Summer School MAGICA H-FARM held: climate research, transition and finance

From 5 to 9 September 2022, at the MAGICA Summer School, 20 university students, graduates and postgraduates passionate about climate change spent an inspiring week in one of the most innovative hubs in Europe: the Campus of H-Farm , in Treviso, Nothern Italy.

The participants learnt about climate research, climate transition and climate finance together with international experts Monica Billio, Carlo Carraro, Daniela Jacobs, Frank McGovern and Peter Vis, and developed their startup projects with Zeno Tosoni, entrepreneur and startupper, who helped them turn their ideas into real business projects focusing on climate.

The participants were selected on the basis of their motivation and a concrete project plan for an innovative solution to address a particular climate change and sustainability issue. They presented a series of lectures on the fundamentals of climate change science, policy and finance, as well as inspiring examples of case studies (programme of lectures and speakers here).

In the afternoon session the group was guided by a professional start up mentor to help shaping individual solution ideas and translate them into a concrete business plan in the view of a future start-up. The group divided in four startup founding teams to learn how to analyze a market need, design & execute a workflow and to accelerate the process of crafting a convincing pitch to convince investors. The workshops were organized in the H-farm Seed Village, where the successful Depop has its origins. Depop is an app based marketplace for second-hand articles across the globe and sold to Etsy for €1.6 billion in 2021.

At the end of this exciting week Boost your Idea as one out of four competing projects Sharelock was selected as most promising by a jury composed by a jury of investors and startup founders as well as representatives of MAGICA and JPI Climate.