ACE is the university incubator in Amsterdam. We support students, academics and tech professionals who are starting or growing their business. Our help consists of training & coaching and introductions to our extensive network of industry leaders, business professionals, investors and service providers. By supporting knowledge-based startups and scale-ups, we strive to build a learning ground for creating impactful companies of the future.

ACE is an official startup visa facilitator in The Netherlands. All startups that are selected for our bi-annual Incubation Program can be assisted in the process of acquiring a startup visa. A complete list of all other startup visa facilitators can be found here.

At ACE we strive to help students, academics and tech or science professionals grow their startup idea into a business. For our explore programs, we're looking for academics interested in entrepreneurship. For our incubation program we're looking for early-stage startups with a tech or science focused business. For our ready to scale program we're looking for startups that are ready to scale.

The Explore Programs are introductory programs organized in collaboration with the universities in Amsterdam to give students, researchers and academics the chance to dip their toe into the  pool of entrepreneurship. We organize several Explore Programs throughout the year. The Incubation Program is meant for early-stage startups that are ready to grow their company and need the tools to get started. We organize two Incubation Programs per year: a Spring edition and a Fall edition.

We maintain an ongoing admissions process. We aim to contact you within 2 weeks after you submitted your application. If it's a go: we will invite you for an interview. After that our panel of admissions will decide if the startup fits the criteria of the program and we will contact you shortly after with the final decision.

ACE has a network of 60 experienced mentors and a selective group of coaches. Both parties will guide the selected startups through the programs and will continue their support afterwards. The difference is that all participants get unlimited access to our mentors (depending on the availability of the mentor) but the time they get to spend with our coaches has a limit (6 hours in total).

Participation in the incubation program is free of charge. When selected into our
incubation program, you do commit to pay 2% of your revenue for the period of 5 years, only when and if you hit a yearly revenue of 250K euros or more.

Please find the full set of selection criteria here.

It is not required to be in the Netherlands to apply. However, our preference does go out to startups that have a strong preference to be based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The aim of the program is to bridge the gap between knowledge and business. By means of our 9-week program, we're providing the tools to transform your startup idea into a thriving business.

The Explore Programs are introductory programs organized in collaboration with the universities in Amsterdam to give students, researchers and academics the chance to dip their toe into the  pool of entrepreneurship. We organize several Explore Programs throughout the year. The Incubation Program is meant for early-stage startups that are ready to grow their company and need the tools to get started. We organize two Incubation Programs per year: a Spring edition and a Fall edition.

Unfortunately not. Attendance on all days of the program is required to get the most value out of the programs.

That depends on the Explore Program. For some of the programs it is not required to be affiliated with the initiating university of the program, for some it is. Please check this page to read more about the details of the programs.