Building Global Innovators (BGI) is an intense global innovation accelerator powered by the unique collaboration of the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE), MIT Portugal Program, Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, and Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship. The accelerator is accepting submissions for its sixth edition at mitportugal-bgi.com through May 24.
BGI welcomes applications from aspiring entrepreneurs, startups, and spinoffs anywhere on the globe working in one of four technology tracks:
- medical devices and health information technology (IT);
- smart cities and industrial technologies;
- enterprise IT and smart data; and
- ocean economy.
By July 16, the selection board will choose a group of 20 ventures, five for each track. During the acceleration process, the 20 ventures will receive mentoring from experts during events such as eTeams I and eTeams II boot camps in Lisbon, Portugal, at ISCTE-IUL, and eTeams III boot camp in the United States at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This in-kind support is provided to the ventures free of charge, and is valued at 1 million Euros. At the end of the BGI program, four outstanding ventures will be selected to receive awards of 100,000 Euros each.
In addition to providing the boot camps and other opportunities, BGI also offers mentoring and other support to its alumni ventures for up to five years after the completion of the accelerator program.
In its five previous editions, BGI has received 515 submissions from 37 countries, 49.7 percent of which were from existing startups. The accelerator has supported 101 ventures, 68 of which are still active, representing an extremely high survival rate of 67.3 percent. To date, BGI alumni organizations have secured over 27 million Euros in financing, more than 62 percent coming from angel investors and venture capital firms. Interested applicants can read testimonials from some of the program's alumni.
