The digital cohort: how did we do it?

For the last three months, we have been incubating 10 food startups from across the globe. However, due to Covid-19, we couldn’t actually meet any of the founders in person to deliver our accelerator programme. So, we adapted to a digital cohort. How did we do it and how did things turn out? Read on to find out.

Back in March, nearly the whole world went into lockdown. When the coronavirus hit, we were preparing to welcome a new batch of startups to the ProVeg Incubator programme. In fact, we were just two weeks away from launch day.

We had accepted 10 companies to join what would be our fourth cohort at the Incubator. The founders were based all over the globe, from Australia to Chile to India to Sweden.

Normally, the startup teams would travel to Berlin to participate in the accelerator programme. With international travel restricted, however, and cities the world over heading into quarantine, this was not going to be possible.

Stand up for startups

The Incubator team had a decision to make: do we carry on with the programme, or do we cancel it? In hindsight, it could have been a complicated choice but the truth is, we all knew what we wanted to do. We wanted the programme to go ahead. Here’s why:

We were motivated to work with the 10 startups we had selected. They have strong teams and are working on impactful projects, including seafood alternatives, plant-based baby food, and fermented dairy alternatives.
The founders needed our help now more than ever. Under the difficult circumstances of Covid-19, startups are facing even more challenges. At the Incubator, we have the resources and networks that young companies need and we wanted to put them to use in these trying times.
It presented a learning opportunity. We were being challenged to change our programme unexpectedly. Perhaps we would find new ways to help our startups that we otherwise wouldn’t have discovered. We were keen to find out.

So the decision was made. Despite Covid-19, we were going to stand up for startups and run our first-ever digital cohort. In just a few weeks, we converted our entire accelerator programme to an online format and we were ready to go.

Overall, we are extremely happy with how it turned out and all 10 startups made significant progress during the three months that we worked together. So, let’s have a closer look at what worked well for our digital cohort and what we missed out on while working under social distancing.

What we loved about the digital cohort

99.9% of our sessions functioned well online. We could still host workshops, fireside chats, feedback sessions, and roundtable discussions as we would have done in-house.
Being online allowed us to bring in new speakers and coaches from further afield. For example, some experts in the US were keen to host a one-hour webinar with us but perhaps wouldn’t have been able to commit to a session in person.
The interactions online were brilliant. There was so much energy in our sessions, with plenty of questions, solutions, and positive collaborations among the group.
The advances in technology allowed us all to see, hear, and interact with one another, with relatively few hiccups.
By not travelling to Germany, our startups were able to cut down on their travel costs and CO2 emissions.

What we missed during our digital cohort

With our startups being based all over the world, differing time zones were a challenge. For every session, we had to consider what time it would be in Australia, Israel, and South America, in order to make sure no-one was getting up at 4 am to join a workshop!
The food. Shipping samples from country to country became trickier and the process took longer. Under the circumstances, opportunities for hosting tasting events in order to showcase the startup products were also far more limited.
We learned how valuable meeting people face-to-face is. Even with all of the advantages of modern technology, we still love spending time with our founders in person.

The fourth edition of the ProVeg Incubator accelerator programme came to an end on July 17th. All ten startups graduated from the Incubator after pitching their companies to a panel of investors at our Startup Demo Day.

Due to Covid-19, the majority of the guests were online, but five of our startups managed to join the Incubator team in Berlin for the event. Finally, after three months, at least a few of us got to meet in person! We are extremely proud to have all of these pioneering companies in our alumni and we are looking forward to continuing our collaboration with all of them, going forward.

The next cohort

We will be working with our next batch of startups from October 2020. We don’t yet know exactly what the format will be for that round of the programme. But we do know that it will largely depend on the circumstances surrounding Covid-19. Ideally, we would opt for a mix of in-house and remote weeks, but we are still waiting to see what will be possible.

If you are interested in joining the ProVeg Incubator, we are accepting applications from startup founders right now. Just go to the Apply section of our website and submit your application.

– Your Incubator team.

The digital cohort: how did we do it?

Stand up for startups

What we loved about the digital cohort

What we missed during our digital cohort

The next cohort

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