Coffee Time presents the Acceleration program. A gateway to Centech, this 12-week intensive program allows startups to lay solid organizational foundations, establish a business model according to the target market, validate the technological project’s potential, and refine their product and so much more!
From their first day, the accelerated companies embark on a tough entrepreneurial adventure. All the teams jump right into networking and discovering the Entrepreneurs in Residence who will follow them over the coming weeks.
Through workshops, conferences and exchanges, companies will be able to fill their toolbox with a lot of knowledge. Being surrounded by a group of entrepreneurial minds with such a great thirst for impact creates a synergy that those teams will be able to benefit from throughout the program.
” The community and the management team raised the issue that if we do nothing, within five years, companies that go through Centech’s programs will be unable to raise financing and build their business if they don’t incorporate concrete actions linked to sustainable development into the internal functioning of the startup.
We are lucky to have Martin Enault, cohort lead, who has been working on the subject for a long time and who is knowledgeable about the issues. Based on this experience, we told ourselves that the only way to take concrete action would be to start with small steps. What we want is for startups to begin this quest with two concrete objectives: one objective for product development and another one for a main axis of their choice. They must choose an axis in which they are not comfortable or an axis where they are certain to have a big impact.
We want these objectives to be concrete and measurable. We want to see actions and indicators that come out of these objectives. For us, this is how we will succeed in having a real impact, by determining actions that will be implemented as soon as the company is created.
Companies are and will be supported accordingly. We have around seven sustainable development experts who participate in the cohort. Among them, we have Republik, which participates as a sustainable marketing agency. We also have the CERIEC and the sustainable development center of the École de Technologie Supérieure, which supports us around product development and circularity. We also have Groupe 3737, which supports us on the inclusion and diversity of the team structure. Finally, we have Coop Carbone, which supports companies on multiple aspects related to sustainable development.
The resources are there, and the expertise exists. We are lucky to have around forty companies in the development and creation phase. If we want to change things, sustainable development must take place starting with the first stages. This is how we manage to implement sustainable processes that will not require a major overhaul in terms of business development. ”
