Elevate: Where Business Theory Meets Practice

Elevate is the first university accelerator in the Balkan region. The program is a joint enterprise between AUBG and venture capital fund Eleven Ventures. 

The Elevate program is mentorship-based and lasts for 18 weeks. During this period, students use the knowledge they acquired from university courses in real-life scenarios by building their own start-up companies.

Currently, Elevate is at the start of its fifth season. Throughout the process, all the competing teams receive $2000 for development with no strings attached and weekly consultations with mentors from the business sphere.

One of the managing directors of the accelerator, Daria Naidenova, said: “The mentors are the most important and valuable thing because they have years of experience, and they can give a synthesis of that experience in an hour and a half or two.”

Some famous mentors in Elevate are entrepreneurs such as Hristo Borisov (Payhawk), Svetozar Georgiev (Telerik), and Georgi Petrov (Yotpo). The list of mentors who have participated throughout the last four seasons of Elevate can be found here.

The program is separated into two phases. The first starts throughout the Fall semester, when all participating teams go through the essential process of developing a start-up including validating the hypothesis of their business idea and building customer profiles.

The second part of the competition takes place during the Spring semester. Then, the contestants go more in-depth by developing their marketing and sales strategies, building prototypes, and familiarizing themselves with the legal framework of their projects. 

“The teams are given the opportunity to develop their ideas in a safe environment where they do not have consequences even if they make a mistake or do not spend the money in the most proper way they could,” said Martin Stanchev, the other managing director of Elevate.

Demo Day is the culmination of all the hard work done by the students. On this day, all the teams present their projects and strategies for development in front of a panel of successful businessmen. The three winners are awarded $10000 to fund the development of their project.

Stefan Tosunov is a second-year student whose team is participating in the fifth season of Elevate. SportsPro, his team’s start-up, aims to prevent young athletes from stopping their careers prematurely due to a lack of material or financial resources by connecting them with sponsors who can provide financial support.

“If you want to be an entrepreneur and create your own company, it is quite a complicated process. Most people do not know what to do, and this accelerator program will be very helpful because it will show us some of the things that we usually do not see or do not think about when creating a company,” Tosunov said. He added that participation in the program is almost risk-free and that even if their project is not successful, the knowledge his team is going to get will be priceless.

One of the winners during the fourth season of Elevate was Education+. The platform is currently providing opportunities to high-school students and undergraduates, such as international internships, job positions, and training camps in foreign countries.

One of the co-founders, Natalia Vasileva, shared her experience: “We had the chance to meet people from the entrepreneurial world who helped us develop our idea and gave us very interesting advice.”

For her, the biggest challenge that Education+ faced after the end of Elevate was the amount of work that had to be done by only two people. “Another challenge is the legal stuff that we never thought about,” Natalia said and added that it is exhausting for two young students to deal with lawyers, accountants, and banks. Still, they continue to look for ways to develop and improve their project. 

Regarding the mentorship program, Natalia said: “We do not feel them as our mentors anymore, they are our friends who helped us develop our idea, helped us build this entrepreneurial thinking, and showed us what you can do with your own mind and heart.” 

“Elevate is the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life. It is not only a place where you try to develop an idea, it is a community of amazing people. In Elevate, I found my best friends. I found people that will be with me till the end of my life,” she said, encouraging everyone wondering whether to participate or not, to go for it, promising that they would not regret it.

Hangout Blagoevgrad was part of the three winners in the third season of Elevate. They are probably the most successful project of the seven fully operating start-ups from the program.

The co-founder, Darina Stanoilova, reflected on what are the benefits of participation in Elevate: “It is the mentorship, the money for the validation, and the fact that Elevate motivates you to do it. You are competing with other teams, but it is a very healthy competition because all the teams push each other, listen to each other, and give ideas to each other.”

Stanoilova also expressed appreciation for the work done by Elevate in the past five years: “A lot of people probably underestimate this, but what Elevate basically does is give you money which you can validate and check whether your business works. All start-ups do not have this money when they start. They need to do this validation on their own resources which is why we need to appreciate what Elevate does, they lose money, but you don’t.”

She stated that communication is key for every business that wants to grow and be successful. “Don’t give up” and “Listen to what other people [from Elevate] say to you” were the advice Stanoilova wanted to spread to all present and future participants in Elevate.