The digitalising success of the Hungarian Government

13/08/2020

László Jobbágy, the CEO of Digital Success Programme, has participated in an English language conference called “Kanapé pitch”, held by Tőkeportál, Hungary’s first crowdfunding website, where there was also opportunity for pitching among the international experts in the areas of crowdfunding and impact investments.

Online crowdfunding is an effective and innovative financial technology service, featuring an easy web-shop style process for crowdfunding projects and startups through online campaigns. The crowdfunding platform is basically the marketplace for such capital raising campaigns. The crowd – a multitude of investors, both civilian and institutional – can make multiple small or large investments into the campaign initiators’ companies. During the several months long campaigns, investors can pose questions to campaign initiators and learn about the operation of the companies. Their mission is to help economically sustainable, early-phase small and medium-sized companies raise capital efficiently while simultaneously building brand awareness and generating sales.

László Jobbágy spoke about the Digital Export Development Strategy of Hungary that was created with the goal to help new startups and enterprises step by step to acquire proper funding and to get the accelerating power to grow afterwards. Mr. Jobbágy emphasised that these days it was exceedingly difficult for startups in Hungary to get funding and advance. The key to success is diverse, since every startup, every story is different and to know what kind of support and investment they need we need to know the people, the idea, the motivation behind them. Hence, companies can appeal for different kinds of aids to acquire seed money and crowdfunding money.

László Jobbágy also mentioned that the main goal of DSP was to give answers to the new challenges of digitisation, to enhance the positive effects and minimise the negative effects of new technologies, and to explore how the government can intervene and help these technologies prosper and make people’s lives easier. He mentioned crowdfunding as an example since it has become more and more popular in recent years as a form of financing. However, experience has shown that most startups are still afraid of using this method of funding due to lack of legislation and lack of consumer protection from the side of investors and companies alike. To overcome this issue, DSP, together with the Hungarian National Bank, the Ministry of Finance and Corvinus University of Budapest, has created and proposed a strategy for the legislation of crowdfunding to the respective departments of the Hungarian government. The goal is to implement such legislation, which is in accordance with EU regulations and to use it to set new opportunities for Hungarian digital startups and enterprises to succeed.

A number of Hungarian and international speakers participated in the event, the details of which can be found here. The event was sponsored by Digital Success Programme.