esi: Who are you, what do you do and what makes you an expert on your start-upcountry?
Jaroslav: I am the head of business consulting at Neulogy, a Research and Development company, providing services for business angels. Also, I am the Investment Manager at Neulogy’s newly established seed and Venture Capital fund in Slovakia. Moreover, I am the co-founder of StartupAwards, the biggest start-up competition in Slovakia.
esi: What is cool about your start-upcountry, what inspires you and keeps you thriving?
Jaroslav: In Slovakia you can find lots of untapped potential, like university drawers full of interesting technologies with virtually no commercialization to date. The Slovakian start-up community is relatively small, but very compact and cooperative thus there are lots of new initiatives that are now coming together – universities, incubators, angels, Venture Capitalists, government and media.
esi: What makes you shake your head about your start-upcountry, what needs to be improved?
Jaroslav: The poor quality of (business) education definitely has to be improved. Tech people are good, but have no business skills. Also, English knowledge is still a big problem. Another problem is the legal environment – Slovakia is generally a really Venture Capital unfriendly country – no vesting, no ESOP, no drag along and no standard Venture Capital terms are recognized by the law. Moreover the tech transfer infrastructure is very poor, thus it is really difficult to create university spin-offs due to their internal rules and regulations.
esi: What’s some cool fact we are likely not to know about your start-upcountry?
Jaroslav: We have couple of very cool start-ups: flying car, plasma drilling etc. There are almost no Venture Capital investments – that is why we are launching a fund. And in Silicon Valley, Slovakia is famous for top designers.
esi: Thank you for the interview.
About the interviewpartner:
Jaroslav Lupták is Investment Manager at Neulogy Ventures and co-founder of StartupAwards.sk
