the process of registration at the time of application.

Base of opperation

The startups must be located in Spain

Activity

We will consider SME’s and  startups incorporated with less than 5 years.

Team

Dedicated teams with at least 2 members will be prioritised

Fit with thematic topics

Prefeible, your business solution fix one or more of a our four topics, close to a commercial and technological scale up stage

Do you need more info?

Watch the recording of our first info day - 18 Dec '23
Watch the recording of our second info day - 10 Jan '24

Our Schedule

23 Nov'23

CAll LAuch

21 jan'24

application deadline

29 jan'24

Selection notification

07 FEB'24

Program kickoff

21 jun'24

demoday & closure

We are looking for partners

if you want to be involve with worldwide changing solution, let's have a talk

FAQ

Most frequent questions and answers

No, the Rural Spain ClimAcceleration is free of charge for the startups and its team members

The Climate-SAFE has been designed as a founder-friendly, and efficient means for Climate-KIC to invest in Europe’s most exciting Climate-tech companies. The Climate-SAFE is a simple agreement for future equity – a convertible investment.

The key terms of the Climate-SAFE are

  • €50,000 value
  • 24-month long-stop date
  • No valuation cap – we don’t want to limit the valuation of any future funding rounds!
  • 20% discount rate
  • No most-favored-nation clause

The Climate-SAFE is structured as a cash + services investment and grants access to the following package of support:

  • Carbon Impact Forecasting, Modelling, and Validation
  • Access to ClimateHIVE community
  • Fundraising support & connections to the Climate-KIC investor network
  • Commercialization Opportunities
  • EU Policy & Affairs support
  • A dedicated portfolio manager

This tool is optional. No mandatory request to join this agreement is needed for this call. If you have any questions about this, please contact the Climate-KIC Investment team on investments@climate-kic.org 

As we have a personalized acceleration program, we will attend maximun ten startups per cohort.

To be part of Rural Spain ClimAccelerator, we prefer startups with at least two team members.  We recomend assist all masterclass and mentors session acording to their role

We encourage systemic thinking solution approach. If your solution is related to more than one topic, let us know on the application form

For this edition the companies should be incorporated and located in Spain. Members of the team can be in any part of the country

For futher question please contact thaisglod@innobound.eu