EURAXESS Startup Tour

We are working hard to prepare new exciting events for aspiring and established scientific entrepreneurs in Estonia, Luxembourg and Italy, with up to 40 travel grants available through open call for participation which will be published in December 2024.

EURAXESS Startup Tour 2025 will offer the opportunity to attend site visits organized by our distinguished partners from Luxembourg, Estonia, Israel and Italy, showcasing the best practices in advancing the researchers’ careers towards startup entrepreneurship, connecting the selected participants to the sharpest entrepreneurial minds (and investors), offering a learning experience, direct opportunities for developing ideas further in collaboration, and possibly finding funding.

If you are a scientist or you are enrolled in PhD programs in the research performing organizations in one of the EURAXESS countries, click on a button below to express your interest to participate and be first to receive new information about the upcoming call for participation.

Estonia is known to have a lively start-up ecosystem, ranking as a world leader in human capital, digital capability, and ease of doing business. Ultra-high IT usage across the economy creates significant efficiencies, real-time data and flexible, scalable business models. 

In recent years, it has focused on becoming also a deep-tech hub, with accelerating the development of research- and science-based entrepreneurship. This part of the ecosystem is still relatively young, but is growing quickly, with a 14% increase of turnover from 2022 to 2023, equaling to €227.2 mn. 

The process is also supported by the Estonian government with a dedicated action plan, with goals to facilitate further access to funding, especially for early-stage businesses, to train the talents on respective capabilities in academia, and help the academia with their spinout processes and to grow startups' ability to turn scientific advancements into commercial products. 

The state has its friendly policies for both EU and non-EU founders through Startup Visa and Scaleup Visa programs to grow their business in Estonia and also make it easy to hire talents worldwide. Widespread support is provided by public sector (e.g. Startup Estonia and Smartcap), private sector (Estonian Founder Society), investor community (EstVCA and EstBAN) and academia (e.g. Unitartu Ventures, Tartu Science Park and Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol).

The EURAXESS Startup Hub is a networked program of support to sci entrepreneurs, setup by the research and funding organizations from 12 countries, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Estonia, Israel, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Switzerland, Moldova, Bulgaria, Greece, Northern Macedonia and Serbia, with participation of tens of external stakeholders, the prominent actors in national startup ecosystems of the above countries.

Click below to learn about our other support activities, such as EURAXESS Startup Entrepreneur Leadership Academy, explore our digital toolkit, contact us to join the program.