Eastern European countries are overtaking the “old†European economies in the West in terms of innovativeness and digitalization. VC investments cumulatively reached over 4bn EUR in 2021 in CEE states with Estonia leading the whole Europe in terms of VC investments per capita. Yet, we still see that corporate innovation scouts and investors from Western Europe are shying away to fully include CEE into their scouting routine. Explore the opportunities and challenges to the full integration of CEE into Europe’s startup market.