BR Awards 2014 – The Nominees: Best Start-up Supporter

Judging criteria: number of start-ups/individuals supported; resources and strategy employed to support start-up activity (infrastructure, consultancy services).

Impact Hub Bucharest for developing Impact Hub Bucharest

After launching The Hub Bucharest in June 2012, and putting in place the basis for the core community and co-working space infrastructure, 2013 efforts centered on building a diverse community, both in terms of members’ experiences and professional background, but also when it comes to the stages of their entrepreneurial journey.

The Impact Hub organized over 20 business clinic events on topics such as: legal & taxes, social media, sales, relationship management, PR, strategy & planning, project management, pricing and budgeting. One big annual conference, Connection, featured 174 participants, 21 workshops and 30 guest speakers. It also piloted an acceleration program for impact businesses: the 60 Day Challenge, preparing social enterprises to have a sound business model, relevant skills, knowledge and be ready to be invested in.

Junior Achievement Romania for the startup program

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House of VLAdiLA and The Climate Change Company, the big winners of the Startarium competition “Romanians are entrepreneurs”

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Junior Achievement (JA) Romania is the largest provider of entrepreneurship and economic education programs in Romania, reaching 180,000 students (K-12 and university) in 42 counties in 2013. In the entrepreneurship program in particular, JA Romania’s strategy is to provide a real, formative and learning-by-doing experience to young people who have identified good opportunities, but are left out by the majority of the existing programs due to the high degree of uncertainty in their ventures and low starting capital.

The program seeks to identify and support these students by: providing them with access to volunteer business consultants, mentors and entrepreneurs (over 80 business volunteers involved in the past four years); offering access to finance through awards (over EUR 20,000 in the past four years for students startups, as well as an award of EUR 15,000 put up for the 2014 Company of the Year competition); and running Company of the Year, the largest annual inter-university entrepreneurship competition in Romania.

The startup program is currently being supported by Enterprise Investors, Ernst & Young, Hyundai Motor Europe, Intel, SAP. It also features a high-school track, run in 201 schools with the support of 279 teachers for 10,226 students. The program was recognized by the European Commission enterprise directorate general for ‘Best Practice in Entrepreneurship Education’.

TechHub Bucharest for developing the first co-working space for tech specialists

TechHub Bucharest was launched in early May and soon became the heart of the Bucharest tech community, hosting weekly meet-ups, open hours, mentoring sessions with international mentors as investors, as well as the most important tech events in the area. TechHub Bucharest is divided between permanent offices for resident members, co-working places, meeting rooms and an event space hosting weekly meet-ups on technology and entrepreneurship subjects.

The TechHub Bucharest membership also includes access to the global TechHub network as well as preferential access to the events organized by TechHub and the online community.

Romanian Business Leaders Foundation for “101 companies from stress to success”

Launched at the Romanian Business Leaders summit in February 2013, the program looked to help 101 companies grow from subsistence to prosperity entrepreneurship, over the course of a three-year project. It enrolled companies with a minimum EUR 100,000 turnover and at least three employees through the active involvement of Romanian business leaders