Talent Garten opens in Vienna
The Talent Garden A1 Telekom Austria campus will be a physical platform for digital, tech and creative professionals to work, learn and connect. A reference point for the Austrian innovation ecosystem promoted by Talent Garden, Europe’s largest coworking network, with the strong support of the most important players of the industry and local institutions: A1 Telekom Austria, Raiffeisen Zentralbank and the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Venionaire is a proud founding partner of the Talent Garden Campus in Vienna.
A1 Telekom Austria provides the ideal location for the campus: 5.000 square meters’ venue that will host TAG café, event spaces, and coworking, which will open 24/7 and host more than 500 professionals. Start-ups, existing companies, freelancers, investors, and agencies will work together to create innovations. The advantage is the exchange between the enterprises working there, in conjunction with TAG Innovation School, a unique in-house academy in the digital field, events, a community gastronomy and an internal networking platform. The coworkers can work based on their membership in all other Talent Garden locations across Europe.
Talent Garden successfully operates 18 such campus locations in six countries as a leading European company. Talent Garden has just closed an EUR 12 million investment round that will fund its further expansion into Europe, reaching 70.000 square meters across the network and 8.000 members.
Davide Dattoli, CEO Talent Garden: “We have been planning to expand into a German-speaking city for the first time since the middle of 2016. Vienna has convinced us for three reasons: Firstly, an ever-growing startup and digital ecosystem. Secondly, an incredibly positive feedback from our founding partner A1 Telekom Austria and all the industry-leading corporate partners and the public sector the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the City of Vienna and the Business-Agency Vienna Wien helped who us in a cooperative and bureaucratic way. From this point of view, Vienna is an ideal base for our community work in the region. Last but not least, a committed group of our local co-founders is crucial for the acceptance in the creative scene of a city. We have been working with our co-founders Martin Giesswein, Max Lammer, and Berthold Baurek-Karlic for months and together with our colleagues from Italy, they are now preparing the opening. From April on, Bernhard Kainrath as local managing director will join the team.”
Alejandro Plater, CEO Telekom Austria Group: “By hosting Talent Garden A1 Telekom Austria campus, we prove our long-term commitment to Austria’s Start Up ecosystem and outline, that we are working very hard on the development of new industries in order to strengthen Austria’s economy. We as Telekom Austria Group are the digital backbone of Austria as a business location and provide our core competences to the Start Up community to encourage innovation. Because: Innovation is in the DNA of Start Ups, which is the reason they have been disrupting entire industry sectors and will do so in the future. And exactly this kind of “will to innovate” is very much needed in a digital world”.
Margarete Schramböck, CEO A1: “As one of the major enablers of Austria’s digital future, A1 has already been supporting the Austrian Start Up scene for more than 5 years. We have helped almost 10 Start Ups develop and scale their business. Start Ups are a vital part of Austria’s economy and are responsible for more than a third of new jobs annually. With the Talent Garden A1 Telekom Austria campus we will support the Austrian Start Up ecosystem growing and innovating.”
Michael Höllerer, Member of the Management Board of Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG: “The concept of Talent Garden is absolutely convincing. It was clear for us, that we will support the idea of having such an innovation hub in Vienna. As international banking group, we focus on sustainable digitization and innovation topics. Cooperating with FinTechs and Start-ups is an important part of our strategy. Still during the first half-year 2017 we will start our accelerator program. For this Talent Garden provides the ideal basis and therefore we will have our own startup space within the campus. Michael Höllerer is coordinating the topics of digitization and the cooperation with Talent Garden for the whole RZB-Group.
Walter Ruck, President of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and Industry: “Industry 4.0, automation, broadband offensive, digital & mobile revolution – the economy of tomorrow has begun already. If we want to be a strong player in an international and competitive environment, we have to make the city of Vienna a hotspot for the young, wild and creative start-ups. This is also the reason why we support Talent Garden. In Vienna an international competence centre and home for the start-up industry comes into being. These are very good news for the location for business and the entrepreneurial future in this city“.
Martin Giesswein: “Parallel to the adaptation of the building, we are going to invite Viennese start-ups, freelancers and digital-oriented companies together with other well renowned corporate partners in the coming weeks to move into the campus with us when it opens middle of year 2017. We will ask well known stakeholders from the innovation scene of Vienna as ambassadors to work on building a vibrant and open campus community.”
The new Talent Garden A1 Telekom Austria campus will be presented to the Start Up community and the media at a community event at 28th of march. If you are interested in Talent Garden Vienna, please send us a “hello(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)venionaire.com”.
Picture: © Talent Garden, Instagram.