스타트업이 룩셈부르크를 선택하는 이유(1/4): 유럽 내의 강력한 기반
스타트업들이 룩셈부르크에서 비즈니스를 세우고 성장시키는 이유가 무엇일까? 대만 회사 CYBAVO사는 룩셈부르크가 EU의 중심에 위치해 있고 강력한 창업 및 금융 생태계, 고도로 숙련된 교육받은 국제 노동력과 독일어, 프랑스어, 룩셈부르크어 등 3개 언어를 가지고 있다는 점들이 다른 유럽 시장을 연결하는 데 도움이 될 것이라고 생각하여 룩셈부르크를 선택했다고 말했다.
Setting up companies in Luxembourg to take off and scale
“We were looking for a country to scale Blackswan Space,” says Marius Klimavičius, CEO of the Lithuanian start-up. “We looked at Germany, Switzerland and a few others and found that Luxembourg is very welcoming, even to pre-revenue start-ups. It has many similarities with Lithuania, and a really good long-term vision for the space sector. In spite of some initial challenges, the country has not given up but continues to invest, create a space business community, develop its space policies and effectively integrate into the global space industry.”
Luxembourg is very welcoming, even to pre-revenue start-ups.
Caroline Assaf, Founding Director of CoCo World, has quite a different story. “I came to Luxembourg for personal reasons. When looking for a job here, someone encouraged me to pick up the edutech idea I had worked on in Canada and suggested that I speak to the Ministry of Education. I thought I had nothing to lose, so I set up a meeting with the ministry and explained my idea. Two weeks later, they told me that they were willing to support my idea through an EU-funded project! We received €500,000 in equity-free funding and the company was off.”
A natural choice
“For me and my Irish co-founder, it was also quite natural to launch our company here as we were both working in Luxembourg when our idea to reinvent the car rental business using IT solutions and electric vehicles was born,” says Renaud Marquet, COO of UFODrive. “Our business is by nature very international: we are present in eight countries, but our headquarters, and about half our staff, is here.”
Photo: © Luxinnovation / Luc Deflorenne