How a one-year EU innovation associate grant moved an Amsterdam AI spinout from concept to hiring

Small and medium sized enterprises often struggle to recruit the specialised engineers and scientists needed to commercialise deep tech. The European INNOSUP programme was designed to help by funding the salary of an 'innovation associate' for one year so an SME can access skills and knowledge it lacks internally. Between 2018 and 2021 the programme funded 151 innovation associates. The case of ELLOGON.AI illustrates both the benefits and the limits of this approach.

What the INNOSUP innovation associate scheme provides

ELLOGON.AI: an academic spinout targeting personalised immunotherapy

ELLOGON.AI was founded in 2019 by Prof. Evangelos Kanoulas and Assoc. Prof. Efstratios Gavves of the University of Amsterdam. The company develops algorithms that combine pathology images and genomic data to produce diagnostic and prognostic reports. The stated product goal is to help medical researchers and clinicians identify which patients are likely to respond to immunotherapy and to personalise treatment decisions.

In February 2021 an INNOSUP grant enabled ELLOGON.AI to hire its first full time employee, Dr. Arun Mukundan. The funding sped up technology development and helped the company attract additional grants. By mid 2021 the team had grown to seven people.

What the technology does and what it needs to succeed

In practice this work requires access to large, well annotated datasets, careful handling of heterogeneous data sources, robust model validation and explainability for clinical users. Clinical deployment also involves regulatory classification of the software product as a medical device in many jurisdictions, clinical trials or retrospective validation against standards, integration with hospital workflows and explicit data governance and privacy safeguards. The article on ELLOGON.AI does not list the datasets or validation studies used. Those are crucial for assessing clinical readiness.

How the company recruited talent and what that reveals about European innovation networks

Finding skilled candidates proved difficult. Open calls did not yield the right match and personal networks mattered. Professor Kanoulas says the company nearly failed to recruit Dr. Mukundan until a co‑founder used a connection to the candidate’s PhD supervisor. That anecdote underscores a broader reality in European deep tech ecosystems where formal hiring channels often sit alongside informal networks and where talent mobility remains constrained by competition with larger, better resourced firms.

Training, onboarding and pandemic constraints

INNOSUP offers a tailor made training programme in general innovation management for innovation associates and their project supervisors. ELLOGON.AI combined that with on‑the‑job training aimed at letting Dr. Mukundan specialise further in computer vision for cancer detection. However Covid‑19 complicated team building. The team had not met in person since Dr. Mukundan joined, and onboarding and culture formation were handled remotely through intensive communication and deliberate management effort.

Outcomes claimed and remaining uncertainties

Company founders called the INNOSUP grant a crucial stepping stone. The recruitment helped accelerate development, brought in more grants and expanded the team. ELLOGON.AI indicated plans to enter the market by summer 2022, which would be intended to sustain and retain the in‑house expertise developed during the funded period.

Several questions remain unanswered in the public account. The article does not describe the product’s validation pathway, regulatory classification or clinical partners used to test real world performance. It does not detail revenue model, pricing, or the size of follow‑on funding that supported the team expansion beyond the initial INNOSUP salary. One year of salary support can be decisive to start hiring but it is short relative to the time often required to validate and sell regulated health technology.

Critical perspective for policymakers and investors

The ELLOGON.AI story highlights the practical value of targeted salary support for bridging critical early hiring gaps in SMEs. At the same time it demonstrates systemic tensions. Short term public subsidies can unlock hiring and development but they do not remove the longer term pressures of retaining talent in the face of competition from large firms, building reproducible clinical evidence, navigating medical device regulation and securing commercial contracts with healthcare providers. For programmes such as INNOSUP to generate lasting returns policymakers need to link short term salary support with pathways to scale up, such as follow on grants, stronger access to clinical data, support for regulatory preparedness and incentives to keep experienced staff in SMEs.

Takeaways

Short term salary subsidies can help hard pressed SMEs recruit technical talent and accelerate development. The ELLOGON.AI example shows how a single funded hire can catalyse product work, attract follow on support and enable team growth. The case also highlights the limits of a one year intervention. Lasting impact will depend on rigorous product validation, regulatory strategy, sustainable financing and retention of trained staff. For funders and ecosystem builders the lesson is to pair immediate hiring incentives with longer term support mechanisms so that technical gains do not leak away once the subsidy window closes.