A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder. During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential, such as unicorns.
Research and development is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products. R&D constitutes the first stage of development of a potential new service or the production process.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology.
BAWAG P.S.K. is the fourth largest bank in Austria. It was formed on October 1, 2005 by the merger of the separate banks P.S.K. and BAWAG.
The Agrana Group is a food company based in Vienna that produces sugar, starch, fruit preparation, juice concentrate and ethanol fuel. Agrana is mainly supplying to international food industry, with some minor end customer business. A known brand is Wiener Zucker. Agrana runs around 50 facilities with major production bases in Australia, Austria, Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Morocco, Mexico, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Ukraine, and the United States.
The KontronGroup of enterprises is an IT consulting, products and services provider with its head office in Linz, Austria.
Corporate venture capital (CVC) is the investment of corporate funds directly in external startup companies. CVC is defined by the Business Dictionary as the "practice where a large firm takes an equity stake in a small but innovative or specialist firm, to which it may also provide management and marketing expertise; the objective is to gain a specific competitive advantage." Examples of CVCs include GV and Intel Capital.
Cornelius Boersch is a German serial entrepreneur, technology investor, business angel, and author. He is the founder of the investment companies Mountain Partners AG and Conny & Co. Boersch is considered as one of the most active and well-known investors in the (European) technology and start-up scene and is the initiator of the annual Entrepreneurs Day at Tegernsee, Bavaria, which takes place annually since 2007. His best-known investments are Alando.de, Lieferando, the Scout Group, wefox, Kavak, and reBuy.
Vienna Capital Partners (VCP) is a corporate finance advisor and private equity investor headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
Peter David Jones is an English entrepreneur, businessman, investor, and reality television personality, with interests in mobile phones, television, media, leisure, retail, publishing and property. He is the last remaining original investor on the BBC One series Dragons' Den, and has appeared on other television programmes with similar formats including Shark Tank in the United States.
Johannes "Hannes" Androsch was an Austrian businessman, consultant and Social Democrat politician. He served as an Austrian Finance Minister from 1970 to 1981, and as Vice Chancellor from 1976 to 1981. As a banker, from 1981 to 1988 he was the general director of the Creditanstalt-Bankverein, and subsequently an advisor to the World Bank. From 1989 onward he built an industrial investment group, Androsch International Consulting (AIC), which is a major factor in Austria's internationally active corporate landscape. In addition, Androsch's foundation is an important sponsor of research and development activities in Austria, where he was regularly consulted on matters of political, economic and financial importance.
Helvetia is an international insurance group that exists since 1858. The group of companies has been organised in a holding structure since 1996. The head office of Helvetia Group is located in St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Invesdor is an international crowdfunding platform operated by several companies which make up the Invesdor Group. With headquarters in Berlin, Germany; Helsinki, Finland; Vienna, Austria and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Invesdor is one of Europe’s largest crowdfunding platforms and operates as an intermediary between companies seeking investment and investors . Invesdor’s low investment threshold aims to empower small investors to invest via their platform. As of May 2023, Invesdor has been able to connect over 170,000 investors with projects they see the potential in, collecting €438 million in pledges from them. Financed projects include for example restaurants, medtech companies, and sustainable energy projects such as solar and windfarms.
Founded in 1922, Bank Gutmann AG, a private bank based in Vienna, Schwarzenbergplatz, specializes in asset management and is the market leader in Austria. The private bank is 80 percent owned by the Kahane family and 20 percent by executive and non-executive partners. Gutmann currently manages client assets of €20.5 billion. Clients include domestic and foreign entrepreneurs as well as entrepreneurial families, foundations, wealthy private clients and institutional investors.
Patrizia SE has been active as an investment manager in the real estate market across Europe for more than 38 years. Based in Augsburg, Germany, the company is listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange and, among others, is a member of the SDAX and MSCI World Small Cap Index.
ImmofinanzAG is a commercial real-estate company based in Vienna, Austria. The company focuses its activities on the retail and office segments and operates in the markets of Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, and the Adriatic region. The core business includes the management and development of properties. As of December 31, 2022, the managed real estate assets amount to approximately 8.4 billion euros, which is distributed across 627 properties.
VHV Group is a German insurance and reinsurance company based in Hanover, specialising in provision non-life and life insurance as well. Its core businesses are all insurance services. Today VHV Group operates primarily in Europe, Middle East and East Asia and especially in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Austria and Turkey. VHV is one of the twenty most important insurance companies in Germany, the leading German insurance company in the construction sector and one of the five major car insurance companies in Germany. Moreover, the VHV Group is the leading risk life insurer in Germany. VHV Group owns a network of subsidiaries, branches and representative offices with a total staff of roughly 4,000, including 2,400 employees in Hanover. Due to the earning power of the VHV-Group and its capitalization level Standard and Poor's raised the rating on A+ Level in April 2017. In 2016 the VHV was able to expand its contractual figures to over 10 million insurance contracts for the first time.
Rainer-Marc Frey is a Swiss businessman and investor. He is active in the Swiss financial services sector and the international hedge fund industry.
Martin Saidler is a Vienna-born Swiss businessman and investor in internet and financial technology companies. He has done most of his investing in central Europe, working mostly through a holding company called Centralway, and subsequently through a family office called Saidler & Co.
Venture capital in Poland is a segment of the private equity market that finances early-stage high-risk companies based in Poland, with the potential for fast growth. As of March 2019, there is a total of 130 active VC firms in Poland, including local offices of international VC firms, and VC firms with mainly Polish management teams. Between 2009–2019, these entities have invested locally in over 750 companies, which gives an average of around 9 companies per portfolio. The Polish venture market accounts for 3% of the entire European ecosystem of VC investments, mainly in the digital space.
