As you may have noticed, we have been working on a document called “Visionen für Startups in Österreich” lately (which translates as Visions for Startups in Austria).
Our ambition with this project is first to let politicians know what startups need. Second to raise awareness for startups in this country, in order to highlight the importance and emphasize on what lasting impact startups could have in Austria, provided with the best conditions needed for a vibrant ecosystem (venture capital, taxes, subsidies, social insurance, regulations, etc). As by now, we handed over the paper to every political party in the Austrian parliament in the past few weeks and had good talks about their ambition to help us working on a more startup-friendly ecosystem in Austria.
The joint handover to Minister Bures and Christoph Matznetter from SPÖ (Credit: Lucia Vilsecker)
Harald Mahrer from Julius Raab Stiftung, an ÖVP thinkthank, accepted the paper
Werner Kogler from the Green party at the paper handover (Credit: Lucia Vilsecker)
Matthias Strolz and Niko Alm from the NEOS party accepted the paper
Kathrin Nachbaur from Team Stronach accepted the paper
Mr. Schellenbacher from the FPÖ at the Parliament’s Säulenhalle
The idea of providing politicians with insights what startups really need was brought to our attention in May by several stakeholders and startups. AustrianStartups decided to gather the relevant data in cooperation with Pioneers and SpeedInvest and we started a joint Austrian-wide startup survey (from which SpeedInvest created the Austrian Startup Report 2013, an overview of the status quo in the startup ecosystem). Based on the results of this survey, the input of many stakeholders and productive meetings with all political parties we produced a paper to improve the startup scene in Austria.
In July, August and September we gathered the startup scene in Vienna at our “Stammtisch” events to talk directly to politicians from various about their specific needs. Couple of weeks later, we had the first draft, which summed up the details for the final paper.
Today (26th Nov 2013), this final paper was presented at a press conference together with the Austrian Startup Report 2013. The paper does not represent “demands” and can rather be seen as working paper to be used as broad yet detailed input for the most important areas that concern startups in Austria. It will be publicly available to everyone (startups, stakeholders, media and public), in order to spread the word and involve the whole community in making Austria a better place for startups!
Our ambition with the release of this document is to help all Austrian startups to work in a more startup-friendly environment – now and in the future, because we believe Austria has to make the transition to a highly innovation-driven economy in the digitalized world of the 21st century. And startups are an important catalyst of this transistion.
WE ALL ARE AUSTRIANSTARTUPS!
Can Ertugrul, Oliver Holle and Christoph Jeschke present the paper (Credit: Lucia Vilsecker)
Answering journalists’ questions (Credit: Lucia Vilsecker)
The Austrian Startup Report & Visions for Austria (Credit: Lucia Vilsecker)
