A Forum for Building Connections
From May 18–22, 2026, ViennaUP brings together founders, investors, corporates, and ecosystem builders across a distributed set of events throughout the city.
Start Up Festival, ViennaUP, operates as a network of curated gatherings, shaped by local and international partners. The format reflects how innovation increasingly happens in practice: across organisations, across sectors, and across borders.
The result is a different kind of engagement. Conversations are less confined to stages and more embedded in working sessions, small groups, and targeted introductions.
Designed for Interaction, Not Observation
ViennaUP’s structure makes participation active by design.
Across the programme, time is allocated to formats that prioritise direct exchange:
- Connect Day (May 19), focused on structured matchmaking between startups, corporates, and investors.
- Coffee House Sessions, bringing smaller groups into closed- door discussions with operators and domain experts.
- A broader set of workshops and roundtables oriented around market entry, partnerships, and growth pathways
These formats reflect a shift in how startup ecosystems are operating, particularly in Europe and CEE. Access to capital, partners, and new markets often comes through deliberate, facilitated connections rather than broad exposure alone.
A European Perspective on Collaboration
Vienna sits at a junction between Western European markets and the Central and Eastern European ecosystem, which brings a particular mix of participants:
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Founders navigating expansion into new regional and international markets.
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Corporates and SMEs exploring collaboration with emerging technologies.
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Investors looking at cross-border opportunities and syndication.
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Public and private actors shaping ecosystem development at a regional level
The agenda reflects this mix, with a focus on collaboration across sectors including industrial technology, AI, manufacturing, and urban systems.
This creates a setting where the emphasis is less on visibility, and more on alignment: matching the right technologies, partners, and market contexts.
Momenta at ViennaUP
Momenta will be represented at ViennaUP by Miroslav Kriz, Principal Partner, who will be in Vienna throughout the week engaging across the programme.
From Momenta’s perspective, ViennaUP aligns most closely with companies building within the digital industrial landscape, where innovation is tied directly to real-world systems and operations.
This includes startups working across areas such as:
- Industrial AI and automation, particularly where models are embedded into production environments.
- Energy and infrastructure systems, where digital technologies intersect with legacy assets.
- Smart spaces and built environments, where data, control systems, and user interaction converge.
- Supply chain and logistics, where resilience and operational visibility are increasingly critical.
ViennaUP’s mix of founders, corporates, and ecosystem players creates a useful environment to explore exactly those intersections.
Miro’s focus will will be on connecting with founders and partners building technologies for real operating environments, particularly those:
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Working at the intersection of software and physical systems.
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Engaging with industrial customers or infrastructure operators.
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Exploring partnership‑led growth alongside direct go‑to‑market models.
ViennaUP provides a strong vantage point into how these companies are positioning themselves within a broader European and global market, and how they are forming the partnerships required to move from early deployment into broader adoption.
A Different Kind of Signal
Events like ViennaUP are about understanding how different parts of the ecosystem fit together.
The decentralised format makes that visible. It brings together a wide range of actors, each contributing a piece of the overall picture.
Seeing how those pieces connect, or where they do not yet connect, is often where the most useful insight emerges.
Connecting in Vienna
If you are attending ViennaUP and would like to connect, Miroslav Kriz will be available throughout the week.
Explore the programme here: viennaup.com
Momenta is the leading Industrial Impact® venture capital firm, accelerating innovators across energy, manufacturing, smart spaces, and the supply chain. Our team of deep industry operators has helped scale industry leaders and innovators to improve critical industries, the environment, and people's quality of life for over a decade. PitchBook named Momenta among the world's top ten digital industry venture funds for both 2023 and 2024 in its Global Manager Performance Score League Tables, one of just two European-headquartered VCs to achieve a Top 10 ranking. For more information, please visit: momenta.vc.
