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Startup Challenge by McKinsey & Company

Lifting Europe's ambition - The next generation of Unicorns and Decacorns "made in Europe"

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Lifting Europe's ambition - The next generation of Unicorns and Decacorns "made in Europe"

Why Apply?

McKinsey is a global management consulting firm committed to helping organizations accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth. We work with clients across the private, public, and social sectors to solve complex problems and create positive change for all their stakeholders.

We combine bold strategies and transformative technologies to help organizations innovate more sustainably, achieve lasting gains in performance, and build workforces that will thrive for this generation and the next.

  • Our challenge

    Lifting Europe's ambition - The next generation of Unicorns and Decacorns "made in Europe" Today, the majority of leading players are from outside Europe. Despite current challenges, we believe in a distinctive value proposition of the European Tech ecosystem to accelerate the growth of future champions. We are looking for ambitious cross-European-markets start-ups ready to scale.

Who can apply?

  • ★ Size and maturity:

    Minimum 100M€ of valuation

  • ★ Geography: 

    Headquartered in Europe

  • ★ Team & Management:

    Still partially or fully founders led

  • ★ Growth: 

    Preparing a growth acceleration / inflexion point : entering new markets, developing and launching new products / technologies, deploying Go-To-Market strategies, looking for investments, preparing for IPO..

  • ★ Sectors:

    Priority given to fields that are crucial for EU sovereignty (e.g. DeepTech, Climate & Energy, Artificial Intelligence, Health & BioTech, Quantum Computing, Automation, Advanced Materials...).

Timeline

  • March 21 - Challenge opens
  • April 21 - Challenge closes
  • May 5 - Selected Startups announced
  • June 11 - 14 - VivaTech Paris

Benefits

  • Growth support - Full day

    1 full day "Growth Strategy" session with McKinsey & Company senior experts + 1 invitation to our exclusive CEO dinner taking place during VivaTech + invitations to additional McKinsey & Company's events planned in 2025 with speaking opportunity (depending on the field of the Start-up)

  • Growth support - Half day

    1 half day "Growth Strategy" session with McKinsey & Company senior experts + 1 invitation to our exclusive CEO dinner taking place during VivaTech + invitations to additional McKinsey & Company's events planned in 2025 (depending on the field of the Start-up)

  • Growth support - Dinner

    1 invitation to our exclusive CEO dinner taking place during VivaTech + invitations to additional McKinsey & Company's events planned in 2025 with speaking opportunity (depending on the field of the Start-up)

  • Boost your start-up : go through our scale readiness assessment

    Leap Quotient allows to assess readiness to successfully scale across all venture dimensions (product & strategy, GTM, Technology, People, Operations, Capital)

Apply