In addition to these events, in order to cut the high failure rate amongst startups, TWIST has helped digital entrepreneurs and startups by:

• Introducing them to international mentors and their potential future investors
• Improving their business and technical skills through co-working laboratories
• Defining their specific management process (startups are not smaller versions of large companies)
• Co-developing hand-in-hand with their future clients
• Facilitating access to the right type of finance
• Getting in touch with large corporates through the TWIST platform to solve their technological and business challenges (Microsoft, Adecco, Meet In Italy for Life Science, Tech-Tour, International Cybersecurity Forum, CISCO, Android, PSA)

The TWIST Training

Through our training formats, coaching events, mentoring events, meetings with partners, investors and successful entrepreneurs, startups learned how to define a challenge and find solutions to improve their cities and to implement their solutions all over Europe.

The methodology applied in the TWIST project was based on the “lean startup model”, customized specifically for European digital entrepreneurs and startups:

• Valorisation  of  the  talent:  helping  web  entrepreneurs  to  recruit,  train  and  retain  the people that can help them grow, and connecting them with the right mentors;
• Access to capital: assisting web entrepreneurs in identifying the sources of capital available to web entrepreneurs in various regions and sectors and linking them to the most interesting hubs in Europe that offer a favorable ground for growth;
• Internships: developing the concept of co‐living and co‐working under the guiding principle of “competences contamination”. Unemployed youngsters who would like to become web entrepreneurs will get internship experiences with the  partners within the TWIST co‐working laboratories.