Romanian Startups had the pleasure to see it mentioned in an article written by Alison Coleman for Forbes.com yesterday “Europe’s Hidden Entrepreneurial Tech Hotbed; Romania Powers Up“.

Making a round-up of the Romanian business and tech scene, she is noticing the emergence of a “flourishing start up community“.

RomanianStartups.com offers a snapshot. The fairly new online database currently lists 169 startups, 348 founders, 30 events and five accelerators/incubators. Many start ups are as yet unlisted. The stats are modest, but a decade ago, would have been beyond Romania’s wildest dreams.

That’s true. When 7 years ago Mircea Goia (RomanianStartups.com founder) has written about the Romanian startup scene in an article for ReadWrite (“Top Web Apps in Romania“) he didn’t have much to write about. Several startups at that time, no incubators, not too many founders and not too many events.
But since then the tech startup exploded, as you see in the above stats (which are not complete yet).

As a tech start-up hub, Romania has plenty to offer, not least. Good internet connectivity for one. Having skipped the copper wire and gone straight to fibre, it was recently ranked fifth best in the world for internet connection speed by bloomberg.com.
Then there are the operating costs and overheads. Things like commercial property, energy and utilities are between three and five times cheaper than in Western Europe, making it easier for start-ups, or any business, to get premises than in other countries.

Yes, it is cheaper in Romania to open a business and especially a tech business. There are several cities where the tech talent is roaming, Bucharest, Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca and Iasi (cities having the best tech universities), these being also the main tech hubs in Romania.

But what Romania still lacks is the other arm which makes a tech sector go wild: the investment capital, the VCs and angel investors.
There are some tech angel investors in the country but no VC fund yet (although we heard from some source that a first VC fund is preparing to be formed soon).

“Some of our best engineers in Bucharest grew up like this. Romania is good at producing people who are used to making something out of nothing, who see scarcity as an opportunity, who dare to take on great challenges because they’ve always had to fight for every little thing they wanted to improve in their lives,” says Ioana Hreninciuc from BigStep.

Need is a powerful incentive and if you want something but you lack the means then you become more creative.
Once more investment vehicles will come to light in Romania (VC funds, more angel investors, accelerators/incubators) that will, hopefully, drive the tech scene into becoming a European tech power house.

RomanianStartups.com will do everything in its power to help with this.

Thank you Forbes and Alison Coleman for bringing the Romanian tech startup scene into the world’s attention.