Digital Economy NRW

With its initiative “Digitale Wirtschaft NRW” (Digital Economy NRW), the state of North Rhine-Westphalia has been gaining momentum as a digital location in recent years. Moreover, it wants to encourage even more digital startups going forward. In fact, North Rhine-Westphalia wants to become one of the leading hotspots for startups in Germany and across Europe. And, #OOTB, with its final award ceremony at the PIRATE Summit (the top-class event for startups in NRW), is an important piece of the puzzle. Here we want to introduce briefly the other pieces:

The DWNRW hubs in Aachen, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Münster and the Ruhr District make digital startups successful by interconnecting an NRW-wide startup ecosystem using a broad range of measures and providing impulses for digital business models at established companies. One of these projects is the central platform startups.nrw, which they have initiated in collaboration with the Digital Hub Cologne and the Founders Foundation. Apart from that, the DWNRW hubs are our “event world champions”: Hub Battle, A-Summit, Digital Demo Day, RuhrSummit, SummerSlam, etc. all go towards boosting the perception of North Rhine-Westphalia as a hotspot for digital startups and innovations. Do you have any questions or suggestions? Then just contact your hub!

In addition to the DWNRW hubs, regionally adapted event formats are necessary in order to permanently anchor the topics of “digitization” and “cooperation between digital start-ups with established companies” in NRW. Therefore, we offer DWNRW-Regio.Events, a program that provides funding support for a large number of smaller information and networking events in these subject areas. Are you planning an event that contributes to this goal and enhances matchmaking for startups in North Rhine-Westphalia? Then you can find out here whether we can support you financially!

The analysis of Startup Genome has shown that locations with a high scale-up density register significantly higher investment amounts as well as important employment effects and an increase in the overall ecosystem valuation. The recently launched program Scale-up.NRW therefore complements the existing programs of the state government by building a strong scale-up segment in NRW. Using individualized scaling paths, high-growth startups from NRW are supported in their growth into international markets. More information about the program and the application process can be found here: scale-up.nrw!