LogMeIn, the remote-access software company whose products came to include GoToMeeting and LastPass, built the first version of its service in Budapest. It was incorporated in Bermuda in 2003, moved its legal home to Delaware a year later, and kept its headquarters in Massachusetts. It listed on Nasdaq in 2009. In 2020, two U.S. private equity firms took it private in a deal that valued its equity at about $4.3 billion.
Ustream, a live video streaming service, took a similar path. It had a Hungarian co-founder and development offices in Budapest, was based in the U.S., and was bought by IBM in 2016.
The two companies appear on the list Tamás Tüske uses to explain why Hungary, a country of fewer than ten million people, keeps producing companies that sell to the world. “Prezi, SEON, LogMeIn and Ustream are all built for the world,” he told 150sec in an interview. Both were also headquartered in the U.S.
Tüske is the Innovation Director of the MeOut Summit, which holds its first edition at Budapest’s Akvárium Klub, the city’s underground cultural center, on November 25 through 26.
He says too many founders from the region leave home in pursuit of global success. The aim, Tüske stresses, is to reverse that by bringing “the capital, the partners and the decision-makers to Budapest.” His summary of what the ecosystem still lacks is short: “What we still need is more visibility and more international capital.”
The event is run by MeOut Group, a Budapest-based company that manages education and innovation programs, including EU-funded projects. It is built with the team behind EU-Startups, the Barcelona-based startup news site MeOut bought in November 2025.
This year MeOut also became majority shareholder of XO Group, parent company of the Global Startup Awards, a startup competition whose Central European regional final is part of the summit program.
Funding data suggests the capital gap is widest not when companies are founded, but when they need money to grow.
Where local money runs out
Tüske’s explanation for Hungary’s record starts with a constraint that works in its favor. “A Hungarian founder can’t build a big business domestically, so they think globally from day one,” he says.
Then comes talent: a long tradition in math, engineering, and science that “shows in product and technical depth”. A March 2026 policy note from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) backs that up, finding that Hungary “punches above its weight in technology patents.”
He adds competitive costs, proximity to most European capitals and a second generation of “early employees and alumni who now start companies, invest as angels and mentor others.” What the list leaves out is international capital, which he says the region still needs.
Numbers from Dealroom, a startup and venture capital data platform, show where local money is strongest and where it fades. Its latest review of the region, published in April, counts €2.3 billion in venture capital raised by CEE startups in 2025, with a recovery that carried into €952 million in the first quarter of 2026.
Across rounds since 2021, CEE firms make up 90% of the ten most active pre-seed and seed investors, 40% at Series A and 10% at Series B and later. Dealroom concludes that “scaling capital comes from abroad,” with the region receiving 40% of the European average in venture funding per unit of GDP, while producing 120% of the European average in enterprise value per euro raised.
SEON, one of the four companies Tüske names, followed that sequence. The fraud-prevention company, founded in Budapest in 2017, raised a 2021 Series A led by Sweden’s Creandum. U.S. firm IVP backed its $94 million Series B in 2022. Sixth Street Growth, also American, led an $80 million Series C in September 2025 that took total funding to $187 million. SEON now says it operates from Austin, London, Budapest and Singapore.
Foreign capital does not reach every part of Europe equally, however. Atomico, the London-based venture capital firm, finds in its State of European Tech 2025 report that overseas investors’ interest “is unevenly spread across the continent.” The UK and Ireland attract the largest number of U.S. investors, followed by the DACH region – comprising Germany, Austria and Switzerland – “with much fewer reaching tech hubs in CEE.”
Founders follow the funding
Headquarters move along the same lines. In its March 2025 report on the region, Dealroom found that 48% of CEE scaleups, meaning startups that have raised at least €15 million, had moved their headquarters out of their country of origin. Of those, 56% went to the U.S. and 39% to other European countries, including 24% to the UK.
Engineering usually stays put. Dealroom notes that C-level executives relocate more often, but “strategic operations including R&D nearly always remain in the country of origin”. LogMeIn’s first annual report as a listed company placed its primary engineering organization in Budapest, for instance.
Atomico’s founder survey suggests why. Across Europe, around 15% of respondents had relocated and more than 40% had considered it. Among founders at Series B or later, about 23% had moved. More than 60% of those who had relocated or considered it cited the need for greater access to funding, and over 70% of those considering a move named the U.S.
The same wiiw note finds that Central, East and Southeast Europe is particularly exposed to Europe’s scaling problem “due to limited finance and local acquirers.” Neither of the exits Tüske cites had a local buyer: LogMeIn went to Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital, Ustream to IBM.
Brussels sees the same pattern. In March, the European Commission proposed “EU Inc.”, an optional EU-wide company form that could be set up online within 48 hours for no more than €100.
Read more: EU makes a move to streamline company rules with EU Inc. framework
The proposal warns that, without EU-level action, some businesses “would risk moving to third countries with more attractive conditions for growth”.
The test the summit has set itself
Capital is only half of Tüske’s diagnosis. The other half is visibility, which a gathering can address directly.
Europe has plenty of big startup events, he says, but “most sit in the West and North.” Central and Eastern Europe, in his words, “rarely gets a stage of its own where international investors, corporates and policymakers show up in numbers”.
Tüske is explicit about how he will judge the first edition. The organizers are planning for more than 1,000 attendees, but he says “that’s not how I’ll judge it.” Instead, “I’ll call it a success if the right conversations start here.”
He describes those as founders meeting “the investors and partners who back them,” and international guests leaving “with a reason to come back.”
“A first edition doesn’t need to be the biggest event in Europe,” he told 150sec. “It needs to prove the region deserves one, and give people a reason to return in 2027.”
Featured image: Ervin Lukacs via Unsplash+
