The data were collected through an online survey aimed at startup founders, run in cooperation with many practitioner supporters, startup associations and a variety of ecosystem stakeholders. The survey remained open from mid-July 2019 until the 2nd of September and collected 848 responses from 31 countries.

Limitations
Some limitations to the study must be taken into account when drawing conclusions from the findings. Firstly, the European Startup Monitor did not have the ambition to have a full coverage of all the startups in Europe, which, needless to say, outsizes the sample by at least one order of magnitude.

The researchers focused on analysing the data per stage of development of the startups. This led to sizable categories and to the ability to make the findings and their comparison significant, with the exception of the steady stage category, which is small in relative terms (2.5% of the sample). Secondly, the data for Austria have been collected through a dedicated survey, with an approach that was mostly, but not completely, aligned with the main survey. The general similarity between the two surveys allowed to analyse their data jointly, but some differences made it impossible to use the data for Austria for some specific analyses.