Bulgarian Eleven startup accelerator is one of the top 10 seed accelerators in Europe for 2015, according to the European Accelerator Report 2015.
The report compiled by Gust and Fundacity ranked European accelerators by the amount and number of capital investments made in 2015. On the list of top seed accelerators by capital investments, Bulgarian Eleven occupied the 3rd position, right after Danish Accelerace and Spanish Wayra. With a total amount of €2 million invested in 40 startups, Eleven also landed on the 12th position in the list of top 20 active accelerators by the number of startups accelerated.
The European Accelerator Report 2015 was created after surveying 237 organizations in Europe for pre-qualification. Only 113 of them have been qualified as accelerators and shared their data. Main findings disclose that these 113 accelerators have invested a total amount of €37,533,632 in 2,574 startups and have exited a total of 33 startups in 2015. The lowest number of startups accelerated per country belongs to Greece, where one accelerated program invested a total of €60,000 in only 3 startups. The upper limit is set by the UK with 1,124 startups accelerated by 24 programs and an invested amount of €71,267,352.
The SEE region is covered by only 3 accelerator programs coming from Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Greece. The startup acceleration in Slovenia covers 19 startups with total investments worth €300,000. Bulgarian Eleven, however, is the champion of the region.
Report results also reveal that the relevant history of European accelerators is considered to have started in 2007 with the launch of Seedcamp. Since 2007, the number of accelerators is constantly growing until 2012. After two years of stagnation, the upward trend continues in 2015. Out of the total number of 26 accelerators launched in 2015, 14 are focused on specific niche markets, such as Health, Real Estate, Food, Media and the like. Hot markets for 2016, based on the interest of the surveyed accelerators, are: big data analytics, e-commerce, health, cloud services, and others. Internet of Things is the number one market focus, marking a 61% increase when compared to the interest in 2014.
The European Accelerator Report was first issued for the year of 2014. With this year’s follow-up on the first edition, Gust and Fundacity aim to closely evaluate and understand the accelerator industry for the region. More specifically, they want to get deeper knowledge on how accelerators are funded and monetized and use these insights to predict the future direction of this growing industry.