DRIVE mentorship supports 12 Teams across Europe
Through 240 hours of mentoring and training, the DRIVE project helped rural innovators strengthen their business models, funding readiness, pitching, sustainability positioning and next-step strategies.
What happens after a hackathon ends?
Too often, promising ideas leave the room with energy, enthusiasm and a half-polished pitch deck, but without the structured support needed to become real-world solutions. DRIVE was designed to avoid exactly that.
Following three place-based Roadshows and Hackathons in Bohinj, Slovenia; Serres, Greece; and Le Bourget-du-Lac, France, the DRIVE project moved from challenge-based innovation into a structured post-Hackathon mentoring programme. The objective was clear: help selected teams transform early concepts into stronger business, funding, stakeholder and implementation pathways for rural bioeconomy and circular economy innovation.
Led under Work Package 3 by F6S, the DRIVE Advisory Services supported 12 selected teams across three rural innovation ecosystems. The mentoring programme delivered 240 hours of mentoring and training through group sessions, tailored one-to-one mentoring, practical assignments and asynchronous learning materials.
The programme was structured around five advisory modules:
- Sustainability and bio-based business models
- Investors and digital platforms
- Effective pitching and communication
- Access to finance and related funding
- Social Innovation for SMEs
Together, these modules helped teams move beyond the “good idea” stage and work on the harder questions: Who is the customer? What is the value proposition? Which funding path makes sense? How should the solution be presented to investors, public authorities or local partners? What local stakeholders need to be involved? And what is the next concrete step after the project?
A pipeline from local challenges to real development pathways
The DRIVE mentoring programme built directly on the three Hackathon challenges developed with local partners and stakeholders.
In Bohinj, Slovenia, the “Grown Here, Served Here” challenge focused on strengthening local agri-food value chains and improving coordination between farmers, producers, tourism actors, hospitality providers and municipalities.
In Serres, Greece, the “Serres Bioeconomy Hackathon 2025” focused on the sustainable use of biological resources across agriculture, food and beverage, bioenergy, waste management and circular economy.
In Le Bourget-du-Lac, France, the “Technolac 2050” challenge focused on symbiotic innovation: cooperative loops between companies, public actors, research institutions and communities, with themes such as circular economy, regenerative tourism, material flows and territorial resilience.
This place-based model was one of DRIVE’s strongest design choices. Rather than asking innovators to respond to generic entrepreneurship themes, the Hackathons invited them to work on concrete territorial needs. The mentoring programme then carried those ideas forward by helping the selected teams assess their maturity, strengthen their business logic and prepare for further development.
The 12 selected teams
The selected teams reflected the diversity of rural innovation in Europe: local food systems, bio-based materials, waste valorisation, agri-food digitalisation, energy efficiency, circular production and sustainable tourism.
From Bohinj, the selected teams were:
- NabisPro, a platform connecting local producers with hotels, restaurants and cafés through improved ordering, branding, logistics and data collection.
- BioNova LLC, developing smart mid-sized biogas systems that help farmers turn organic waste into energy, supported by mobile monitoring and control.
- Čebelarstvo Baloh, combining traditional beekeeping with experiential tourism, education and promotion of pollinators and local food identity.
From Serres, the selected teams were:
- Grapology, creating an extraction and bioprocessing unit for winemaking residues to produce polyphenol- and antioxidant-rich natural ingredients.
- UCO-app, developing a digital application to support the management of used cooking oil from households and enterprises.
- VitisFlour, transforming grape pomace into high-value, traceable grape flour in Northern Greece.
- SunflowerPower, developing a bio-battery concept using sunflowers and other local agricultural resources.
- Vegan Dreams, producing plant-based vegan ice cream linked to sustainable production and the bioeconomy.
From Le Bourget-du-Lac, the selected teams were:
- Karibu, building an open platform that helps territories understand, measure and regenerate their environmental impact.
- The New Materialist, designing circular biomaterials made from agricultural and food industry by-products and leftovers.
- Savoie Process, developing Ecoficient, a solution to optimise industrial processes by reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emissions through waste heat recovery and electric systems.
- Bonature, a digital platform and e-commerce solution connecting small and medium local producers with restaurants, grocery stores, hotels and catering services.
Practical mentoring, not generic training
The DRIVE mentoring process was designed to be action-oriented. Instead of offering a standard entrepreneurship course, mentors worked with teams on practical outputs such as value proposition refinement, pitch development, business model improvements, stakeholder mapping, funding opportunity identification and communication materials.
This mattered because the selected teams were not all at the same stage. Some needed stronger market validation. Others needed clearer customer segmentation, financial sustainability logic, investor communication or stakeholder engagement. The programme therefore combined a common advisory structure with tailored support according to each team’s maturity, sector and development priorities.
F6S led the Investors and Digital Platforms module, supporting teams on investor readiness, digital ecosystem access, fundraising preparation and platform-based visibility. Other project partners contributed complementary expertise across sustainability, communication, funding and social innovation.
What changed for the teams?
The results point to a programme that was useful, practical and well received.
The mentoring programme supported 12 accelerated innovative concepts across the three ecosystems and delivered 240 hours of mentoring and training. A participant impact survey collected 10 responses, with an average satisfaction score of 4.00 out of 5. Eight out of ten respondents said they felt confident to take the next concrete step for their venture after completing the programme, while the remaining respondents reported being moderately confident.
For the teams, the value was not only in receiving advice, but in becoming clearer, more structured and more confident.
The programme also helped us think more strategically about implementation, customer segments, financial sustainability, and how to present BioNova not only as a green technology, but as a practical and scalable solution for farmers. As a result, our team became more confident in pitching the project, explaining the problem, and showing why our solution can create both environmental and economic value.
For Grapology, the mentoring helped turn an early concept into a clearer entrepreneurial direction.
The most valuable outcome of the DRIVE mentoring programme for our team was the development of a clearer and more structured business strategy. Through the mentoring sessions, we improved our understanding of customer needs, refined our value proposition, and strengthened our teamwork and problem-solving skills. The programme also increased our confidence in presenting our idea and helped us see entrepreneurship as a realistic and achievable path.
Building rural innovation ecosystems, not just supporting individual teams
One of the wider lessons from DRIVE is that rural innovation support works best when it is connected to real local ecosystems.
The Roadshows and mentoring activities created stronger links between selected teams, local partners, municipalities, public authorities, universities, companies, producers and innovation support actors. This is especially important in rural and bioeconomy contexts, where good ideas often depend on cooperation between many actors: farmers, SMEs, researchers, local authorities, tourism providers, cooperatives, investors and communities.
The DRIVE mentoring programme showed that post-event support is not a nice extra. It is the bridge between inspiration and implementation. Hackathons can mobilise ideas, but mentoring helps teams test assumptions, sharpen their business case and prepare for funding, pilots, partnerships or further acceleration.
For rural Europe, this is where the real value sits: not only in launching more ideas, but in helping the most promising ones become credible, locally grounded and ready for the next step.
The mentoring materials and presentations developed through DRIVE are also intended to be made available through the project website as reusable resources, supporting the continued growth of rural bioeconomy areas beyond the project duration.
DRIVE’s message is simple: rural innovation does not lack ambition. What it often needs is structure, visibility, targeted mentoring and the right ecosystem connections. Through its post-Hackathon Advisory Services, DRIVE helped 12 teams move closer to that next stage.
About DRIVE
DRIVE – Driving Rural Innovation through startup Villages across Europe – is a Horizon Europe project supporting rural innovation ecosystems, start-up villages, circular bioeconomy solutions and new value-added products, technologies and business models across European rural territories.
Funding disclaimer
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.