José-María Súnico, MScE

Technology & Strategy Advisor

Specialised in business coaching for technology-intensive start-ups and SMEs that need guidance to prepare and refine their business plan and their fundraising strategy

Highly experienced coaching start-ups, spin-offs and beneficiaries of European Projects (e.g. H2020, Horizon Europe, Eureka, EIC, Cleansky, EDIDP, EMFF, BlueInvest)

Services I provide, and instances I collaborate with

European Projects Proposals Writing Workshops

-Public funding such as European Projects can be difficult to understand and it is easy to apply to programmes that are not a right fit or raise 'red-flags'.

-I share my experience as a EC evaluator, coach & mentor to help SMEs maximise their chances to get funded.

I have trained dozens of SMEs at prestigious RDI hubs e.g. Techhub at Google Campus, Enel Innovation Hub (Spain); Venturelab - EPFL (Switzerland); A2Be, HiCenter (Israel).

Company / Proposals Diagnosis

Some times, you need an external expert to challenge your business plan, your company or technology.
There are times, when you need an independent view to analyse aspects of business not working as supposed.
There are other times, when you need a honest feedback on a proposal you sent to a VC or to a public funding programme to find how to improve it.

I have extensive experience helping SMEs analyse their company, business ideas, and investment proposals sent to public & private instances (over 300 business ideas & proposals analysed to-date!).

Business Innovation Coaching

-SMEs often need external expert support to acquire new techniques that help them face their next challenges:

We start with strategy, setting key goals & methods to ensure alignment.
Then, we introduce techniques to ensure product-market fit and produce a portfolio roadmap strategy.
Next, we learn techniques to analyse business models and use them to find potential improvements.
Then, we produce a feasibility study and, if positive, a solid business plan.
Finally, we study fundraising scenarios, considering private & public sources.

EC Expert, Coach, Mentor

I collaborate with different public and private instances as an external expert:

Business Coach for BlueInvest and EIC proposals beneficiaries.
Business Mentor for beneficiaries of the Copernicus Accelerator.
Business Mentor at Early Warning Europe (Pro-bono).
Business Mentor at madri+d Mentoring Network, who provides support to SMEs and startups in Madrid, Spain (Pro-bono).
Regional jury in the South-Europe Startups Award (Pro-bono).

Testimonials

"We chose José-María as business coach in our Horizon 2020 Phase 1 project in 2017. He worked hard with us to extract the best value for our project and to develop a reliable and strong strategy to move ahead. He offered us a wide technical knowledge embraced with a wise, open and active listening to our ideas to help us identifying the best ones. I would love to have him in my team when I need it and, as professional business coach, I hope I can."