esi: Who are you, what do you do and what makes you an expert on your start-upcountry?
Michal: My name is Michal and I meet over 250 new start-up projects, mentor tens of them, and train hundreds of people each year. I founded JIC | StarCube, an award winning start-up accelerator program and first accelerator in the Czech Republic. I am also in charge of Microsoft Innovation Center Brno. Both initiatives are part of JIC, where I am responsible for leadership and strategic planning of the start-up program for almost five years.
esi: What is cool about your start-upcountry, what inspires you and keeps you thriving?
Michal: What keeps me thriving is definitely to work with talented people who are hungry for success and are grateful for valuable help. Unexplored is a systematic approach to work with talented people in academia and from corporations, who might be the biggest asset for the next generation of central European companies. That makes it a challenging obstacle to be conquered. What is cool is the big and collective push of the regional government, companies and universities to bloom the knowledge economy. Unfortunately, this is happening only in the south-east of the country in Brno and it’s region.
esi: What makes you shake your head about your start-upcountry, what needs to be improved?
Michal: Currently, Czech start-up scene is quite young and immature, mostly copying American and British projects. There is also lot of “hipster” kind of start-ups that love to “do the start-up”. The lifestyle is more important for them than to bring some value to customers. In fact, I believe, we need more high-tech companies. The successful start-ups I have seen were mostly run by CEOs over 35 with PhDs. In Central Europe we cannot afford to have only the hipster attitude. You can hear more about this topic at my keynote speech from WebExpo Prague 2013: www.vimeo.com/78068669
esi: What’s some cool fact we are likely not to know about your start-upcountry?
Michal: Czech Republic is very strong in the computer security industry. There is almost 39% of the world market in antivirus business situated in the vicinity of Brno. Many other companies are working in the area of network monitoring and data protection. One of them (Cognitive Security) was acquired by Cisco in 2013 for over 20 Mio. USD.In each city over 100.000 inhabitants there are some applied research facilities, that will need to produce applied results. This is a huge opportunity for new companies to be born based on advanced technology solving real big problems of today’s world.
esi: Thank you for the interview.
About the interviewpartner:
Michal Hrabí is director of StarCube. He says his mission is to spread entrepreneurial spirit and start-up culture across Europe.
