Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/977918
maltatoday SUNDAY 6 MAY 2018 46 Information Technology ON 17th November 2017 appli- cations opened for startups to join the YouStartIT programme, run by MITA's Innovation Hub (MIH). YouStartIT is an inten- sive four-month long accel- erator programme designed to help tech startups develop and then test their minimum viable product (MVP) on the market. Participating startups benefit from MITA's pre-seed invest- ment worth €22,000 comprising a €15,000 equity-free cash grant, in addition to between €10,000 and €20,000 worth of pro-bono services from PwC, Ganado Ad- vocates and Grant Thornton covering respectively company formation, specific legal sup- port and ad hoc Blockchain sup- port. During the programme the startups focus on achieving the milestones agreed with the MIH while receiving guidance from MITA's entrepreneur-in- residence, Jarek Bialek, as well as from various external men- tors, assigned from time to time. They also have to report about progress, share lessons learned and deliver on their commit- ment to help build the Maltese startup ecosystem through the Social Impact Programme. YouStartIT#3 applications closed on 28th of January 2018 receiving 94 applications from 19 different countries. The complex task of evaluating all applications was completed in six days and produced a short- list of 13 startup teams from seven different countries. After a week-long pre-acceleration process, which included a week- end bootcamp, where the start- ups were challenged and coached by startup and social media spe- cialist Angelika Lattner, seven startups were selected for ac- celeration. The selection was done at a closed event on 24th February 2018, where all thir- teen teams pitched their idea to a panel of three judges. The panel was composed of interna- tional writer, speaker and mar- keting expert Jessica Gioglio, PricewaterhouseCoopers part- ner Bonavent Gauci, and MIH manager Alex Borg. The seven teams accepted for the YouStartIT#3 programme span various markets and tech- nologies, among them Med- Tech, mobile technology, vir- tual reality (VR) and Blockchain. Refer to the side bar for a brief description of each startup busi- ness idea. YouStartIT#3 programme of- ficially kicked off on 20th March 2018. So the startups are already in their second month. In the next couple of weeks they will start organising workshops, Seven tech startups in the MITA's YouStartIT accelerator