The CEE AI Scene: Exploring Investment Growth and Key Entrepreneurial Hubs
Executive Summary
In this episode of Startuprad.io, host Jörn “Joe” Menninger and guest Thomas Kösters, MD at DEEP Ecosystems, discuss the potential of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as a hidden gem for AI startups. They highlight the region’s strong economic leaders and growing AI scene in cities like Warsaw, Bucharest, and Prague. While CEE is not heavily represented in AI startup locations, it shows promise in reaching the top 15 European rankings for AI startup investments. They also delve into AI investments and trends in Europe, including machine learning, big data, and natural language processing.
The episode ends with a call for listener suggestions for future topics of analysis.
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Growth of Central and Eastern European Hubs: “What we looked at here was how did the different hubs In CEE perform against the EU average, quarter over quarter. And you see that they actually, almost always hit the EU average in each quarter And often even go beyond. And that’s, so that shows that, in 2023, the CE Hubs Have been growing above the average of the EU, and that might change the picture in the future.”
— Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems
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The Rise of AI Founders from Central and Eastern Europe: “So in absolute numbers here on top, you see Poland is in the top ten, in terms of founders originating, I found this origins.”
— Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems
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European AI Investments: “AI investments are relatively high in Europe already since, quite some years. And it doesn’t increase that much. No?”
— Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems
Questions Discussed in the Interview
- What factors contribute to the success of AI startups in cities like Bucharest, Budapest, Warsaw, and Tallinn in Central Eastern Europe?
- How do economic leaders like Poland, Bucharest, and Prague drive the growth of startup and AI scenes in Central and Eastern Europe?
- What are the main challenges for Central and Eastern European AI startups when it comes to attracting investment and building successful ecosystems?
- How do multinational teams and collaboration across borders contribute to the success of startups in Central and Eastern Europe?
- What are the key trends in AI investments in Europe, and how do they compare to global trends in AI investment?
- In what ways does the availability of a large pool of developers impact the growth of the AI startup ecosystem in Central and Eastern Europe?
- What opportunities and obstacles do AI startups face when expanding or near-shoring their teams to countries like Croatia, Serbia, Greece, and Poland?
- How does the level of media attention and meetups correlate with trends in AI investments in Europe, and what insights can be drawn from these correlations?
- Why is Berlin rated as the top destination for starting an AI company, and how does it compare to other popular locations like London?
- Given the potential of Central and Eastern Europe as a growing hub for AI startups, what strategies can be employed to further develop and promote the region’s AI ecosystem?
Startup Investments in Central and Eastern Europe: “Tallinn in Estonia, Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest, and a bit, a bit as well in Budapest, much less in Bratislava, Belgrade, Sofia, Poznan, no? That’s also there. These are the places that where where investments happen.”
— Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems
About the Pulse of the European Startup Ecosystem
The European startup scene is changing fast. There are new players, old ones fading away, and even more to come in their place- all vying for a piece of this growing pie! To avoid getting left behind, you need regular updates on what’s going on so that our entrepreneurs can stay one step ahead when building or investing in companies here. That’s why we started the “Pulse of the European Startup Ecosystem” which will provide you with quarterly podcasts chronicling different aspects related to startup activity across European Hubs, supported by the data from the specialized analytics company DEEP Ecosystems.
The Video Podcast is set to go live on Thursday, December 13th, 2023
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Economic Growth in Central and Eastern Europe: “I think it’s interesting that we see, let’s say, the classical economic leaders in Central, Eastern Europe Also, being on top here, EU membership definitely seems to give a boost.”
— Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems
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The Geography of AI Hubs in Europe: “And then you see London on top with a large margin that is like The typical situation, a lot of startups get funded in, in London.”
— Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems
The Guest
In this episode, we have the pleasure of hosting Thomas Kösters, MD at DEEP Ecosystems. Thomas is a seasoned professional with a wealth of experience in the European startup and AI ecosystem. With a keen eye for emerging trends and a deep understanding of investment landscapes, he brings valuable insights into the world of AI startups in Central and Eastern Europe. As the Managing Director at DEEP Ecosystems, Thomas is at the forefront of fostering innovation and driving growth in the startup space, making him an invaluable guest for our discussion on the potential of CEE as a hidden gem for AI startups.
Thomas Kösters is a respected authority, known for his expertise in identifying key trends and opportunities within the European market. His extensive knowledge of startup topics, investment trends, and ecosystem activities has positioned him as a sought-after voice in the industry. With his in-depth understanding of the European AI landscape, Thomas provides valuable perspectives on the growth trajectories, investment patterns, and emerging hotspots within Central and Eastern Europe. As a thought leader and practitioner, his insights shed light on the evolving dynamics of AI investments, making this episode a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the promising AI startup scene in CEE.
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Links / Further Readings / Additional Resources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-k%C3%B6sters-8602a247/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepecosystems/
- https://startupheatmap.eu/
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The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:
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Automated Transcript
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe from startupgrade. Io, your startup podcast, YouTube blog, and internet radio station from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, bringing news and insights with our media partner, Deep Ecosystems here. Hey, Thomas. How you doing?
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:00:16]:
Great. Thank you, John.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:00:18]:
Today, we thought we’re not bringing you a quarterly update. We do something differently. Today we’re talking about a certain topic. Our choice this time is artificial intelligence in Central and Eastern Europe. Thomas, thank you very much for doing all the digging and work. I have to admit I myself haven’t seen the presentation yet. But we totally get into it. I’ll ask a few stupid questions as always.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:00:49]:
And if you’re interested in learning more about what Thomas did does and the deep ecosystem, You can go to their website or subscribe to our European startup, Pulse sub podcast, where there’s only content together with the deep ecosystems. Thomas, could you start with the definition what is Central and Eastern Europe?
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:01:10]:
Yes. Thank you. Very good question. Central Eastern Europe is, a term that subsumes a lot of countries that maybe not always want to be subsumed under that term. But In its widest definition it would range from politics down to Turkey and Maybe even the, the initial parts of the, the congresses. So, you have a very very large region depending on who you ask. And central means basically you’re in the area of Czech Republic close to Germany and, Poland. And then, Eastern Europe, that would speak to the Southeastern Europe, Balkan, East and West Balkan Down to Romania and actually going further to, yeah, even including Greece sometimes.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:02:03]:
So it’s really a wide, the area that is being called central eastern Europe for analytical purposes, it makes sense to to, yeah, limit this to a set of, Countries, and then just stick with that. So for us we have now included the Baltics in here and we go To down to Turkey but without Turkey. We’re not including Turkey. Mhmm.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:02:27]:
Without Turkey. And of course on the, western side, you stop at the German border Meaning Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are not included here and that’s for the simple reason this is part of the European startup pulse. For everybody who sees me in the video, I’m looking a bit little bit sweaty. I’m very sorry. Right now we have heavy snowfall here in Frankfurt, and I struggle to make my way home in time. Thomas, do you want to give us a little introduction into first, the weather right now in Munich and secondly, AI in CEE?
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:03:01]:
Very good. Yes. The weather in Munich was quite tough over the last weekend. Now we had the heaviest snowfalls ever recorded in history, but it was basically 2 days of complete chaos with no flights, no trains, but we’re getting back to normal. And it was a good time to dive into data about central eastern Europe and artificial intelligence startups.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:03:23]:
Because you couldn’t do anything else. Right?
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:03:26]:
Exactly. Tea, drink tea, have some Christmas cookies, and do data analysis. Well, that that’s a nice, pastime. Mhmm. Yeah. So what do we do? We do what we always do. We tap into a lot of different data sources to answer Questions that our partners and customers have. And here, the question that we, discussed in the, in the Preparation of this interview was how is the artificial intelligence innovation space, playing out in Central Eastern Europe.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:04:00]:
We often hear the idea that CEE is, the hidden gem of Europe where there is a lot of talent, a lot of Geniuses that know how to, build the next unicorn in AI. They are coming from the CEE region. They’re coming from Eastern Europe And it’s just about to discover them. So there’s a lot of excitement about, the region with its strong developer talent, and we are, we are yeah. We wanted to analyze how the startup scene is tapping into that and how CEE looks in terms of AI startups.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:04:35]:
I may add that a lot of European startups, Germany, UK, France, Italy, wherever, They tend to have so called tech hub, meaning having development teams not on-site, but as they call it Nicho in central or Eastern Europe. So there is a lot of, good coders trained by well known startup and tech names out there. So that’s that’s basically, I do believe, a big resource for, all the good developers there as well.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:05:06]:
Yes. Indeed. So we see a lot of expansion of startups early on already. Early stage Teams even before the 1st funding round are often made up of talent and entrepreneurs that come together over borders. No. It’s not limited to only I’m the founder that had the idea. I start in Berlin and my whole team is in Berlin. That’s actually not the picture we’re seeing.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:05:32]:
We’re seeing that from the start. There is like, there’s teams that span across borders. And it might very well be that even in the early stages of having an idea and developing an idea, a Berlin based founder is already collaborating with 1 in Bulgaria, In Poland, and they they work together via via the Internet. They might have never met even, but they, developed this idea jointly.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:05:57]:
Mhmm. I have been in the past, talking to a lot of, startup companies here in Germany that either have the tech up in Croatia or in Serbia.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:06:09]:
Yes. That might be, very well true. Now we see that, they can be anywhere. Balkan, is is very well positioned in this area. Croatia very much with the EU membership makes Things very easy. Surbame maybe is a bit different. I know that, there’s also by Unicorns, you have like developer hubs sprouting up in, Greece, in Poland, etcetera. So there is definitely this kind of expansion and this near shoring as you call it.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:06:43]:
It’s relatively safe. Right? You can commute there. You can fly there if you need to. And otherwise, regulation is similar.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:06:52]:
Mhmm. Sure. So sorry for interrupting you in the introduction so often. Just go ahead and shoot.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:06:59]:
Yes. No. No. I just, wanted to answer that question quickly. But, we can, of course, dive into the presentation and, go through the various findings. Mhmm.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:07:09]:
Sure. So let’s as always we do have slideshow associated with that. If you’re listening to this On our Internet radio station or on our audio podcast, Godal Hinny here in the show notes. There will be a link to it or look on our Medium blog for AI in CEE or something like that. There will be it will be available there.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:07:33]:
Very good. Yes. I’m very happy if people download this presentation and maybe even, ask questions, use the data for their, for their own presentations, show how they position in AI using these insights that’s very much welcome. So Please download it and see what you can make of it. First of all, I think the first question that we had was, what The AI trend in in Europe looks like over time. Right? So we wanted to look at investments. We wanted to look at The ecosystem activity and the attention the topic gets. And, actually, what we did, we mapped out exactly these 3 things and, you see here quite surprisingly maybe that AI investments Are, a, on a very high level already.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:08:25]:
Maybe the graph is a little bit misleading here because it’s the the lowest bar. But in principle, compared to other sectors, AI investments are relatively high in Europe already since, quite some years. And it doesn’t increase that much. No? So in the last years, it did not increase, by tenfold or something. But we have a, plus 11% increase, versus 2020, when we take the 23 estimate. Now we took All the investments we saw until, the Q3 and estimated how many it would probably be until the end of the year And, that would give us an 11% increase versus 2020. So this is not, let’s say, Going through the roof. Here we analyze by the way, that’s important.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:09:17]:
We have a bracket that we analyze for the number of deals, because we we don’t want to skew the data too much. We don’t want to have the very early stage, phases in this account. We don’t want to have government grants and discount. We want to have serious VC investments. So we are counting the deals that are between €450,000 up to €100,000,000. Also, the later deals we exclude because the databases, they sometimes, use a bit Faulty data there and include also corporate rounds, m and a rounds in the largest, in the larger sizes. So that’s also something we want to Exclude here. So this is the growth rate that we have in that bracket.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:10:03]:
I think that’s, quite interesting that it’s not Going through the roof yet, but steadily growing on a high level. On contrast to that, you see that news mentions of the topic AI In startup media has increased by 66% over the same time span. That means the attention that AI gets Is jumping a bit faster, than a bit higher than the investments themselves. So we see more attention, more interest And that can be an early sign that that this is also something that will push through to the investments and investments will go up, constantly, maybe even with a bigger jump in the near future.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:10:48]:
Is this your experience or do you Have a real correlation already established there in terms of tracking of data if the media interest goes up. As you said, usually investment follows. Can can you nail this down with a hard number or is this just an experience?
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:11:06]:
Yes. So that that is an experience that we have from looking at the developments over the last years. We’re tracking news, for startups, since 2020. And we do see that it correlates very closely. Topics that I mentioned in the news, they correlate very closely with also the investments. The same is true for meetups. You see also that meetups are the first thing that kind of rises in a topic. Now when you have a trend, there’s founders that are Starting to organize around a new buzzword, around a new, issue and you see kind of, about happening in the beginning.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:11:47]:
A lot of meetups happening and then, the hype goes a bit down. The meetups are not, let’s say, always on that very high level. But, the beginning is done now. So the community has formed. Fewer meetups survive. There’s some consolidation. But the community really, Yeah. Maintains its momentum from that community that was created.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:12:13]:
And then you see that after some time also the investments come. Investments are always a late, and lagging indicator Because they’re the last thing that happened. Especially if you look at sums of investments. Mhmm.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:12:26]:
Okay.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:12:27]:
Very good. Shall we go to the next one?
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:12:29]:
Yes. Sure. Artist AI topics. Of course the machine learning, big data, computer vision, natural language processing, AI hardware, deep learning, and other. Interesting. Can you give us a little bit more information on that as well as All the stuff or some of the stuff that is hidden behind other?
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:12:53]:
Yes. I mean, there is a lot of AI, out there. A lot of AI solutions and it’s not always easy to identify into which box they fall. So other is, is a big group. No? So this can be, vertical applications. This can be, various things. Or this could be also just unknown. That we don’t know if it falls into one of the other categories.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:13:21]:
Yeah. And you see that basically the, the machine learning as a, let’s say, as a Base, let’s say, affiliation that a lot of AI companies would have, is on top. I mean, you will have machine learning also in, the the other parts. Right? So it’s not mutually exclusive necessarily. But, what you see is that these are the words and the, the categorizations that, that we see most often In databases, like, for example, in this case, it’s Crunchbase. Mhmm. It’s an analysis by the recursive. So you see what the affiliations are.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:14:01]:
And maybe what is interesting is that natural language processing, which is a very specific field or computer vision as very specific fields are high up, while machine learning and big data are more general terms that could apply to various things. But then these specific niches, computer vision and n NLP as well as AI hardware. I mean, that’s that’s quite interesting that they pop up here as particular fields. This is for CEE, by the way, so this analysis is already diving deeper into Central Eastern Europe, breaking down the, the hottest topics. Yeah. Going back maybe to to the overall look, we were asking, so, you know, we have the startup heat map. The startup heat map Is, among other things, a survey where we ask every year what start Hubs founders would like to start their company in. And we can break this down for AI founders.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:15:02]:
So founders in AI, where would they see They are, the best destinations for starting an AI company. And what is interesting here is that, for example, Berlin is overtaking London here in terms of where AI founders want to go. So it’s higher rated than in the General, let’s say, question or the general ranking, most popular startup apps in Europe. London is number 1. But for AI, Berlin is number 1. And actually by quite some margin. So that’s quite interesting. You Do see that CEE is not so big on the map.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:15:44]:
Now that is a bit the, the challenge, I would say, that we that we have here. The the map has wider leaning towards the west side.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:15:58]:
I see. I see Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia, Tesavaniki, Istanbul, Athens, Sakreya, Pluviana, Pratislava, I assume Varsho, Riga, Tallinn, Stockhol and there should be, There should be more up here, but already a few well known names here.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:16:21]:
Exactly. Yes. So everyone that is shown here has received a number of votes. Those that are not shown they have not been mentioned. So that is, that means we we have, at least they are on the map and on the radar. Founders recognize these places as potentially a place to go to. But it seems like from destinations where founders want to go, really, CEE is rather the place That that they would leave and, western and even Mediterranean, destinations are more popular. Nordics, by the way, also not so popular in comparison to the to the rest.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:17:05]:
Now we wanted to analyze this, a bit deeper and, we said, okay, what does that geography look like? What’s the geography of AI hubs in Europe? Mhmm. And we just put out here The investment deals that we saw for AI startups for 4 years. Not 2020 to 2023. The number of deals in AI startups, per city. And then you see London on top with a large margin that is like The typical situation, a lot of startups get funded in, in London. But also here, you see, at the margin, of what is this, maybe the top 15, you see Warsaw and Tallinn as, in Istanbul, if you will. We don’t include it in CEE, but it shows up Here, so, you could show that there is some hops in CEE that even reach, let’s say, The top 20, top 15, I’m not quite sure now, of the, of the European ranking.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:18:12]:
Mhmm.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:18:14]:
The whole thing, gets interesting when you then look at individual hubs, and what we can then see in CEE is that there’s maybe hope that this will even change and even Turn a bit more in favor of CEE. What we looked at here was how did the different hubs In CEE perform against the EU average, quarter over quarter. Mhmm. And here you can see 3 quarters and and 4 cities in CE. And you see that they actually, almost always hit the EU average in each quarter And often even go beyond. And that’s, so that shows that, in 2023, the CE Hubs Have been growing above the average of the EU, and that might change the picture in the future. Talent here with, With a very high number, Bucharest with a high number, Bucharest with a constant good number, so that there is potential in these individual hubs here.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:19:24]:
Mhmm. So that that will mean the hidden gems we already discovered is Bucharest, Budapest, Warsaw, and Tallinn as AI hubs in CEE.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:19:34]:
Definitely, you could say that. Yes. So there’s there’s definitely something happening. We went then further to analyze, maybe let me jump through this. But, further we analyzed, where founders come from. We are we are our founders being born that go into AI. And, that’s quite interesting because here again, similar, similar hubs pop up. We looked at the, participants of The top accelerators in Europe.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:20:06]:
Some 120 accelerator programs in Europe. Who participates in them and who participates in them with an AI start up? Right. And there’s 2,465 AI startups since 2017 that participated in these 120 top accelerator programs. Mhmm. So and these 2,500 almost, 10% of them, the founders come from CE. Yeah. So that’s 10% of all the new, let’s say, fast growing Startups accelerated by Europe’s top programs. That I think is quite quite big.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:20:47]:
No? So 10% make it into these programs From CE. So I think the talent that you find in CE, is quite sought after And we do see, exciting new startups being created by founders from CE. They might not always be in CE, But they come from there and they got their education there and, learned how to develop these solutions. And yeah. So in absolute numbers here on top, you see Poland is in the top ten, in terms of founders originating, I found this origins. And then per capita, CEE is just ahead of everyone. Per capita, Estonia, Latvia, these are the first 2 in terms of producing AI founders and then followed by Slovenia. So there is quite some, there’s quite some movement, from these countries.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:21:45]:
I see. So we should say that, Poland, Estonia, Lativa, and Slovenia are a big source of AI entrepreneur talent. Would that be correct?
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:21:59]:
Yes. You can say that. Yes. So we do have, like, the founders that pass the threshold To join top accelerator programs Mhmm. Many of them come from Central Eastern Europe, Even if though the majority of the programs happen in Western Europe. So that that is quite, Quite astonishing and and a strong sign. Mhmm. You said something about the developers as well.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:22:26]:
And so we wanted to look at, Is it true that CE has these big pools of developer talent? Right? And, Well, partly. Yeah. That’s that’s true. I
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:22:40]:
mean Partly. In term in terms we have this wonderful word meaning a combination of yeah, Yes. And 9, no.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:22:50]:
I think that applies here. Yes. I mean, you do have, so I think what CE does not have is the high concentration of economic hubs like London, Paris, Berlin even, where you just have enough attraction and new developers are moving in. So you don’t have like 1 place that gathers all of the developers. But if you look at the breadth of the whole region, You see that in the space, there is a lot of developers. And some cities, they even have a very high per capita, concentration. Prague and Budapest stick out here in terms of number of developers that are Working from there.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:23:37]:
Mhmm.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:23:37]:
It’s a bit different from the picture before. Now in Slovenia, you don’t have that high concentration. And Warsaw you don’t have that high concentration. There are also big cities and it’s not, let’s say, a place where a lot of developers are, flushing into. So it it’s a bit different than, let’s say, maybe the expectation or the image that they have. But I think it’s still true that there’s a lot of developers in c e. They might just not concentrate yet so much in individual cities.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:24:11]:
Mhmm. I see see.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:24:14]:
Great. Then some interesting finding was that, We looked at data science talent. There is a nice report by Sequoia that talks about, developer talents in, in Europe. And they mapped out different specializations even. And here, we do not see CE pop up yet. They only give us the top 5 rankings per, per, topic. But we look now for example, at data science. And in the ranking in data science talent, CE does not reach the top 5 ranks.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:24:52]:
So, I think here we see the classical Economic hubs, London, Paris, Zurich, Berlin, and here also Madrid. They pull in a lot of, developers, hiring them, relocating them and that kind of attraction gives them this, this, big Lead in terms of how many data scientists they have in the, in the hub. So, this is maybe again a bit of a problem of concentration. You don’t have the capital available in CEE in the individual economic centers to pull in and create really that, Yeah. Buzzing developer hub that maybe you have in in in London.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:25:36]:
Mhmm. I see.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:25:38]:
Yes. And finally, We want to give, like, a bit of a complete overview now because now we heard a lot of different data points, etcetera. And so what does how does that look now in totality? Now and then the first thing that we we we did was we did a map with the investments. Also the investment deals are here on the map. So you see the size of the bar. It’s a bit hard to compare but if you see how where it pops out, you see where investments happen in startups in CE. And actually that is, as we saw in the very first analysis, Tallinn in Estonia, Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest, and a bit, a bit as well in Budapest, much less in Bratislava, Belgrade, Sofia, Poznan, no? That’s also there. These are the places that where where investments happen.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:26:43]:
On the left, you see A complete picture, let’s say, across 3 categories. So investments, meetups as a proxy for ecosystem activity, And the sum of developers, and we kind of, yeah, we sorted the, the cities by the average score per meetup, Per per category. So that basically means on average Warsaw performs best in each of the 3 categories, Followed by Bucharest, followed by Prague, followed by Budapest, followed by Sofia, and then only Tallinn. Yeah. So interestingly enough, these are the hubs that are on average from the, from the scores reach The highest.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:27:33]:
Mhmm. That is pretty good. That means that are actually the places everybody who is listening and is looking to start a developer hub looking at an AI hub, then are the cities you need to have to pay closer attention to.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:27:50]:
Yes. I think this is a first overview what’s happening in CE and where it happening. I think it’s interesting that we see, let’s say, the classical economic leaders in Central, Eastern Europe Also, being on top here, EU membership definitely seems to give a boost. Poland as, let’s say, the largest country in the, in the CE except for the Ukraine, is also leading with Warsaw, followed by remain Bucharest. That’s might be a bit surprising. Prague on 3rd. Definitely one of the stronger economic players, that also has now a good startup scene and, and starting to have this AI scene as well.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:28:36]:
Mhmm. Mhmm. I see. So, Thomas, thank Thank you very much for those deep insights. Everybody who’d like to learn more, go down here in the show notes. There will be a link to your company’s website, to the research report, And of course, your LinkedIn profile so everybody can ask more questions about it. I do believe we will meet again pretty soon in the new year to have another reporting together.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:29:02]:
Absolutely. And looking forward to the next question you post to us what we should analyze. Also, if the listeners have an idea what they want to learn about, we are happy to analyze your question and give you, a quick Overview of where things are standing.
Jörn “Joe” Menninger [00:29:19]:
Thank you. Have a good day. Bye bye.
Thomas Kösters MD at DEEP Ecosystems [00:29:22]:
Thank you.
