Wild Card 2021 by EIT Health

Every year, Wild Card builds two new ventures that break new ground, push boundaries and troubleshoot some of European healthcare’s greatest challenges. Wild Card attracts the brightest talent, mentor founders-to-be and invests up to €1.5 million in the two most promising ventures. Launched in 2017, Wild Card is backed by EIT Health – one of the largest healthcare networks in the world, counting 150 world-leading organizations as partners and supported by the European Union. 

The Wild Card Programme seeks to transform healthcare delivery through attracting the brightest talent to solve some of healthcare’s greatest challenges. The challenges are needs that remain unsolved, inefficiently solved or are currently delivered in a very expensive or inconvenient process. Through the Wild Card Programme, EIT Health brings together top talent with the right resources and creates healthcare and life sciences companies which hold the potential to transform health care. Through training and mentoring, access to the biggest healthcare innovation network and up to €1.5 million in non-dilutive funding, teams selected to become Wild Card ventures benefit from unique opportunities for an early-stage start-up. The programme follows a comprehensive format, taking individuals, small teams and young start-ups as participants and furthering them to established start-ups ready for private investment.

Expected result

The goal of the programme is to build ventures addressing challenge areas as set out by EIT Health partnership. As the result of the selection process, up to two teams receive two years of ongoing support and up to €1.5 million in non-dilutive funding (€750,000/company/year), mentoring and coaching to help them grow their projects into thriving commercial businesses.

Challenges

In the Wild Card Programme EIT Health sets out two challenge areas each year. For the 2021 Wild Card Programme Call for Applications, the challenges are:

Challenge 1: Eye & Vision Care

How to mitigate, prevent and cure eye conditions and vision impairment?

Challenge 2: Pain Management

How to alleviate acute and chronic pain conditions?

Who should consider applying

• Teams and newly incorporated start-ups - Small teams of up to 5 team members with a business idea, including less than 1-year old start-ups
• Entrepreneurs with a business idea - Professionals with a proposed idea/solution seeking to find co-founders
• Entrepreneurs seeking business opportunity - Professionals with an entrepreneurial mindset looking to join teams and other entrepreneurs to found a company

Wild Card journey

The programme follows a comprehensive format, taking individuals and small teams as participants through team formation (optional), training, need and market validation as well as rigorous stress-testing of the solution. In the end, EIT Health will invest in up to two best teams with business proposals.

Stage 1. Deep dive: Spanning over one month in this first phase of the programme, participants will get to know each other, complete and/or form teams.  Those teams will then work on their projects and ideas with the support of mentors that will aid them to sharpen their proposals. 

Stage 2. Business Model Validation: Up to 8 successful teams from stage 1 will be invited to continue the journey on a 9-week, part-time acceleration programme, which will lead teams through the customer discovery process and business model validation. During this stage, participants will be tasked to validate key assumptions with regards to their proposal. The two-hour weekly sessions will be conducted online, and each team will be assigned dedicated US and European mentors to support them on the journey.

Investment Pitch: Final pitch in front of EIT Health Panel where teams present their final proposals for investment. Up to two teams will be selected for investment. 

Wild Card Ventures: Following the incorporation into a start-up, if applicable, Wild Card ventures will be offered, access to EIT Health network and partners, lead mentor, organization coaches, ongoing support from EIT Health Project Manager and up to €750,000 funding/team/year.  See companies in Wild Card portfolio.

Find more information on the Wild Card website

Detailed application information here

Apply here until 16 March 2021