Business and Investment Development Agency

News

Czech Republic the centre of European start-up event

The Startup World Cup and Summit returning to Prague

Czech Republic the centre of European start-up event Source: SWC-S

The Startup World Cup & Summit will take place in Prague on Wednesday, 10 April 2019. This is one of the biggest start-up events in Europe and undoubtedly the biggest start-up event of 2019 in the Czech Republic. An expert jury will first select from among 21 favourites the finalist of the Visegrad Four regional round, which will subsequently compete with the winners of the other regional rounds from countries throughout Europe. The winner will advance to the international final in Silicon Valley.

The Czech Republic will be represented in the V4 regional final by a total of 14 start-ups in the areas of proptech (innovation in building management), virtual reality, IoT (internet of things), logistics, healthcare, products and e-commerce. These include four start-ups – Actijoy, Aleego, Motionlab and Spaceflow – that previously participated in CzechInvest’s start-up development programmes.

The winners of the thirteen regional rounds, including the V4 round, will compete against each other in the Europe-wide phase of the competition. The jury will select only one “champion of the continent”, which will receive an investment in the amount of USD 500,000. The competition is very strong – more than 100 start-ups entered each of the thirteen regional rounds; the resulting number of finalists in the Startup World Cup & Summit thus represents the best of more than two thousand European start-ups.

CzechInvest is the main partner of the event. The agency has been focusing on support for Czech start-ups since 2010 and is responsible for coordination of activities leading to the creation of the national start-up and spin-off environment defined in the Innovation Strategy of the Czech Republic 2019-2030. Therefore, the agency is striving ever more intensively to eliminate the fragmentation of the Czech start-up ecosystem and to cooperate more closely with the private start-up scene.
CzechInvest will exhibit at the conference at a stand shared with selected start-up with which it cooperates in connection with its activities and programmes – Aleego, Mebster, miomove, Motionlab and OctoGeo. In the mentoring zone, interested parties will be able to meet with representatives of CzechInvest regarding the topics of foreign expansion and space technologies.

In connection with the conference’s accompanying programme, CzechInvest is organising, in cooperation with the MY-GATEWAY project, the two-day Access2finance workshop, at which participants will learn about the broadest spectrum of forms of support, e.g. financial instruments (SME Instruments), subsidies and other possibilities of alternative sources of financing for start-ups. Those interested in participating in the workshop can register for each day separately via the relevant registration forms on Tuesday, 9 April 2019, here and on Wednesday, 10 April 2019, here.

The Startup World Cup & Summit was established by combining two major start-up conferences of recent years. The Startup World Cup is a global start-up conference and competition organised by the Fenox venture-capital fund. It was established in Silicon Valley with the aim of supporting innovation, unifying the start-up ecosystem, opening doors to talented entrepreneurs and identifying the world’s twenty best start-up projects. The winners of the regional rounds will compete in the grand final in Silicon Valley for an investment in the amount of CZK 1 million and more. The history of the Startup Summit, which is organised by the Air Ventures investment fund, dates back to 2012.

More information is available at www.swcsummit.com.

We use cookies to ensure optimal functioning of our website. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. More information here
}