EBAN in co-operation with LBAN held their annual Winter University last October in Luxembourg.
Over 100 participants attended the one-day event and among the topics discussed, the actual economic situation could not be left out.
In his final statement Anthony Clarke confirmed that it is the right time to make an investment in new and promising projects especially as the financial markets actually do not provide better or no return.
It has also been proved that it is in a downtime period that the most promising investments have been done.
What is your take on this statement that you should try to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy?
On Monday I had a chance to participate as one of the reviewers in the European Venture Contest semi-final held in Prague. As I announced earlier here there was seven semi-finals all together taking place in Brussels, Stuttgart, Linz, Copenhagen, Pamplona, Eindhoven and Prague, each picking up three most promising hi-tech companies for the final to be held in Barcelona on December 17 with the cash prize of 90,000 euros.
So who won in Prague?
Continue reading ‘The European Venture Contest semi-final results’
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’
The 6th Framework Programme is practically over and so it is our NETIES project. In last two years we surveyed over 750 SMEs, organised 32 networking events, workshops or conferences attended by 1750 people in six countries. The consortium provided 84 individual consulting sessions and coached 31 companies in the area of finding foreign partners, improving and presenting their business plans or FP6 applications.
22 contributors from 11 countries published more than 300 posts here sharing their experience, views and comments on the topics of technology innovation, R&D funding, venture capital and Central and Eastern Europe. NowEurope attracted totally 30,000 unique visitors over the period. Thank you all.
Continue reading ‘NETIES is ending’
The 12th edition of the European Tech Investment Forum and the accompanying Venture Academy were organised by Europe Unlimited in the Hague in mid November. Meanwhile the European Commission published a report summarizing findings and recommendations from 430 European ICT companies seeking venture capital funding in the past 5 years.
The data presented is based on a number surveys that were performed immediately after each of the 10 events. The impact report includes the complete list of 430 companies from 29 countries and recommendations from investors, consultants and successful entrepreneurs.
It can be downloaded from our Virtual Innovation Park. Disclosure: Our company VIP park was involved in organizing five editions (2002-2004) and in coordinating the project activities in the Eastern and Central Europe.
The other day I was having lunch with my wife, an investment manager from one of few VC funds operating here in Slovakia. I brought her Steve’s article and asked for her comments.
Here are some points showing tech investment in Slovakia last year:
• All companies that received investment are considered rather high-tech and all investment occurred during the expansion phase of development. Interest in start-ups and seed capital is still limited (see Steve’s conclusion). Continue reading ‘Venture Capital is active’
Loading ...
Recent Comments