Terms of Service

The following terms and conditions govern all use of the RomanianStartups.com website and all content, services and products available at or through the website (taken together, the Website). The Website is owned and operated by Romanian Startups (“Romanian Startups”). The Website is offered subject to your acceptance without modification of all of the terms and conditions contained herein and all other operating rules, policies (including, without limitation, Romanian Startups’ Privacy Policy) and procedures that may be published from time to time on this Site by Romanian Startups (collectively, the “Agreement”).

Please read this Agreement carefully before accessing or using the Website. By accessing or using any part of the web site, you agree to become bound by the terms and conditions of this agreement. If you do not agree to all the terms and conditions of this agreement, then you may not access the Website or use any services. If these terms and conditions are considered an offer by Romanian Startups, acceptance is expressly limited to these terms. The Website is available only to individuals who are at least 13 years old.

1. Your RomanianStartups.com Account and Profile. If you create a an account and profile on the Website, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your account, and you are fully responsible for all activities that occur under the account and any other actions taken in connection with the content of your account. You must not describe or assign keywords to your account’s content in a misleading or unlawful manner, including in a manner intended to trade on the name or reputation of others, and Romanian Startups may change or remove any description or keyword that it considers inappropriate or unlawful, or otherwise likely to cause Romanian Startups liability. You must immediately notify Romanian Startups of any unauthorized uses of your content, your account or any other breaches of security. Romanian Startups will not be liable for any acts or omissions by You, including any damages of any kind incurred as a result of such acts or omissions.
2. Responsibility of Contributors. If you operate an account on this Website, post material to the Website, post links on the Website, or otherwise make (or allow any third party to make) material available by means of the Website (any such material, “Content”), You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content. That is the case regardless of whether the Content in question constitutes text, graphics, an audio file, or computer software. By making Content available, you represent and warrant that:
   • the downloading, copying and use of the Content will not infringe the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret rights, of any third party;
   • if your employer has rights to intellectual property you create, you have either (i) received permission from your employer to post or make available the Content, including but not limited to any software, or (ii) secured from your employer a waiver as to all rights in or to the Content;
   • you have fully complied with any third-party licenses relating to the Content, and have done all things necessary to successfully pass through to end users any required terms;
   • the Content does not contain or install any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content;
   • the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);
   • the Content is not pornographic, does not contain threats or incite violence towards individuals or entities, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party;
   • your account and content is not getting advertised via unwanted electronic messages such as spam links on newsgroups, email lists, other blogs and web sites, and similar unsolicited promotional methods;
   • your account and content is not named in a manner that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company. For example, your blog’s URL or name is not the name of a person other than yourself or company other than your own; and
   • you have, in the case of Content that includes computer code, accurately categorized and/or described the type, nature, uses and effects of the materials, whether requested to do so by Romanian Startups or otherwise.

   By submitting Content to Romanian Startups for inclusion on your account, you grant Romanian Startups a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your account. The Content you submit cannot be deleted by yourself, however, you can ask the Website to hide it or be deleted using the Contact form. Romanian Startups will use reasonable efforts to remove it from the Website, but you acknowledge that caching or references to the Content may not be made immediately unavailable.

   Without limiting any of those representations or warranties, Romanian Startups has the right (though not the obligation) to, in Romanian Startups’ sole discretion (i) refuse or remove any content that, in Romanian Startups’ reasonable opinion, violates any Romanian Startups policy or is in any way harmful or objectionable, or (ii) terminate or deny access to and use of the Website to any individual or entity for any reason, in Romanian Startups’ sole discretion. Romanian Startups will have no obligation to provide a refund of any amounts previously paid, if any.

1. Responsibility of Website Visitors. Romanian Startups will review every entry posted on the Website by every account and approve or not the entry itself, but cannot be responsible for that material’s content, use or effects. By operating the Website, Romanian Startups does not represent or imply that it endorses the material there posted, or that it believes such material to be accurate, useful or non-harmful. You are responsible for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content. The Website may contain content that is offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable, as well as content containing technical inaccuracies, typographical mistakes, and other errors. The Website may also contain material that violates the privacy or publicity rights, or infringes the intellectual property and other proprietary rights, of third parties, or the downloading, copying or use of which is subject to additional terms and conditions, stated or unstated. Romanian Startups disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from the use by visitors of the Website, or from any downloading by those visitors of content there posted.
2. Content Posted on Other Websites. We have not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, made available through the websites and webpages to which RomanianStartups.com links, and that link to RomanianStartups.com. Romanian Startups does not have any control over those non-Romanian Startups websites and webpages, and is not responsible for their contents or their use. By linking to a non-Romanian Startups website or webpage, Romanian Startups does not represent or imply that it endorses such website or webpage. You are responsible for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content. Romanian Startups disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from your use of non-Romanian Startups websites and webpages.
3. Copyright Infringement and DMCA Policy. As Romanian Startups asks others to respect its intellectual property rights, it respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that material located on or linked to by RomanianStartups.com violates your copyright, you are encouraged to notify Romanian Startups in accordance with Romanian Startups’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) Policy. Romanian Startups will respond to all such notices, including as required or appropriate by removing the infringing material or disabling all links to the infringing material. Romanian Startups will terminate a visitor’s access to and use of the Website if, under appropriate circumstances, the visitor is determined to be a repeat infringer of the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of Romanian Startups or others. In the case of such termination, Romanian Startups will have no obligation to provide a refund of any amounts previously paid, if any, to Romanian Startups.
4. Intellectual Property. This Agreement does not transfer from Romanian Startups to you any Romanian Startups or third party intellectual property, and all right, title and interest in and to such property will remain (as between the parties) solely with Romanian Startups. Romanian Startups, RomanianStartups.com, the RomanianStartups.com logo, and all other trademarks, service marks, graphics and logos used in connection with RomanianStartups.com, or the Website are trademarks or registered trademarks of Romanian Startups or Romanian Startups’ licensors. Other trademarks, service marks, graphics and logos used in connection with the Website may be the trademarks of other third parties. Your use of the Website grants you no right or license to reproduce or otherwise use any Romanian Startups or third-party trademarks nor it grants you the right to gather (through manual or automatic ways) and use all the data from RomanianStartups.com without the express written consent of the owners of this service.
5. Advertisements. Romanian Startups reserves the right to display advertisements on your account and content at anytime.
6. Attribution. Romanian Startups reserves the right to display attribution links such as ‘Profile at RomanianStartups.com,’ theme author, and font attribution in your blog footer or toolbar.
7. Changes. Romanian Startups reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to modify or replace any part of this Agreement. It is your responsibility to check this Agreement periodically for changes. Your continued use of or access to the Website following the posting of any changes to this Agreement constitutes acceptance of those changes. Romanian Startups may also, in the future, offer new services and/or features through the Website (including, the release of new tools and resources). Such new features and/or services shall be subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
8. Termination. Romanian Startups may terminate your access to all or any part of the Website at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately. If you wish to terminate this Agreement or your RomanianStartups.com account (if you have one), you may simply discontinue using the Website. All provisions of this Agreement which by their nature should survive termination shall survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity and limitations of liability.
9. Disclaimer of Warranties. The Website is provided “as is”. Romanian Startups and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither Romanian Startups nor its suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that the Website will be error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted. You understand that you download from, or otherwise obtain content or services through, the Website at your own discretion and risk.
10. Limitation of Liability. In no event will Romanian Startups, or its suppliers or licensors, be liable with respect to any subject matter of this agreement under any contract, negligence, strict liability or other legal or equitable theory for: (i) any special, incidental or consequential damages; (ii) the cost of procurement for substitute products or services; (iii) for interruption of use or loss or corruption of data; or (iv) for any amounts that exceed the fees paid by you, if any, to Romanian Startups under this agreement during the period prior to the cause of action. Romanian Startups shall have no liability for any failure or delay due to matters beyond their reasonable control. The foregoing shall not apply to the extent prohibited by applicable law.
11. General Representation and Warranty. You represent and warrant that (i) your use of the Website will be in strict accordance with the Romanian Startups Privacy Policy, with this Agreement and with all applicable laws and regulations (including without limitation any local laws or regulations in your country, state, city, or other governmental area, regarding online conduct and acceptable content, and including all applicable laws regarding the transmission of technical data exported from the United States or the country in which you reside) and (ii) your use of the Website will not infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any third party.
12. Indemnification. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Romanian Startups, its contractors, and its licensors, and their respective directors, officers, employees and agents from and against any and all claims and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, arising out of your use of the Website, including but not limited to your violation of this Agreement.
13. Miscellaneous. This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between Romanian Startups and you concerning the subject matter hereof, and they may only be modified by a written amendment signed by an authorized executive of Romanian Startups, or by the posting by Romanian Startups of a revised version. Except to the extent applicable law, if any, provides otherwise, this Agreement, any access to or use of the Website will be governed by the laws of the state of Arizona, U.S.A., excluding its conflict of law provisions, and the proper venue for any disputes arising out of or relating to any of the same will be the state and federal courts located in Maricopa County, Arizona. Except for claims for injunctive or equitable relief or claims regarding intellectual property rights (which may be brought in any competent court without the posting of a bond), any dispute arising under this Agreement shall be finally settled in accordance with the Comprehensive Arbitration Rules of the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service, Inc. (“JAMS”) by three arbitrators appointed in accordance with such Rules. The arbitration shall take place in Maricopa County, Arizona, in the English language and the arbitral decision may be enforced in any court. The prevailing party in any action or proceeding to enforce this Agreement shall be entitled to costs and attorneys’ fees. If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that part will be construed to reflect the parties’ original intent, and the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. A waiver by either party of any term or condition of this Agreement or any breach thereof, in any one instance, will not waive such term or condition or any subsequent breach thereof. You may assign your rights under this Agreement to any party that consents to, and agrees to be bound by, its terms and conditions; Romanian Startups may assign its rights under this Agreement without condition. This Agreement will be binding upon and will inure to the benefit of the parties, their successors and permitted assigns.

Introduction
Romania is a country located at the intersection of Central and Southeastern Europe, bordering on the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast and east, and Bulgaria to the south. At 238,400 square kilometers (92,000 sq mi), Romania is the ninth largest country of the European Union by area, and has the seventh largest population of the European Union with more than 19 million people.

Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, the ninth largest city in the EU.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain and the 1989 Revolution, Romania began its transition towards democracy and a capitalist market economy. After a decade of post-revolution economic problems and living-standards decline, extensive reforms fostered economic recovery. As of 2010, Romania is an upper-middle-income country with a high human development index.
Romania joined NATO on 29 March 2004, and the European Union on 1 January 2007. It is also a member of the: Latin Union, Francophonie, OSCE, WTO, BSEC, United Nations, etc. Today, Romania is a unitary semi-presidential republic, in which the executive branch consists of the President and the Government.

With a GDP of around $267 billion and a GDP per capita (PPP) of $12,476 for the year 2011, Romania is an upper-middle income country economy and has been part of the European Union since 1 January 2007.

Since the country’s accession to the European Union, this has begun to change. After being slashed by 50% in 2009 due to the global recession, R&D spending was increased by 44% in 2010 and now stands at $0.5 billion (1.5 billion lei). The country has joined or is about to join several major international organizations such as CERN and the European Space Agency. Overall, the situation has been characterized as “rapidly improving”, albeit from a low base.

Science and technology
Historically, Romanian researchers and inventors have made notable contributions to several fields, such as: aeronautics, medicine, mathematics, computer science/engineering, physics, biophysics, chemistry, biochemistry and biology. In the history of flight, Traian Vuia made the first airplane to take off on its own power and Aurel Vlaicu built and flew some of the earliest successful aircraft. Also, Henri Coandă discovered the Coandă effect of fluidics. Preceding him, Elie Carafoli was a pioneering contributor to the field of aerodynamics in the world.

Victor Babes discovered more than 50 germs and a cure for a disease named after him, babesiosis; biologist Nicolae Paulescu discovered insulin. Another biologist, Emil Palade, received the Nobel Prize for his contributions to cell biology. George Constantinescu created the theory of sonics, while Lazăr Edeleanu was the first chemist to synthesize amphetamine and also invented the modern method of refining crude oil. Costin Nenițescu found new methods for the synthesis of pirilium salts, of carbenes, tryptamine, serotonin, two new syntheses for the indole nucleus, and a new method of polymerisation of ethylene.

Several mathematicians distinguished themselves as well, among them: Gheorghe Titeica, Spiru Haret, Grigore Moisil, Miron Nicolescu, Nicolae Popescu and Stefan Odobleja; the latter is also regarded as the ideological father behind cybernetics.
The Romanian mathematics team is the first in Europe and 10th in the world, a performance recently acquired.

Notable physicists and inventors also include: Horia Hulubei in atomic physics, Serban Titeica in theoretical physics, Mihai Gavrila specialized in quantum theory and discoverer of the atomic dichotomy phenomenon, Al
The nuclear physics facility of the European Union’s proposed Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) laser will be built in Romania. Romania currently has 1,400 MW of nuclear power capacity by means of one active nuclear power plant (Cernavodă) with 2 reactors, which constitutes around 18% of the national power generation capacity of the country. This makes Romania the 23rd largest user of nuclear power in the world. Alexandru Proca (known for the first meson theory of nuclear forces and Proca’s equations of the vectorial mesonic field), Stefan Procopiu known for the first theory of the magnetic moment of the electron in 1911 (now known as the Bohr-Procopiu magneton), Theodor V. Ionescu, the inventor of a multiple-cavity magnetron (1935), a hydrogen maser in 1947, 3D imaging for cinema/television in 1924 and hot deuterium plasma studies for controlled nuclear fusion, Ionel Solomon known for the nuclear magnetic resonance theory in solids, Solomon equations and photovoltaic devices, Petrache Poenaru, Nicolae Teclu and Victor Toma, with the latter known for the invention and construction of the first Romanian computer, the CIFA-1 in 1955.

In early 2012, Romania launched its first satellite from the Centre Spatial Guyanais in French Guyana.

Information technology
Romania is one of the fastest-growing information technology (IT) markets in Central and Eastern Europe. The country has made significant progress in all of the information and communications technology (ICT) subsectors, including basic telephony, mobile telephony, the Internet and IT. The country’s telecoms sector has been deregulated, expanded and modernised over the past 15 years.

Romania is the leader in Europe, and sixth in the world, in terms of the number of certified IT specialists, with density rates per 1,000 inhabitants greater than in the US or Russia. There are almost 100,000 specialists in the IT sector. Approximately 5,000 of the 30,000 engineers graduating every year in Romania are trained in ICT.
Microsoft acquired Romanian Antivirus Technology in 2003. According to Microsoft, Romania has a clear potential in information technology, an area in which Romanian students, researchers and entrepreneurs excel. Its western-oriented culture and the high educational degree of its youth bring Romania forward as a huge potential market (the second largest software producer in Eastern Europe). In terms of IT outsourcing services Romania is ranked in the third place worldwide successfully challenging India.

The IT market is one of the most dynamic sectors of the Romanian economy. Since the year 1994 the IT market has demonstrated growth rates of 40–60 percent a year. The biggest sector in terms of revenue is system and network integration, which accounts for 28,3% of the total market revenues. Meanwhile the fastest growing segment of the IT market is offshore programming. The industry of software development outsourcing crossed the mark of $3 billion of total revenues in 2005 and reached $4.8 billion in 2006. Nowadays it account for about 6-10% from the GDP.

Currently Romania controls 5 percent of the offshore software development market and is the third leading country (after India and China) among software exporters. Such growth of software outsourcing in Romania is caused by a number of factors. One of them is the supporting role of the Romanian Government. The Government has launched a program promoting construction of IT-oriented technology parks – special zones that have an established infrastructure and enjoy a favorable tax and customs regime. Another factor stimulating the IT sector growth in Romania is the presence of global technology corporations such as Intel, Motorola, Sun Microsystems, Boeing, Nokia and others, which have intensified their software development activities and opened their R&D centers in Romania.

The ICT industry has broadened its focus beyond manufacturing equipment to maintenance and management services as well as creating audio, video, print and digital content. These developments are anticipated to create a variety of new opportunities in Romania’s ICT market. On the occasion of the World Electronics Forum (Paris 2000), the “Worldwide ICT Professionals Market Situation Study” showed that, by 2008, Romania will be the only European country to have excellent IT specialists.
Romania’s main competitive advantage in software development consists of its highly qualified, cost-effective human resources.
Currently, about 25,000 software professionals work in the industry and almost 1/5 of them are involved in software export activities. Romania ranks the 6th in the world by number of certified professionals (“2003 Global Skills IQ Report”, Brainbench) and has been awarded a bronze certificate in the category of “Most Certified Nation (Overall)” during the first annual Bench Games 2005 (“2005 Bench Games Report”, Brainbench). Vicepresident for EMEA, showed that Oracle is committed to encourage this country to take advantage of its potential: “Oracle aims to help push Romania into becoming the Silicon Valley of Central and Eastern Europe.”

In Romania there are 7.8 million connections to the Internet, out of which 4 million are broadband (end of 2010).
Country code (Top level domain): .ro
There were approximatively 250 000 domains registered under .ro at the end of 2007. This number had risen to over 340,000 in November 2008 and in 2012 the number went even higher: over 600,000 (710,000 domains in 2013).

Based on Akamai report at January 2011, Constanţa, Iasi and Timisoara are in the top 100 cities at the world level with the highest average Internet speeds.
Based on Pando networks content delivery service released on September 2011, Romania is in the top 5 Internet speeds in the world (2013) averaging at 37 Mbit/s download. Romania surpassed Bulgaria, Lithuania and Latvia on the top five, while the United States was only the 14th.

For business use, services are usually provided through fiber optics or radio. Companies providing such services are providing very flexible and negotiable plans also based on the Metropolitan/International distinction. Usually prices and bandwidths are fully negotiable, with the micro-ISPs discussed above being influential resellers. There is very strong competition, with no peering between many such companies (again requiring a lot of traffic to be routed through international routes) and not even access to another’s fiber-optics infrastructure (leading to the existence, in some cases, of over 25 fiber optics cables on the same street, hanging from the same pole). As such many companies have two separate providers for basically the same services.

Romania is aggressively promoting and developing its biotechnology industry. Hundred of millions of dollars were invested into the sector to build up infrastructure, fund research and development and to recruit top international scientists to Romania. Romania features one of the world’s newest competitive bio-industries, in key areas as pharmacogenomics, protein engineering, glyco-engineering, tissue engineering, bio-informatics, genome medicine and preventive medicine. Romania is devoting substantial resources to developing universities and R&D facilities, increasing bioventure startups, growing bio-clusters (communities of biotechnology companies and institutions) and developing human resources, all with the goal of making it one of the world’s most advanced biotechnology regions.

More:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_of_Romania
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Romania
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Romania
• http://www.businessinsider.com/europe-fastest-connections-2011-11?op=1
• http://www.rotld.ro
• http://rost.ancs.ro
• http://www.aries.ro
• http://www.anis.ro
• http://www.apti.ro
• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/business/global/31iht-RCE-ROMANIA31.html?pagewanted=all
• http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/05/with-a-talent-war-in-the-valley-perhaps-romania-has-the-answers
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/alisoncoleman/2014/03/27/europes-hidden-entrepreneurial-tech-hotbed-romania-powers-up/