About us

Impact Hub Bucharest is the organization that supports the development of entrepreneurial initiatives with positive impact through collaborative work spaces and team offices in 3 locations in Bucharest, growth and incubation programs, conferences and events and a crowdfunding platform. Impact Hub Bucharest has been present in the capital city of Romania since 2012 and it is part of the global Impact Hub network that has over 110 locations on 5 continents.

Impact Hub joined as a Country Partner for Romania in 2016 and organized 3 editions of the national ﬁnale in Cluj-Napoca & Bucharest.

After Budapest, Vienna, Ljubljana, Soﬁa and Warsaw, this year, at the 6th edition, we’re bringing the Regional Grand Finale to Bucharest to meet and celebrate the regions’ ecosystem winners, along with startups, investors, accelerators, incubators, role models, founders and many others members of the diverse CEE network.

See our activity report for 2018 here.

“We are have been organizing the national CESA competition in Romania since 2016. This premiere of the regional finale in Bucharest is a good opportunity to connect and offer visibility to entrepreneurs and also to position Romania as a very important market in the region. We are so excited to be part of this and we are ready to offer an unique and high quality experience to all those who will join us!”

Oana Craioveanu,
CEO of Impact Hub Bucharest

Central European Startup Awards (CESAwards) was born out of a vision to connect the startup ecosystems in the Central and Eastern European countries. Back in 2014, the national startup ecosystems were growing and developing fast but very little connections between the community builders, investors, talent and founders among the countries existed. A strong platform in the CEE region was needed to showcase the innovations and stakeholders from the ecosystem to the rest of the world.

CESA aim is to use this yearly award show as a vessel to map, connect and promote the national and regional startup ecosystems of the CEE Region as well as its stakeholders, and to add entrepreneurship on the agenda of policy makers together with our partners and to foster tech innovation by connecting the bests.

Central European Startup Awards is part of the Global Startup Awards, providing annual spotlight to those who dare to dream big and shape the way our future will look.

Find out more about CESA here.

“These days everyone in the startup ecosystems is focusing so much on the global hubs, just like London or San Francisco, that we fail to get to know our neighbors hence we miss out many opportunities for raising capital, finding partners, early stage investors or clients, and we limit our resource funnels. The CEE region has been historically pretty much disconnected, though we are more similar as we may think. With more than 100 million citizens, countries mostly part of the European Union, the new generations are willing to change the status quo.”