For years, Romania’s startup ecosystem has been growing in fragments. Strong founders building bold companies. Accelerators, incubators, investor networks doing the work — often with limited resources, often in isolation, often without the institutional support that makes scaling possible at national level.

That’s about to change.

Through POCIDIF, the Ministry of European Investments and Projects (MIPE) is funding ROStartup Ecosystem Association with €20 million to coordinate and resource the organizations that support Romania’s startups every day. It’s the largest EU-backed investment ever made in Romania’s startup support infrastructure — and a fundamentally different way of approaching public funding for innovation.

This isn’t another grant program. It’s the foundation of something Romania has never had before: a national, structured, ecosystem-led mechanism for supporting startups and scaleups.

Here’s what it means, why it matters, and what comes next.

What this project actually does

Through a €20 million mechanism funded by POCIDIF, ROStartup Ecosystem will run competitive calls to select startup support organizations across Romania — accelerators, venture capital funds, investor networks, incubators, clusters, education providers, NGOs, and coordinated groups of entities. The selected organizations will receive funding to deliver integrated services to over 360 Romanian startups and scaleups.

The services aren’t generic. They’re the things founders actually need to grow:

• Mentorship and coaching
• Business development, innovation, and internationalization consulting
• Networking access — matchmaking events, demo days
• Educational events and workshops
• Access to specialized platforms and databases
• Branding and promotion services
• Courses, bootcamps, and trainings
• Specialized training sessions, on-site or online
• National and international conferences

For startups, this support comes free of charge. Everything is fully funded through the project.

Why fund support organizations instead of startups directly?

Because money alone doesn’t make a startup grow.

Romania has tried direct funding before — Start-up Nation, Start-up Plus, and others. These programs got money into the hands of small businesses, which sounds like the right thing to do. But the results told a different story: access to funding without access to mentorship, acceleration, market knowledge, or international networks. Founders received grants, but they didn’t necessarily receive the support that turns a good idea into a competitive company.

The hard truth is that the gap in Romania’s startup ecosystem isn’t capital. It’s infrastructure. It’s the people, organizations, and networks that help a founder validate an idea, refine a business model, attract investment, and access international markets. That infrastructure exists — but it has been under-resourced, geographically concentrated, and inconsistent in capacity.

This project addresses that directly. Instead of giving money to startups and hoping they figure out the rest, it invests in strengthening the organizations that already know how to accelerate, internationalize, and scale companies.

The expertise is in the ecosystem. This project gives it national reach and the resources to deliver at scale.

ROStartup’s role

ROStartup Ecosystem Association serves two roles in this project.

First, it’s the administrator of the de minimis aid scheme — the entity responsible for organizing the competitive calls, selecting the support organizations, and coordinating implementation at national level. This is the operational backbone that ensures the funding flows transparently, the selection process is fair, and the impact is measured rigorously.

Second, ROStartup is the national umbrella association for the organizations that support Romanian startups. We connect them under one voice, help them strengthen their capacity by working together, and represent the Romanian startup ecosystem in EU-level policy dialogue — including through ESNA (the European Startup Nations Alliance), where ROStartup is the organization representing Romania.

These two roles are deliberately connected. The same organization that knows the ecosystem inside out — its strengths, its gaps, its working dynamics — is also the one administering the mechanism designed to strengthen it. That’s not a coincidence. It’s the entire point.

A model proven across Europe

The approach behind this project isn’t experimental. It’s a model already tested and refined in some of Europe’s strongest startup ecosystems:

• In Estonia, Startup Estonia coordinates the ecosystem without competing with it — supporting accelerators, investors, and policy dialogue rather than running its own programs.
• In Finland, Business Finland funds existing organizations instead of building new ones, with a focus on connecting startups to international markets.
• In Germany, the EXIST and Digital Hub Initiative reduces fragmentation through specialized networks of existing hubs.
• In the Netherlands, Techleap supports scaleups through existing partners, focusing on access to capital and growth — not parallel programs.
• In the UK, Tech Nation delivers services through a network of partners, with a strong focus on investment readiness.

For Romania, this approach is new. But adopting a proven model was only the starting point. Understanding what Romania specifically needs took years of research, consultation, and data.

Built on real groundwork

Since 2020, ROStartup has been running public consultations with more than 100 ecosystem actors across Romania — accelerators, incubators, investors, founders, policymakers, universities, regional development agencies. The goal was simple: understand what’s working, what isn’t, and what the ecosystem actually needs to grow.

Two dedicated reports were developed in partnership with the European Commission and the World Bank — Starting Up Romania and Scaling Up Romania — which mapped the ecosystem in detail and recommended concrete interventions. Across every consultation, every report, every conversation, the same theme came up: support capacity needs to grow, and it needs to grow in a structured, coordinated, ecosystem-led way.

Who can apply

The calls for funding will be open to all startup support organizations operating in Romania — incubators, accelerators, VC funds, angel networks, education providers, NGOs, clusters, and coordinated groups of entities — with a proven track record of successfully supporting startups.

Membership in ROStartup is not a condition.

What matters is hands-on experience working directly with startups building scalable, innovation-driven solutions. Experience managing EU-funded projects is not a criterion. The calls are designed to reward quality and capability, not just cost or institutional familiarity with public funding mechanisms.

For diaspora organizations: yes, you’re eligible — as long as you’re legally registered in Romania and have worked directly with Romanian startups in recent years. Diaspora expertise is also welcome in another form: international experts can deliver workshops on topics like internationalization within the selected organizations’ programs.

Full eligibility details will be published in the call guidelines.

How results will be measured

The project’s results will be measured against the formal indicators set in the funding application: minimum 360 startups supported, at least 180 startups introducing innovation, and more than 20 new jobs created. These are formal commitments tied to the EU funding — not internal targets, not aspirations. They’re documented, verifiable, and subject to rigorous monitoring and reporting.

But the real impact won’t be captured by these figures alone. It will also be reflected in:

• A better connected and more structured startup ecosystem
• Stronger support organizations with improved services and broader reach
• A functional database and collaboration network across Romania
• Higher survival rates and competitiveness for Romanian startups
• A measurable shift in how Romania participates in European innovation policy

These outcomes are harder to put on a dashboard. But they’re the ones that will define whether this project succeeds in building infrastructure that lasts beyond the funding period.

Why this matters

Romania has talented founders. It has investors willing to back them. It has accelerators, incubators, and networks doing meaningful work. What it has lacked, until now, is the connective tissue — the national infrastructure that turns individual efforts into a coordinated, scalable system.

This project is the first serious attempt to build that infrastructure. It’s not a quick fix. It’s the result of years of quiet, persistent work by people who care deeply about Romania’s startup ecosystem and who believe it deserves better than what it’s had so far.

The €20 million is the headline number, but the real story is what gets built with it: a stronger ecosystem, better-resourced support organizations, more competitive startups, and a model of public-ecosystem collaboration that can be replicated, refined, and expanded over time.

What happens next

The calls for support organizations are being prepared and will be launched by the end of the year. Full eligibility criteria, timelines, and application procedures will be published in the official call guidelines.

If you’re a startup support organization with a track record of working with founders — start preparing.

If you’re a founder, watch this space: the services will reach you through the support organizations selected in the upcoming calls.

If you have questions, ideas, or feedback, we want to hear them. This project was built with the ecosystem, and it moves forward with it.

Follow ROStartup for updates as the calls are launched.