The study, led by Karl-Heinz Leitner, AIT Center for Innovation Systems & Policy, provides a comprehensive overview of the Austrian startup landscape. This year, the focus was on the "Impact of COVID-19 on Austrian Startups and Spin-Offs at the Startup scene".
For the first time, Austrian startups employ more than 25,000 people. In particular, young companies in the fields of finance, e-commerce or "software as a service" were able to use the digitization fueled by COVID-19 as a tailwind and scale accordingly. At the same time, unsurprisingly, startups in the tourism industry or in the offline services segment were hit particularly hard by the ongoing pandemic situation. Nevertheless, four out of five startups will continue to hire new employees in 2022, creating well over 10,000 new jobs. "The figures show that startups as new leading companies have not only become an important driver of economic growth and employment in Austria, but are also increasingly addressing social problems in the process - almost every second startup is now working on a social or environmental problem ", says Markus Raunig, CEO of AustrianStartups.
However, the robustness and special agility of startups is not only in demand in the COVID-19 crisis. Innovative startups also make a valuable contribution to society in a social context and in tackling the climate crisis: for almost every second startup, social and/or ecological goals represent a central component of their actions - a proportion that has grown successively in recent years. "This area of the startup ecosystem is also very heavily populated by women. Social and environmental goals are of much higher importance for Female Startups than for all-male founding teams," says Dr. Rudolf Dömötör, Director of the WU Gründungszentrum.
In order to successfully shape social and ecological change, it is essential to actively apply the knowledge generated in the university environment. In this regard, so-called "research spin-offs" are proving to be particularly innovative in the development and use of new technologies. "Just under a quarter of Austrian startups have their origins in an academic institution and are thereby pioneers of technological change," says Prof. Karl-Heinz Leitner, Senior Scientist at AIT and scientific project manager.