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Going Full Circle: The Ultimate Guide to a Regenerative Economy

March 22, 2023

Regenerative Economy is a relatively new concept that is gaining popularity as the solution to the exponential population growth we are experiencing. It focuses on restoring and rebuilding by following the principle of circularity, which aims to minimise waste and maximise resource use efficiency. For those new to the concept, let us walk you through the basic concepts for a better understanding.

Camila Ugarte

Communications & Marketing Intern

All stories

Save the Date: March 25th 2023, 8:30pm

March 20, 2023

Earth Hour is more than just an hour of darkness. It is a symbol of unity and a call to action for a sustainable future. Together, we can make a difference and create a brighter and healthier future for ourselves and future generations. This Earth Hour, let's come together to show our commitment towards the planet we call home!

Camila Ugarte

Communications & Marketing Intern

The Roots of Flavour: Exploring Culinary Traditions with Zina Abboud

March 8, 2023

This International Women's Day, we caught up with one of our female entrepreneurs from the WorldStartup community. Her story is as inspiring as her venture - Leaves by Roots. Discover how they're tackling income inequality, building bridges across cultures and improving the food system.

Camila Ugarte

Communications & Marketing Intern

Rebuilding Ukraine by Supporting Startups

March 6, 2023

What is the current state of the startup ecosystem in Ukraine? Our colleague, Svitlana Krystenko discussed her views and presented key steps for its development during her speech at the Futurepreneurs for Ukraine Kick-off event in Vilnius. Read more about her story in this article.

Svitlana Khrystenko

Innovation Project Manager and Service Designer

How can innovation hubs transform physical spaces into storytellers of their mission, values, and accomplishments

Give Your Spaces a Voice

February 23, 2023

How do you tell a story about the mission, vision, and accomplishments of an innovation hub within its physical space? Olga Royenko and Alissa Bankovska from Voice of Space searched for answers to these complex topics during WorldStartup's meetup at ImpactFest 2022. You can now read their report based on the outcome of the session.

Olga Royenko

Founder of Voice of Space

The 6th edition of Futurepreneurs: hands-on entrepreneurship training and focus on Ukraine

January 26, 2023

Futurepreneurs, a pre-accelerator programme that promotes sustainable entrepreneurship, is launching its sixth edition, this time focused on Ukrainian startups that will work on projects to rebuild Ukraine after the war.

Antanas Popiera

Startups Project Manager at Sunrise Valley Science

Lucy, Europe's first all-electric airline, featured at Startup Tuesday

December 23, 2022

During Startup Tuesday, on the 29th of November in The Hague, Teun Kraaij - the man behind Europe's first fully electric airline Lucy - shared his inspiring and personal story about his ambition, inspiration and motivation with an audience of fellow entrepreneurs.

Fabienne de Hilster

The Hackathon for Good The Hague #5 announced its winner!

November 30, 2022

The fifth edition of the Hackathon for Good has a new winner! Teams from all over the world worked for 48 hours straight to tackle today’s biggest challenges related to sustainability, privacy, open government and corruption.

Laurens Slats

Communication lead HFG

Kick-off Sustainable aviation challenges and opportunities a success!

November 2, 2022

The aviation industry is facing many challenges and opportunities in its journey toward a sustainable future. On Thursday, 20th of October, Transavia, Maeve and Zepp.Solutions shared their latest development and challenges during the Kick-off of the sustainable aviation Challenges & Opportunities Session.

Can we celebrate the rise of a new generation of progressive founders?

October 31, 2022

Gerrit Jan reflects on the recent Thinking Bigger report by Techleap and Utrecht University.

Gerrit Jan van 't Veen

Managing Director of WorldStartup Collective

Nature policy on the rooftops in Rotterdam

October 20, 2022

Rotterdam offers many alternative ways for its inhabitants to experience the city. Those who find walking on the sidewalk a boring activity can plan their next routes on the city's skyline. Adventurous strollers had the possibility to walk from roof to roof and across the Coolsingel. These walkways are placed on high scaffolding at various locations in the city. During this “Rooftop Walk,” you will come across sustainable, innovative, and creative ways to make roofs more inclusive in improving the quality of life in a city.

Mathis van der Voordt

Programme Support Intern

The Regenerative Economy. Your two cents, please.

October 17, 2022

Gerrit Jan discusses the concept of a regenerative economy. How does it differ from a traditional ESG framework? And more importantly, how can we make sure it becomes the new standard?

Gerrit Jan van 't Veen

Managing Director of WorldStartup Collective

Connecting with fellow change makers at Frankfurt's Impact Festival

October 7, 2022

In this personal note, Gerrit Jan recounts his experiences at the Impact Festival in Frankfurt and highlights some of the most inspiring impact entrepreneurs he encountered.

Gerrit Jan van 't Veen

Managing Director of WorldStartup Collective

Hopping back to university to engage the freshmen

September 20, 2022

Last month we participated in Leiden University's HOP week in The Hague, which aimed to welcome the freshmen in their first academic year.

Svitlana Khrystenko

Innovation Project Manager and Service Designer

Co-creation is key to innovation

September 15, 2022

We brought the community together at The Hague Tech on September 13 for an interactive session where all participants had a chance to share their ideas and collaborate with others who are enthusiastic about tech in government.

Svitlana Khrystenko

Innovation Project Manager and Service Designer

GovTech NL Holds First Roundtables Event in July

July 15, 2022

Five roundtables, five diverse topics and two speakers. This is how we launched the first in-person event for the GovTech community this summer. Read more about this event in this article by Svitlana Khrystenko, GovTech NL's communication manager.

Svitlana Khrystenko

Innovation Project Manager and Service Designer

Taking on the fight of waste plastic and affordable housing on a global level with ‘Conscious Designs’

July 8, 2022

During this project Rushabh was working on how to use plastic waste, which was abundant in Indonesia, and how to solve the issue of unsafe constructions.

Rushabh Chheda

Founder of UniBrick

Fingers Crossed

June 30, 2022

In his latest editorial, Gerrit Jan shares the contents of a session WorldStartup is going to host at the EVPA Impact Week in November 2022.

Gerrit Jan van 't Veen

Managing Director of WorldStartup Collective

A fruitful week: Organising a design sprint for Miro

June 3, 2022

WorldStartup is delighted to announce an interaction with the number one online visual collaboration platform “Miro”, also known as one of our favourite remote/hybrid facilitation tools.

Milena Ninova

Programme Design & Management, Workshop Facilitator

Positive Growth for Society and Nature

May 30, 2022

In this newsletter editorial, Gerrit Jan reflects on the positive growth approach in entrepreneurship.

Gerrit Jan van 't Veen

Managing Director of WorldStartup Collective

It Starts with the Problem

May 2, 2022

Read Gerrit Jan's newsletter editorial about what it takes to become an impact entrepreneur.

Gerrit Jan van 't Veen

Managing Director of WorldStartup Collective

Governments' innovation starts with understanding your challenges

April 7, 2022

Daniël Steginga and Alwin Veldboom have supported the Municipality of The Hague with formulating a Challenge for Startup in Residence with the Worldstartup Challenge Discovery & Definition process.

Daniël Steginga

Managing Director of WorldStartup

1 Month Later: The Reality of Living through War in 2022

March 24, 2022

A story by Svitlana Khrystenko, a Ukrainian living in The Netherlands. In her story, she describes her personal experience with the recent war in Ukraine and how her family living there lives with it. In the end, she suggests practical steps each of us can take to support Ukraine.

Svitlana Khrystenko

Innovation Project Manager and Service Designer

Introducing startup Limo as a new member of the Basecamp programme

March 21, 2022

​​Limo was founded in 2021 by 4 young international team members. It all started with the passion to improve the quality of landscape and environment surrounding the greenhouses in The Netherlands. Later on, it grew into a concrete product that creates value for everyone in the horticulture ecosystem.

Svitlana Khrystenko

Innovation Project Manager and Service Designer

Evil minds that plot destruction

March 1, 2022

Our thoughts are with everyone who suffers from this terrible war that has been raging for almost a week. Our office and our Next Valley program is open for startups from Ukraine and Russia.

Svitlana Khrystenko

Innovation Project Manager and Service Designer

Startup Spotlight - Khach and Natalya from Scimagine

February 22, 2022

Khach and Natalya are co-founders of Scimagine, a startup which has developed an innovative cloud-based platform for categorised experimental data, structured and stored in the form of searchable databases. They joined the WorldStartup Altitude program in May. Here is an overview of their 2021 startup journey.

Khachatur Julfakyan

Founder of Scimagine

Infrascreen: nanotech solution offers greenhouse growers extra energy savings‍

February 22, 2022

The agro-ecosystem in the Netherlands is of great importance for innovations like the one of Infrascreen. Read how Frank & The Backs works with a network of seasoned professionals and C-level executives.

Egbert Ottevanger

Director Frank & the Backs

IMEC participant's story "Camptoo brings private campervan rental to Germany"

January 28, 2022

Camptoo is the platform for private individuals who want to rent a campervan or rent out their campervan safely. The popularity of his 'Airbnb on wheels' has ensured that founder Martijn Peeters now focuses on the enormous market potential in Germany.

IMEC participant's story "Tiller expands to the United Kingdom"

January 21, 2022

Tiller bv is a unique company from The Hague with an innovative product: a hand truck with a motorized lifting system.

Hackathon for Good Wrap up

December 17, 2021

Hackathon for Good The Hague 4 edition was so much more than a weekend. We are thrilled to see all the fruitful outcomes it has brought to the teams and challenge owners.

Milena Ninova

Programme Design & Management, Workshop Facilitator

Launch of the Basecamp Programme

December 14, 2021

Read about our brand new support programme Basecamp and the first startup Batazia that joined the programme.

Svitlana Khrystenko

Innovation Project Manager and Service Designer

Interview with James White

December 2, 2021

Climate Action Center is one of our newest Altitude startups that joined World Startup a few months ago. We are glad to introduce James, a co-founder of Climate Action Center, with whom we have had a very inspiring conversation.

James White

Founder of C.A.C.

The DFCD Climate Challenge Final

November 15, 2021

This year, the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD) launched the Scalable Climate Solutions Challenge. With the aim of finding scalable climate projects in Bangladesh, Kenya and Uganda.

Wrapping up Growing Green Cities Lab

November 11, 2021

Growing Green Cities Lab is a six-month programme organized jointly by SYNCHRO SPACE, the Embassy of the Netherlands in Ukraine, and WorldStartup. The main goal of the programme is to help the municipality of Rivne to solve its sustainable challenges by providing them with scouted solutions from Dutch and Ukrainian startups.

Svitlana Khrystenko

Innovation Project Manager and Service Designer

Inspiring BackTalks event

October 6, 2021

On September 27 the event BackTalks took place for the first time. The hybrid event, organized by Frank & the Backs, was a success: over 30 interested parties attended the live event in The Hague, almost 50 people worldwide were present online. The event was moderated by Bas van Werven, radio host at BNR Nieuwsradio. Plan is to organize BackTalks every quarter.

New Onboarded Startups

October 6, 2021

Our purpose-driven community never stops growing. Both Altitude and Next Valley have onboarded new members with innovative and impactful ideas, who are ready to grow under the guidance of WorldStartup!

5G Smart Railway Hackathon - looking back and, always, forward

August 31, 2021

Celebrating the winning team Nife Labs and their smart AR solution, right before the start of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in July. The hackathon program was part of the 5G Railway Lab in Barcelona and it was fully designed and facilitated by the WorldStartup Lab unit.

Milena Ninova

Programme Design & Management, Workshop Facilitator

Welcoming new Altitude startups & Exploring new markets

August 27, 2021

While Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos focus on concurring the space creating one giant leap for pollution, we focus on impact-driven entrepreneurs on the Earth.

Uplift, Empower & Sustain local farmers & communities

August 18, 2021

Empower farming communities, enhance transparency in the supply chain and ensure fair wealth distribution in the supply chain.

Ayon Hazra

Founder of Qlikchain

KJ Lab Challenge - How we did it

August 4, 2021

The Hague's population is growing and with that the number of bicycles. The number of bicycles left behind on the streets has risen over the past years. Additionally, parking garages are getting filled with old bicycles that lead to lack of space for active cyclists. WorldStartup, together with ANNA Vastgoed & Cultuur and The Municipality of The Hague, facilitated co-creation workshops with local citizens to raise awareness and seek solutions to the problem of abandoned bicycles.

Visiting Rivne as part of the Growing Green Cities Lab

July 6, 2021

On May 18-19 SYNCHRO SPACE team visited the Green Trail that runs through the entire region of Rivne, Ukraine. Together with the embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands in Kyiv and WorldStartup, the Growing Green Cities Lab is kicking off.

Learning Circle 'How to find the right impact investor'

May 18, 2021

12 founders had a great peer to peer learning experience

In April we organized our first Learning Circle on 'How to find the right impact investor'. The idea of the Learning Circles is for founders to take a deep dive into a certain topic and learn a lot from both experts and fellow founders. In our first Learning Circle, we explored the topic of finding the right impact investor, which is a challenge for a lot of impact driven founders.

We kicked off with four Live Talks, led by Michelle Chakkalackal (Impact Business Consultant & Strategist). We had a very interesting line up of expert speakers: Martijn Blom (EVPA), Pavithra Ram and Ynzo van Zanten (Tony's Chocolonely), Marije Schasfoort (Stichting DOEN), James Mitchell (BuildX), Kamael Ann Sugrim (People First HC).

WorldStartup Lab: Behind the scenes of Hackathon for Good

April 2, 2021

This year we are looking forward to the 4th edition of the Hackathon for Good.

Burgs Foods raises funding from Unknown Group

March 16, 2021

16 March, The Hague. Unknown Group is delighted to announce an investment in Burgs Foods. Founded in 2018 by Sander Peltenburg and George Brandenburg, Burgs Foods manufactures sustainable food products made of insects. With their unique insect processing technologies they intend to become the food factory of the future for everything related to processing insects into food.

B Corp Month

March 16, 2021

The entire month of March is B Corp month. We’ll be joining a global community of almost 4,000 businesses to celebrate what it means to be a Certified B Corporation™ and share our story to becoming a Better Business.

uHoo

February 6, 2021

Worldstartup Stories is a series of exclusive interviews with impact driven startups. In this series, as a recap and result of #CoCreateFutureCities, we will introduce you to founders, who work with great passion in shaping our solutions to our global development challenges.

Dutch Mentor Community is going strong

January 6, 2021

The Dutch Mentor Community unites seasoned entrepreneurs and managers that are eager to share their knowledge, experience and network with startup founders. In addition to that, the mentors also value the opportunity to meet other mentors and learn from each other’s mentoring experience.

The Dutch Mentor Community is the first open mentor community in The Netherlands, run by the mentors themselves, helping each other to be the best mentors and enhancing mentorship within the Dutch startup ecosystem.

How to deal with misinformation on 5G?

January 4, 2021

The Province of South Holland engaged in a co-creation process with an innovative startup to deal with the problem of misinformation and fake news about 5G. After defining the challenge, WorldStartup scouted for startups that could co-create solutions together with the province. Zephyros is developing an easy to use tool that gives government officials and other stakeholders clear insights on all the (mis)information on the topic on social media. The dashboard shows the number of posts per topic, the sentiment (positive, neutral or negative) and also sources and how the information is spread.

Hackathon for Good 2020 & The Hague Legal Tech Alliance

January 4, 2021

The Hague is known as the international city of peace& justice. During the third edition of Hackathon For Good, The Hague Legal Tech Alliance played a crucial role with a challenge in the field of innovation in the law.

ModelMe3D

January 4, 2021

Data is key for planning the city. ModelMe3D delivers the 3D interface for data driven design and monitoring. Samuel Alvarado will share his lessons so far and talk about how 3D models help policy makers, city designers and architects in our latest WorldStartup Stories.

WorldStartup is looking back on 2020 and forward to 2021

December 17, 2020

This year has been, to say the least, a remarkable year. Next to the impact of COVID19, we united the expertise of Outside Inc., Frank & the Backs, Dutch Coast and the former World Startup Factory with WorldStartup.

Finch Floating Homes

December 14, 2020

This is Finch Floating Homes. As a recap and result of their session ‘Floating homes how to deal with severe floods’ on the CoCreate Future Cities platform, we’ve held an interview with the founder of the global impact startup. Next to our medium articles and the startup Tuesdays that we organize we’ve started and experimented with our podcast channel. Please check the first one out.

Finding better solutions to the nutrition of human beings

July 9, 2020

Ivana Dvořáková’s first encounter with crickets was during a school presentation about the sustainability of crickets. After that presentation, Ivana and some of her friends went to a pet store and bought their first crickets which they then tried. From the start she thought it tasted amazing.

Ivana Dvořáková

Founder of Terraz Food

Work in peace and breathe with ease knowing the air around you is safe and healthy

July 8, 2020

The idea for uHoo came when Dustin and Brian were studying in Hong Kong. Both Dustin and Brian have respiratory difficulties from which they were suffering more due to the air quality in the dormitories in Hong Kong.

Dustin Onghanseng

Founder of uHoo

With an eye on the sustainability and health benefits of cricket-based food

July 8, 2020

Burgsfoods was founded by Sander Peltenburg and George Brandenburg in 2017. Burgsfoods is a company that creates meat substitutes that consist of insects, mainly crickets and grasshoppers.

Sander Peltenburg

Founder of De Krekerij

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