In the past ten years SMEs have accounted for 57% of new jobs in Europe. In 2017 SMEs accounted for 66.4% of total jobs and for 56.8% of value added. In fact, SMEs comprise 99.8% of all companies in Europe.

At EurA their ambition is to assist as many SMEs as possible in developing better projects and business cases while raising both private and public investment. In addition to their experience with over 50 Technology-Transfer networks and over 1000+ customers, EurA has recently been contracted to provide and coordinate the Business Acceleration Services under the European Innovation Council pilot (EIC).

Their contributions to the Business Acceleration Services focus on providing meaningful, customer made services to the EIC portfolio of over 4000 SME Instrument-beneficiaries, FTI and FET-projects. These services include access to the EIC Community and peer2peer learning, valuable connections to investors, partnering and networking with other funded companies, trainings and facilitation of partnerships to large firms and corporations.

The portfolio of 4000+ pre-selected EU backed high-quality beneficiaries, provides the strength in both quality and numbers. This makes it easier to pre-select the most adequate potential business partners. EurA prides itself in working with large global organisations that share the same passion for SME-friendly practices and innovation as they do. With a facilitator doing the heavy lifting, SMEs have more time to focus on pitching their ideas and closing deals.

In addition, they have recently signed on to the InvestHorizon project, another very interesting initiative where they hope to contribute to helping European SMEs get access to leading investors.

The goal of these projects is to help European high-tech SMEs flourish and secure better deals with world-class business-titans. For a fledgling high-tech SME, it is not always clear which investor or corporate to work with, nor how to best prepare for the encounter. On its own, an SME is also not very likely to secure a focused timeslot with a busy decision-maker.

EurA is split into 8 different branches in Germany and Europe. Each branch has a high level of autonomy and personal accountability.  This allows each branch to feel empowered and take real ownership of their work. Ricardo Greenfield is Managing Director of the EurA Portugal branch, and tries to pass on these same principles onto his team, which has grown from zero to 8 employees in 3 years. His and his team’s biggest achievement to date is the successful conclusion of the first 2 years of the Business Acceleration Services project, resulting in the success of many beneficiaries and some interesting case-studies of success.