About us

The core mission of Booster Labs is to support DeepTech start-ups at critical growth stages throughout their scale-up journey. Based on the 10+ years experience of each of its founders in various accelerators and business support organizations, Booster Labs aims to help DeepTech start-ups hack the growth process by drawing inspiration from the collective experience of the ecosystem and in particular from notable peer success stories, and consequently efficiently plan and achieve key milestones in their development by accessing adequate resources. We have analyzed and identified the critical success factors at every stage of growth, in different DeepTech technology areas and across various sectors, and leverage the mappings we have established to review and/or develop personalized roadmaps that allows the start-ups we support to efficiently cross the “valleys of death” associated to their growth stages. We firmly believe in the impacts of collaborative innovation and involve a dense network of multidisciplinary partners across Europe to stimulate the emergence of projects of common interest for the quintuple helix stakeholders, leveraging the convergence of disruptive technologies to create market value.

Our services

 

Strategy review

Understanding the approach, positioning and ambition of the start-ups we work with is a prerequisite to successfully and efficiently support them. We challenge and support the founders we work with to make sure they have defined a sound technological, business and financial roadmap and action plan.

Go to market

To support start-ups achieving the main goal of putting their solutions and services on the market, we leverage a wide network of corporates and midcaps strongly invested in open innovation and willing to collaborate with start-ups. We match-make start-ups and large companies and help them establish a proper framework for working from PoC to larger scale deployments.

Non-dilutive funding

One of the core expertise of Booster Labs is the access to public funding,  in particular to support individual and collaborative innovation and R&D projects. We mainly cover French and European grants and support the start-ups throughout the end to end application preparation process.

Private funding

To facilitate access to growth capital, we support start-ups in the fundraising process up to Series A. We help start-ups review and refine their Business Plan and pitch deck, access the resources needed to achieve key milestones leveraged in the fundraising process to have a convincing business case and increase valuation and introduce them to the most relevant Angels and VC from our European network.

Our team

Jean-Baptiste

Paul

Jean-Baptiste is a senior coach for BPI France and InvestHorizon (support for Series A DeepTech start-ups). He also works with impact tech start-ups on financing, R&D management, IP & valuation strategy, design methodologies,market entry and ecosystems implementation. Finally, he is also today the representative of the CCIF in Georgia and a speaker in innovation programs (X-up, UPMC…).
For 8 years, he was successively creator of incubator and technological accelerator (micro/nanotech) for Agoranov (Critéo, DNA script, Olvid,…) and ESIEE Paris, then entrepreneur and associate at STYCKR (Smart autonomous tracker for industrial assets). Previously, he worked on the financial markets of carbon credits and managed a national agency at the Ministry of Energy and Environment.
His commitment: to contribute to the growth of impact technologies, to the development of talents and their soft skills with benevolence and passion.

After his PhD in the field of micro and nanotechnologies, Paul worked during 5 years as a technical team leader in a consulting company helping start-ups, SMEs and large groups get public funding for innovation and R&D. Paul had joined Opticsvalley – the Paris area cluster in photonics and DeepTech – in March 2015 where he became in 2017 the Business & Innovation team leader.  His main tasks were to support DeepTech companies from the Ile-de-France region, all along their development cycle, to find solutions to technical issues, stimulate collaborations, technology transfer and the emergence of innovative projects supported through public funding.
Since 2019 Paul stared working as an independent expert, designing EU funded projects, preparing collaborative and individual funding applications, and contributing to the implementation of some of the successful projects such as www.dt2invest.com and www.leadership4smes.eu.

 

Our projects

Financed under the Grant Agreeent N° 101072073 (« HORIZON-EIE-2021-SCALEUP-01-01 – Expanding Acceleration Ecosystems » call for applications).

The European innovation landscape is still geographically unbalanced, negatively affecting more disadvantaged business ecosystems and creating in those areas weaker entrepreneurial activity, scarcer investments and lower employment opportunities. As a consequence, the diverse innovation landscape in Europe and the strong geographical gap among the better-connected innovation ecosystems (‘strong innovators’ and ‘innovation leaders’) and the less connected ones (‘moderate’ and ‘emerging’), leads the start-ups from better-connected ecosystems benefitting from more local accelerators with greater funding opportunities and more qualified business support services compared to their counterparts elsewhere.
Starting from these premises, the mission of the AccelerAction project is to lay the foundations for a reversal trend, by contributing in making moderate and emerging innovation ecosystems more attractive to international companies interested in setting up their businesses outside the established centres and generating a more balanced business activity across Europe. To this end, AccelerAction aims to create more connected and efficient innovation ecosystems in the sector of advanced technologies, supporting the scaling of companies, encouraging innovation and stimulating cooperation among national, regional and local innovation actors through a pan-European Networked Acceleration Programme. AccelerAction aims to: i) improve the quality and outreach of business acceleration services in developing innovation ecosystems; ii) co-design programmes of activities proposed jointly by business acceleration entities located in less connected ecosystems and innovation hubs; iii) strengthening less connected ecosystems to increase their competitiveness & connectivity, and to keep more balanced the business activity across Europe; iv) accelerate gender equality in the innovation ecosystems.

Financed under the Grant Agreeent N° 101095720 (« HORIZON-HLTH-2022-IND-13-04 – Setting up a European Smart Health Innovation Hub » call for applications).

SHIFT-HUB (Smart Health Innovation & Future Technologies Hub) aims to establish a pan-European Smart Health Innovation Hub bringing together a rich network of multidisciplinary stakeholders across the dimensions of the quadruple helix, with the mission to facilitate the development, ensure the promotion and foster the uptake of Smart Health technologies and services. SHIFT-HUB will develop and test with the community a complete service offer, integrating networking and matchmaking, identification of partners and support for procurement, guidance for access to funding, research infrastructures and scientific expertise. In complement to a complete service offer based on JRC’s guidelines for the establishment of DIH’s, SHIFT-HUB’s differentiating factors consist in:
1) an immersive approach to involve patients and citizens in the co-creation process based on the Living Lab methodology, coupled to an on-line gamification based e-learning journey allowing to raise awareness, increase literacy and foster the adoption of Smart Health solutions.
2) an approach based open innovation to foster a collaborative, demand-driven and SME-inclusive development and uptake of Smart Health solutions (in an ecosystem of multidisciplinary stakeholders).
3) a technical platform pilot including a Health Data Hub, a Smart Health Apps Repository and an on-line Marketplace to support the experimental development based on a secure and interoperable access to data and showcase a portfolio of solutions developed by the community members.
SHIFT-HUB will identify a pool of 100 high potential Smart Health apps, that will be assessed by at least 300 patients and citizens during 5 Living Lab events, 1500 users on-line and will be connected to at least 50 Healthcare organizations for further uptake.

 

Financed under the « EISMEA/2021/OP/0018Access to Expertise and Training through EIC Tech to Market Training Programme and Venture Building Activities »  tender (Lot 1: Business Model Design and Training for Deep-tech Innovators ).

CIRCE – Coaching for Innovation and Research-based projects by Connected Entrepreneurship program aims to contribute to the objectives of the EIC “to bring promising technologies to a level of development, validation and demonstration where they become a credible basis for entrepreneurship, business creation, investment and, ultimately, economic and/or societal returns”. The approach proposed by CIRCE’s consortium aims to smoothly integrate in the continuum of tools and services developed by the EIC and its EIC Program managers for European researchers and innovators. Through this program, aiming at accompanying cohorts of scientific entrepreneurs from business awareness to the prelude of their startups, CIRCE will set the cornerstone of a European deep tech entrepreneurship community. Indeed, CIRCE will provide coaching and training, within 2 years, to more than 700 scientists from various horizons, ages and industries and build a solid network of partnerships to enlarge this community beyond the EIC laureates.

ExcellEnt

Financed under the Grant Agreeent N° 101100515 (HORIZON-EIE-2022-SCALEUP-01-01 – Expanding Entrepreneurial Ecosystems call for applications).

ExcellEnt has the ambition to propose a collaborative program with the mission to strengthen and homogenize entrepreneurial practices by enhancing the connectedness between the members of 6 entrepreneurial ecosystems across Europe (4 emerging ones and 2 advanced ones). ExcellEnt builds on the competences of 7 experienced partners, having a vast expertise in the design and implementation of start-up support and incubation programs, and aims to build bridges across EU entrepreneurial ecosystems, creating equal opportunities for arising entrepreneurs in less developed ecosystems and connections for the overall European ecosystem with the international landscape. With our project, we aspire to explore novel ways to capture, preserve, curate, organise and communicate sets of unstructured entrepreneurial experiences, stories, narratives with an emphasis to those of younger audience that is addressing the challenge of (self)employability, so that they can constitute a shared resource that people can augment, and that individuals as well as institutions can delve into, to find inspiration for new ways of conceptualising and promoting entrepreneurship, and how these new ways can be reflected into every-day practices and policies, and foundations for visions of our common European future.

INNO-MOB

INNO-MOB will focus on the opportunities that initiatives and networks offer to innovative and dynamic businesses through an inclusive mobility innovation European ecosystem business support framework. The emerging (sustainable) mobility market will be used as the vehicle to examine the opportunities provided and develop mechanisms to support the deployment potential of companies in bringing innovations to the market quickly. INNO-MOB will reduce innovation divide between strong and moderate innovators in European territories by increasing the inclusiveness of the existing networks and initiatives. INNO-MOB will base its operating principles on four main blocks of activities: i) exploring the needs of the key innovation stakeholders ii) design, development and implementation of new schemes and collaborations iii) Connect & learn iv) sustain.

fuTOURiSME

Financed under the Grant Agreeent N° 101121578 (SMP-COSME-2022-TOURSME call for applications).

 

fuTOURiSME aims at supporting SMEs in the sector of experiential tourism, overcome the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemics and emerge from the new socio-economic environment, through new business models, innovative services, skills & utilisation of twin transition (digital and sustainable) solutions. fuTOURiSME holistic approach consists of: 

  • Best Practices repository: curating and sharing leading strategies and best practices concerning the needs of SMEs in a compendium, as a roadmap and inspiration for tourism SMEs and stakeholders eager to embrace the twin transition journey. 
  • Skills enhancement & training: equipping tourism SMEs with the expertise to harness the twin transition, complemented by custom training resources and expert-led coaching. 
  • Digital & sustainable innovation projects grants: championing digital advancements and sustainable approaches by awarding 60 tourism SME-led innovative projects with €30,000 each that enable the development, implementation and scaling-up of innovative solutions. 
  • Sustainability certification & self-assessment: Developing and Introducing a unique fuTOURiSME sustainability tool, guiding SMEs towards achieving prestigious sustainability certifications. 

By addressing specific topics of the Transition Pathway for Tourism, such as circulatory tourism services, green transition, digitalization, and skills awareness, fuTOURiSME is reshaping SME operations and invigorating the entire tourism ecosystem. Open

The fuTOURiSME Open Call for Innovative Projects in Tourism, focused on promoting the Twin Transition for tourism SMEs, was officially launched on September 16th, 2024, and will remain open until November 27th, 2024.

This initiative will fund 60 innovative, SME-led projects with lump sums of €30,000 each, supporting the development, implementation, and scaling of cutting-edge solutions.

For full details, please refer to the Terms of References.

Apply Now

 

 

CO-INVESTIN

Financed under the Grant Agreeent N° 101114238 (HORIZON-EIE-2022-SCALEUP-02 call for applications).

CO-INVESTIN focuses on creating cross-border co-investment opportunities for modest and moderate EU ecosystems by leveraging promising startups in the portfolio of local investors to attract foreign investors from more advanced ecosystems in their new rounds. To achieve that, the partners will pilot the approach in 4 emerging ecosystems (EL, BG, RO, PT) where the consortium partners have a strong footprint and progressively integrate at least 10 additional emerging/ moderate ecosystems by the end of the project. The project focuses on the funding gap around the Series A, very acute in these ecosystems both from the lack of capital and investors perspective, as well as in terms of deal size with respect to more advanced ecosystems. As demonstrated by the recent experience with the EIC Fund, identifying a lead investor and co-investors is a challenging task for DeepTech start-ups, in particular the ones from emerging ecosystems.

The CO-INVESTIN approach relies on 4 main dimensions, that cover in a complete manner both the analytic and the action oriented dimensions of the approach: 1. Investment gap analysis, 2. Development of Market Orientation Programmes, 3. Stimulating cross-border investments and 4. Upscaling the framework and enhancing its impacts.