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NRW on its way into the top 10 start-up locations in Europe

A scale-up program is to help further promote dynamic start-up activity .

By the year 2025, North Rhine-Westphalia could well rise to the top 10 of the largest European start-up locations. Given the results of the NRW Start-up Report 2020, the chances of this are good. Despite the ongoing global pandemic, the NRW ecosystem developed dynamically in 2020: The number of start-ups in NRW increased by 15.2 percent compared to the previous year, more than the national average (12.5 percent). Approximately 1.3 new start-ups were added per day. Within the state, Cologne and Düsseldorf have the highest density of start-ups.

Minister of Economic and Digital Affairs Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart: "In order to make North Rhine-Westphalia one of the top 10 start-up regions in Europe by 2025, we need to help young companies grow faster and become internationally active. With the help of our ambitious scale-up program, we want to support selected start-ups on this path and attract strong venture capitalists and business angels in North Rhine-Westphalia even more than before."

Starting in March 2022, ten to 15 different start-ups will take part in the 18-month scale-up program. The program supports founders who are undergoing a phase of rapid growth and change, or soon about to. Topics include internalization, management expansion, and increasing financial requirements.