INVEST SOFIA Took Part in Action-oriented Roundtables in Budapest on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in European Cities
The Executive Director of the Sofia Municipal Privatization & Investment Agency Verginia Stoyanova and Radostina Belcheva, Chief Expert at the Agency, participated in the international Deep Startup Ecosystem Conference, which took place on July 5 and 6 in Budapest, Hungary.
The event was organized by DEEP Ecosystems, which holds the forum twice a year as part of its international accelerator program DEEP Startup Ecosystem Accelerator (DEEPSEA). The organisation is one of the largest communities in Europe for building entrepreneurial ecosystems on the Continent and globally and since 2018 has trained over 180 companies in its accelerator.
DEEP Ecosystems also maintains the open data platform Startup Heatmap Europe, which gathers data on ecosystems across European cities in terms of startups, fastest-growing companies, accelerators, investment funds, preferred location by founders, and much more.
The conference in Budapest once again brought together innovation ecosystem builders, investors, corporates, and government representatives who seek to build stronger ecosystems that can tackle our communities´ most pressing challenges. Highlighting the program were interactive discussions and workshops with country experts on several topics. The results will be soon summarized and published in a White Paper.
Among the topics for the deep-dive sessions, in which the Agency’s team also took part, were Impact Ecosystems & Investing “Building the impact innovation scene in emerging markets”, Startup Technology Trends “Communities of Future: The Blockchain and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)” and Startup Accelerators “University Accelerators: A Sandbox for Future Startups Unicorns”, in which we had the opportunity to share Sofia Municipality’s experience in working with local companies within the framework of the “Sandbox for Innovative Solutions” that help innovative solutions to urban challenges.
We would like to thank DEEP Ecosystems for the invitation to participate in the two-day conference. The international meeting allowed us to compare Sofia with leading international destinations for start-ups, share our experiences and learn best practices from other cities, and connect with experts and potential partners for geographically-oriented initiatives to develop European regions and innovation hubs.
