Tag Archive for 'attracting money'

Brain Drain: The Austrians have suffered and learned

Published
by
Guenther Krumpak
  on  August 29, 2008
  in  Austria
. 1 Comment

Encouraged by recent postings and an interesting article from Romania from 2006 http://mises.org/story/2371 I want to join the brain drain debate.

Austria has been suffering from brain drain during the entire 2nd half of the 20th century but has recently introduced measures to get good people back: An organisation called BrainPower www.brainpower-austria.at, a department of Austria’s research funding and promotion agency FFG www.ffg.at is offering support for researchers who are interested in getting back to Austria (jobs, accommodation, travel costs, information etc.). They work closely together with an organisation called ASCINA, Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America, an initiative of the Office of Science and Technology (OST) at the Austrian Embassy in Washington D.C. www.ascina.at, this, because a major part of the brains that emigrated have drained to North America.

Networking plus practical support obviously help, as their statistics show, but the best proof for real breakthroughs is “give them appropriate playgrounds, and they come back themselves”.

Continue reading ‘Brain Drain: The Austrians have suffered and learned’

National seed capital fund to be rolled out in Estonia in 2006?

Published
by
Tarmo Pihl
  on  November 10, 2005
  in  Venture capital
. 0 Comments

It was in 1994 when Jeff Bezoz and his few employees created a web site and database in Bezos’ Bellevue, Washington garage. It was few months later when he approached local venture capital (VC) firms in search for valuable growth capital. None of the venture capitalists invested – they evaluated the idea good, but company not attractive enough for investment. Today, with about 45% stake in Amazon.com Bezoz’s share is worth at least an easy $2 billion, while initial investment he received from business angels totaled marginal $1.2 million.

Ironically, a year later angel and venture capital investments soared and investments were made into virtually everything that went on Internet. Total venture capital investments in the USA increased nearly 15 fold in six years, from a mere $6.3 billion in 1995, to an unworldly $90 billion in 2000. However, the feast did not last long. Everything came back to earth again in 2001, when dot com bubble eventually burst, and when forty-nine out of the Silicon Valley’s fastest 50 lost value, with the majority experiencing market capitalization declines of 80%.

Continue reading ‘National seed capital fund to be rolled out in Estonia in 2006?’