Farnell, the Development Distributor, announces a partnership agreement with ST to offer even greater support for startups in France. This includes special offers on specific ST products available to startups exclusively from the Farnell site. Together, Farnell and ST will be working hand-in-hand for specific events and exhibitions in order to better serve the young businesses attending and seeking bespoke support. The first of these events is the IoT Meetup in Annecy on 27^th June.

Farnell’s partnership with ST includes supporting the launch of the Open Innovation Challenge – a competition for startups to pitch their innovative and sustainable project or business plan, with the winners receiving a prize worth more than €50,000. The competition challenges startups to use the STM32 platform innovatively, technically and originally, with the challenge’s jury evaluating designs based on their features, embedded products, sustainability and potential market. Applications are open until 31^st May 2019, with the winning project being announced in June. The chosen project will win a free working space at selected ST sites in France for 2 years, preferential commercial arrangements on components for first orders, certification for the ST Partner Programme and much more.

Farnell understands the challenges facing startups, particularly accessing the right technical expertise. Start SomeWhere is Farnell’s own startup support scheme, which helps young businesses by offering preferential terms and conditions. In France, Farnell is currently working with more than 80 startups, supporting their everyday activities and trying to enable them to bring their products to market. Morgane Roche, Marketing Manager for South Europe and Benelux at Farnell, said “I heard young businesses who say ‘How could you help me more as a distributor?’ The Farnell support scheme enables them to achieve their goals and get the most out of our network, services and internal skills. As well as our Start SomeWhere scheme, we also offer an exclusive customisation programme, Design & Manufacturing services, and marketing support to help them grow their business.”

Some of the startups currently working with Farnell include:

• Senssight – Senssight is an industrial expert of thermal infrared vision systems. Their technology is being used to solve industrial problems in the transportation, security and industrial maintenance sectors as well as playing a key role in the development of smart city technology.

• Animalinks – Animalinks created CoHo (Connected Horses). CoHo is a smart solution for monitoring the environment of horses in stables. This technology connects the stables and monitors, manages and improves the horses’ environment in real-time and provides feedback to the owners.

• Uniswarm – Uniswarm designs generic robotics boards, ideal for robotics prototypes. There is an entire range of boards to suit all robotics needs including motion control, sensors, power management and general usage. The boards all come with open source firmware and are designed for use in industry due to their reliability and robustness.

For more information, please visit the Open Innovation Challenge website.

Premier Farnell, the Development Distributor, announces the launch of “Maker to Market”: a range of capabilities that offer start-ups the support, expertise and resources to take their products to market.

These Maker to Market services are supported by Design & Manufacturing Services which enable engineers to focus on developing the best product possible by providing support at every stage of the design and manufacturing process. This includes customisation for larger scale projects or manufacturing volumes.

The Premier Farnell group of businesses’ expertise and experience helps its customers to overcome product design challenges – both technical and commercial – as well as providing advice and support with cost optimisation, volume production, certifications and compliance testing, all of which leads to a quicker time to market. Premier Farnell has a strong track record of working with start-ups and helping them to bring their products to market. One such example is FutureHome, a Norwegian start-up that has developed a Smart Hub gateway allowing users to remotely control, automate and monitor multiple smart devices in the home. Premier Farnell provided FutureHome with a full range of services, including engineering services, compliance and manufacturing, which then allowed the team at FutureHome to focus on product and business development.

Premier Farnell is an active sponsor of Startupbootcamp IoT | Connected Devices, a dedicated accelerator program offering support, mentorship and investment opportunities to global technology start-ups working in the consumer or industrial IoT sectors

Premier Farnell also manufactures some of the world’s most popular single-board computers – including Raspberry Pi™, BeagleBone® Black and BBC micro:bit: further evidence of its knowledge, expertise and resources for helping start-ups through the design, production and commercialisation process for technologically advanced products.

“As the Development Distributor, we at Premier Farnell pride ourselves on providing great support to engineers taking their ideas and developing them to the next level”, comments Steve Carr, global head of marketing for Premier Farnell “With our Maker to Market services, we are helping to meet the needs of both start-ups and professional makers who have great ideas and are passionate about the products or ideas they are developing - but who may not necessarily have the in-house skills or resources to be able to design, manufacture, distribute and promote their products.”

“As a result, we can help designers turn a brilliant idea into a finished product that can be promoted and distributed worldwide – and we can help makers get their product ideas to market faster and at a lower overall cost.”

An additional resource for startups is Hardware Studio Connection, a venture between Avnet (parent company of the Premier Farnell group of businesses) and Avnet’s new Dragon Innovation division, giving designers access to hands-on support from the companies’ engineers as well as discounts on components and services. These new programs are designed to help guide startups through the product development cycle and get their ventures into the right channels as quickly as possible.

Premier Farnell, the Development Distributor, has announced a second year of sponsorship of Startupbootcamp IoT. Now in its second year, Startupbootcamp IoT’s program will give nine startups access to a global network of business mentors, hardware professionals, corporate partners including Premier Farnell, potential customers, and investors. With workshops, one-to-one sessions and events, each startup is able to call upon daily support from the Startupbootcamp team on areas including business development, finance and marketing.

The nine startups selected to join the second cohort of its London-based accelerator program kicking off in October, are developing Internet of Things (IoT) devices that tackle problems in diverse applications from factory automation and smart farming to driver safety and cybersecurity.

Back in April Startupbootcamp IoT opened applications with a particular call out to Industrial IoT, B2B and high-impact startups in areas such as manufacturing, infrastructure, energy, education, the environment, health, agriculture and retail. This was a response to trends highlighting a growing investment in the Industrial IoT space and waning support for smarthome products and consumer IoT devices. As a result nearly 75% of the applications received were from startups working on B2B IoT devices, compared with just 24% in 2016.

Program CEO and Founder, Raph Crouan, said: “We’ve begun to see a real shift in how investors, partners and customers are viewing the IoT. These audiences recognise the clear benefits the IoT brings but are bored of the deluge of useless connected products built in the past five years. With a few notable exceptions, last year’s inaugural IoT cohort was dominated by home and consumer-level products, but this year it’s been the reverse. We’ve witnessed a real shift in those innovations attacking the needs of heavy industries such as manufacturing, logistics, agriculture, etc., or using IoT in high-impact areas such as the environment, sustainability and societal problems in general.”

“Our experience seems to mirror what’s happening on a global level, where those startups bringing IoT innovation to heavy industries — through innovation in areas such as sensors, security, cloud platforms, networking infrastructure, machine learning, AI, robotics and data analytics — are receiving a greater share of the investment going on in the IoT ecosystem.”

“Here at Startupbootcamp IoT we’re aiming to make the journey of building a connected hardware startup clearer, shorter, and more successful for entrepreneurs. The team can’t wait to start helping this year’s exciting cohort to realise their goals and bring their IoT innovations to market. Narrowing down our final startups was very difficult given the exceptionally high calibre of the applicants but the nine we’ve chosen have huge potential in such a diverse set of applications.”

Steve Carr, Global Head of Marketing at Premier Farnell and a mentor for the Startupbootcamp cohort said: “Premier Farnell is delighted to sponsor the programme for a second year. We pride ourselves on the support we give to customers as they navigate their journeys and bring products to market. This might be providing the technology they need when they need it or working more closely with them on their design, right through to developing high quality packaging and getting the product out for sale. As a mentor I thoroughly enjoyed working with the 2016 cohort – they showed an immense amount of energy and enthusiasm – and determination! I am looking forward to working with this year’s start-ups.”

After receiving, and reviewing, applications from over 350 startups from 57 countries, 18 finalists were invited to attend Startupbootcamp Selection Days between September 13-15th. The final nine to join the program were chosen following an intense three-day selection process that included expert workshops, pitches to program partners including Premier Farnell, and mentor feedback sessions.

The 2017 Startupbootcamp IoT cohort is:

1. HUDlog (Canada) — the HUDlog Head-Up Display projects essential driving information through the windshield of a vehicle so drivers never have to take their eyes off the road.
2. Internet of Trees (Honduras) — a forest monitoring solution to alert authorities about fire outbreaks and logging in real time.
3. Mothive (UK) — creating wireless devices to continuously monitor air temperature, air humidity, soil moisture and irradiance or crops.
4. Odyssey Sensors (UK) — delivering vital and actionable intel from field to farmer for the 428 million underserved and often overlooked smallholder farmers.
5. Robotic Solutions (Latvia) — building a self-driving kit to make existing manually controlled machinery autonomous.
6. Sonodot (UK) — a plug and play indoor location intelligence platform for warehousing and factory automation.
7. Storybot (Israel) — a handheld, screen free connected device for children that engages them in healthy digital, social and physical activities.
8. Thingblox (Hungary) — a simple, secure, scalable and complete IoT communications hardware technology.
9. Unifi.id (UK) — helping businesses improve their user experiences by inserting a special RFID tag into a standard plastic card, which is detected at long-range upon entry to a location of interest.

Premier Farnell operates as Farnell element14 in Europe, Newark element14 in North America and element14 in APAC.

Farnell element14, The Development Distributor, is today launching a competition for tech start-ups based in Norway in partnership with CamdenBoss, Altium and Intel. Two winning organisations will be able to select a product worth up to 20,000kr. to help them take their design to the next level.

Farnell element14 has launched the initiative as it recognises that access to the right products and design support is what helps tech start-ups make their idea a reality. Two winners will be given the opportunity to select a product worth up to 20,000kr. to support their start-up design.

In 2016, Farnell element14 worked with Norwegian tech start-up Futurehome to help it bring its home automation product to market. Based on a Single Board Computer, Futurehome utilises smart technology to allow users to control, automate and monitor hundreds of smart devices remotely through a single Smart Hub gateway. Farnell element14 supplied the Single Board Computer as well as supporting Futurehome in the early stages of their development with compliance, manufacturing and engineering services. Working with one vendor to provide both products and services tailored to their individual needs freed Futurehome up to focus purely on developing the product.

Peter Birks, European Business President, Farnell element14, said: “This competition is designed to give two start-ups in Norway the boost they need to get their idea off the ground. From idea and proof of concept to prototyping and production, we are here to support the small start-ups like Futurehome to the large semiconductor manufacturers. Farnell element14 is the Development Distributor and by providing a joined up service we are able to dramatically reduce time to market, which is fundamental for so many start-ups. I am excited to see the innovative ideas that will come from the businesses that apply for this competition.”

Organisations can submit their entries at http://startup.farnell.com/no.  One winner will be announced at EIF Stavanger exhibition on 10^th May with a further winner announced in June.

element14 today announces its partnership with Startupbootcamp IoT | Connected Devices, a new dedicated Internet of Things (IoT) accelerator programme from Startupbootcamp, the global network of industry-focused accelerators. Through this partnership, element14 will work with the programme to provide unprecedented support to IoT and hardware startups from across the world.

The accelerator programme, which launched on 2 March 2016, is seeking applications from startups across the world with a focus on innovation in Consumer or Industrial IoT, for example, Wearables, the Connected Home, Industrial IoT and Smart Retail.

Ten startups will be selected to engage in an intensive three-month programme starting in September 2016, with each one receiving €15,000 and guidance and support from mentors, partners and investors, including element14. The programme will take place in a brand new, 70,000 sq ft fast prototyping lab at Cocoon Networks in London.

As a corporate partner, element14 will play an integral role in supporting the startups in taking their initial concepts through to a finished product, in an aggressive three-month development process.

As a leader in the global electronics market, element14 can provide a range of products and services to support the IoT and hardware startups, together with extensive technical expertise and an established global channel to market:

• An extensive range of hardware products and components available to help startups build an IoT solution
• Expertise and consultancy in electronics design and build - critical for IoT innovators with a software background requiring support for hardware solutions
• Advanced electronic engineering and hardware design services
• Creation of prototypes right through to volume manufacturing
• Access to the engineering expertise, ideas and support of the 400,000 members of the element14 Community

At the end of the three-month acceleration, the programme’s startups will pitch their company to 250+ investors and mentors on a Demo Day, set to take place on 7 December 2016.

Startups can apply for the Startupbootcamp IoT | Connected Devices programme here.  Applications close 13 June 2016.