What Makes The Bulgarian Startup Ecosystem Attractive

It is an often repeated mantra that the startup ecosystem consists to a large extent of people who have been abroad, gained experience, explored cultures, new models of thinking and came back to apply them in Bulgaria. We know, for example, that in the past three years there is a positive trend and on average 10K people come back to Bulgaria yearly and this is a double growth compared to 2013, the National Statistics Institute data shows.  There are also some signs that the growing IT sector might reverse the brain drain. One third of the Bulgarians who live abroad would come back and most of them consider this step because of the thriving IT industry, the latest study by the Bulgarian Association of the Software Companies (BASSCOM) reveals.

BUT

We don’t possess enough data to prove or deny any hypothesis so decided to ask are there reasons and which would they be for Bulgarians who have established their careers abroad to come back and contribute to the local ecosystem. This is a joint initiative with the Bulgarian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) and it was started as a Christmas Campaign in 2018.  We asked the BVCA network from all over the globe and got some encouraging answers.