The global trends were shaping the Hungarian startup ecosystem in 2012. Domestic investment activity heated up, local startups were taking part in and receiving investment from international seed programmes, Hungarian companies were going abroad to reach global markets. As The Telegraph notes, the technology industry has never been more important than it is today. This tendency was felt by the Hungarian entrepreneurial ecosystem as well.
Investments
Without further ado, let us look at the numbers marking the financial performance of startups in 2012. According to data from Startups.hu, technology entrepreneurs managed to close deals in worth of € 9 million in 2012. The three biggest investments went to Tresorit (€ 1.3m by Euroventures), Remagine Technologies (€ 1.2m by Primus Capital), and Multipass Solutions (€ 0.95m by Primus Capital). We have to mention Real5D, that managed to secure the highest investment round from a foreign investor group in 2012, with $ 1.2 million from DoubleRock Venture Capital. The year concluded with a total of 15 successfully closed deals.
2012 saw an expansion in seed and angel funding as well. Colabs successfully conducted a seed and an angel financing programme this year, and Business Angel Club was restarted with to give boost to early-stage tech companies. Finally, iCatapult, the first Hungarian technology accelerator and business development company was launched at the very end of the year with an initial cash pool of € 1.3 million, and with the aim of taking new technologies to global markets, primarily to the USA.
Conferences and events
The 2012 conference season started rather late, but as soon as the winter was over the year was kicked off by a really busy March. The fifth annual Startup Underground conference was followed by Barcamp Budapest, then Startup Weekend Budapest, and finally the Smart Mobile Conference. The second Mobile Weekend was held in April and the Hungarian Innovation Tech Show in June.
Following the summer break, the autumn months were filled by high quality startup events. The Budapest Stock Exchange hosted the first rounds of Blind Investment in September. October marked the first-time arrival of two of Europe’s most renowned startup seed programmes to Budapest. Everyone was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Startup Sauna, followed by the first ever Seedcamp Budapest. The last two months were also quite action packed. The Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Global Startup Battle, Startup Weekend and the live streaming of the Lean Startup Conference marked the end of 2012.
On the grassroots front 2012 saw a great deal of movement compared to the previous year. Two other cities joined in with tech meet-ups to awaken the local scene: Szeged with SzegedTech and Debrecen with DebTech. In the second half of the year, the European Entrepreneurship Foundation started a monthly, informal networking event called E-Liquidity, and the Business Angel Club was restarted. Business meet-ups also started popping up more often in event calendars from June onwards. At the closing of the year, Budapest Boost emerged with the aim of expanding the local startup ecosystem, and accelerating the flow of trends from Silicon Valley to Hungary.
Co-working
2012 saw a continuing expansion on the supply side of co-working offices. DBH Investments opened KoWerk in June, while The Hub opened its doors to the public in December. With these latest additions, the total number of co-working spaces increased to 10 in Budapest: Colabs, Innoffice, i-Office, Kaptar, KoWerk, Loffice, MyCorporation, PHOffice, Startup Office, TheHub.
Closing remarks
The startup ecosystem has never been more vibrant and alive in Hungary than it is today. That’s not just due to the ever increasing angel, seed, and venture capital activity, but also thanks to all the people working hard, contributing to community life, sometimes by sacrificing their private time to expand the local startup ecosystem. 2012 was a year that few could have forecasted at the beginning. Now let us focus on the year ahead, and make 2013 just as prosperous.
