STARTUP CITY
of doom and gloom, something quite unexpected is happening in Budapest. The Hungarian capital is becoming host to an eco-system for entrepreneurs and investors. But what do a festival orchestra and a robot on the moon have to do with it all? Scott Alexander Young reports.
A
It’s a Monday night in February 2013, and in the rustic but chi-chi surroundings of a private members club called Brody Studios, a crowd of entrepreneurs and investors are all enjoying Chianti, beers, and an atmosphere charged with entrepreneurial vigour. It’s a mostly young, predominantly male crowd, and the conversation gets more animated and, well, bullish as the night wears on. According to the invitations, things were meant to wind down at 9pm, but the last stragglers slip out into the brisk winter’s night some time after midnight. The social calendar of the entrepreneurial year has begun with a bang. But this isn’t San Francisco, Berlin, Manhattan, or London - this is Budapest, Hungary. If
this ‘First Monday’ sounds curiously familiar,
business well, it
was unabashedly modelled on Julie Meyer’s First Tuesday events which started in London back in those high octane days of the dotcom boom.
Now, while Hungary has been making international headlines in the last three
40 entrepreneurcountry
mid a long, drawn out recession and a uniquely Central European type
years, it has chiefly been for a political program that has drawn criticism from Hillary Clinton, the EU and the IMF, and whether it’s because of controversial new media laws, amendments to the constitution or alleged rigging of the judiciary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s policies have a way of making headlines and not always for the right reasons. His admirers - and there are many - see Orbán as restoring national pride and direction, his detractors for following a course that brings back uncomfortable memories of totalitarianism. Meanwhile, no-one could deny that the global recession has been felt keenly in Hungary. In all of Europe, the Hungarian worker is said to have the second gloomiest outlook only after the Greek.
This is hardly the background you
might associate with startups, venture capitalism and business incubators. But in Central/Eastern Europe, it is Budapest, the
which has become an unparalleled regional hub for start-ups, investors and incubators. Much of this can be attributed to one man, the dynamic Peter B. Záboji, and his European Entrepreneurship
Hungarian capital,
Foundation,
the EEF. An energetic and always debonair elder statesman figure, Záboji already had a lifetime of experience behind him, working as an executive for Siemens, as a business angel and as a teacher of entrepreneurship with the world renowned INSEAD business school. But after one too many break- ins at his home in the South of France, in what was supposed an idyllic semi- retirement, Záboji returned to his Hungarian homeland in 2008. Ever
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58