Have you ever attended a press conference? It’s a quite uncommon situation for IT people. Of course, if you are not Ilon Mask. So when Eltrino B.V. co-founder Ernst Hoestra and Eltrino CMO Elena Kulbich received an invitation from Residence of Startups to attend a round table “Startup: From Idea to Success”, we were excited about that. At the press conference were representatives from the Ukrainian government, ministries, accelerators, and Ukrainian startups itself. It was a fruitful discussion between people who can create an appropriate environment for the development of innovations and executives. I mean startups who directly develop these innovative solutions.
It’s not a secret that Ukraine is full of people with great ideas. But bad news - 90-95% of those startups will never transform into a successful company. Comparing to this 5-10 % in Ukraine, Dutch startups are relatively successful as over 65% of them survive the first five years. In other countries, that’s only around 44% on average.
So what is the secret? And it’s a better environment that facilitates rising startups and decreases the failure rate. Let’s deep diver and figure out what factors impact on this supportive environment.
Most startups are aware that it’s challenging to get funding and build a viable business model. But did you know most businesses fail simply because there is no market for their product? Or there are competitors on that market who can enrich their product with such innovation just in a month when you’ve spent a year on that. In the Netherlands, there are a lot of programs where startups can get mentors’ support and learn vital skills in how to:
- do market research properly,
- pitch clearly,
- engage the broader community (investors, mentors, cooperate organizations, private initiatives).
Furthermore, the Dutch government offers competitive tax deductions, reimbursements, and allowances. Perks include an effective corporate tax rate as low as 5% for R&D and innovation.
It was a great experience. Due to the positive atmosphere at the press conference, people reaching out to each other, attendees opening up by sharing their challenges and issues. It’s extremely important to understand that we all are in the same boat and only acting together, we can pave the way for successful innovations.
