Good practice:

Startup Incubator Rijeka

Startup Incubator Rijeka is a support center for people who want to develop their entrepreneurial idea independently or within a team and start their own business. The incubator was established in 2013 by City of Rijeka, as integrated part of the Department of Entrepreneurship. Users are provided with educations, workspace, mentoring network, assistance in development and implementation of a business plan, and support in connecting with investors and international startup scene. All services are free of charge. The incubation program lasts 8 months and is consisted of 35+ workshops divided into three thematic modules: Idea validation (1), Product development, legal aspects and finance (2) and Go-to-market (3), which allows users to redesign their initial ideas. During the incubation, participants have at disposal 48+ mentors for addressing specific issues and challenges. The most successful teams from each generation are awarded with cash prizes for the purpose of starting their own business.

Startup incubator Rijeka represents the ‘first level’ support (pre-incubation) in the System of startup and business incubators of the City of Rijeka. Diversity of users’ ideas is requiring expertise in many specific fields, which is now covered by growing mentoring network. After Startup incubator, newly established startups/SMEs have opportunity to continue their development in incubation, acceleration or post-incubation program within City of Rijeka business incubators.

Initial costs (space refurbishment and equipment, web site): 40.000,00 Eur
Average annual costs (maintenance, overheads, external services, promotion, awards, staff): 78.000,00 Eur
Number of full-time employees: 2
Number of part-time employees: 2

Since opening, Startup incubator Rijeka hosted 173 teams with their initial business ideas, i.e. 435 users in 11 generations. Altogether 290 workshops and 889 individual consultations were held until today, resulting with 23 newly established enterprises in the city of Rijeka.
StartupBlink in ranking for 2020 pointed out that Rijeka continues in a positive trend by jumping for 73 places on global scale (compared to 2019), which is the biggest improvement among all Croatian cities.

At first, Startup incubator was intended for young people only (<30). From 2018 the age limit was abandoned. In the next generations significant progress has been made both in number and in creative/innovation potential of users’ ideas.

There are 2 main benefits resulting from such practice:
(1) The intention to ‘produce’ new entrepreneurs relies on comprehensive support that has to be the result of local policies. Croatian Employment Service is implementing successful measures on national level limited to financial support only. People without previous entrepreneurial experience who want to start their own business need to gain more than that: basic know-how, skills and mentoring to develop the idea from initial draft to go-to-market level. This, along with other supporting services, should be available to users for free, and not limited for any specific field of interest.
(2) Startup incubator becomes a key factor in Rijeka startup ecosystem, by gathering new business ideas and high-skilled lecturers and mentors to one place, and by generating startups. This is directly affecting to improve local entrepreneurial culture and business-friendly environment.