E606 | EUCVC Summit 2025: Thijs Povel, dealflow.eu & Ekke Van Vliet, EIC: Bridging Corporates and Startups in Europe

0:00Startups want scale. Corporates want innovation. But bridging that gap, it's one of the biggest challenges in Europe's venture ecosystem. Thuis Bovel, CEO of dealflow.eu and Etke van Vliet, investment coordinator at the European Innovation Council. Join us to unpack what's working and what's still missing. From better matchmaking to removing friction, they'll explore how Europe's corporates and startups can finally find common ground and turn collaboration into growth. Hello Thijs. You are working for DealFlow. I'm at EIC. Can you tell me what DealFlow is doing in a few words? Yes, happy to. DealFlow was founded to support startups that have been funded by the European Commission with scaling up.

0:52We do it with helping them to get introduced to investors and the same with corporates. And we have a big data platform where we try and make it easy to find all the EU-funded startups. So it would be actually great if you could also tell us a little bit more about the EIC and how you can help the audience here today with all of the government backing and funding. Yes, indeed. I have been at the European Innovation Council, which is an initiative of the European Commission to support deep tech in Europe since 2019. And the European Innovation Council has a budget of 10 billion euros, which can be spent on, amongst others, startups, deep tech startups across all verticals in Europe and across, well, even other countries in the wider region of Europe.

1:56And the startups can get 2.5 million euros of grant and up to 10 million euros of equity. I think this is super interesting for all the corporates here, for all the investors here. If they have deep tech startups that are still developing, still doing R &D, they can get significant several millions of euros from the EIC. And if you are investors and you're looking for the most promising, most innovative startups, you can find them also in your portfolio. We have a link on the slide. And maybe could you tell us a little bit more about what do you do once startups have received your funding, they've received the 2.5 million, they've developed their products, what kind of support activities do you do?

2:43Yes, so we have a wide range of support activities to make a success of those startups. And one of those activities is also reaching out to corporates, which is the topic of today. And for this, we organize so-called corporate days. And since 2017, so even before the ESC started, we have organized more than 70 of those corporate days with the biggest corporates in Europe. And Thijs, maybe you can tell something about those corporate days as well, because I think you have something interesting to share from a study which has been done about those corporate days which we have organized since 2017.

3:32Yes, with pleasure. And it's really our honor to help corporates work with the startups of the EIC. normally this there's a lot of cost involved to do this but thanks to the I see you're supporting corporates to do these kind of corporate days and meet enough to startups we've had the pleasure to organize these corporate days we've looked at the data from them and with over 1 ,000 startups involved over 70 events we've taken some key findings and I'm not going to go in too much detail here. I'm happy to talk to anyone and take you through them in more detail. But we are really seeing what works, what doesn't work in terms of number of corporates we bring, number of startups we bring, if we do it in person or online.

4:21And we're looking at the correlation between the number of startups that we bring to the corporates. And we see that there is really like a good ratio between the number of corporates, the number of startups. It shouldn't be too many. It shouldn't be too little. And it should really be quality, where one of the most important findings is in-person with one-on-one meetings is super important. But if we push the one-on-one meetings too far with too many startups, the results drop significantly. So over time we have, and that's in this report, We have come to a lot of conclusions and we've done many mistakes over 70 corporate days, but we've learned a lot.

5:06And now we feel like we have the best formula, which of course if we can improve, we are still happy to improve. But we found a really good way of bringing corporates, startups together. And for us it's a success if we see deals happening, collaborations happening between those corporates and those startups. Yeah, Thijs, that's very interesting to hear. And it's good that, well, there are lessons learned. And I think, or I'm, well, I know for sure that tomorrow you're also organizing a corporate day. And participants there will be the corporates Velux and Mota Engel from Portugal. Maybe you can tell something about that.

5:51multi-corporate day which is being organized tomorrow at the venue of tech barbecue if i'm not mistaken in a separate room yes and everyone here is welcome to also attend and meet the startups meet the corporates see us in action and see how we create these collaboration opportunities we've also had the pleasure to work with eucvc to make this all happen and And what can I say about it? It's that also on the slide you see it really takes a lot of effort to bring the corporates, the startups together. It's about five months of work that goes into it. But Thijs, maybe can I interrupt you? Does the EIC really have something interesting to offer to those corporates?

6:42Is it not too small? Do we have enough, say, startups, solutions? Are they interesting for the corporates? I think this is a really interesting learning that we've had. The EIC has fantastic startups when it comes to deep tech, when it comes to climate, energy, healthcare. This is where the European Commission is funding a lot, and this is where we see there is a fantastic overlap of the best, most innovative startups, they are often getting EIC funding. And there, there is a pool of over 6 ,000 companies. So here we see a really good match. Maybe I can return the question to you. What do you feel that the corporates are most happy about and what can you offer the corporates in a collaboration?

7:32Well, in fact, they get everything on a silver plate. Our excellent startups, which are already supported with quite a lot of funding and other services to make them a success. So they get rather major startups with solutions which are relevant for their challenges. And even better, they don't need to pay anything for this. So the only thing they need to do is to communicate their challenges and to receive then the startups during that given day, like tomorrow at Tech BBQ. Yeah, so I think a great opportunity for all corporates to connect with startups almost for free. You can see us in action tomorrow.

8:23Also, if you want to organize a corporate day with the EIC, I've put a QR code, you can scan it, and you can join the pipeline of corporates that can work with the European Commission. But maybe for the audience we can still say something about, say, the startups which are participating tomorrow. Do we have their kind of characterization? How many are there? There's 14 startups. They range VLOGS and Moto Angel. They're, of course, focused on construction. So they're startups that are looking at sound engineering. I think we could have used that in this room a little bit as well. and that are looking at construction, healthy living spaces, healthy air, solar blinds, these kind of things.

9:08So I think there's something also for the audience to listen to and to learn from. Absolutely. Thank you very much.