The Emerging Startup Ecosystem of Varna

Stefan Petrov

OVERVIEW OF VARNA’S STARTUP ECOSYSTEM

In the past 5 years, Varna has become one of the digital hubs and innovation centers in Southeastern Europe and the reasons behind that are several:

Varna has a growing young population with 6 universities in different specializations and every year it attracts not only students from the country, but also many foreigners to graduate and work in the city.
One of the most favourite places for developers, students, entrepreneurs and digital nomads to work and network are surely the main 4 co-working spaces and hubs that were established – Innovator, CryptoVarna, Switch and VarnaLab
The biggest asset of the city – the young people, also have wide variety of events, seminars and courses to participate and develop skills. For a fifth straight year in the city, Innowave Summit gathers world famous experts and speakers from some of the biggest tech companies to help the local businesses grow and go to global markets. Another great event is the Startup Ventures, where people with ideas broadly learn how to validate a startup from top experts.
As we mentioned startups, in Varna only for the last 2 years have been found more than 20 startups in different areas – fintech, blockchain, medicine, IoT, 3D printing and more. This shows to potential investors and business angels the city has a future in terms of developing future unicorns who can boost the economy of the region.
Some of these Startups are already expanding outside the border with the support of some national VC funds and organizations such as: LauncHub, Eleven Ventures, Bulgarian entrepreneurship Center, Bulgarian Business Forums, BBF Angels Club, Brightcap Ventures and others.
Some large tech companies have founded their main centers and headquarters in the city which opened thousands of work places, which also reduced the unemployment rate to below 3% and boosted the economy.

varna ecosystem

Main Events:

www.innowavesummit.com

https://swvarna.com/

Universities:

https://ue-varna.bg/

http://www.tu-varna.bg/

http://www.mu-varna.bg/

https://www.vfu.bg/

https://vum.bg/

http://www.naval-acad.bg/en

Co-working spaces and Hubs:

https://innovator.bg/

https://www.varnalab.org/

https://switchvarna.com/en/

https://cryptovarna.com/

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