A well-known attribute of Luxembourg is the easy access to decision makers in both the corporate and the governmental spheres. “Companies and the government are all open and accessible,” confirms Roberto Machado, General Manager EMEA at CYBAVO. “It is not difficult to get in touch with banks and top tier companies that would be very difficult to reach in some other countries.”
It is not difficult to get in touch with banks and top tier companies that would be very difficult to reach in some other countries.
“We feel much support from the government and the different space-related organisations ranging from the university to the Luxembourg Space Agency,” says Antanas Petrovas, Business Development Manager at Blackswan Space. “They want to make sure that we have everything we need to develop the company. We are also in touch with some other space companies here, such as Redwire Europe, OKAPI and of course our fellow graduates from Fit 4 Start.”
Finding investors and clients
Renaud Marquet, COO of UFODrive, finds the ecosystem very dynamic with a high number of initiatives and start-ups being founded relative to the size of the country. “I can also see that it is becoming more known among investors abroad,” he points out. “We recently raised $19 million in our Series A funding round. It was led by two international investors, Hertz and Certares, but local investors also contributed. LuxAirport is also a key partner for us. They saw the potential when we first came to them with our idea of an innovative way to handle car rental and wanted to be at the forefront of offering new services to their customers. With a first agreement signed with them, we had a good basis for speaking to other, bigger airports.”
Luxembourg’s tagline “together, let’s make it happen” is more than just a slogan – it is a promise that the country is delivering on.
“There are three main things that made Luxembourg a great ally for us: the equity-free funding that took our project from idea to start-up and, hopefully, successful scale-up, the diversity of the population which makes Luxembourg a perfect testbed for innovative products, and the agility of the country and its decision making,” says Caroline Assaf, Founding Director of CoCo World. “Many countries use big words, but I genuinely feel that Luxembourg’s tagline ‘together, let’s make it happen’ is more than just a slogan – it is a promise that the country is delivering on.
Photo: © Luxinnovation / Luc Deflorenne