Europe's Leading Start-Up Hubs 2024 is a ranking of the top centres for founders offering incubator and/or accelerator programmes to people who want to build or grow a company. Requiring at least one physical location in Europe, we call these centres for founders start-up hubs. In total, 125 such hubs are recognised in this inaugural ranking.
The Financial Times cooperated with Statista R, a subsidiary of the international data and research company Statista as well as Sifted, a leading media brand for the European startup community.
To identify the leading hubs, a registration and survey process was conducted. Several elements were considered for the evaluation, with the main criterion being the assessment of the respective start-up hub by alumni who participated in at least one incubator or accelerator programme run by the respective hub. In addition, the recommendations of external experts, such as investors (business angels, representatives of venture capital firms), entrepreneurs and academics were included. On top of that, the most successful startups coming out of a hub were examined.
Several hundred start-up hubs within Europe were identified as potential candidates. They were actively invited to register, via announcement articles published on FT.com and Sifted.eu, followed by e-mails and calls from a team of researchers provided by Statista as well as via newsletters and ads sent out by Sifted.
The online registration phase ran from July 6 to September 29, 2023.
A start-up hub had to meet the following criteria to be eligible for consideration:
Once a hub registered and provided all the required information on its programmes and track-record, alumni which participated in such programmes between 2019-2022 were asked to evaluate their experience, both in general and by certain aspects.
The alumni were asked to evaluate the programme they took part in in the following dimensions:
Alumni were also asked to what extent they would recommend their hub on a scale of 0-10. Furthermore, questions on the application process, cost (fees or equity taken) and the ex-post support were asked.
For each dimension evaluated by the alumni through multiple questions and the overall recommendation, an average score was calculated (=Alumni Score).
In parallel to the registration and alumni evaluation period, start-up investors and seasoned entrepreneurs were asked to evaluate start-up hubs they know on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best score (=Expert Score).
Information requested from hubs themselves about the top five startups which participated in one of their programmes was collected and evaluated (=Track Record Score).
The Overall Score for a start-up hub was calculated as a weighted average of the Alumnis Score (overall recommendation and evaluation of subdimensions), the Expert Score and the Track Record Score.
All survey data (Start-Up Hubs registrations, Alumni evaluations and Experts' recommendations) has been processed and checked by Statista. In order to retrieve missing information, Statista reached out to some of the start-up hubs.
The selection of the start-up hubs and the definition of the evaluation criteria were carried out according to independent journalistic criteria of The Financial Times and Statista. The ranking was created through a complex procedure. Although the research was very extensive, the ranking does not claim to be complete, as some start-up hubs did not want to participate or didn't receive a sufficient amount of alumni evaluations to be included in the ranking.
The ranking is comprised exclusively of start-up hubs that are eligible regarding the criteria described in this methodology. A position in the ranking is a positive recognition based on the information provided through the respective survey and the data collected.
The survey and the analysis phase ran from July to October 2023. Data which was published after that time and events following November 3, 2023, were not included in the metrics. As such, the results of this ranking should not be used as the sole source of information for future deliberations. The information provided in this ranking should be considered in conjunction with other available information.
The quality of start-up hubs that are not included in the ranking is not disputed.
1 The start-up hub must be based in one of the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.