Spotlighting Entrepreneurship In The Czech Republic

I have been watching a small corner of the technology entrepreneurship universe with great interest. It has come up phenomenally well, and the eco-system is producing wonderful and pragmatic successes.

Six years back, we covered AVG: Freemium, Conversion Rates and More: AVG CEO J.R. Smith.

Three years back, I covered Avast, at the time, a $300M security company focused on the consumer antivirus market. Read: Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler.

In 2016, Avast acquired AVG for $1.3 billion. Currently, Avast is valued at over $3.6 billion as a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange.

In consumer antivirus, the Prague area has become a hotbed of innovation.

Last April, I covered Y Soft, a hardware-software hybrid venture in enterprise print management.

Read: Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of Y Soft.

And last week, I interviewed Milos Sochor, who runs Y Soft’s tremendously effective corporate venture fund. You can listen to the podcast here.

From Milos, I learnt that currently there are close to a thousand startups active in that small region. A very small number of these receive venture funding (under 20), and some are going straight from bootstrapping to exit. I think these are all signs of a robust energy level.

I imagine, at least 100-200 of the 1000 are quality companies who could use support and acceleration to become success stories one way or another.

My question is: do you know if there is an entity in that eco-system (accelerator, VC, government, …) that could benefit from collaborating with us in supporting this pool of companies? [Re: Incubator In A Box (IIAB)]

Looking For Some Hands-On Advice?

For entrepreneurs who want to discuss their specific businesses with me, I’m very happy to assess your situation during my free online 1Mby1M Roundtables, held almost every week. You can also check out my LinkedIn Learning course here, my Lynda.com Bootstrapping course here, and follow my writings here.