In 2018, imec.istart was awarded the 4th place in the ‘World Top Business Accelerator – Linked to University’ category by UBI Global. This renowned organization unveiled its ranking of university-linked incubators and accelerators following a screening of 1,370 programs worldwide according to over 50 parameters. This 4thplace for our program also makes imec.istart the n° 1 accelerator in Europe. Get the details
Imec.istart support proves to be a catalyst for its start-ups to become scale-ups.
In UBI Global’s category for securing follow-up financing, imec.istart is benchmarked amongst the top 3% of incubators and accelerators worldwide. Many businesses in our portfolio have become more and more successful in securing additional funding. Today, the total funding for all imec.istart companies exceeds 150 million euro. Almost 70% of that amount was raised in the last two-and-a-half years. This also implies that for every euro invested by imec.istart, our companies on average attract 17x that amount in various forms of follow-up financing, illustrating the catalytic effect which imec.istart aims to generate for its entrepreneurs.
Like in previous years, imec.istart is again named as 1 of the world’s 10 best programs in the European ScaleUp Reports by Sirris, remaining a real stronghold amongst big players such as Y-Combinator, Techstars, 500 Startups, Seedcamp and Microsoft Accelerator.
Have a look at some significant figures since the beginning of imec.istart in 2011 –
- 168 businesses supported through imec.istart.
- 84% continuation rate of all supported businesses. 13 start-ups exited through acquisition and/or management buy-out; 27 stopped their activities.
- Over 800 jobs created by imec.istart companies in total.
- Over 100M € revenue by all imec.istart’ers in total.
- Nearly 40 scale-ups since entering the program as a start-up.
- Over 80 have international sales with customers abroad.
- 25 female co-founders spread over 20 imec.istart companies. 3 founding teams are entirely female.
