The Inception Phase is the essence of the Open Horizons journey. Why? Years of high-level entrepreneurial experience are distilled into a month of high-impact training.
This phase enables selected ideas to take shape and founders to turn ambition into strategy. Over just a few intensive weeks, startups receive concentrated knowledge from our mentors and the project partner InnovX. Get to know the people behind the process. Meet the mentors whose distilled experience and insights form the key ingredients for a successful preparation to pilot their structured ideas.
The recipe for a plan ready to scale up
The Open Horizons’ mentors bring together an exceptional mix of backgrounds: from global tech leaders at Microsoft to venture investors, legal experts, corporate executives, and founders. All of them have built and scaled their own companies.
Their combined expertise spans every corner of the innovation ecosystem – from artificial intelligence, cloud solutions, and finance, to marketing, design thinking, and intellectual property.
Throughout the Inception Phase, they guide startups in understanding both the mechanics and the mindset required to transform a concept into a market-ready solution.
Corporate partners also step in to provide feedback grounded in real operational needs, ensuring every idea is tested against practical, business-driven perspectives.
Together, these interactions ensure that the programme delivers the most valuable outcome of all: clarity.
Key steps and guidance of the inception programme
- Business Model Canvas workshops
Before growing, you need to know who you are and what you can do. The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is a tool that helps startups define who they are, who they serve, and how they create value.
Maria-Luiza Jipescu, Design Thinking and Innovation Facilitator, will lead these sessions with Mădălina Ciinaru, Nicu Iancu, and Bodó György. They are bringing expertise in strategic design, partnership building, and digital transformation.
As the programme advances, a broader circle of mentors – Steliana Moraru, Liviu Munteanu, Ana Bobircă, Bogdan Năforniță, Melinda Muresan, Daniel Dumitrescu, Raluca Nicolescu, Aimen Aldahash, Robert Pufan, Madalina Dobre, Delia Necula, Adina Saniuta, Dorina Torje, Sergiu Pop, Carmen Dibuș, Sonia Fedorovici, Diana Dumitrescu and Suleiman Arabiat – will join us to help refine each startup’s approach. Their feedback sessions will resemble a collaborative studio, where investors, entrepreneurs, and innovators will combine perspectives to ensure every business model will be sound and scalable.
- Co-Design workshops for pilot planning
These sessions, co-led by InnovX and Open Horizons corporate partners, focus on turning ideas into actionable pilot plans.
Startups will work hand-in-hand with corporate innovation teams to tailor their solutions to real-world operational contexts. Moreover, they will identify measurable outcomes, and set up frameworks for collaboration. This is learning applied at its best – pragmatic, goal-oriented, and driven by dialogue.
- Proof of Concept (PoC) legal readiness workshop
Legal clarity is essential to kick off on a solid ground. Bogdan Coraci, Legal and IP expert, guided founders through the essentials of collaboration frameworks: Non-Disclosure Agreements, Intellectual Property rights, confidentiality agreements, and the evolution from Proof-of-Concept to licensing.
His session provides not just legal theory but negotiation practice, helping teams recognize each party’s red lines and build balanced, trust-based partnerships.
- Microsoft Power Lab
Innovation thrives with technology thanks to the Microsoft Power Lab. It will showcase how cutting-edge tools can accelerate growth and ensure security at scale.
- Aimen Aldahash will illustrate Microsoft’s support journey for startups — from pre-seed Azure credits to global go-to-market partnerships.
- Ovidiu Pismac, Senior Security Cloud Solution Architect, will share insights on data protection, cybersecurity, and compliance in the age of AI.
- Robert Pufan, Senior Partner Solutions Architect for AI Business Solutions, will introduce Microsoft 365 Copilot as a catalyst for smarter, safer workflows.
- Sergiu Pop, EMEA Data & AI Specialist, will follow with a deep dive into the new “agentic AI” paradigm, showing how data and automation empower innovation.
- Individual reviews and the final rehearsal
The final stretch of the Inception Phase is where everything comes together. Startups enter one-to-one review sessions with InnovX mentors and corporate partners, validating Business Model Canvases and Proof-of-Concept plans before delivery.
Then comes the final evaluation seen through two complementary lenses:
- Mentors act as directors, ensuring the storyline is coherent, strategic, and compelling.
- Corporate representatives take the role of critics, assessing feasibility, alignment, and real-world impact.
It’s the last acting rehearsal before the show. Here, every detail is refined, every performance perfected, and every team ready to take the stage for pilot implementation.
Looking ahead: New horizons and pilots
As the selected startups move toward their pilots, they carry with them the insights, discipline, and inspiration distilled from Europe’s most experienced innovators. They create a collective compass guiding them through the open horizons and the Pilot Phase ahead.
Follow us to learn how Piloting looks like in our programme.