Majo Porvažník (Co-founder, Vacuum Group & Sparring): From Law to Tech, from Eastern Slovakia via Oxford and Back

Debating, law and the decision to leave The Hague

Martin Brath: Alright, welcome to everyone listening. With me today is Majo Porvažník, an investor, entrepreneur, and lawyer who brings together an interesting combination of technology, law, and investing. Majo, welcome.

Majo Porvažník: Hi!

Martin Brath: I'd start with your beginnings. I'm quite interested in the part where, as a teenager, you decided to go into law. That usually leads to some kind of specialization, but your path has been rather atypical. What happened between deciding to study law and becoming the person you are today?

Majo Porvažník: Wow. Alright, I think several things influence our lives. For me, the first is people. Of course, you have your genetic makeup and life events, but people are what shape you most. While I was still at secondary school, precisely at that teenage stage, I was lucky enough to find a group through the Slovak Debate Association. It's a secondary-school debating program that teaches public speaking, argumentation, and critical thinking. But the people there are much more important. They're inspiring people who like reading and are interested in the world. Many of those secondary-school students subscribed to The Economist. We'd discuss things like what to do about Taiwan, both through the motions at competitions and in our free time.

Majo Porvažník: It was a very inspiring group that became a benchmark for your life: where do you actually want to get to? When you saw friends a year or two older finishing up at schools in England or elsewhere abroad, it motivated you to go further. They also remained friends who could give you feedback and a frame of reference. So it doesn't really matter which organization it is. I'm not saying the Slovak Debate Association is the best thing since sliced bread; there are lots of organizations. What's important is that, whatever secondary school you attend, you surround yourself with inspiring people who can help you move forward in whatever direction you're drawn to.

Majo Porvažník: That was the first thing. It gave me the foundations of civic engagement and caring about society, of understanding that life isn't just about looking after yourself. Many debate topics were social issues, so we thought about what a well-governed society could look like. I think that later fed into business and law as well.

Majo Porvažník: Another important moment came when I went to The Hague after Oxford. It was interesting: we dealt with genocide in the former Yugoslavia. I worked in the prosecutor's office, and at the tribunal we dealt with Srebrenica. On Rwanda, we dealt with a hill where about 30,000 people had died. It was interesting to be part of major history, the kind that gets written into textbooks. But after a year, I realized that international justice would manage perfectly well without Majo Porvažník. Whether I was there or not made no difference. My added value was practically zero. If I wasn't there, someone else, just as well or better educated, just as intelligent or more intelligent, would do the work and process those cases. If I stayed, I'd be staying only for myself.

Majo Porvažník: That was an important life decision. In The Hague, I told myself I had to return home to Slovakia. We're a small country with a significant outflow of people, and here one individual can achieve an enormous amount and make a difference. I made that decision in 2014 and came back then.

Majo Porvažník: Then came a period in corporate law. That was another lesson. We worked quite a lot in the public institution, but I felt we weren't being pushed to our limits. I think that, up to the age of 30, your primary goal should be developing your abilities, building your skill set. How much you earn isn't completely irrelevant, but it's largely secondary. Once you earn enough to live decently, money doesn't play such a big role at that early stage of your career. What matters much more is what skills you're learning and how quickly you're learning them.

Majo Porvažník: Corporate law was, in the best possible sense, hard labor. Of the 16 or 17 waking hours available to me, I spent 15 on law. Some of that was during working hours, which were extensive, but afterward I read legislation, commentaries, judgments, and case law. At university I'd been active in civic life outside school rather than working in law firms, so I had a lot of catching up to do. Over those two years, I really felt my abilities develop substantially, and I still draw on them today.

Majo Porvažník: At the same time, and this is important, I felt corporate law didn't offer that much scope to do meaningful things. We sold banks and large companies, one private equity fund to another. We were essentially shoveling millions around between wealthy entities, without understanding why the transactions were happening. We handled a tiny slice of an international transaction spanning dozens of countries. Again, I didn't feel I was making Slovakia better in any way.

Majo Porvažník: After two years, I also felt my learning curve was flattening considerably. Of course you learn throughout your life, but with due diligence, contracts, and M&A, the diminishing returns were already significant. So I started looking for something new. I felt I had a solid enough foundation to establish myself in law for the rest of my life, but I was still relatively young and could try expanding my skill set. Then, completely by chance, I met Maťo Vtáčnik at an event serving bottomless glasses of wine. One thing led to another, and I joined Vacuum.

Oxford and what it gave him

Martin Brath: Back to Oxford. Why did you choose Oxford, and how did you get in?

Majo Porvažník: Throughout university, I volunteered with the Slovak Debate Association. I helped develop the debating program in Slovakia. We founded Debatiáda, a debating league for primary-school pupils, and set up debate clubs all over Slovakia, from Humenné to Trnava. It was great work in terms of management and leadership, and I definitely developed through it. But I didn't do work placements in public offices, law firms, notaries' offices, or anywhere like that.

Majo Porvažník: When I was finishing university and thinking about what to do next, I wasn't really able to make an informed decision about where to go within the legal world. I think that's an important lesson for anyone listening: until you've tried things, you can't make an informed decision. If you want to decide, try things first; then you can choose. I hadn't done that, so I thought, great, perhaps I should keep studying. You do what you know how to do.

Majo Porvažník: The difference was that Oxford offered 40 courses in the master's program, and I could choose four. I thought that was an excellent opportunity to choose four very different ones, gain a deeper understanding of those areas of law, and then choose one. Public international law appealed to me most, so I went to The Hague. And I've already explained how that turned out.

Martin Brath: Alright. Vacuumlabs. So you started in sales, by the sound of it. And before...

Majo Porvažník: Just one more thing, because you also asked how I got in. How did I get in? I submitted an application! No, what I really want to say is that Slovaks are very capable and shouldn't be afraid to dream big. Several friends applied to prestigious schools. Many got in, and even those who tried again a year later eventually got in too. So, first of all, don't be afraid.

Majo Porvažník: At the same time, with all my love and respect for education around the world, I think it's a little overrated. I don't think Oxford or any other school guarantees success in life, happiness, or everything else. Lots of other things influence that. Even without a prestigious university, through your free time and other activities you can build a very solid intellectual foundation, often exceeding what formal education provides. It's one path, but certainly not necessarily the best one.

Majo Porvažník: Paradoxically, lots of people work so hard at secondary school that, when they don't get into their chosen university, they feel their life is over. I think that's an enormous mistake. There are many roads to Rome.

Martin Brath: Do you regret going to Oxford?

Majo Porvažník: Not at all. It was a wonderful experience: living in what was essentially a fairy-tale city, being surrounded by capable people, and doing things at a truly excellent level. In fact, I have one recurring dream, the only dream that keeps coming back, and it's that I'm going back to study at Oxford. Even during the dream I think, but this is that dream again. Yet every time, I convince myself that this time it's real. Then I wake up in the morning, and it isn't.

Majo Porvažník: So it was a good experience. I now go back as an alumnus for various activities. It's nice to stay in touch with the university. But I think Slovak universities can be good too. They need to work a bit more with their alumni communities. Western universities are very good at that. When you walk around, you see marble plaques everywhere listing donors: this person paid for a library, that person paid for something else. That collaboration matters.

Majo Porvažník: Every year, a law student from Oxford calls me, wanting to chat and get some career advice. Then they ask about my memories of Oxford. After half an hour, they ask whether I'd like to make a contribution. They've really perfected the system. They take notes: this person likes talking about cats, that person likes talking about sports. In that sense, they have an intelligence agency that raises funds.

Martin Brath: You're in the CRM.

Majo Porvažník: I'm in the CRM.

Putting law aside for Vacuumlabs

Martin Brath: Right. Vacuumlabs, then. As a lawyer, you decided to put law aside for the time being?

Majo Porvažník: Yes, I decided to put it on ice. I could return to it at any time. With all humility, I felt I had a sufficient foundation of skills that finding work wouldn't be a problem. With that fallback secured, I could try something new.

Majo Porvažník: Maťo convinced me. Vacuumlabs had about 20 people at the time, and Maťo had just joined full-time as a co-founder. He was starting to develop the sales department and needed more people, so I joined him. After three days, he discovered I was a lawyer, so the internal legal work ended up with me as well. It became fifty-fifty: I spent half my time on sales and traveling the world with Maťo, and the other half building a legal department within Vacuum.

Martin Brath: If you could choose again, would you still study law? From where I'm sitting, that combination of law and technology seems to give you an edge. Say you're in the top 25 in two different things, and that gives you a competitive advantage.

Majo Porvažník: That's a good question. There's a book called Range that argues the world belongs to generalists rather than specialists. I'd say that any combination of fields or skills, often an unexpected combination of seemingly unrelated things, like law and technology, can give you a major competitive edge. It may even lead you down paths in life you didn't know existed. Calligraphy, for example, helped Steve Jobs enormously when he was building the Mac [product name unclear in the source transcript].

Majo Porvažník: I think it's more about not becoming too narrowly focused on one area. Throughout your life, you should try to discover and understand new perspectives. That's perhaps one of my biggest observations in recent years: perspective, the ability to look at something from different angles. Above all, understanding people who seem to be saying foolish things. Understanding why they say them is enormously important, including for reaching agreements and making progress.

Martin Brath: So do you feel you understand people outside your bubble better? People who, for example, support political ideologies that don't quite fit with what you believe?

Majo Porvažník: Mrs. Záborská recently passed away [name and event may be mistranscribed in the source]. She was quite a conservative politician, opposed to abortion and things like that. In part of my social circle, she was essentially the embodiment of a bad person who was actively working against people. From their perspective, freedom is the key value. So, of course, they see a harsh disciplinarian with a big stick trying to curtail their freedom and take it away. I completely understand why they saw her as a major enemy.

Majo Porvažník: But if you read someone like Tomáš Halík, the Czech theologian, and understand that Christian morality has a much broader scope than secular morality, and recognize that Mrs. Záborská was starting from that moral framework, then you see that she was fighting for people and for the freedom of people who couldn't fight for themselves because they hadn't been born yet. You realize that she wasn't a bad person at all. She was starting from a legitimate perspective and fighting for ideals she genuinely believed in. She was a good person, although, of course, she wasn't taking those other perspectives sufficiently into account.

Majo Porvažník: At the very least, that understanding means I don't see her as evil or as an absolute enemy. I understand the perspective she's coming from, and I see her as a good person within that perspective. First, that gives you some distance, and it also creates the conditions for agreement.

Majo Porvažník: For example, I could say to her: look, my goal is also to bring the number of abortions down to zero. That makes sense; we're on the same side. Where life begins is ultimately a political decision, but let's not approach this through bans, because it will end up on the black market and with backstreet practitioners, which will be even worse. Let's do it through education and support for mothers and single mothers, so unwanted pregnancies happen less often. When they do happen, mothers should find it much easier to say: the state is here, society is here, they'll support me, and I can have this child and give birth. And yes, let's make the country safe enough that pregnancies resulting from violence don't happen at all, or happen as little as possible.

Majo Porvažník: With that kind of argument, it's much easier to find a compromise. It isn't always possible, but at least it helps enormously when you're not seeing red.

Majo Porvažník: The same applies in business, in the boardroom. You need to understand that you have an IT person who thinks in binary, ones and zeros, alongside a salesperson who thinks completely differently, in terms of storytelling. Looking for common ground is an enormously important skill.

Majo Porvažník: That's what we did at Vacuum. There were four of us on the board. Two were IT people. Maťo could code, but he was more of a salesperson, the visionary. I was more focused on law and strategy. Very different perspectives, backgrounds, and types of arguments. Often we didn't understand one another. That ability to translate, respect one another, and find a way forward was a secret weapon Vacuum had for a long time. At the same time, it was a major source of headaches, because some meetings were tough.

From Vacuumlabs to Sparring and spin-off companies

Martin Brath: Tell us about the path from when you started at Vacuum through to Sparring. What happened in between?

Majo Porvažník: Quite early on, Vacuum made a fairly bold decision for such a small software company: alright, we can do everything, but we won't do everything. We'll differentiate ourselves from the market and develop domain knowledge. We chose fintech. Two years later we added crypto, which is, let's say, part of fintech, not necessarily, but to some extent. We decided to go down that path and focus on it.

Majo Porvažník: We adjusted sales and marketing accordingly. As we won those projects, we gradually gained real experience, developed international partnerships, and so on, which enabled Vacuum to grow. The wider environment helped too. PSD2, an EU directive about data sharing, was adopted. Banks suddenly needed development studios to build products and comply with regulation. It also created opportunities for neobanking and challenger banks, so new banks were being established. There was a lot of room in the market.

Majo Porvažník: We grew quickly and had resources. Beyond a certain point, we weren't doing it for the money, so we didn't distribute it as dividends. Suddenly we had money in our accounts and lots of capable people who could see that things could be built, that success was possible without doing business with the state or anything like that. So we started trying new projects.

Majo Porvažník: One of the first, which was already running to some extent when I joined, was the developer conference ReactiveConf. At one point, it grew into a 1,300-person developer conference centered on React, later expanding to other frameworks and languages, including Python [following wording unclear in the source]. It started relatively early, so we were among the people evangelizing React before it was cool, which helped a lot.

Majo Porvažník: Once we'd had the experience of another project with a slightly different cap table and different shareholders, further ideas naturally started emerging for new companies. At one point, I think we'd tried around 16 projects. Some we killed very early, after a month or two, when we could see they weren't quite right. Others worked extremely well.

Majo Porvažník: What that showed us was that even the best projects, the most carefully thought-out ones, failed without good people. Conversely, where we had excellent people from the start, even a less-than-ideal project could pivot and become successful. One of our lessons was that it all stands or falls on people. We primarily drew those people from within the organization. We hired some externally, of course, but recruitment and selection are difficult. You can filter some things out, but it's ultimately an artificial environment. You can put someone under pressure and draw out their best intellectual performance on an assignment, but it's still only a tiny slice of that person's life.

Majo Porvažník: As my co-founder Tomáš Kuli [surname as transcribed] put it, the best interview process is working together for years. When you know someone inside out, you can assess very well which roles they'll perform well in and which they won't. Once we were an organization of several hundred people, we didn't lack potential founders to work with. Even so, it didn't always work. Sometimes we needed to bring someone in from outside, which also came with a certain probability of success. So there was trial and error, but it moved forward.

Majo Porvažník: Another important thing is that we're probably one of the few software companies in the Czech-Slovak market to have made a reasonably successful transition into a venture builder. We managed that. Then it became essential to say: okay, we're no longer just a software company. We'll have a holding company, and we need to organize those relationships.

Majo Porvažník: That brings us to standardization. There wasn't much of a standard for turning a software studio into a venture builder, so we made a huge number of mistakes. There were three or four years of serious corporate, accounting, and business headaches trying to work out the whole structure. We definitely weren't efficient. We have a lot of know-how now, and we advise and help many software studios with similar ambitions. But I can honestly say we're still at the beginning. There have been so few examples that, as a market, we still haven't fully established best practices.

Martin Brath: You're describing it from the company's perspective, but you started in sales and at some point gained decision-making authority. How did that process develop?

Majo Porvažník: That's a good question. It was gradual. As a lawyer, your job is essentially to look at things strategically. I looked at the organization and thought: we're here today, but we want to get somewhere else. What do we need to resolve? What risks might we face, and how do we deal with them?

Majo Porvažník: I was the person who came in and said: look, the software-studio structure is working terribly for managing additional projects. We need a substantial corporate restructuring, a holding company, and meaningful relationships between the portfolio companies so that the incentives for the people in each team work properly. That was essential.

Majo Porvažník: I was able to contribute more than just what I'd been assigned, which I'd call the employee mindset. I came up with strategic proposals, some more coherent than others. At some point, the founding team recognized that there was added value there, and a skill set they didn't fully have themselves. Very gradually, through many iterations, I moved closer to the overall leadership of the company. At one point, they invited me onto the board, so I became part of the decision-making process. Then we formalized it through equity and so on. But it was a very gradual process over many years.

Majo Porvažník: That's another thing: if an employee expects to become CEO on the first day, or in the first year, that's not a good approach, either in how they relate to the company or for their own peace of mind. You need to understand that, first of all, you have to create substantial value. Of course, the company might fail to recognize it. That happens. Fine: in that case, leave and offer that value on the market. If the value is solid, you have nothing to worry about.

Majo Porvažník: That's why I say people should put less emphasis on formal agreements and things like that. I've seen plenty of agreements where, two or three years later, the parties looked at them, realized they no longer reflected reality, and said: we have an agreement, but it isn't being fulfilled, so let's forget it. People sometimes feel that signing something fixes it for eternity. It doesn't. Enforcing it is often difficult and may not even make moral sense.

Majo Porvažník: Instead, let's build the substance. Let's make sure the person joining the company becomes essential and gains the know-how. Becoming essential doesn't mean trying to eliminate your competition. It actually means trying to make yourself replaceable in routine operations, so you can focus on creating the most important value, understand the company, go beyond your assigned work, and bring something critical. Then, whether it's company A, B, C, D, or E, you'll be a highly attractive addition to a team. If you can't reach an agreement with your original company, you can move on elsewhere.

Martin Brath: That's an interesting point, the need to be patient. You clearly had that strategic perspective and the drive, but you were still patient. How did you feel throughout the process if the company wasn't recognizing your value? You stayed even though you might have felt you could move up faster elsewhere?

Majo Porvažník: That wasn't really the case for me. On my first day, I definitely wasn't bringing the same value I was bringing in year five. I learned a great deal throughout the process, and as the company grew, my contribution grew too. The important thing was to develop myself faster than the company was growing.

Majo Porvažník: It's interesting with growing companies: some people are good at the beginning but eventually can't keep up. That actually happened in some of our roles. Those people had to be replaced, or at least remained part of the team with a management layer placed above them, because they weren't growing as quickly as the company. Sometimes it's possible to keep up, sometimes it isn't. If a company suddenly goes public from one year to the next, that obviously requires a somewhat different team.

Majo Porvažník: But I managed to grow more or less alongside the company, so I didn't feel particularly wronged. I knew I'd come in as a lawyer who knew nothing about technology. I had to work hard on myself, understand the technology, the theoretical concepts, the basics. I had to understand a completely different kind of law: you approach a bank differently from a startup. And, of course, I had to develop a sales skill set from scratch.

Majo Porvažník: So yes, patience matters, but before that comes humility: recognizing everything you don't know and developing a vision of what you personally need to work on to move forward. I think that's fundamental. It's interesting, my grandparents used to say: you'll study now, and then you won't have to anymore. But I quickly realized that throughout my life I wouldn't just need to keep learning; I'd want to. It's essential.

Majo Porvažník: If you look at some of the most capable CEOs in Slovakia, people like Jano Cifra or Mieško [name as transcribed], they constantly work on themselves. They attend courses at Harvard and Stanford, not just to walk among old buildings. Of course there's prestige involved, but they go because they feel they need to keep improving.

Majo Porvažník: Sometimes it's difficult to find time alongside work, especially when someone like Jano Cifra has a demanding role at Dedoles. It makes sense to set aside two weeks, say, leave me alone for a while, I'm going to another continent to really focus on my skills so I can ultimately be more productive and useful to the company.

Majo Porvažník: It's important to think about yourself through the lens of what you can bring to the company, rather than your salary or title, and to understand that your contribution comes from your abilities, experience, and know-how. You need to work on those first; the other things will follow. It isn't a chicken-and-egg problem. Start with skills.

How he chooses what to learn, and why Slovakia

Martin Brath: You still have that mindset today. The question is how you choose what to work on and how. I assume books are somewhere near the top of the list, but how do you choose the next skill set to develop and the most effective way to get there?

Majo Porvažník: These days, with GPT, you can set up quite a good trainer or coach if you tell it what direction you want to go in. But when I was making those decisions, I didn't have a coach. You're right about books, though: they're enormously important to me.

Majo Porvažník: Of course, you need to complement them with something more current, such as magazines and podcasts. By magazines, I don't mean Plus 7 dní, but something like The Economist. I read The Economist specifically. I'd like to read other things too, but I probably don't have the time. So I have one serious subscription, and about once a week I find a couple of hours to browse it in the app.

Majo Porvažník: Then there are books. I have about five or six subject areas that I rotate through. There's personal development, geopolitics because it interests me, nature, and then business, specifically business stories. The story of Ethereum, for example. Next I'm planning to read the story of Lego and a few other things.

Majo Porvažník: I keep alternating between those areas, partly because if I read books on similar subjects back-to-back, they start blending together and I lose track. Switching from business to nature makes sense for me, including in terms of memory; I can work with the material much more effectively.

Majo Porvažník: But I have to say that biographies are probably my favorite these days. Understanding a life in detail gives you a very useful perspective on what to expect from life and whether you have reason to be happy or unhappy. Of course, there are clinical conditions that need to be addressed, but many people are unhappy simply because their expectations are wrong, shaped by their social bubbles, Instagram, and so on. Those are things you can work through with a normal, rational process of reflection.

Majo Porvažník: But you need to gain perspective and understand that life can be much sadder and harder, and that, to a large extent, most of us won the social lottery a long time ago.

Martin Brath: You mentioned geopolitics and thinking about returning to Slovakia after Oxford. Why Slovakia? If you wanted broader justice, there are other ways to influence things. Slovakia is a country of five million [following wording unclear in the source]. Why did you choose to help at home rather than globally?

Majo Porvažník: The key was realizing that you can help most effectively where you already have roots and understanding. If I decided to start shaping American foreign policy, my chances would be pretty slim. I genuinely believed, and saw it in The Hague too, that when you have social connections, understand a country, and have that cultural closeness, you're much better placed to help at home than somewhere you arrive as a foreigner.

Majo Porvažník: I find it interesting that, in the current atmosphere, many people cry into their pillows at night and wonder whether to move to the Czech Republic or Portugal. Lately I hear Cyprus mentioned a lot too, but Portugal is still the leader among the people I hear from. We could come back to the responsibility such people have. But when I hear this, I think they don't quite understand: they can go there and surf, but they'll find it enormously difficult to get involved, win a village mayoral election, create a pedestrian zone, change a zoning plan, or deal with a property developer. As a Slovak in a Portuguese village, without even speaking Portuguese properly, that's extremely hard.

Majo Porvažník: Andrej Babiš probably managed it, but there are very few exports like that. I'm not evaluating his political record here. My main motivation is that Slovaks can have the greatest impact in Slovakia. If impact is what motivates you, that's the country to be in.

Majo Porvažník: For me, it works the other way around: the bigger Slovakia's problems are, the more important our presence here becomes, because we have to face them. If Slovakia were doing brilliantly, Switzerland crossed with Singapore, really thriving, I'd ask myself: why am I actually here? If everyone has figured it out, has it firmly under control, and it's working well, perhaps I really can go surfing, because I'm not needed. But the greater the crisis, the stronger the calling I feel: we need to do something, and it's up to us.

Quick-fire round

Martin Brath: Alright, let's do a quick-fire round and change things up a little. You've probably heard the format: say the first thing that comes to mind. Sometimes it might be both, or I don't know, but just your first thought. Buying property or stocks?

Majo Porvažník: Stocks.

Martin Brath: Investing in people or technology?

Majo Porvažník: People.

Martin Brath: Still?

Majo Porvažník: Definitely. We can come back to that, but...

Martin Brath: We'll come back to it. Products or services?

Majo Porvažník: Both. There's no difference.

Martin Brath: A quick exit or a long-term hold?

Majo Porvažník: It depends, but typically a long-term hold.

Martin Brath: Working hard or working smart?

Majo Porvažník: Smart.

Martin Brath: Car or train? Train. Book or podcast?

Majo Porvažník: Book.

Martin Brath: Keeping talented people at home, or encouraging them to return after gaining experience abroad?

Majo Porvažník: It's definitely good to go abroad. Right, these are supposed to be short questions and answers...

Martin Brath: So...

Majo Porvažník: Definitely the second. Let people go, explore, learn, and then let's bring them home.

Martin Brath: Silicon Valley or East Slovakia?

Majo Porvažník: I support East Slovakia.

Martin Brath: Alright, if you had to invest a million euros of your own money tomorrow in one Slovak startup, which would you choose?

Majo Porvažník: Wow, that's a difficult question. I have a conflict of interest here, so... I'd put it all into Trama, but...

Success, investment ethics and integrity

Martin Brath: Trama, then. What does success mean to you today compared with ten years ago?

Majo Porvažník: For me, success is the inner conviction that you're living in accordance with a moral framework you've created for yourself, and maintaining that. It's one thing to say it. Then, at some point, you reach a position of status or power and are suddenly confronted with those choices.

Majo Porvažník: Transparency International says nobody feels like, or decides to become, a thief. Most people involved in corruption justify it to themselves: everyone steals, or this is different. Everyone constructs a case for their ego so they can look in the mirror and feel they aren't a bad person. Corruption creeps in very gradually. Pope Francis calls it a cancer of society.

Majo Porvažník: So it's important to define that framework, but above all, and this is the harder part, to stick to it when difficult decisions arise. When choosing someone for a company, or for public office, it's much better if you can assess whether they've already faced challenges like that and held firm. It isn't about age. It's enormously important, because many people can speak beautifully about it and genuinely mean it and believe it.

Majo Porvažník: But it's very difficult to put yourself in the shoes of someone facing a choice between their apparent success and their family on one side, and a rather abstract, hard-to-grasp common good on the other.

Martin Brath: No name-dropping, but if a ten-million-euro investment came from China, would you say no or yes?

Majo Porvažník: Again, if it were a state-owned company, with certain connections and so on... There are probably people who've left and are active there [wording unclear in the source]. I don't like to generalize, but yes, you have to be extremely careful, essentially always.

Majo Porvažník: That's why, at Vacuum, we thought carefully about which projects to take on. We rejected some projects because we had moral objections, either to the entities involved or to their business, gambling, for example. We had explicit red lines we didn't want to cross, and largely stuck to them.

Martin Brath: So a moral compass matters both at company level and personally.

Majo Porvažník: It's essential, because you need to build a company with outstanding people. There aren't many of them, and competition for them is fierce. You need to explain more than just how much they'll be paid. Outstanding people typically aren't concerned only with money. They also ask: what else? You need to explain your integrity, why you're doing good things, and what value you're bringing to society.

Majo Porvažník: I understand that when work was scarce, with unemployment at around 20% twenty or thirty years ago, money alone was enough because it was in short supply. Paying well was sufficient. But once unemployment is minimal and, effectively, the people not working are those who don't want to, that isn't enough anymore.

Majo Porvažník: Of course, we have marginalized communities and settlements where poverty is severe. But for most people born into an ordinary apartment-block environment, much of it is in their own hands. Beyond a certain point, once you're earning money, it's important to answer the question of what else you're living for.

Majo Porvažník: Something interesting happens here. A friend of mine researched Slovenskí branci, the Slovak Recruits group. Sitting with them in the forest around a fire, he asked: guys, what are we doing here? One of them said: look, I work at Kia. It's a perfectly fine job and I earn money, but I don't feel particularly good about myself. I was looking for something meaningful. Here, with these recruits, I feel I'm preparing to defend my country, my community, my family, and that I'm part of something bigger. That's where I find my dignity and sense of calling.

Majo Porvažník: I'm not saying Slovenskí branci are great or anything like that. I'm simply saying people need dignity. That goes back to the division of the soul into emotion, reason, and then thymos, that sense of dignity [attributed to Aristotle in the source]. Every person needs it. Without it, we don't get anywhere. Either work fulfills it, or something else will. For outstanding people who spend so much of their time working, it's typically their work.

Martin Brath: That's interesting. In hiring, saying you have integrity sounds like something everyone says, so how can I trust you? On the other hand, for top talent, that seems to be a key question to answer right away.

Majo Porvažník: I always ask that much-maligned HR question: where do you see yourself in five years? It's my favorite question, because it gives the person a chance to open up and lay their wildest ambitions on the table. Then you can discuss whether there's room for them or not.

Majo Porvažník: Sometimes people look surprised when I ask it, as if to say, what are you trying to pull? So I explain my context. You're typically hiring someone for a number of years. The role will probably evolve, and the person will evolve too. You need to know who they want to be in three, four, or five years, whether they'll still be connected to your organization, and whether you can offer what they're looking for.

Majo Porvažník: Are they a good fit, or is it obvious that after a year it won't work for them anymore? Then you need to decide whether you want that person for the year and whether it makes sense. Of course, if you're facing an urgent challenge or crisis, a short-term hire, a kind of mercenary, can be fine. But if you're building a long-term core team, people need broadly similar ideas about their long-term future. Otherwise, teams fall apart.

Opportunities in eastern Slovakia and Košice

Martin Brath: Alright, let's move to eastern Slovakia. You moved back east after seeing the world and seeing Bratislava.

Majo Porvažník: And more than that, more than that.

Martin Brath: And more. You decided to go back east. You've mentioned, or at least one of your visions is, that the east will develop as neighboring countries improve, and that after the war ends there will be a lot of potential. If a potential Austrian investor had a ten-million-euro fund, or let's say a ten-billion-euro fund, to invest in eastern Slovakia, what would you tell them? Where would that money have the greatest effect?

Majo Porvažník: There are two levels. The first is the large-scale one, essentially foreign direct investment. I'm convinced eastern Slovakia is excellently located to play an active role in rebuilding Ukraine. I don't feel many Slovak companies are actively interested. We don't seem to be making much of a push. I've only come across a few Slovak companies actually doing business in Ukraine today. There aren't many.

Majo Porvažník: For Austrian investors, or those from farther away, moving closer to Ukraine while remaining in a country that uses the euro, belongs to the European Union and NATO, and is still only 20 kilometers from the Ukrainian border is an enormous competitive advantage. Ukraine will very likely be rebuilding and integrating over the coming decades. That gives a very strong, stable outlook. Europe's entire geopolitical security architecture depends on it. Without Ukraine, there are only bleak scenarios for Europe [part of the wording is unclear in the source].

Majo Porvažník: I think it will end well in some form, and in that case integration and reconstruction will take decades. For an investor like that, it's a long-term, very stable investment with clear demand. Moving substantially closer reduces delivery times, transport costs, and so on. I think it's a very good opportunity, and that's how large investors should approach it.

Majo Porvažník: At the same time, and this applies to Slovakia as a whole, it's important to encourage individual entrepreneurship. In America, that starts in kindergarten. You let children sell lemonade, and they have to calculate the cost of lemons, water, and straws to set a price. Then they need to do some marketing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. They learn, try again six months later, do it better, and raise more money [following wording about what the money funds is unclear in the source].

Majo Porvažník: That really happens in America. It's how effective capitalism is built, starting in kindergarten. As education progresses, those activities should become more sophisticated, so you develop a society of entrepreneurs. As Rado Procházka wrote, not Jozef Mak, but The Great Gatsby: people who believe in their experience, their abilities, and their dreams, and can create something from nothing. A project, product, or service that employs people in their community and generates wealth for society, alongside the value of the product or service itself.

Majo Porvažník: Even with the rise of artificial intelligence, when we look at what might survive, I recently noticed a craft incubator starting up in the east. It's specifically for craftspeople, helping with storage, business registration, and small practical matters, so they can start making things from wood more efficiently and revive traditional crafts. It looks as though neither robots nor AI will completely replace those.

Majo Porvažník: That's an interesting business opportunity even in regions that aren't the centers attracting major investors. You can be an efficient and prosperous craftsperson in a village too. So we also need to look at it from the bottom up.

Martin Brath: Would you tell them to establish companies there, or what would the next step be? Infrastructure itself isn't necessarily that attractive to an investor.

Majo Porvažník: It depends. There are various public-private partnership projects, so infrastructure is an option. In Slovakia, we have experience with motorways, broad-gauge railways, and so on. They can partner with the state, although that's demanding. It would require major players, but it's one route.

Majo Porvažník: The other, more important option is exactly that: building manufacturing and logistics facilities there to shorten the journey for goods, particularly physical goods going to Ukraine.

Martin Brath: If you had ten million to invest in one project in the east, what would you choose? Unless, of course, you don't want to give competing investors a specific tip.

Majo Porvažník: It also depends a great deal on which part of Ukraine you choose. For example, the frontline regions, Kherson and similar areas, will have very different needs from western Ukraine, which hasn't been physically affected by the war to the same extent. Of course, some energy infrastructure has been destroyed, but they'll need different things.

Majo Porvažník: If I were a road-building company, I'd focus on building the facilities and capacity I need for roads or railways right on the Ukrainian border, preparing for those transport infrastructure projects. On the other hand, companies working in the frontline regions will have to repair everything: houses, kindergartens, anything. That's how I'd look at it, primarily in terms of construction companies.

Majo Porvažník: Of course, there are plenty of other things to do, from defense to healthcare. I can easily imagine a company capable of building and managing hospitals having a very big impact. There really are lots of possibilities. I think the opportunity, demand, and available capital will be sufficient for almost any company able to establish itself there to do well.

Majo Porvažník: For one thing, some parts of Ukraine objectively needed modernization even before the war. For another, a huge amount has been destroyed and will have to be rebuilt from scratch. When infrastructure such as railways or the energy system is rebuilt, it's extremely important to make it compatible with the rest of the European Union, because that will make connections and integration easier.

Martin Brath: Alright. If we wanted to make Košice a technology hub like Bratislava, or wanted Košice to do even better than Bratislava, what would it take? Just from a visionary perspective; we don't need to get into...

Majo Porvažník: Something business and further study have taught me is how important the framework is. I say, framework is king. The framework is enormously influential. In Slovakia, especially when we talk about the east and Košice, the framework has always been nationwide. We've approached it as: this is Slovakia, we need to get to Bratislava somehow, operate there, and build connections. That's useful, but it isn't working. Bratislava is doing its own thing.

Majo Porvažník: There's a joke in the east that if they'd started building the motorway from Košice toward Bratislava, it would have been finished long ago. But because they started in Bratislava, it'll probably never reach Košice. People give dates now, saying once Hubová is completed and so on, but nobody is dealing with the fact that Branisko still has only one tunnel tube. So it'll never be finished.

Majo Porvažník: I think we need to change the framework: alright, we're Košice, we're the east, so where does our path to success lead? Bratislava and the rest of Slovakia are essential to that success, of course, but they're far from the only part of it. Košice and eastern Slovakia lie among countries that are opening up, attracting capital, and growing. We need to build relationships with them, prepare a strategy for the next 20 or 30 years, and execute it.

Majo Porvažník: For example, Košice was always seen as the steel heart of the republic, with the steelworks and later U.S. Steel [the earlier steelworks acronym is unclear in the source]. But around 2000 to 2004, a vision emerged: this isn't sustainable. It's a relatively vulnerable sector, especially when it's the only one, so let's diversify. Technological innovation is coming; let's make this an innovative IT city.

Majo Porvažník: That vision emerged, along with Košice IT Valley and other organizations. Through cooperation with universities, schools, and foreign investors, they gradually created jobs for 20,000 people. That was unimaginable at the time, but they did it. There was a vision, although it was still relatively local, drawing on a broader geopolitical trend, digitalization.

Majo Porvažník: Now there's another geopolitical trend: the poorest parts of Poland, Hungary, and Ukraine, which happen to border eastern Slovakia, are starting to regenerate. Eastern Poland, led by Rzeszów, has completed infrastructure. The city has doubled in size and become a key hub for communication and trade with Ukraine. Western Ukraine is developing substantially, both in capital and in society's sense of solidarity and drive. Hungary's regional development, what is happening in Tokaj, for example, is also inspiring.

Majo Porvažník: If we can understand this properly, ride that wave, and develop a strategy for connecting these places, there are several ways to do it. You need mobility, partnerships and consortia, and urban planning. Together, these can create an attractive vision that, above all, brings people in.

Majo Porvažník: I say you'll have an innovative country when you have innovative people. You either have to develop them or attract them. The east's biggest problem today is brain drain, not just young people. Adults leave too: women work as carers in Austria, men take jobs in Germany. We need to bring them back. That will only happen through an attractive, long-term vision for the east, one that's more self-directed and less dependent on central government.

Majo Porvažník: We need more control over our future by working with multiple partners. Economically, if you're open and your partners are becoming wealthier and growing, their expansion usually pulls you along. To a large extent, that's what happened to Slovakia after the revolution. As a region, we need to build on that.

Martin Brath: Do you believe attracting top talent from Ukraine is one way Košice could overtake Bratislava?

Majo Porvažník: It's certainly one way, but it can't be the only one. Many Ukrainians, almost all of them, are strong patriots. As soon as it's possible, they'll be very happy to return and help rebuild their country. I wouldn't rely on that alone. We can probably retain some people and create conditions in which they can fulfill their potential, be happy, and feel safe.

Majo Porvažník: But first and foremost, we have to build on our own people and become an attractive enough region that people from Hungary and Poland can also imagine living in eastern Slovakia. We need to work with our diaspora, from Bratislava all the way to America, so they understand they can come home.

Majo Porvažník: We have some unfair advantages. The east is home. People's parents live there and will need them at some point. It's also a genuinely beautiful part of the country. With a good economic vision and meaningful work, the arguments for returning can be very strong. When those pieces come together, I think it can work.

Majo Porvažník: It's enormously important that people have good jobs, and the state won't simply bring those. Those days are long gone. But it can be done through a more independent, proactive approach.

Majo Porvažník: For example, Moravia has JIC, the South Moravian Innovation Centre. It's an excellent organization. The name isn't particularly exciting; South Moravian doesn't exactly sound hugely ambitious. Yet you meet this innovation center at a conference in Austin, Texas, and all over the world. They're genuinely capable of building partnerships across continents and substantially raising the profile of Brno as a university city and of the functioning startup, innovation, and technology ecosystem around it.

Majo Porvažník: I think eastern Slovakia will ultimately need to do the same, conducting its own economic diplomacy. SARIO works very well in Slovakia, for example, but it's an organization that tends to wait for companies to come rather than actively approaching them and doing sales: come and do business in Slovakia.

Majo Porvažník: An eastern Slovak equivalent, such as the municipal organization Business Košice, could do that. It could speak to companies in the critical sectors you mentioned, those needed in Ukraine, and attract them here. Show them: we have land, infrastructure, and support ready for you. Approval processes will be as fast as we can make them. You'll have support and managers [type of managers unclear in the source] to help you operate more efficiently and achieve slightly better margins. But that can only happen when people share a common vision.

Martin Brath: You mentioned a geopolitical connection: countries surrounded by rich countries tend to be richer. Bratislava is close to Austria and the Czech Republic. Hungary is relatively close too, but let's leave that aside for now. Košice, meanwhile, is surrounded by poorer countries, but growing ones. Which is better?

Majo Porvažník: At this stage, Bratislava's starting position is definitely very strong. Travel on the motorways between Bratislava and Budapest, Prague, or Vienna, and you can see the flows of goods. There are so many trains, and people are traveling. I say that in Slovakia, we don't have a Slovak innovation ecosystem; we have a Czech-Slovak one. Bratislava's connections and proximity to major neighboring cities are an enormous advantage.

Majo Porvažník: Košice doesn't have that today. You can get to Budapest, fine, but economically and culturally there aren't many companies outside agriculture that function across the Slovak-Hungarian space. Bratislava is far away, and the connections are what they are. The other surrounding areas were historically poor, and proper connections aren't even really there anymore.

Majo Porvažník: In that sense, if you think of Westeros, we were Castle Black, by the Wall, the Schengen wall. But it looks as though that will start coming down, and suddenly you gain new partners and neighbors. When I was at secondary school, all that seemed to happen with Ukraine was smuggling cigarettes, people, and cheap vodka. That's not a basis for a successful country. There were tunnels too. I think a TV series was even made about it.

Majo Porvažník: But it doesn't have to be like that at all. Ukraine can be a sophisticated trading partner with whom we build shared prosperity and create jobs. Even during the war, I was there a few weeks ago, it's a nice place, though still fairly small [the place being discussed here is not named clearly in the source].

Majo Porvažník: For eastern Slovakia, the key center is primarily Lviv, formerly referred to as Lvov. A large part of Kharkiv's IT cluster is moving there. We're talking about over a million people, an enormous ecosystem, much bigger than Bratislava, perhaps slightly smaller than Prague or on a similar level. And it's 250 kilometers away. That makes things possible.

Majo Porvažník: It's in eastern Slovakia's interest to help Uzhhorod get a meaningful connection across the Carpathians to Lviv, so that, once everything is integrated, the journey could take two hours by train or two hours by car. That's possible. It would create the conditions in terms of time and distance for joint business and shared prosperity.

Majo Porvažník: It starts with mobility. Mobility is essential, and we need to focus on it strategically. I'm a big Civilization player; I don't know whether you know it. At one point, the game introduced the concept that roads were no longer built by workers wherever you wanted, but developed according to whom you traded with. You had to make strategic decisions about whether to open up to a particular country.

Majo Porvažník: Roads are essential. There's a beautiful connection: look at the ancient Roman road network in France and today's motorway network, and they're almost identical. Once the routes were built, relationships developed around them. Perhaps they could have been different, perhaps the original choices weren't ideal, but once you start, things follow that path.

Majo Porvažník: Having a motorway to Bratislava one day is important, but it isn't enough. Even now, a motorway to Bratislava alone isn't sufficient. It needs to reach Košice and Ukraine, through Vyšné Nemecké [place name appears garbled in the source]. We also need to look at the route through Bardejov into Poland, and at how to connect with Hungary and potentially Romania, so that a two- or three-hour radius can work effectively for Košice too.

Advice to his 25-year-old self

Martin Brath: Alright, one last question. If you could give one piece of advice to 25-year-old Majo, what would it be?

Majo Porvažník: Wow. I was just finishing university then, and...

Martin Brath: [Unclear wording in the source, referring to tech.]

Majo Porvažník: Yes, yes. No, I'd say: it'll be alright. Relax. Funnily enough, a friend gave me that advice back then. We were driving back from a debating competition, from Bardejov or somewhere, and he said: getting into Oxford isn't that difficult. We're healthy, young, and living in a relatively wealthy country. We've already won the social lottery. What are we afraid of? If you make an effort, things can work out.

Majo Porvažník: You probably won't win it all or become a world champion. But in some reasonable percentile, you should be able to make a decent living [wording unclear in the source]. That shouldn't be a problem.

Majo Porvažník: I've reminded myself of that conversation many times. It really lifted some of the burden you can create for yourself. So I'd remind my 25-year-old self of that conversation, word for word, and go to sleep with that thought: relax, it can be done. As long as we're healthy, it's alright.

Majo Porvažník: And perhaps to today's generation, who feel the current atmosphere in Slovakia and the world very acutely, are distressed by it, and are considering leaving, I'd say: it's alright. Things have been much worse. Ultimately, it's our job to deal with this. At some point, history will ask whether people simply left or stayed and did something about it. So relax. It'll be alright.

Martin Brath: Majo, thank you for the conversation.

Majo Porvažník: Thank you.