Mini BOOTCAMP for Startups on Jan 27
It's come out finally. TechSquare and the European Entrepreneurship Foundation, in cooperation with Credo Ventures, would like to invite you to the first Mini BOOTCAMP for Startups held in Prague. The event is dedicated to young Czech entrepreneurs, with the aim to facilitate transfer of know-how from experienced entrepreneurs and investors to early stage startups. The workshop will be focused on building innovative companies with global market potential from the CEE region.
Mini BOOTCAMP for Startups
| When: | January 27, 2012 at 9am – 6:30pm |
| Where: | TechSquare, Lomnickeho 7, Prague 4 |
| Fee: | CZK 1,890 (50% discount for TechSquare & StartupYard companies & Startup roku teams) |
| Language: | English |
AGENDA
09.00 Opening & Introduction (Ondrej Bartos)
09.10 Setting the Stage (Peter B. Zaboji)
09.45 The Avast Story (Eduard Kucera)
10.30 The IndexTools Story (Marton Szoke)
11.00 COFFEE BREAK
11.30 Team Building (Zoli Piroska)
12.00 Business Slang – Lingua Franca of Today’s World (Imre Hild)
12.30 The YSoft story (Vaclav Muchna)
13.15 LUNCH
14.15 Don’t Fear Failure (Ondrej Bartos)
14.30 The AllPeers Story (Cedric Maloux)
15.00 PANEL: Thinking About Funding Your Startup (Peter B. Zaboji, Ondrej Bartos, Marton Szoke, Cedric Maloux)
15.50 COFFEE BREAK
16.30 PANEL: What Is the Relevant „region“? (Peter B. Zaboji, Zoli Piroska, Imre Hild, Vaclav Muchna)
17.15 PANEL: Is Exit Strategy Important? (Imre Hild, Ondrej Bartos, Marton Szoke)
18.00 Wrap Up & Closing Session
18.30 Networking & Drinks
SPEAKERS
Seven high profile speakers will share their business experience and personal stories with aspiring entrepreneurs:
Facilitators:
Peter B. Záboji
Peter B. Záboji is the Founder and President of the European Entrepreneurship Foundation, Board Director of the Common Sense Society, President of Winning Angels Think Tank, and a board member of a number of young European ventures. Peter enjoyed a long and distinguished career with Siemens in the US and in Germany. In the nineties, he turned entrepreneur and founded several international companies. Later he became a private equity investor. For many years, Peter was Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD; today he lectures at the CEU Business School.
Ondřej Bartoš
An entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Ondrej experienced his first successful business endeavor before he graduated from college in 1996. Several business enterprises later, he is now managing the early stage venture capital firm Credo Ventures, which he co-founded in January 2009. Until December 2008 he served as the Senior Investment Director of MCI Management S.A., where he was responsible for managing investments in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and former Yugoslavia. Ondrej views venture capital as a tool to help entrepreneurs reach their goals, execute their visions, and boost the economy by supporting innovative ideas and projects. Since 2009 he also stars in the investment TV show Den D (Dragons‘ Den) on Czech TV.
Guest Speaker Profiles:
Eduard Kučera
Eduard co-founded AVAST (ALWIL Software) with Pavel Baudiš in 1991 as an association in order to independently develop and distribute the avast! anti-virus program. They quickly managed to break into all areas of the public and corporate spheres in Czechoslovakia and dominate the market. A major turning point came after the entry of global competitors. Loss of the market forced a transition to a new business model – the provision of avast! to home users free of charge. Thanks to this innovative approach, the company succeeded in creating a massive worldwide community of users with which they collaborate to improve and localize avast! in many languages – avast! is currently available in 33 versions. Its maximum use of all available technologies and automation allows the company to serve 130 million users worldwide with “a mere” 100 employees. Eduard Kučera strives to have machines (servers) do as much of the work as possible, freeing up his employees’ time for creativity and innovation and making his company more effective and productive.
Václav Muchna
Born in1980, studied Masaryk University in Brno (Informatics), but didn’t finish it. With business Vaclav started at the age of 18, and 2 years later in 2000 he co-founded Y Soft together with his classmate from college. In 2006 he was awarded with Startup Entrepreneur of the Year and in 2010 Technology Entrepreneur of the Year as well as Entrepreneur of the Year in South Moravia. In Y Soft Vaclav has served as a CEO since the beginning, and today the company has over 130 employees, 11 offices around the world and sells in 72 markets.
Zoli Piroska
Zoli Piroska has been involved with early stage start-ups for much of his career. He is currently the founder and Chief Executive Officer of GreenerOne, Inc., a San Francisco based company that develops environmental ratings for thousands of consumer products in the US and the EU.Prior to founding Greener One he led MoodLogic, a digital media company out of San Francisco, CA. He took over the management of MoodLogic with the company being in significant debt, and over a five year period built it into a profitable venture which ultimately had a highly successful exit for its investors. Earlier in his career, Zoli led the sales and business development functions at the venture funded digital entertainment start-up OneBigCD/Amplified Holdings. He also served in the capacity of Director of Operations for CyberCash, where he managed the company’s online payment service. During this time CyberCash had a 70% world-wide market share in Internet based credit card payments. He was the co-founder of two successful start-ups prior to CyberCash, including USMall, Inc. which owned some of the most successful web sites in the mid 1990s as well as Agri-Marketing Group, a food commodity trading firm.Zoli Piroska graduated from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
Imre Hild
Imre’s professional career began in the Tourism business right at the time of the political changes in Hungary. In 1993 he left for the USA to attend Cornell University. After graduation he worked for McKinsey in Budapest then, upon finishing his MBA also at Cornell he joined the lodging practice of Lehman Brothers in New York. Upon his return to Hungary Imre founded Hild Kft. which brought the innovative Life Annuity for Real Estate concept to market. In 2005 he joined OTP and founded OTP Life Annuity which he headed as CEO until the end of 2008. Currently Imre isinvolved as founder / owner in a number of innovative mobile internet startups. Besides professional activities Imre is co-founder of IvyPlus, a network of US Alumni of Ivy League Universities and RETURN, an umbrella organization of US Alumni.Imre holds a BS with Distinction and MBA degree from Cornell University.
Ivan Štefunko
Ivan Štefunko is the co-founder and Chairman of Neulogy. Ivan’s focus is on commercialization of technologies, technology-based start-ups and academic spin-offs. He studied political sciences and international relations at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris in France and Matej Bel University in Slovakia. Besides being a serial entrepreneur, Ivan has extensive background in media and internet. He co-founded several internet and technology companies, which became number one in their category and respective country, including Euractiv.sk, Pelicantravel.com, Monogram Technologies and wineshop.sk. Over the past 6 years, Ivan has also been extensively advising entrepreneurs on how to better use their skills and assets, and government authorities on how to motivate and support innovative entrepreneurs.
TOPICS
Speakers will cover a wide variety of topics such as:
Starting your business
All of our guest speakers have a personal story to tell. What are their lessons learned? How to start your company? How to build a great team? What are the mistakes to avoid?
Raising capital
Most entrepreneurs are concerned with how to raise capital to finance their innovative idea. All of our guest speakers are entrepreneurs themselves and some of them even turned angel investors. So how did they approach investors? And what do they expect from their investee companies?
Expanding within/from the CEE region
Is it true that you can only build a globally successful startup from the Silicon Valley? Our guest speakers seem to defy this assertion. What are the specificities of starting an innovative business in the CEE region? How can one turn seemingly inferior location into competitive advantage?
Exits
Exits are certainly an exciting period for both, investors as well as entrepreneurs. Though rare in our latitude, our guest speakers will tell us about their first hand experience with IPOs and M&As.
ABOUT
About EEF
The European Entrepreneurship Foundation is a non-profit organization – created in 2006. Its vision is to foster entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial culture in Europe. The European Entrepreneurship Foundation (EEF) works Europe-wide, to catalyze an entrepreneurial society in which job creation, innovation, and the economy flourish.
About TechSquare
TechSquare was established in 2010 with the vision to establish the first business accelerator in Prague, which would bring to innovative technology companies the concept of a modern office space together with professional services around, events and community.
REGISTRATION
Sold out - to be on waiting list please e-mail petra at techsquare.cz