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Program

13th edition in 2025!

almost 700 supported teams

500,000€investment prize

over 200M€ total alumni startups valuation

teams from
19 universities in 9 cities

Are you a young visionary that aims to build a tech start-up?

Join us to turn your tech vision into a product through fine-tuned mentorship, access to bleeding-edge technologies and interaction with top companies, mentors and angel investors.

Are you an innovative company looking to connect with the most vibrant innovation eco-systems?

Join the main university based tech start-up accelerator program in Romania - and be part of a network that fosters innovation, collaboration and digital transformation.

How to find your team category & business track
for a game-changing solution


Step 1: Select your team type from
the following 3 categories:

Student driven team

Innovation Labs is a University centered program. Choose this category if you are a team of students keen to develop entrepreneurial thinking and to learn the basics of start-up creation.

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University research spin-off

Innovation Labs aims to foster effective technology transfer. Choose this category if you are a team with a proven research idea (PhD, PostDoc) and you are looking for ways to get it to market. Ideally, the author of such research would be the team lead.

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Senior team

Innovation Labs continuously strives to grow the start-up ecosystem at large. Choose this category if you are a professional with experience in building and managing companies looking to test out a new idea. To provide the best value for the ecosystem, we believe fresh talent should also be employed, so your team must contain at least one student


Step 2: Pick one of the 9 tracks to align your idea

with savvy mentors, bleeding edge technologies, and current industry & business opportunity

Agriculture

Take up the challenge of making agriculture more attractive for young professionals and entrepreneurs, more efficient for farmers, more profitable in a changing economy, more sustainable and ecological.

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Blockchain

Create cutting edge solutions with a strong blockchain core solving critical business needs, from health to supply chain management, and have them showcased on this special track.

Cybersecurity

Create solutions for a safer digital world, empowering users to explore in confidence the previously uncharted and push the boundaries of knowledge and experience, in full awareness of risks and defense measures.

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DevTools

If you are passionate about making life easier for software and hardware developers and increase their productivity to more easily create, share, reuse or otherwise make more creative use of code, this track is for you.

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DigitalHealth

Build digital solutions (software and/or hardware) that will help medical professionals, patients, caretakers and medical institutions to build the future of healthcare.

Lifestyle

Help people take full advantage of current technologies to increase self-knowledge, hack their daily routines and take control over their lifestyles.

Retail & E-commerce

Revolutionize retail by merging mobile applications, IoT sensors and devices, cloud service and powerful data analytics tools for novel customer-business interaction.

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Smart City & Industry 4.0

Boost urban experiences and shape inspiriting environments through rich information flows and secure feedback loops, synchronizing rhythms of daily life, business, and travel into a city-wide performance.

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Sustainability

Sustainability is becoming a more and more important subject, pushed on the public agenda by authorities, legislation, companies, but also by more and more citizens, and NGOs. The achievement of a balanced economic, social and environmental development (as expressed in the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development) is one of the major challenges humanity is facing today. Yet, challenges come with a lot of opportunity points.

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How can Innovation Labs help you?


PrototypeInnovation Labs invites young professionals to explore the potential of bleeding-edge technologies to solve real problems, for real people - by developing a Minimum Viable Product.

PartnershipsProgram partners open for participants an arena for experimenting with dedicated IT&C solutions and infrastructures of the future. Explore and catch their interest with your insight and potential!

Media exposureWe guide teams in improving their graphic design, presentation skills and media footprint, shaping their media profile with distinctiveness and outreach.

MentorshipsTop mentors from the startup ecosystem and ICT industry keep open lines of dialogue and feedback throughout the program and beyond, helping teams to align disruptive technologies with well-specified needs.

InvestmentEarly Game Ventures is set to invest a minimum of €500,000 in standout startups from the 2025 Innovation Labs cohort. Stay focused, engaged, and ensure your product is ready to capture this opportunity!

Program structure

Registration

December - February

In this initial preparation phase, we encourage you to develop and shape your ideas at Idea Jam events and student-mentor meet-ups. Bring your own concepts or create new ones with support from mentors, partners, and program alumni in a series of dynamic and informal sessions. Not quite sure about your idea but ready to dive in? Explore the Open Challenges on our landing page—these specially curated concept cards, crafted by Innovation Labs and our partners, are designed to spark inspiration. For those eager to secure their place, the pre-registration form is available. For further details on the technology enablers provided by our partners, be sure to visit the Tech section.

Selection Hackathons

08-23 March

Welcome to the beginning of your start-up adventure! Join us in one of the 30-hours Hackathons – and pitch your idea in 1 minute in front of the public. Inspire the audience, find team members, and go on to build your prototype - with mentorship and lots of coffee. Then hack through the night and discuss and improve your product based on feedback from mentors. At the end, pitch your prototype in front of the jury, renowned IT professionals, business gurus, tech-angels – and keep your fingers crossed for the selection. If you manage to convince the jury about the feasibility of your idea, you are selected to join the mentorship program. Congratulations, you have just won three months of hard work!

Pre-acceleration phase

March - May

Once you are in the program, amazing things are about to happen in the next months which we call the “development phase”. You will attend weekly workshops and inspirational Innovation Labs Unplugged sessions that will engage you with the entrepreneurial ecosystem and provide food for thought! Empowered by your mentors and assigned coaches, you will be assisted in developing your product on various dimensions, and creating your own entrepreneurial mindset.

Workshops happening during the program:
How to Build an MVP in Innovation LabsUX and Customer DiscoveryCompetitive AnalysisBusiness modelsPersona identificationFeature prioritisationUser Journey & Info ArchitectureSoftware Architecture & Tech StackUser Testing Cybersecurity basicsPatentingHow to Pitch

Demo Day

27 May

You’ve made it to the most intense event of the journey! The program culminates with the graduating events that gather teams, mentors, and ambassadors, partners of the program as well as different stakeholders from the educational and entrepreneurial ecosystem. The first event is the “Startups Fair”, where you will be presenting your technical demo and networking with our various stakeholders. The second event is the “Demo Day” where you will hold a 2 minutes’ pitch in front of the audience, showcasing the product you have built over the past three months, and will compete for the jury’s recognition regarding your efforts in turning your idea into an MVP over the program. These exciting event put the best teams and products in the spotlight, allowing you to benefit from a strong media exposure and an audience of approximately 600 possible partners and investors.

Long-term support

June and beyond

Your journey does not end with the Demo Day event. Innovation Labs supports teams that choose to continue working on their product and still need technical guidance and advice on certain issues, such as scaling their start-up or applying for specialized accelerator programs. Also, you will be encouraged to reach out to the world by promoting your products in media appearances that Innovation Labs can facilitate for you.