WU EA Students Benefit from Wide-Ranging Offer of WU Entrepreneurship Center

A groundbreaking idea is turned into a company; a dream becomes reality: a start-up is an attractive option for both students and alumni of the WU Executive Academy who are looking to put their skills and experience to good use.  

Everybody Wins When Universities and Start-ups Join Hands 

“The most important motivation that drives founders is the right mindset: somebody sees a problem and wants to solve it,” says Rudolf Dömötör, the Director of the WU Entrepreneurship Center with twenty years of experience in the start-up ecosystem. More and more students consider entrepreneurship as a means of fulfilling their dreams – an endeavor for which a certain level of maturity is definitely a plus. The wish to make a positive contribution to society is another important factor that motivates founders.  

As many as half of all start-ups in Austria these days are so-called impact start-ups, i.e., enterprises focusing on the common good by offering, among other things, ecological or social solutions. More than three quarters of all founders are university graduates. “This clearly shows the importance of universities and business schools for the start-up segment,” Dötömör points out.  

Comprehensive Portfolio for (Future) Founders at the WU Executive Academy 

Through its Entrepreneurship Center, WU Vienna supports (potential) founders at all stages of building their enterprise. The Center’s outstanding service quality has been certified by the Financial Times, which has ranked the Entrepreneurship Center among the leading start-up hubs in Europe. All of the services offered are available to students and alumni of the WU Executive Academy. And there’s a lot to choose from: support is provided throughout every stage of building a company.  

Advice and Support for Founders 

• Founders Advice 

For anybody with a good idea looking for some pointers, the Founders Advice is the right service: at these weekly sessions, business advisors will answer all of their questions and connect them with someone from the Center’s pool of experts.  

• Start-up League 

Students and graduates who have already started putting their ideas into practice are all set to apply to join the Start-up League: in this three-month incubation program, every team is assigned their own mentor, and there are also opportunities to talk shop with external experts. Participants should be ready to spend a minimum of ten hours per week on advancing their project and are supported in this endeavor through workshops and co-working sessions. By the way: the current batch of founders in the start-up league also includes students of the WU Executive Academy.  

Inspiration and Networking 

To foster exchange and networking, which are more important than anything else when it comes to founding an enterprise, the Entrepreneurship Center offers various event formats: 

• Entrepreneurs Talk 

At the Entrepreneurs Talk, business leaders share their experiences and success stories with the participants in a casual setting. These events are also great opportunities to get to know and talk to other founders.  

• Joint Forces 

Founders seeking a platform to present their ideas or start-up to an affable audience have to look no further than the Joint Forces. This event series jointly organized by WU, BOKU University, TU Wien, and the University of Vienna enables cross-university networking.  

• Entrepreneurship 360° 

Entrepreneurship 360° is a kick-off event that takes place at the beginning of every winter semester. At this occasion, the WU Entrepreneurship Center presents its varied offers and initiatives, organizes lectures by renowned speakers, and also hosts casual networking events.  

Programs and Platforms for Founders 

• Entrepreneurship Avenue 

The Entrepreneurship Avenue is another program that caters specifically to founders: this event series of the Entrepreneurship Center Network (ECN) – an interdisciplinary network of Austrian universities and universities of applied sciences – supports start-ups in putting their business ideas to the test and connects entrepreneurs. Past winners of this format include Refurbed and Hokify. 

• Matching Platform 

Above-mentioned ECN also offers a matching platform, which helps aspiring entrepreneurs find potential co-founders. The xbio program, which is organized by WU Vienna in cooperation with other universities and institutions, also has attractive offers in store for students and graduates of the WU Executive Academy. It connects life sciences researchers with experienced business leaders. 

• Skills Academy 

The Skills Academy helps participants acquire or hone the know-how needed to found a company, zooming in on both hard and soft skills. It also provides ample opportunity to mingle with like-minded professionals.  

• WU ENGAGE.EU Labs 

The WU ENGAGE.EU Labs bring together start-ups, students, researchers, enterprises, and organizations in collaborations on innovative solutions that benefit society at large. This way, research findings and innovations developed by young companies find their way into actual business practice.  

• Austrian Startup Monitor 

The Center also offers up-to-date information regarding the Austrian start-up ecosystem to help (potential) founders make sound decisions. The Austrian Startup Monitor, which is provided in cooperation with the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) und Austrian Startups, is an important tool in this regard. 

Austria and Its Start-up Ecosystem  

And how are Austrian start-ups doing at the moment? Rudolf Dömötör, who is also a member of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy’s Start-up Council, has no doubt that the country offers favorable conditions for founders. Thanks to several generous funding programs, financing should not be an issue, and also business angels are definitely interested in Austrian start-ups. Compared to other countries, however, Austria lags behind with regard to growth capital: setting up a fund of funds as envisioned in the current government agreement could help remedy the situation.  

The introduction of the Flexible Company (also dubbed FlexCo) has greatly reduced the red tape for founders through, among other things, lowering minimum capital requirements and creating the possibility to issue non-voting company shares. Nonetheless, Dömötör would welcome further measures to make founders’ lives easier, particularly as the number of new companies is stagnating. “But no matter what, turning your life-long dream into reality and founding an enterprise will always be an exciting perspective,” Dömötör says. 

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