I3P Startup Academy, the free training course for aspiring innovative entrepreneurs created by the Incubator of Politecnico di Torino (I3P), is about to return in its third edition, with five appointments scheduled from March to May 2025.
Where does one start to turn an idea into a successful business? What steps must be followed to found an innovative start-up? How do you assemble a team with which to take on the challenge of a technology-based business project? These are some of the main questions being asked by all those who are entering the world of innovative start-ups for the first time, and they will be answered by I3P experts during the Academy meetings, geared to offer a starting point and the fundamental knowledge to build an innovative business project.
As with the previous editions, held in 2023 and 2024, the I3P Startup Academy 2025 training course is funded and implemented as part of the activities of the Italian NODES Ecosystem and its Spoke 1, dedicated to Aerospace and Sustainable Mobility, in which the I3P incubator is among the main partners.
Online applications to participate in the Academy - which will be held in Italian language - are already open and will close on Wednesday, February 19, 2025, with an initial pre-selection based on meeting the requirements for participation and a second introductory step before the final selection. The course has a maximum of 35 places available in total.
We start-up the venture
The goal of I3P's initiative is to support aspiring startuppers at their earliest stage, helping them to give concrete shape to an innovative idea, get to know other profiles with whom they can compose a team with complementary skills, and start the process of customer discovery, with a focus on techniques for validating the entrepreneurial project and examining the market to which it could potentially appeal.
The course will consist of 5 in-person lectures and will follow an interactive mode: each lecture will be based on theoretical preparation pills, business games, and face-to-face moments with scale-up founders and some of the leading venture capitalists who will tell in a practical way how a successful entrepreneurial story is born. Experienced mentors and already active start-ups, particularly from the aerospace and sustainable mobility sectors supported by Spoke 1 of the NODES Ecosystem, will also participate.
As in previous editions, the incubator intends to once again create a dynamic and exciting atmosphere that encourages participants to interact, learn the basic concepts of the lean start-up approach, and meet new possible co-founders for tomorrow's innovative companies.
The target audience for the initiative
I3P Startup Academy 2025 is aimed at people under the age of 35, domiciled in Piedmont and with at least one bachelor's degree. Participants can be either already formed teams who have a first idea for a future innovative enterprise, or individuals who do not yet have a specific project, but would like to get involved by joining existing groups or creating new ones.
In fact, one of the distinctive purposes of the course is to bring together people with different skills, to complement existing teams or alternatively to give rise to novel formations. Succeeding in this requires that participants genuinely want to engage in dialogue and discussion - as much with tutors and mentors as with each other - and are thus willing to share their ideas and skills with other aspiring startuppers.
In addition, the initiative aims to offer equal opportunities for meeting, training and consulting to all those who are interested in embarking on the path of creating a start-up, with a particular focus on female entrepreneurship and on supporting teams composed of female founders, in order to foster their rise in the world of innovation, which is still marked by a preponderant male presence. Aspiring female entrepreneurs, I3P looks forward to meeting you and accompanying your innovative ideas to success!
The program of the course
The classes of I3P Startup Academy will be held on Saturday mornings, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., on five dates: March 8, March 15, March 29, April 12, May 10, 2025. All meetings will be held exclusively in-person, in alternating locations in Turin such as the I3P headquarters and the spaces of two partner institutions of the initiative: Talent Garden Fondazione Agnelli, the Turin campus of the European Talent Garden network, and OGR Tech, the innovation and technology hub of OGR Turin. Participation in the Academy is entirely free of charge.
At the application stage, interested parties are asked to be willing to follow the entire course with perseverance and dedication, coming up with an entrepreneurial project to present at the concluding date, so that they can make the most of the initiative and put the opportunity it offers to good use. In between classes, participants will also be required to carry out activities aimed at testing and validating their business idea. This means that during the weeks of the Academy, aspiring startuppers will have to invest their time in applying the concepts, notions and insights gained during the course appointments to their nascent business project.
To apply to join the new edition of the I3P Startup Academy, one must fill out the dedicated online form by no later than February 19, 2025, but it is a good idea to do so sooner rather than later because the second evaluation step will need to be completed within the days immediately following. Successful applications will be confirmed between late February and early March, in time for the first lesson on Saturday, March 8.
For more information on the initiative and program details, it is possible to write to the dedicated e-mail address academy@i3p.it.
