The Founders' Agreement: Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in the EU. Understanding which terms are actually enforceable across different countries.21 | Ultimate Guide For Startups

TL;DR: Founder non-compete clauses in the EU only work when they are narrow, local-law aware, and tied to a real business interest

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The Founders' Agreement: Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in the EU. Understanding which terms are actually enforceable across different countries.21 explains that if you are a founder in Europe, a scary clause is not the same as an enforceable one. What usually protects you most is a short, focused restriction backed by clean IP ownership, strong confidentiality terms, and country-by-country legal review.

• Your biggest benefit: you can avoid signing fake protection that fails in court or traps you in a bad exit. Across the EU, judges usually test duration, geography, scope, bargaining power, compensation, and whether the clause protects a real business interest.

• What usually survives: short customer or employee non-solicit clauses, tight confidentiality terms, and founder restrictions linked to actual products, clients, or trade secrets. Broad 24-month worldwide non-competes often fail or get cut down.

• Why this matters across Europe: founders are not treated the same as employees, directors, or sellers of a business, and countries like Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands all apply different rules. Some post-exit non-competes need payment to be valid.

• What you should do next: review your founders’ agreement with local law in mind, clean up IP ownership, and make your legal documents consistent. If you want related help, read this IP assignment guide and this startup legal checklist.

If you are updating founder terms now, use this article as a checklist and redraft your restrictions before a dispute forces the issue.

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The Founders’ Agreement: Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in the EU. Understanding which terms are actually enforceable across different countries.21 starts with one uncomfortable truth: founders often sign restrictions they do not understand, and later discover that half the clause is drama, one quarter is unenforceable, and the last quarter is the part that can actually hurt them. In the EU, non-compete and non-solicit clauses are not governed by one clean European rule. They sit inside a patchwork of local contract law, labor law, company law, public policy, and court practice. For startups, that means a clause that looks tough in one country may collapse in another, or survive only in a much narrower form.

What is a non-compete? It is a contractual restriction that tries to stop a founder, employee, or shareholder from starting, joining, or helping a competing business during the relationship or after it ends. What is a non-solicit? It is a clause that tries to stop someone from poaching customers, staff, suppliers, or other business contacts. For startups, these clauses are usually meant to protect code, know-how, customer access, investor trust, and team stability.

Why this matters for startups: if your founders’ agreement includes vague or overaggressive restrictions, you may scare off talent, trigger litigation, or create a false sense of safety. A founders’ agreement should protect the company, but it should do so in a way that a court can respect. If you have not yet cleaned up the broader governance side, start with a solid founders agreement guide because non-compete language only works when the rest of the document is coherent.

Key takeaway: in most EU countries, enforceability turns on a few recurring tests. Courts look at legitimate business interest, duration, geography, scope of activities, bargaining power, and whether the clause goes further than needed. Some countries are stricter with employees than with shareholders or sellers of a business. Some require compensation for post-termination restrictions. Some are deeply skeptical of broad restraints. That is where founders get burned.

Why do non-compete and non-solicit clauses matter so much for EU startups now?

The startup problem is simple. Early-stage companies have very little that is fully defensible. Brand is weak, patents may not exist yet, customer contracts are fragile, and the product changes every month. What you really own is usually a messy bundle of know-how, code, product direction, pricing assumptions, lead lists, investor conversations, and tacit knowledge sitting inside human brains. That makes founder exits dangerous.

At the same time, Europe is not one legal market. Founders recruit in Portugal, incorporate in Estonia, raise in the Netherlands, contract with German customers, and move to Spain mid-journey. Then everyone acts surprised when a single founders’ agreement does not magically travel well. From my own European founder perspective, this is where bootstrappers make a very expensive mistake. They copy a US template, insert a 24-month global non-compete, and feel protected. They are not protected. They are often just self-soothed.

Recent legal reporting keeps showing how restrictions on competition and solicitation remain a live issue in business disputes and worker mobility. Public reporting from Law.com on tougher EU antitrust rules and from Global Competition Review on no-poach related disputes reflects a broader policy mood. Europe is cautious about restraints that distort fair competition or worker mobility. That mood does not decide every founders’ agreement case, but it shapes the background against which courts read restrictive covenants.

Limited resources means one founder departure can damage product continuity and fundraising.
Fast hiring across borders means the same clause may touch labor law in one country and shareholder law in another.
Investor diligence often checks whether founder restrictions are sensible and enforceable, not just scary on paper.
Remote teams create governing law and forum problems that many startup templates ignore.

Here is why this topic keeps coming back. Founders treat restrictive covenants like a weapon. Courts treat them like an exception. That difference matters.

What is actually being restricted in a founders’ agreement?

Let’s break it down. People often throw three or four different restrictions into one bucket, even though courts may assess them differently.

Non-compete

A non-compete tries to stop a founder from carrying out competing activities. That may include starting a rival company, investing in one, advising one, or working for one. The legal risk rises when the clause is broad on activities, territory, and time.

Non-solicit of customers

This clause blocks a founder from approaching, enticing, or doing business with the startup’s clients, prospects, or partners for a period after departure. Courts often view it more favorably than a full non-compete because it is narrower.

Non-solicit of employees

This tries to stop the departing founder from recruiting or inducing team members to leave. Startups care about this deeply because small teams are fragile. A no-poach clause aimed at your own team is usually easier to defend than a ban on all competition, though it still must be proportionate.

Confidentiality and trade secrets

These obligations protect non-public information such as source code, product plans, pricing, algorithms, investor data, manufacturing methods, and customer strategy. Very often, a startup would be smarter to draft excellent confidentiality, IP assignment, and return-of-materials clauses instead of leaning too hard on an overbroad non-compete. If your company still does not clearly own what founders built, fix that with an IP assignment guide before pretending a non-compete will save you.

Which legal tests usually decide enforceability across EU countries?

Even though national rules differ, judges across Europe tend to ask similar questions. You should draft around these questions from day one.

Is there a legitimate business interest? Protecting trade secrets, confidential information, customer relationships, and team stability usually counts. Preventing all future competition usually does not.
Is the clause proportionate? Courts examine whether the restriction is no wider than needed.
How long does it last? Shorter periods are easier to defend. Six to twelve months is easier than twenty-four.
How broad is the activity ban? A clause tied to a specific product category or customer segment is safer than “any competing business.”
What is the geographic scope? Country-specific or market-specific limits are easier to justify than worldwide bans, unless the company truly operates globally and can prove it.
What is the legal role of the person? Courts often treat employees, directors, founders, minority shareholders, and sellers of a business differently.
Is compensation required? In some countries, a post-termination non-compete is hard or impossible without payment.
Can a court narrow the clause? Some legal systems may trim an excessive restriction. Others may strike it out.

That last point matters a lot. Founders often assume a judge will kindly rewrite their bad drafting into something fair. In some places that can happen in limited ways. In others, the clause simply dies. Betting your startup on judicial editing is lazy drafting.

How do key EU countries differ on founder non-compete and non-solicit clauses?

This is the part founders actually need. The summary below is practical, not academic. It is also general, so local advice still matters before signing or enforcing anything.

Netherlands

The Netherlands is often contract-friendly, but employment restrictions receive close scrutiny. Dutch law is known for formal rules around employee non-competes, and courts can temper clauses that overreach. Founder-shareholder restrictions may get more room than employee restrictions, especially if the founder negotiated at arm’s length and had real bargaining power. Still, proportionality matters. A narrow non-solicit tied to known customers and employees is usually easier to defend than a broad sector-wide ban. Law.com has also pointed to the Netherlands as an active venue for private enforcement discussions, which shows how legally sophisticated the jurisdiction can be.

Germany

Germany is famous for structure. Post-contract non-competes in employment settings usually require compensation and are tightly bounded. For managing directors and shareholder-founders, the analysis can differ, but the clause still needs a real protective purpose and a reasonable scope. German drafting often works best when it is very specific about customer set, business area, and duration.

France

France is also strict, especially with employment-related restrictions. A post-termination non-compete generally needs to be limited in time and place, necessary to protect legitimate interests, and compensated. Courts dislike vague drafting. Non-solicit clauses can be easier to sustain if they focus on direct business relationships and team poaching rather than a blanket market ban.

Belgium

Belgium often separates employee rules from business sale or shareholder situations. Employee non-competes have statutory guardrails. Between founders or shareholders, courts may show more flexibility, but proportionality still runs the show. If your startup spans Belgium and the Netherlands, do not assume one covenant works for both just because the train ride is short.

Spain

Spain tends to accept restrictive covenants only when they are justified and bounded. Post-termination restrictions often need compensation in employment contexts. In founder exits, a narrower non-solicit and strong confidentiality package often offers a cleaner path than a broad non-compete.

Italy

Italy also places limits on non-competes and usually expects clarity around object, duration, territory, and compensation, especially in labor relationships. For founders acting as shareholders or directors, courts may assess the commercial context more flexibly, but they still do not love sweeping bans.

Ireland

Ireland is known for a common-law style reasonableness test. Courts can be skeptical of broad post-termination restraints, and employers often lose when the drafting is too wide. Narrow customer and staff non-solicit clauses may fare better. Startups often assume Irish law is “business friendly,” then discover that friendly does not mean permissive.

Sweden, Denmark, and Finland

The Nordics usually care about fairness and proportionality, especially where labor mobility is involved. Restrictions may be tolerated in limited settings, but courts and policymakers are not enthusiastic about founder agreements that read like cages. If you operate in a distributed Nordic team, restrictions should be sharply linked to confidential information and customer access.

Poland, Czech Republic, and other CEE jurisdictions

Central and Eastern Europe is not one legal bloc. Some jurisdictions are more formal, others more court-led in practice. Compensation and statutory detail can matter a lot. The drafting quality gap is also huge here because many startups borrow documents from Germany, the UK, or the US without adaptation. That is how founders end up with clauses that impress nobody except the person who copied them from the internet.

Rule of thumb: in much of Europe, the closer your clause gets to a targeted customer non-solicit plus strong confidentiality and IP protection, the better your odds. The closer it gets to “you may not work in this whole sector anywhere in Europe for two years,” the worse your odds.

Are founders treated the same as employees?

No, and this distinction changes everything. A founder can wear several hats at once: shareholder, director, employee, consultant, board member, inventor, and seller of shares. Courts may examine the same person through different legal lenses depending on which document and which obligation is being enforced.

Employee lens: stronger worker protection, more skepticism toward broad restraints, and often stricter rules on compensation.
Shareholder lens: more space for negotiated restrictions, especially when tied to company value and governance.
Business sale lens: courts may accept broader restraints when someone sells a business or shares and receives value for goodwill.
Director duty lens: active directors often owe loyalty duties during office even without a separate post-exit non-compete.

Here is where startup reality gets messy. A co-founder can resign as CEO, keep shares, and still owe confidentiality duties. Another can remain employed but stop contributing. Another may be a contractor, not an employee. This is why your legal stack must fit together. Restrictions do not live in isolation. They connect to vesting, leaver rules, IP ownership, and board control. If you are cleaning up founder departures, review your vesting schedule in Europe because dead equity often causes more damage than the absence of a non-compete.

What terms are more likely to be enforceable?

Founders always ask for a model clause. The better question is what design choices increase the odds that a clause survives. Here is the short answer.

Short duration, often six to twelve months rather than eighteen to twenty-four.
Narrow activity scope, tied to the startup’s actual products, customers, or market segment.
Defined geography, only where the company really operates or plans to operate credibly.
Specific customer non-solicit, limited to customers or prospects known through the role.
Employee non-solicit, focused on active poaching rather than accidental hiring.
Clear legitimate interest, such as protecting trade secrets, strategic roadmap, pricing, or product architecture.
Compensation where required, especially in jurisdictions that expect payment for post-termination restraints.
Separate confidentiality and IP clauses, so the non-compete is not carrying work it should never carry.

In founder disputes, I have seen one recurring pattern. The startup that can point to real confidential assets, documented access, signed IP assignments, and a carefully drafted customer non-solicit usually looks serious. The startup waving a giant generic non-compete often looks insecure.

What terms are least likely to survive?

Worldwide restrictions for a local or early-stage startup.
Two-year bans with no compensation where local law expects compensation.
Bans on “any business that competes directly or indirectly” with no clear definition.
Restrictions that cover markets the company has never entered.
Clauses copied from employment contracts into shareholder agreements without adaptation.
Restrictions imposed on junior contributors who had no access to sensitive information.
Clauses that try to stop passive investment in public companies at tiny ownership levels.
Terms that conflict with mandatory local labor law.

Bad drafting also creates practical problems. Even if you win on paper, investors and acquirers hate avoidable litigation risk. An unenforceable clause can still poison a cap table conversation because it signals sloppy governance.

How should startups draft founder restrictions step by step?

Next steps. If you are building or revising a founders’ agreement, do not start with the clause. Start with the business interest you need to protect.

Phase 1: map the real risk

List your real assets: codebase, product roadmap, customer list, technical methods, pricing logic, supplier terms, investor pipeline.
Identify which founder can access which assets.
Separate what is public from what is truly confidential.
Check whether the company already owns the IP created by each founder.

If you are still deciding where to set up the company, jurisdiction choice affects all of this later. A smart first step is reviewing incorporating in Europe because the place of incorporation and governing law can influence how your founder package is built.

Phase 2: choose the lightest restriction that does the job

Use confidentiality for information protection.
Use IP assignment for ownership.
Use non-solicit for customer and team protection.
Use non-compete only where a narrower tool is not enough.

This is one of my strongest founder opinions. Protection should sit inside the workflow, not just inside legal fantasy. If the company has weak access controls, messy documentation, and shared passwords, a strict non-compete is lipstick on operational chaos.

Phase 3: draft for a judge, not for intimidation

Define “competing business” with precision.
Name the protected customer groups.
Limit duration.
Set a realistic territory.
State the legitimate business interest.
Check if local law requires compensation.
Add severability only if it helps under the chosen law.
Align the clause with leaver, vesting, confidentiality, and IP terms.

Phase 4: prepare enforcement evidence before any dispute exists

Keep records of who accessed what.
Maintain signed agreements in one place.
Document customer ownership and founder roles.
Run clean exit procedures when a founder leaves.

This matters even more once you start hiring. Team departures create similar issues, but labor law can be even less forgiving than founder-shareholder law. If your startup is scaling across borders, read hiring in Europe because founder clauses and employee restrictions often collide in ugly ways.

What are the best practices for 2026?

1. Prefer a narrow non-solicit over a broad non-compete when possible

What it is: a ban on approaching defined customers, prospects, or staff for a limited time.

Why it works: courts often see it as less restrictive than blocking someone from earning a living in a whole sector.

Name the protected groups clearly.
Limit the period to what the business can justify.
Tie it to contacts gained through the founder role.

Common pitfall: covering every person the company has ever emailed.

How to avoid it: restrict the clause to active customers, serious prospects, and current team members.

2. Build around trade secrets, not ego

What it is: identifying the information that truly gives the startup an edge and protecting that directly.

Why it works: courts respond better when they can see what exactly needed protection.

Create a confidential information schedule.
Limit access internally.
Use return-of-materials and deletion obligations at exit.

Common pitfall: calling everything confidential, including public marketing copy.

How to avoid it: classify information and treat each class differently.

3. Match the clause to the founder’s role and bargaining power

What it is: drafting different restrictions for a CEO-founder with deep access and a part-time co-founder with limited exposure.

Why it works: proportionality looks stronger when the covenant matches real access and real risk.

Map role, access, and influence.
Adjust duration and scope to that map.
Review the package after funding rounds or role changes.

Common pitfall: one boilerplate clause for every founder and adviser.

How to avoid it: treat restrictions as role-based, not template-based.

4. Make the legal stack internally consistent

What it is: ensuring your founders’ agreement, shareholder agreement, employment contract, IP assignment, and vesting documents do not contradict one another.

Why it works: disputes are won or lost in the gaps between documents.

Check governing law and forum across all documents.
Align definitions like “cause,” “bad leaver,” and “confidential information.”
Review the package whenever the team or jurisdiction mix changes.

Common pitfall: using a UK template, a Delaware SAFE logic, and a local employment contract in one European startup stack.

How to avoid it: run a document harmonization review before a financing round or founder exit.

What mistakes do founders make most often?

Mistake 1: copying US non-compete language into an EU startup

Why founders do it: speed, budget pressure, and false confidence from online templates.

The impact: the clause may be partly void, fully void, or unenforceable where it matters most.

Check local law before signing, not after conflict starts.
Draft around legitimate interest and proportionality.
Use narrower restrictions first.

Mistake 2: using non-competes to fix weak operations

Why founders do it: it feels easier to threaten than to build proper information controls.

The impact: even a valid clause is hard to police when the company cannot prove what was confidential or who took what.

Use access controls.
Maintain audit trails.
Document confidential assets.

Mistake 3: forgetting compensation rules

Why founders do it: they do not realize some countries expect payment for post-termination restrictions.

The impact: the covenant can collapse even if the rest of the drafting looks neat.

Check whether compensation is mandatory.
Model the cost before inserting the clause.
Prefer non-solicit if the economics of non-compete compensation make no sense.

Mistake 4: treating all countries in Europe as one jurisdiction

Why founders do it: remote work creates the illusion of one market.

The impact: governing law fights, forum fights, and clauses that fail under mandatory local rules.

Map where founders live and work.
Review which rules are mandatory despite the contract choice.
Update agreements after relocation or expansion.

How can you measure whether your founder restriction package is actually good?

You do not need vanity metrics here. You need a legal hygiene dashboard.

Foundational checks

Percentage of founders with signed, current agreements.
Percentage of founder-created IP assigned to the company.
Existence of a clean confidentiality schedule.
Jurisdiction review completed for each founder location.
Exit checklist completed for each departing founder or senior hire.

Advanced checks after a few months

Time needed to assemble enforcement evidence.
Percentage of customer accounts with clear ownership history.
Access log coverage for code, product, and finance systems.
Document consistency across founders’ agreement, employment terms, and shareholder documents.

If your answer to any of these is “we think so,” then your legal hygiene is weaker than you think.

How should different startup stages approach founder restrictions?

Pre-seed and seed

Your reality: little cash, lots of trust, changing product, and very little appetite for expensive disputes.

Prioritize IP assignment, confidentiality, vesting, and a targeted customer and employee non-solicit.
Keep any non-compete short and tightly bounded.
Avoid legal theatre that you cannot afford to enforce.

Success looks like: if one founder leaves, the company keeps the code, keeps the roadmap, and keeps operating.

Series A

Your reality: team growth, investor scrutiny, more formal governance, and higher risk around customer relationships.

Review all founder restrictions for local enforceability.
Separate employment and shareholder duties cleanly.
Build evidence trails and access controls before any conflict appears.

Success looks like: diligence questions get answered quickly, and no investor panics at founder document chaos.

Series B and later

Your reality: multiple jurisdictions, senior hires, acquisitions, and more to lose if a founder exits badly.

Standardize document logic across countries while respecting local mandatory rules.
Review acquired founder covenants separately.
Use litigation-readiness procedures, not just signed PDFs.

Success looks like: the company can manage exits without improvising its legal position under pressure.

What would I do as a bootstrapping European founder?

I would draft like a linguist and operate like a paranoid product manager. That means every restriction would be tied to an observable business risk, every vague word would be questioned, and every legal promise would be backed by a workflow. This comes from years of building across jurisdictions, technologies, and teams where legal hygiene cannot be an afterthought. My bias is simple: protection should be invisible, embedded, and provable.

I also would not confuse punishment with prevention. Founders waste time dreaming about suing defectors when they should be fixing ownership, access, documentation, and exit mechanics. Education that feels too safe rarely changes behavior, and startup law works the same way. The agreements that save companies are often the ones built around real operational discipline, not macho wording.

What should you do in the next 4 weeks?

Week 1

Collect every founder-related document in one folder.
List all jurisdictions connected to each founder.
Mark which clauses are non-compete, non-solicit, confidentiality, and IP assignment.

Week 2

Map your real confidential assets and customer relationships.
Check who owns code, designs, data, and patents or patentable outputs.
Identify any clause that is global, vague, or longer than needed.

Week 3

Redraft the restrictions around legitimate business interest.
Split customer non-solicit from employee non-solicit.
Verify whether compensation is needed in each relevant country.

Week 4

Align the clause package with vesting, leaver provisions, and IP ownership.
Create a founder exit checklist.
Store signed versions and evidence trails properly.

Glossary of the terms founders actually need here

Non-compete: a contractual restriction on working in or helping a competing business during or after a relationship.

Non-solicit: a clause preventing active poaching of customers, employees, suppliers, or other business contacts.

Legitimate business interest: a real business reason that may justify a restriction, such as protecting trade secrets or customer relationships.

Proportionality: the legal idea that a restriction should go no further than needed to protect the interest at stake.

Trade secret: commercially valuable information that is not public and is protected through secrecy measures.

Governing law: the legal system the contract says will apply to its interpretation.

Forum: the court or arbitration venue where disputes will be decided.

Bad leaver: a founder or shareholder who leaves under conditions that trigger harsher contractual outcomes, often tied to vesting or share repurchase rules.

Key takeaways

EU founder non-compete and non-solicit clauses are country-specific. There is no single European answer.
Narrow usually beats broad. Customer and employee non-solicits often stand a better chance than sweeping non-competes.
Employees and founders are not always treated the same. Role, bargaining power, and local law matter.
Compensation can be mandatory. Miss this, and your clause may fail.
Operational proof matters. Clean IP ownership, confidentiality controls, and exit procedures often matter more than aggressive wording.
Draft for enforceability, not intimidation. Courts are not impressed by legal cosplay.

If you remember one thing, remember this: the best founders’ agreement does not try to imprison the future. It protects the company with terms a court can respect, a founder can understand, and a startup can actually live with.

FAQ

Can a founders’ non-compete fail even if everyone signed it willingly?

Yes. In many EU countries, signature alone does not save an overbroad restriction. Courts still test necessity, proportionality, role, duration, and local mandatory law. A clause negotiated between sophisticated founders may get more respect than an employee clause, but it can still be narrowed or struck out.

Is a non-solicit usually safer than a non-compete for EU founders?

Often yes. A customer or employee non-solicit is usually easier to justify because it targets a specific business risk instead of blocking someone from working in a whole market. Draft it around actual relationships, recent contacts, and a short period rather than broad future commercial activity.

What happens if a founder moves to another EU country after signing?

Relocation can create enforcement headaches. The contract may name one governing law, but mandatory employment or public policy rules in the founder’s new country can still matter. If your team is mobile, use a cross-border legal review and compare terms against a startup legal checklist by country.

Do courts care whether the company actually protected its confidential information?

Very much. If passwords were shared, access logs were missing, and sensitive files were loosely handled, your argument for restrictive covenants gets weaker. Courts prefer concrete evidence of real trade secrets and real protection steps, which is why strong European startup playbook discipline matters.

Are non-competes more enforceable when a founder sells shares or exits after an acquisition?

Usually they have a better chance. Courts are often more open to restrictions linked to a sale of goodwill, shares, or business value than to ordinary employment. Even then, the clause still needs sensible limits on duration, territory, and scope of competing activities.

Should startups include passive investment carve-outs in founder restrictions?

Yes, in most cases. A ban that blocks tiny passive holdings in listed companies can look excessive and unnecessary. A common fix is allowing small minority investments with no management role, board seat, or access to confidential information in any potentially competing business.

How should startups define “competing business” in a founder agreement?

Define it narrowly by reference to your real products, services, technology stack, customer segment, or market category. Avoid vague phrases like “directly or indirectly competitive.” The more your definition matches the company’s actual commercial activity, the stronger the case for enforceability across EU jurisdictions.

Can a startup rely on a court to rewrite a bad restrictive covenant?

That is risky. Some countries may trim an excessive clause, but others may refuse and let it fail entirely. Draft as if the text will be read literally under pressure. If a restriction would look unreasonable to a judge on day one, fix it before signing.

What evidence should a startup keep if it may need to enforce a founder non-solicit?

Keep signed agreements, cap table history, role descriptions, customer ownership records, access logs, exit emails, return-of-device confirmations, and proof of who handled sensitive accounts. When disputes arise, enforcement often depends less on dramatic wording and more on whether your evidence package is clean.

What is the practical alternative if a post-termination non-compete looks too weak or too expensive?

Use a protection stack instead of one heavy clause. Combine confidentiality, IP assignment, customer non-solicit, employee non-solicit, clean offboarding, and role-based access controls. For many EU startups, that bundle protects core value better than a broad founder non-compete that may not survive scrutiny.

Violetta Bonenkamp

Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as Mean CEO, is a female entrepreneur and an experienced startup founder, bootstrapping her startups. She has an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 10 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely. Constantly learning new things, like AI, SEO, zero code, code, etc. and scaling her businesses through smart systems.

The Founders’ Agreement: Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in the EU. Understanding which terms are actually enforceable across different countries.21 | Ultimate Guide For Startups | 2026 EDITION