\n<\/p>\n
Supporting super-early stage entrepreneurs in Europe seems to be suddenly in vogue. Back in March, \u201cProject Europe<\/a>\u201d was launched<\/a> to great fanfare by podcaster and VC Harry Stebbings with a small $10 million fund to back founders aged only 25 and under, riffing on the \u2018Peter Thiel Fellowship\u2019 model of old. Now a new fund hopes to go one better \u2014\u00a0but this time with $68 million.<\/p>\n EWOR<\/a> (shorthand for \u201centrepreneurship without risk\u201d) has launched its own \u2018founder fellowship\u2019, committing \u20ac60 million, which will offer selected founders \u20ac500,000 in capital for a 7% stake (in comparison, Project Europe offers on \u20ac200,000 for a 6.66% stake). It claims that, on average, alumni have gone on to raise \u20ac1million to \u20ac11M during the fellowship.<\/p>\n The money will be going to 35 entrepreneurs a year who fit the mould of \u201cvisionaries, technical prodigies, deeply driven operators, and serial entrepreneurs.\u201d<\/p>\n Fellows will get virtual-first support, with 1:1 mentorship (including\u00a01 to 5 hours per week with a \u2018unicorn founder\u2019), access to 2,000 mentors, VCs, and subject matter experts. By contrast, Project Europe offers its founder-investor network of 128 backers.<\/p>\n Founded in 2021,\u00a0EWOR is run full-time by six entrepreneurs who were previously inside companies such as SumUp, Adjust, ProGlove and united-domains: Daniel Dippold, Alexander Grots, Florian Huber, Petter Made, Quinten Selhorst, and Paul M\u00fcller.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a call with TechCrunch, Dippold contrasted EWR\u2019s fellowship offering with Project Europe. While the latter trumpeted taking entrepreneurs with \u2018just an idea\u2019 he said EWOR will easily match that offering: \u201cWe do two fellowships, ideation and traction. You can literally \u2014\u00a0like we had a year ago with the youngest machine learning researcher from Cambridge\u2014 have no co-founder, no idea. You can start at inception, no problem.\u201d<\/p>\n As part of the \u20ac500,000 investment, this includes \u20ac110,000 from EWOR GmbH and an additional \u20ac390,000 from the investment fund via an uncapped convertible note or similar instrument.<\/p>\n One example of a previously backed startup includes Aspect Health<\/a>, a startup that was built in Moldova, raised funding in Silicon Valley and New York, and ended up with a $50M.<\/p>\n Dippold said: \u201cWe have 50,000 applicants in a vector database that understands every intricate detail of a person\u2019s GitHub. So if you need to hire a person with 10,000 lines of code and Rust skills, I can find that person with one query.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe run evil like a software company, build measure, Learn, Build measure, Learn, Build measure, learn\u2026 The only thing that matters is it needs to be the most useful thing any founder can possibly do,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ten founders have so far been accepted into this year\u2019s cohort.\u00a0<\/p>\n They include UK-based Mark Golab, a 3D printing pioneer applying the technology to organ transplants with\u00a0Cambridge Surgical Models<\/a>, after surviving a life-threatening infection himself. And Vienna-based Viktoria Izdebezka, who is working on lead generation with\u00a0Salesy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Previous EWOR fellows include Ricky Knox, who achieved two 9-figure exits with\u00a0Azimo<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Tandem Bank<\/a>; and Tim Seithe, who led\u00a0Tillhub<\/a>\u00a0to a bootstrapped exit at almost \u20ac100M.<\/p>\n EWOR fellow J\u00f6rgen Tveit, founder of Thaleron, added in a statement:\u00a0\u201cThe founders of EWOR are deeply technical and understand the challenges of building a world-changing tech company.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n