Abstract:

The authors are employed at the FH JOANNEUM GmbH (FHJ), a university for applied sciences in Austria, at the department for Internet Technologies & - Applications. They are all involved in the Project Accelerator which is an Interreg Danube project funded by ERDF and IPA and where the FHJ is one out of ten international project partners. The main task in this project is to motivate IT students, but also people from the region, to consider entrepreneurship as a serious option and alternative to an (un)employment. The focus of people who gets supported in this project by the FHJ is on entrepreneurs in the IT sector since that is where the expertise of the authors lies.

Within the project Accelerator, two pilot programs had to be launched. In the first pilot, mostly one-to-one support was offered which took different forms like coachings, mentorings and general consultancy on a variety of topics that may arise during the whole foundation process, that is from the first business idea to the actual establishment of a company. The topics therefore covered writing proper business plans, preparing talks with investors and fundings institutions to more specific issues like labour law or data protection. This first pilot ended with a business-plan competition where the best 10 ideas presented their business plans to an audience of stakeholders and out of which the best three business plans got a price from the local municipality (Kapfenberg).

In the second pilot, however, this rather traditional concept of support was extended. Something new had to be introduced into this support concept of the first pilot of the FHJ in order to be unique on a highly competitive market. New courses at the FHJ were designed specifically to address the needs of founders in general and those in the IT sector in particular and these courses were offered not only to (mostly master) students but were open also to the interested public. It was this mixture of different modules, different people and the resulting exchange of information and experience that was particularly valuable for those who participated in the second pilot.

The courses consisted of several modules, which the paper will describe in detail, and where it was - according to the modular system - possible to select just a few or even just one course only. However, most people attended all the courses which showed us that all the modules are important when venturing into the setting up of an IT-enterprise. The final event of this second pilot of the project Accelerator was a networking event, where students and other prospective founders had the chance to meet not only other (funded) projects that deal with the issues of entrepreneurship but could also get in touch with stakeholders like the Chamber of Commerce, the municipality etc.

Now, with this second pilot program finished we noticed that there is still room for improvement. A new idea turned up, it was brought forward by one of our students. Since the smart phone is the single point of information for many people, we will try to develop an App for founders.

Our conclusion is that through these two pilots within the project Accelerator the FHJ had the chance to set up a long term incubator called KAIT. Through that we will be able to support founders in and outside the FHJ in the IT sector with a ready to use developed course for IT-entrepreneurs although constant improvement is necessary in a highly volatile market like IT founders.

Keywords:

Entrepreneur, eu-project, interreg, ebusiness.