Keywords: incubation, startups

Tomorrow Street is a joint-venture between Vodafone Procurement Company (VPC) and the technology-oriented business incubator Technoport. It is an innovation center headquartered in Luxembourg that runs an acceleration program for scale-up startups, leveraging growth through Vodafones strategic worldwide network of partners and resellers.

The aim of Tomorrow Street is to support the growth of selected companies by connecting them with a global network of clients and partners and by giving them up-front exposure that they would normally not have without a strategic global partner like Vodafone. Tomorrow Street hosts and supports late-stage startups that have completed Series A funding, generate revenues and have traction on a specific market. The focus is on the most promising companies in the areas of IoT, AI, and Cybersecurity, identified as long-term strategic technologies that can be scaled through Vodafone""s network. A 50%-50% joint-venture between Vodafone Procurement Company and Technoport SA, Tomorrow Street has a dedicated international team of 13 people with experience across corporate, entrepreneurial, and technical domains.

The innovation is threefold. It is an innovative partnership model between a world-renowned incubator, owned by public shareholders, and a global corporate, aiming at filling a market gap in the support of scale-up companies. The operational model of the new Innovation Center aims to scout companies worldwide (with scouts in different continents) and attract them to Luxembourg. The business model of the Innovation Center is solely based on a success fee on sales performances achieved thanks to the program (no equity). This consolidated expertise in the startup ecosystem on one side and an international corporation network of partners and resellers on the other side allows to connect startups with corporate clients and partners worldwide. Another important aspect is that there is no exclusivity for Vodafone thanks to the joint-venture approach.

1.5 years after inauguration, Tomorrow Street has monitored over 3,650 companies worldwide, 335 were filtered in the startup pipeline and 6 have been formally approved and are currently still being accelerated. The impact for the Luxembourgish ecosystem has been the creation of six new technology companies and related employments. Proof-of-concepts and first purchase orders have been successfully passed by these companies. Tomorrow Street has also signed strategic deal flow agreements (>60), some of which with major international VC funds. As a positive related outcome to this program, one further company, that was monitored by their team, entered the Technoport incubator at the end of 2018.