It’s time to close the year from the startup program’s perspective also, while the Romanian startup ecosystem continues to be rolling. We have made a wrap-up of those startup-related programs and events that we considered to be the most important ones.
Part of the Startup Ecosystem Radar, we prepare this information in a digestible form and deliver it to our subscribers on a weekly/bi-weekly basis, with the aim to inform them about the ecosystem and help them make business decisions. If you would like to get these reports, subscribe by using the form at the end of this article.
The first 6 months review can be found here and now we will present the second part of 2022.
Let’s start!
1. Rubik Hub has organized Rubik Garage, an accelerator for startups at the beginning of the road. Out of the 120 founders who signed up for the program, 22 startups have been accepted to participate in over 60 hours of practical workshops and feedback sessions (link). Also, Rubik Hub collaborated with Meta for a Growth Bootcamp dedicated to startups, who want to excel in applying Meta tools to support business growth and development (link).
2. StepFWD 2022 selected 9 teams to enter their pre-accelerator cohort. The selected participants came from 4 cities in Romania and were from various industries from retail, medtech, human resources to cybersecurity (link). The demoday will be held on January 16, 2023. Moreover, the organization partnered with Google for Startups, Orange and Algolia, and launched in September 2022 the first report on the impact of diverse teams on the business environment and how diversity greatly influences the ecosystem (link).
3. INNO, a department of the North-West Regional Development Agency, has launched in August StartUp LevelUP, an educational program that aims to initiate those who wish to enter the world of entrepreneurship. The program is organized in levels, with different themes and activities, which help the participants to develop, regardless of their stage (link).
4. Innovation Labs 2022 edition has come to an end, and on demoday, 15 startups presented their developments and what their long-term plans are. The big winners of this edition are Manuscrito, an app that helps children learn to write by hand, read and do math exercises (link).
5. InnovX-BCR has organized InnovX VC Bootcamp, a part of the accelerator that targets people who can open an investment fund (link). Also they have selected the group for the Scaleups, an accelerator dedicated to companies that already have activity and revenue, but can grow more in international markets (link). The winners also have been announced (link).
6. Impact Hub Bucharest’s Black Sea ClimAccelerator, dedicated to green businesses in Romania and Bulgaria, chose 16 startups to participate in the autumn program (link). In September the launch of the Green Startup Ecosystem Overview Report 2022 took place in an on-line event. While the fourth edition of the Innovators for Children program announced its winners at the Pitch Day (link).
7. Open Banking Hackathon – CEE Edition has launched its fourth edition of the innovation challenge competition. Out of more than 40 fintechs from all across Europe, 12 have been selected to move forward with the competition (link).
8. Over 70 teams from the CEE region have registered for Startup Reaktor, an incubation platform designed to fast-forward early-stage EU tech start-ups. The program is designed by Romanian Tech Startups Association in partnership with Techcelerator and Rōnin (link).
9. Techcelerator celebrated five years at the third edition of Investors Day – the accelerator’s flagship event, which took place on October 13. More than 250 people participated in the event, including start-ups, investors, mentors, representatives of technology companies or authorities (link). While the Demoday, the event that concluded the first phase of the Venture Program, the pre-acceleration program offered by EIT Digital through Techcelerator. Each finalist team obtained an investment of €5K, and competed for a new round of up to €20K (link). Together with Google for Startups, they launched the third edition of the “Advancing AI” acceleration program, dedicated to startups in the South-Eastern Europe region that develop products using artificial intelligence / machine learning (link).
10. Make IT in Oradea has organized in September the Bright Labs Incubator demo day event in which the 7 selected startups have presented their ideas to the jury (link). In promotion of the 2023 program, Make IT in partnership with Activize, Cluj Startups, FreshBlood Healthtech and ABC Incubator organized an overview event for the end of year focused on the North East region (link).
11. The F&B Business Accelerator, the 6-week program organized by Hospitality Culture Institute and dedicated to entrepreneurs that want to innovate the food industry, opened the applications for a new cohort (link).
12. 26 entrepreneurs from Arad, Timiș, Hunedoara and Caraș-Severin were selected from among the 200 enrolled in the ADRVest Accel business acceleration program organized by the West Regional Development Agency and the Institute for Excellence in Entrepreneurship – IdEA (link).
13. Atos launches RoBOOST, a national program through which it aims to support startups and SMEs that have a dedicated portfolio in the area of cyber security and advanced technologies (link).
14. Patria Bank team has launched Patria Academy, a financial education program dedicated to entrepreneurs. The educational project aims to support the business environment in Romania in the current difficult economic context (link).
15. SeedBlink and Bucharest International School of Management launched Tech Investors Academy, a learning program dedicated to early stage investors (link).
16. EIT Manufacturing RIS Hub Romania managed by Iceberg has organized the Industry 5.0 Pre-Acceleration Program which aims to support the emergence of new startups that want to overcome the transformations associated with Industry 4.0, while developing new technologies, products and services to support the transition to a sustainable, focused European industry (link).
17. Nod Makerspace, the first large-scale creative center in Romania whose objective is the democratization of design, engineering and education, launched the Bursa de Makeri program through which teams of 2-4 young professionals from the fields of design, arts, carpentry and other related fields can access a studio in the workshop space free of charge for 3 months (link).
18. Bravva Angels created InvestReady, an education program meant to bring together founders and investors to learn the fundamentals of a partnership between a start-up and its business angels (link).
19. ROStartup has launched two key reports: Starting Up Romania and Scaling Up Romania in order to better understand where the Romanian startup ecosystem is now, but also what are the next steps in its evolution (link).
20. Activize and FreshBlood Healtech has organized two hackathons, together with Transilvania University of Brașov, respectively with Cluj’s Babeș-Bolyai University, focused on innovative ideas for student-led team.
Some conferences
1. How to Web, Eastern Europe’s leading startup & innovation conference has been organized in September (link).
2. The third edition of Prow – a conference dedicated to tech and digital products, was organized in September at FABER Timișoara (link).
3. A team of local and international experts, in partnership with Oradea Tech Hub, has organized the third edition of the Romanian Artificial Intelligence Days (link).
4. The 10th edition of ITDays, a regional conference in Cluj-Napoca, Romania has been organized in November. The event focuses on innovation, entrepreneurship and technologies in the IT space (link).
5. SSIMA Re:Imagine Healthcare is an annual international MedTech festival in Eastern Europe and this year it was organized in Oradea between 5-9 September. Business leaders, highest-level government officials and world-renowned academics attended the conference, to discuss trends, policy and business, and to teach the new generation of MedTech leaders about the latest technologies and trends (link).
Closing
Hackathons, conferences, events and many more, this year’s Romanian startup ecosystem didn’t sleep at all. Even after making the selection, we can see that the ist is quite long. We are eager to see what the new year will bring us and how the ecosystem will react to it.
This article is based on the weekly reports made for the Startup Ecosystem Radar, which contains news about the startup ecosystem and venture capital in Romania, so if you are interested to find out more about it check this product here and subscribe to it in the form below!
