Are EWOR fellowships the real project Europe is looking for?

Summary

Supporting super-early stage entrepreneurs in Europe seems to be suddenly in vogue. Back in March, “Project Europe” was launched to great fanfare by podcaster and VC Harry Stebbings with a small $10 million fund to back founders aged only 25 and under, riffing on the ‘Peter Thiel Fellowship’ model of old. Now a new fund hopes to go one better — but this time with $68 million. EWOR (shorthand for “entrepreneurship without risk”) has launched its own ‘founder fellowship’, committing €60 million, which will offer selected founders €500,000 in capital for a 7% stake (in comparison, Project Europe offers on €200,000 for a 6.66% stake). It claims that, on average, alumni have gone on to raise €1million to €11M during the fellowship. The money will be going to 35 entrepreneurs a year who fit the mould of “visionaries, technical prodigies, deeply driven operators, and serial entrepreneurs.” Fellows will get virtual-first support, with 1:1 mentorship (including 1 to 5 hours per week with a ‘unicorn founder’), access to 2,000 mentors, VCs, and subject matter experts. By contrast, Project Europe offers its founder-investor network of 128 backers. Founded in 2021, EWOR is run full-time by six entrepreneurs who were previously inside companies such as SumUp, Adjust, ProGlove and united-domains: Daniel Dippold, Alexander Grots, Florian Huber, Petter Made, Quinten Selhorst, and Paul Müller. In a call with TechCrunch, Dippold contrasted EWR’s fellowship offering with Project Europe. While the latter trumpeted taking entrepreneurs with ‘just an idea’ he said EWOR will easily match that offering: “We do two fellowships, ideation and traction. You can literally — like we had a year ago with the youngest machine learning researcher from Cambridge— have no co-founder, no idea. You can start at inception, no problem.” As part of the €500,000 investment, this includes €110,000 from EWOR GmbH and an additional €390,000 from the investment fund via an uncapped convertible note or similar in...