Johanyák Csaba vagyok, a Mathias Corvinus Collegium Jövő Technológiák Műhelyének kutató diákja, ahol a The Rise of the Scaleup Cities elnevezésű kiemelt projekt keretében az európai startup ökoszisztémát kutatom. Ezt a kutatást 2021-ben a pozsonyi GLOBSEC Policy Institute vendégkutatójaként kezdtem, ahol a globális technológiai trendeket elemeztem regionális szemszögből. Jelenleg az európai startupok túlélésének előrejelzésén dolgozom machine learning segítségével. A Budapesti Corvinus Egyetemen negyedéves gazdaságinformatikus hallgató vagyok, emellett business & strategy újságíróként is dolgoztam előző félévben.

Kutatási téma:

Uncovering the Role of Proximity in European Scaleup Investments

Ambitious and scalable startups are a key source of employment (Kane, 2010), innovation and productivity growth in Europe (Carree & Thurik, 2010), but many struggle to move from early stages to attracting over €1 million in funding, leading to the "scaleup gap" or otherwise known as the “Valley of Death” (European Commission, 2021). While the majority of startups fail within a few years, they show higher growth rates in terms of employment and output compared to mature firms (Haltiwanger et al., 2017). On average, startups make up 17% of employment and create 42% of new jobs across OECD countries (Calvino et al., 2016; Criscuolo et al., 2014). The study explores to what extent do European investors prefer spatial proximity in their investments. The literature is quite divided on this topic, it is debated to the extent that Fritsch & Schilder (2008) even suggest that the absence of VC firms in a region may not be a major barrier for a flourishing startup ecosystem as opposed to Bringmann (2018) who claims that despite the decreasing barriers regarding investments, proximity plays an important role in investment decisions. Therefore, the aim of the study is to analyze the role of spatial proximity and how this role varies across different startup lifecycle phases and countries in Europe.