Editor’s Note
This article highlights two distinct companies: Herosan, a sustainable pet food startup from Graz that recently secured investment from Reploid, and Holzkern, a global brand known for its wood-based watches and accessories.
Herosan is a Graz-based pet food startup focused on sustainable pet nutrition. This year, Herosan received an investment from Reploid.
Holzkern is a globally active provider of watches, jewelry, and accessories made from natural materials. In 2025, it received the award as Scale-up of the Year in the “Retail & Consumer Products” category.
Minimist is a Vienna-based startup that provides second-hand stores with software enabling them to record products once and then automatically list them on platforms like Vinted, Google Shopping, Shopify, and eBay – including AI-powered image recognition and price suggestions. In a pre-seed round this year, Minimist raised 350,000 euros.
refurbed is an Austrian scale-up with a marketplace for refurbished electronics like smartphones, laptops, and tablets, now offering around 45,000 products in eleven European countries. In 2025, the company founded in 2017 achieved profitable growth again after job cuts and completed a funding round of 50 million euros led by investor Alex Zubillaga.
silana is revolutionizing the fashion industry with the world’s first fully automated sewing robot for local, on-demand textile production. It was awarded the Rising Star of the Year in the “Disruption & Innovation” category at the EY Scale-up Award.