The Gerard & Anton Awards, the annual election of the ten most promising start-ups in the Brainport Eindhoven region, will be expanded. In addition to the annual awards ceremony, a start-up community supported by the region will be created. The aim is to further strengthen the power of the Eindhoven start-up ecosystem and to fulfill the wishes of former award winners.
Ten new winners
During the sold-out Gerard & Anton Event, winners 81 through 90 received their awards. They are:
Antennex
VivArt-X
Integer Technologies
Mantispectra
GrAI Matter Labs
Gilbert Technologies
Alphabeats
Neople
Tibo Energy
Fonontech
There was also a special prize for Pakt: this promising student team operating out of TU Delft and TU Eindhoven received the Golden Lightbulb from Round One Ventures.
Develop further
Since 2014, Gerard & Anton have been visible once a year. The many talents present in Brainport have been given a stage with these Awards for nine years. Research by Strategy Unit and Innovation Origins has shown the success of that formula: where on average, some ten to twenty percent of start-ups are permanently successful; for the former winners of the Gerard and Anton Awards, this is around 75 percent. An unprecedentedly high number.
The survey also clarified that there are still ways to develop further. Most importantly, former award winners overwhelmingly asked for more ways to stay in touch with each other and the rest of the ecosystem. In other words, they asked to create a Gerard & Anton Community. With the strong support from the regular Gerard & Anton Award sponsors, that can now come about.
Founders Dinner
The first activity is the G&A Founders Dinner, to which all 90 founders or CEOs who have ever won an award will be invited to the Philips Museum. This will be an opportunity to learn from each other and the figureheads of High-Tech in an informal setting.
Sylvia van Es, President of Philips Netherlands: “It fits into our DNA that the experienced companies help the start-ups where necessary. In this way, we try to further stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship in the region. In the run-up to next year’s Gerard & Anton anniversary edition, with the 100th winner, we will, therefore, start an annual Gerard & Anton dinner in our Philips Museum. We want to continue to invest together in the unique strength of Brainport: a finely meshed, almost invisible network of cooperating parties from the industry, education, and government. In doing so, we will continue to contribute to this significant breeding ground for new ideas that provide fertile ground for the innovative startups of today and tomorrow so that together we can build on what once started with Gerard Philips.”
The dinner is just the beginning. A regular newsletter will become part of the community, featuring the successes of community members and their challenges and requests. The annual High Tech Peak Awards and monthly Drinks Pitches & Demos will have a place within the Gerard & Anton Community. The members themselves will determine other initiatives and activities.
IO Next
More about these winners can be found in the special edition of IO Next. This new magazine, produced by Innovation Origins, was baptized during the Gerard & Anton Awards. You can read the first copy for free: https://online.fliphtml5.com/lknoe/yclv/
The Gerard & Anton Awards are an initiative of Innovation Origins, the platform for the story of innovation from across Europe. Besides Philips, Gerard & Anton has High Tech Campus, EY, Kadans, Twice, Mikrocentrum, Holland Innovative, VO, Municipality of Eindhoven, Rabobank, and Dispatches Europe as sponsors. There is room for more partners.
Related Posts
