Based on those who responded to the online survey, the report shows that a slight majority of EU start-ups (54%) said that their business experienced a negative development during the COVID-19 pandemic, while about a quarter of them (24%) experienced a positive development and about a fifth of them (19%) said they were unaffected by the pandemic.

Some respondents (15%) received public support automatically, i.e. without requesting it. Nearly half of respondents (43%) reported their start-up did not request any public support, with – among these –  the most prominent reasons being that the start-up “Did not need any public support” (30%) and that “Public support measures on offer were not useful” (27%), or “The application process was too bureaucratic” (17%), while 3% of these start-ups did not request public support because they received automatic support from public authorities and deemed it to be sufficient. From the half of start-ups that requested public support, 28% did not obtain it and the leading cause of this was not fulfilling the conditions for the requested support.

Among the start-ups that received public support, nearly half (48%) of them claimed to be satisfied with the COVID-19 support they received, while a quarter of them (25%) were disappointed and 24% remained neutral on this. Among those disappointed with the public support received, the most mentioned reasons for disappointment included explanations that “The measures were not appropriate for our business, thus the support did not address the main challenges we faced” (45%) and “The process was too bureaucratic” (24%), which were followed by “The process was too lengthy and therefore the support did not reach us at the right time” (22%).

The start-up respondents pointed out that the public support during crises needs to be provided fast, as time really matters, and the lessons learnt need to be used in other crisis, such as related to the Russian war or aggression against Ukraine, which also affected start-ups to various degrees, as quite some of them prospered during the last couple of years while quite some others have struggled to survive.