Slovak Startup Ecosystem Matej Ftacnik,
co-founder The Spot Booster @ftacnik European Entrepreneurship & Innovation @ Stanford Engineering 23rd Feb 2015

2 Heart of Europe
Member of EU since 2004 - 5.5M Citizens - SK GDP - $94B (2012) - IBM rev.– $99B (2013) Largest car producers per capita

Bratislava
500k
popula8on

The Spot – Booster NGO
Education Networking Mentorship Incubator/Accelerator EIR’s / Mentors Funding Corp. partnerships Jumpstar8ng innova8on in Slovakia 2012 2014

Value Proposition World-class 450 mentors
and initial seed financing of up to 30K with follow-up funding of 30-250K. Focus Data, cloud services, analytics, transactional technologies, fintech and e-commerce, B2B technologies, location-based services, and security software Financing Backed by private investors and the European Commission Estonia Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary Lithuania

Life at The Spot Workshops,
events, mentorship

From Engineering to Bizdev A
short bio Companies Awards / CommunityNGO

Startup ingredients Solving the missing
pieces to make the ecosystem excel Business Talent Lack of international experience / schooling Rare ingredients Abundant ingredients Venture Capital Availability of capital to large numbers of startups Government Support Signs of commitment to support the startup ecosystem Top Engineers Low volumes but high-quality talent coming out of schools Serial Entrepreneurs Small number of exits forces entrepreneurs to stay with one company Test Market National market too small to be final market

Slovak success stories Who already
made it or is on it’s way there Cyber Security 100M+ Customers Mobile Navigation 80M Users Game Developers 25M+ Gamers Mobile Web Creator Exit to godaddy.com

Aeromobil.com
A
flying
car

Aeromobil.com
A
flying
car

Booster - after first 6
months Early success signals from porHolio companies 500 000 EUR Raised seed funding FIT 500 000 EUR Raised seed funding Asseco CE March 2014 batch: Invento SIGNEE

Slovak startup ecosystem A brief
overview Slovak President @ Stanford Governments commitment to support startups John L. Hennessy Stanford President Andrej Kiska Slovak President

Slovak startup ecosystem A brief
overview Venture Capital Community University Government

Slovak startup ecosystem A brief
overview Corporate Associations Inc. / Acc. Mature Startups

Bridging into the Valley Connec8ng
the two ecosystems Mentors, experts, US entrepreneurs Getting people from Silicon Valley excited to come to Slovakia and broaden the knowledge pool of local startups. Market access/discovery Allowing more Slovak startups to experience Silicon Valley. Establishing a “Slovak house” that fosters relationships and acts as a bridge. Access to later stage capital Making it easier for high-potential Slovak startups to be considered for Series A or later stage funding from SV investors. Scouting innovation Enabling CEE corporates to scout and partner with SV startups making them more innovative. Opening a new market for those startups.

Get in touch Matej Ftáčnik
ftacnik@thespot.sk +421 911 278 426 @ftacnik 18