Market Data 
- Project Europe has launched to support young founders with €200,000 in investment and mentorship.
- The initiative aims to nurture European talent and build a more collaborative tech startup ecosystem.
- Its CEO, Kitty Mayo, outlined key tips and pitch deck dos and don’ts for prospective applicants.
Europe’s tech ecosystem has long been chastised for trailing behind the US. A batch of investors and founders on the continent want to change the narrative — and they are betting on young people to do it.
Project Europe, which launched this week as a collaboration between 20VC, Adjacent, and Point9 Ventures, is looking to back enterprising founders under 25 who are building a tech-enabled startup.
The program — which is being billed as Europe’s own Thiel Fellowship — offers a €200,000 initial investment in exchange for 6.66% equity in an applicant’s startup. And, crucially, it can provide access to a sprawling network of European founders who can act as mentors.
“We’ve seen so many talented people build in Europe,” Project Europe’s CEO Kitty Mayo told Business Insider. “The shame is, there seems to be this dismissal that Europe is a good place for them to be building — and so it means that actually, we’re missing out on a lot of that growing ecosystem around technology, as it’s hyper-concentrated in certain areas in the world.”
Still, competition for the initiative, which Mayo said aims to “nurture and accelerate” talent in Europe, is likely to be fierce. Mayo outlined what the organizers are looking for in top-tier applications.
Young, technical, and hyper-ambitious founders
Europe is teeming with technical talent across all ages, but Project Europe is looking for “hyper-ambitious” founders under 25.
Mayo told BI that this was a deliberate choice.
“Actually, because this is such a grassroots movement, we’re trying to change the culture and the approach to entrepreneurship in Europe. It makes sense to focus on people who are just starting their career — and then the whole thing will filter up through those companies as those founders mature,” she told BI.
“It also means that we can go directly to the source and find people at the very, very early stages when they’re based, either universities or schools or different communities around where they’re building,” she added.
Many Gen Zs are digital natives, so Mayo expects applicants to tout these technical skills in their application.
Instead of backing founders with pure business backgrounds, Mayo said the project looks for those “who have engineering minds, who are fluent in all the local tools and anything they can get their hands on so they can hack together and resourcefully pull together things to get to an outcome.”
Contrarian ideas and concise pitch decks
Applicants should make sure they’re “sharing ideas about why they’re exceptional,” Mayo said. “Don’t hyper-fixate on one specific thing in the application — and don’t procrastinate for months.”
A common pitfall is that applicants often share answers that they think the team would want to hear instead of relaying a natural and authentic response. “Be as natural and audacious as you can be,” Mayo advised.
Prototypes, demos, and examples of founders’ work would also strengthen the pitch, Mayo said.
“Tell us stories about the things you’ve done, rather than just talking about your notions and beliefs,” she said.
When it comes to formatting the pitch deck, Mayo advised founders to keep it short and concise — in lieu of providing too much information in an overly formatted style.
“I want to know what the problem is, what unique insight you have around how to solve this problem differently, and then why you’re the person to solve it,” she said.
Cultivating Europe’s next tech darlings
Over 140 European tech founders — including heavyweights such as ElevenLabs’ Mati Staniszewski and Synthesia’s Victor Riparbelli — have partnered with the Project to provide mentorship and masterclasses to this incoming cohort of founders.
“The dream scenario is that the founders who joined the first cohort will be the partners for mentoring cohorts coming through in the future,” Mayo said.
With so many communities of builders across European hubs such as Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, and Tallinn, Mayo said the initiative would aim to “be a clear conduit” that gives these founders the best access to support and communities locally and across the continent.
Just like the famed accelerator Y Combinator, which offers financial and advisory backing, Project Europe intends to build a collegial environment of founders working adjacent to each other across the continent.
“We hope that seeing other people going through the journey at the same time galvanizes the ecosystem and creates a proper network, instead of isolated success stories,” Mayo added.
