Peter Kolesár (Startup Awards Co-organiser, Partner at Civitta Slovakia): From Diplomacy to the Startup Ecosystem

Diplomacy as a childhood dream

Martin Brath: Welcome, everyone. With me is Peter Kolesár, a partner at Civitta Slovakia, a co-organizer of Startup Awards Slovakia, and an expert on the Slovak startup ecosystem. Peter, welcome.

Peter Kolesár: Thank you very much for inviting me.

Martin Brath: I’d start with your beginnings. You began your career as a diplomat, and you went to Brno to study international relations. Why Brno, and why international relations?

Peter Kolesár: Diplomacy was my childhood dream. From about the age of 14 or 15, as far back as I can remember, I was interested in politics, international politics, and diplomacy. I always wanted to study diplomacy.

At the time, there was a lot of excitement around Brno. It was 2000 when I applied to Masaryk University, and lots of Slovaks were going there, including many of my classmates.

The university’s reputation, together with the fact that so many classmates from Alejová Grammar School in Košice were going, made it a completely natural choice. We had a fantastic group of friends there. Those were some of the best years of my life.

I studied international relations and European studies, with some periods at universities abroad in between. Becoming a diplomat was the goal, but it didn’t happen straight after university. I first spent five years at a public affairs consulting firm in Bratislava.

Then an opportunity arose: for the first time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs opened economic diplomat positions to external candidates, people from outside the ministry. I saw my chance, applied, and was selected. We moved to Tel Aviv as a family.

Israel in 2011: the Startup Nation years

Martin Brath: So Israel was your first posting. What did the Israeli startup ecosystem look like then? Was that when the “Startup Nation” excitement around Israel was taking off?

Peter Kolesár: Exactly. It was the period when Israel managed to move beyond the narrative of being a country defined by conflict. We moved there in 2011, and people were increasingly talking about it as an epicenter of innovation: a place producing billion-dollar startups, where large VC funds invested and searched for investment opportunities.

That was exciting, all the enthusiasm around Startup Nation. Of course, I’d read up on it thoroughly beforehand.

At the time, the best-known company was Better Place, which many people no longer remember. They raised $900 million and developed infrastructure for electric vehicles where batteries were swapped rather than recharged. Then they went bankrupt.

But that’s essentially irrelevant to this point. What mattered was that it motivated many people to take an interest in Israel and collaborate with Israeli universities and entrepreneurs. It also encouraged young Israelis to see entrepreneurship, particularly technology entrepreneurship, as a promising career path.

That was the Israel I arrived in. I have to say, it lived up to everything I’d read, and this became my main area of work.

Living in Tel Aviv

Martin Brath: What was life in Israel like?

Peter Kolesár: Excellent. We moved there with our young son, who was a year and a half old.

Tel Aviv is a very pleasant city to live in. We lived at the embassy, relatively close to the beach, perhaps 500 or 600 meters away. The promenade stretches for many kilometers—five to eight kilometers—where you can walk all year round.

The Tel Aviv atmosphere is wonderful, so life there was great. Lots of family members and friends visited us. Our daughter was also born there, shortly before we left.

We have beautiful memories associated with Israel. Our daughter will always have Tel Aviv as her place of birth in her passport. I think Israel will always remain in our hearts as an important period in my life and my wife’s, also because of our children.

What an economic diplomat can actually do

Martin Brath: What tools or influence did you have as an economic diplomat in Tel Aviv?

Peter Kolesár: Generally, for an economic diplomat—not just in Tel Aviv, but wherever they’re posted—it depends on whether the role is combined with another function.

Slovak diplomacy has limited resources, so economic diplomacy is often combined with consular work, the role of deputy ambassador, or other responsibilities. That makes it difficult because there may not be much time left for economic diplomacy.

In Israel, it’s a separate role, and the same is true in Washington. That means a great deal depends on what the individual makes of it.

They can simply respond to incoming requests from headquarters or businesses, trying to accommodate whatever arrives. Or they can actively shape the agenda.

Of course, I wanted to shape it actively, both in Tel Aviv and later in Washington. What interested me most in Israel was the ethos of enterprise, technology entrepreneurship, and innovation policy.

I tried to raise awareness of how Israel, particularly its public sector, supports innovation and startups: how the public incubator system works, how much funding goes into it, and how it’s designed.

I tried to invite as many public officials, university representatives, and businesspeople as possible to Israel so they could see it for themselves, and to connect Israelis with Slovakia.

The tools available depend on your creativity as an economic diplomat. Of course, Slovak diplomacy has limited resources compared with countries such as the Czech Republic, Italy, or the Netherlands, whose diplomats are very active.

That means you have to be even more creative. It really depends on individual initiative and effort. Many diplomats end up sitting and waiting to see what comes in. But it’s up to each of us—or each of them. Ultimately, that’s probably true everywhere, particularly in public administration.

Washington and guided serendipity

Martin Brath: How was it different when you moved to Washington? What was the biggest difference between Israel and the US?

Peter Kolesár: [The beginning of the answer appears to be missing. The source repeats the host’s question several times before resuming here.]

…where we also invited people from Slovakia and the US to connect with one another. Many interesting collaborations came out of that, as well as some people returning to Slovakia, which we may have helped bring about in a small way.

When working with Slovak professionals, you can’t predict or arrange everything. You have to create the right environment and conditions for good things to happen.

That’s what Americans call “guided serendipity.” Chance is still involved, but you can increase the likelihood that a chance encounter leads to something good for your home country.

Taking Slovak startups to Silicon Valley

Martin Brath: Through Startup Awards, you also send startups to the US, to Silicon Valley. Do you bring knowledge or experience from that period into this work?

Peter Kolesár: Yes. From the beginning, in 2011, Startup Awards included an element of international collaboration or time spent abroad.

Initially, SARIO funded it, and it was a three-month stay. Now we have to work very hard to raise the money, either from Startup Awards alumni—which is interesting, because they’re now contributing to the next generation—or from companies willing to support the trip.

Last year—or actually, this year, in March—we took startups to Silicon Valley. We certainly use the contacts I developed on both the East and West Coasts when planning the trip.

We still meet many people from my time there, but we’ve also developed many new contacts since then.

A key partner organization is SlovakPro, the association of Slovak professionals abroad, in this case particularly in the Bay Area. It’s led by Michal “Mušo” Šimkovič, the current president of SlovakPro, who is very well connected.

They help us enormously to make the week as valuable as possible for the startups. The feedback from the startups was that it was extremely demanding but also very enjoyable.

Leaving the ministry for Neulogy

Martin Brath: So you had a childhood dream of becoming a diplomat, but at some point you decided, “That’s enough.” You returned to Slovakia and began a new chapter at Neulogy.

Why did you make that decision? What feelings went into ending that career—or perhaps not ending it completely? How did you see it?

Peter Kolesár: At the time, I saw it as ending or pausing that career. Several factors came into play when we returned from Washington.

Family was certainly very important. Returning to a position at the Foreign Ministry’s headquarters and then leaving again in two, three, or four years, with two young children and a wife who would by then have returned to work—we couldn’t really imagine doing that together.

Having already experienced Tel Aviv and Washington, I also didn’t have another obvious destination to aspire to in terms of innovation and startups. Perhaps some Asian countries, but we decided we needed a little more stability.

That’s why I left the ministry. At the same time, if I wanted to work in innovation and startups, a subject close to my heart, Neulogy was the biggest player in Slovakia then.

As an economic diplomat, I’d already built very close relationships with people at Neulogy, including Petra Lipnická and Ivan Štefunko. It felt natural that, if I was going into the private sector, it would be Neulogy. I could still influence these things, but from the business side.

The culture shock of paying salaries

Martin Brath: What was different in terms of pressure? Suddenly you had people reporting to you, which I assume you hadn’t had before, and different expectations. How did you experience that period?

Peter Kolesár: It’s a fundamental difference. For anyone moving from public administration into business, particularly into a role responsible for bringing projects and revenue into the company and paying people’s salaries, it’s an absolute culture shock.

[The transition back to describing public-sector work is incomplete in the source.] Public administration can be frustrating in many ways, but the good thing is that the money arrives in your account. You don’t have to worry whether your colleagues or subordinates will be paid either.

That isn’t the case in the private sector, particularly when you lead a company, and it certainly wasn’t the case at Neulogy.

I arrived during a period that wasn’t easy commercially. The first two years—essentially three—were very difficult. We had to diversify the business somewhat and work out where the money for salaries would come from and what kinds of projects to bring in.

I had to recalibrate: business had to be the priority. Bringing revenue into the company came before anything else.

It took time. It’s a culture shock, but I’d wish that experience on everyone in public administration.

Listen more than you speak

Martin Brath: How did you develop yourself through that? You needed to recalibrate, improve, and presumably gain new skills. How did you approach it?

Peter Kolesár: Looking back, I would certainly do some things faster now. I’d hesitate less, and in many ways it could have been simpler, or at least less complicated.

I talked a lot with people who had more experience. That’s something I still try to apply generally: listen a lot.

I try to talk less when I meet someone or attend a meeting, and listen more. It’s much more useful to me than telling someone about myself or what I do. Asking other people questions and learning from them is more productive.

That’s what I did then. I also learned from mistakes. Unfortunately, I did many things badly or too late, made mistakes, and now know I’d do them differently.

But the basic principle is to find people who are further along than you, more capable or wiser, ask lots of questions, and listen more than you speak. I still try to follow that, at least to some extent.

Ten years at Neulogy and Civitta, and leaving

Martin Brath: After 10 years, you’re now leaving as a partner. How does that feel? What’s ahead? Is there uncertainty, or is it a relief?

Peter Kolesár: To a large extent, it’s a relief.

Neulogy’s story is interesting in many ways. It began as a boutique innovation consultancy in 2017. [Year as transcribed; this conflicts with the following reference to joining in 2016.] I joined at the beginning of 2016.

The company gradually changed. In 2019, we joined Civitta, a much larger firm headquartered in Estonia, now operating in 22 countries around the world.

A small boutique consultancy became part of a large network. The company also grew considerably in Slovakia—quite substantially for a consulting firm, I think.

It became much more international in terms of the projects we do, the consortia we work in, and the work done by people in Slovakia. Most of our people in Slovakia also work on international projects with colleagues from Estonia, Ukraine, and Lithuania. We also have consultants from abroad working on some of our projects.

That was a big change and a major learning experience, not just for me, learning from other partners in similar roles, but also for our consultants.

At the same time, perhaps inevitably as it grew, the company became more centralized. Local offices have less and less autonomy. That requires a certain style of management and adaptation.

After 10 years, I decided it was time for a change. I’ve always seen myself as entrepreneurial, and I felt I might be able to fulfill that side of myself better outside Civitta.

That was my thinking. Ten years is also the longest I’ve ever spent in any organization. So there was a natural combination of fatigue and a desire to immerse myself in a different environment, work with different people, and learn again in a new setting.

After a long period of reflection and discussions with management, all of that led me to decide to phase out of Civitta.

Now I’m considering how to use the experience I’ve gained and which direction to take.

Rapid-fire round

Martin Brath: Let’s do a quick round of rapid-fire questions. Short questions, with the first answer that comes to mind.

Martin Brath: Product or service?

Peter Kolesár: Product.

Martin Brath: Work hard or work smart?

Peter Kolesár: Smart.

Martin Brath: Car or train?

Peter Kolesár: Car.

Martin Brath: Book or podcast?

Peter Kolesár: Podcast.

Martin Brath: Košice or Bratislava?

Peter Kolesár: Košice.

Martin Brath: Keep talent at home, or encourage people to return after gaining experience abroad?

Peter Kolesár: Encourage them to return after gaining experience abroad.

Martin Brath: If you had to invest €1 million of your own money tomorrow in one Slovak startup, which would you choose?

Peter Kolesár: Probably Powerful Medical or Brightpick. [The second name is transcribed as “Bright Peak” in the source.]

Martin Brath: So, right now, you’d put it into Powerful Medical?

Peter Kolesár: Yes.

Startup Awards at its peak

Martin Brath: Let’s return to Startup Awards. Neulogy had been organizing it since 2011, and you joined in 2016. What did Startup Awards look like in 2016 compared with what we experienced last year?

Peter Kolesár: Last year was similar to 2016 in that it was a large-scale format.

In 2016, 2017, and 2018, we used some of Slovakia’s largest venues: Istropolis, the large Slovak National Theatre, and then Refinery Gallery.

Interest in 2016 was enormous. It was also broadcast on television, which meant very expensive, complicated production. President Kiska was a very active supporter and attended in person. There was a huge amount of excitement.

We also knew there was considerable interest from abroad in attending Startup Awards. But we didn’t want it to stop at an awards ceremony that simply recognized startups.

So we decided to organize a technology conference as well: a daytime conference with top international speakers and Startup Awards in the evening. We began doing that, and the conference part was later renamed FutureNow.

But it became an enormous undertaking: recruiting startups, organizing regional events across Slovakia, running a bootcamp, putting on an all-day technology conference with 10 to 15 top speakers, and then a televised pitching final in the evening.

That’s an immense burden for any team. It really requires a professional events team. We were still doing it alongside everything else, trying to keep the business running while organizing it on the side.

To this day, I don’t quite understand how we managed it. Well, I do, because I’m doing something similar now, but it really was madness.

We began looking for a strategic partner. Just raising enough money to break even or make a small loss took half to three-quarters of a year. In Slovakia, it’s incredibly demanding in both time and energy.

We wanted a strategic partner to join us and take some of the pressure off. [A short transition is incomplete in the source.]

HB Reavis and HubHub had a strategy of entering coworking, building the HubHub network, and working with young technology companies. FutureNow and Startup Awards fit as a platform that could complement the physical space with content.

We agreed on HubHub becoming involved in Startup Awards and later taking it over entirely. For us, that felt like the culmination of the journey: the awards and conference finally had a new home where they could develop under a much stronger partner.

We handed it over in 2018 and 2019, and we were happy to do so.

COVID, the break and the relaunch

Martin Brath: But then COVID arrived.

Peter Kolesár: It did, which is devastating for any event. At the same time, HB Reavis changed its strategy in Slovakia and across Europe regarding HubHub and the platform. The event gradually moved online and eventually ended altogether.

After a two- or three-year break, investors and founders began approaching us: “Wouldn’t you like to bring Startup Awards back? It was so important for the community. It was the one event everyone looked forward to and wanted to attend.”

We said, “No, no, no. We don’t want to. It’ll kill us again, and we’ll be right back where we were.”

But after about a year of discussions, we opened talks with HB Reavis. Around the same time, Slovenská sporiteľňa approached us and said, “If you want to revive it, we’ll support you as a partner.”

Several things came together at once. I think the bank was very far-sighted in saying we should bring back not just the event, but the entire platform, because it would help everyone.

The discussions with HB Reavis were excellent. I’d like to thank those people here as well. They fully understood what we wanted to do and why we wanted to bring it back to the community.

It isn’t a profit-making event. We aren’t doing it to make money. Quite the opposite: we want to mobilize people around entrepreneurship and startups, while helping the most promising startups gain visibility and expand internationally.

That combination allowed us to relaunch SASK last year. We were nervous. We’d received positive feedback, but we didn’t know what people would actually do: whether we’d get good startups, whether enough people would come, or whether television would want to work with us.

Fortunately, we sold out well in advance, and the response was very positive. In terms of the startups, it essentially looked similar to 2015 or 2016.

This year, we’re making changes and continually rethinking how to improve it. We don’t want people to see it as just an event or an awards ceremony. It isn’t the Crystal Wing awards or Slovak Woman of the Year. Those evening events have their purpose, but we want to take a completely different direction.

We use the final and gala evening to enable us to support startups throughout the year. The final is the culmination and the most visible part. It helps us raise funding, but the bootcamp, held a month or a month and a half earlier, is usually much more valuable to the startups than the final itself.

That’s our concept, and we keep thinking about how to improve it.

The bootcamp versus Silicon Valley

Martin Brath: How do you compare the bootcamp with sending startups to Silicon Valley? Which do you think has greater value for a startup?

Peter Kolesár: First, the bootcamp involves more founders. This year, we selected 25 companies, so around 50 founders go through three extremely intensive days.

For some, it’s hell; for others, an enormous learning experience. They meet people they might otherwise need two years of attending different events to meet, all in one place.

We have around 48 mentors this year: VCs, founders who have exited, successful founders building hundred-million companies, corporate people, and Startup Awards alumni. Top people from across the region.

The competing founders spend time with them in formal group mentoring and one-to-one sessions, but also in the evenings. They approach them at one or two in the morning to discuss things.

Having them all in one hotel is amazing and transformative for many people. We still hear these stories, and we try to share them publicly.

Rišo Malovič from Whalebone, a hugely successful Czech company with real potential to become a global business, didn’t even reach the final. He only attended the bootcamp, and now he’s a mentor.

He still says that the bootcamp helped him get his first major customers, including O2, because we had Peter Gažík from O2 as a mentor. He also made other contacts, including with his lead investor—I think it was Day One—who were mentoring too.

It changed his startup life. The fact that he didn’t reach the final was irrelevant.

Martin Basila similarly describes it as a condensed university degree in entrepreneurship. Katka Šimková, now at [company name unclear in the source], who was at Staffino then, has shared similar experiences.

We collect these accounts, and every year confirms that the bootcamp changes lives. We put enormous attention into it: planning things down to the minute and designing those interactions. It works very well.

Silicon Valley, on the other hand, is only for the winning startups. Last year, there were winners in four categories and an overall winner, who was also one of the category winners. So that meant eight founders.

They should already have a specific reason to explore the US market. They meet potential customers and major VCs. It’s an entry into the wider world.

Often, they realize how regional their thinking was. They wanted to build a Slovak or Central European company, and suddenly America gives them a wake-up call.

Questions from investors, VCs, and other founders raising multimillion seed rounds make them realize that, if they want to build a global company, they need to think big.

They have to make sense of all of that. Raising lots of money doesn’t make sense for everyone. Someone can bootstrap and gradually build a globally successful company, perhaps with some angel funding.

Slido is an example: it never took VC money.

They need to digest that intense week, decide which path they want to take, and use the Silicon Valley contacts to help them along that path.

Mentors who pay their own travel

Martin Brath: How do you persuade mentors to come to the bootcamp? I assume you don’t pay them.

Peter Kolesár: We don’t. We cover accommodation and food, but they pay their own travel and do the mentoring for free.

Many—most—have families and young children, yet they give up their weekend. Some write to say, “I can come on Saturday from nine until two, then I have something with the children, then I’ll come back in the evening and for a few hours on Sunday.” They make it work around their commitments.

One year, Lucka and Šimon Šicko came with their children. Part of our team looked after the children so they could mentor.

That’s the most beautiful thing: people genuinely want to help. That’s what the bootcamp is about.

This year, we actually had to turn mentors away. Many asked if they could come, but we already had so many that we had to cap the number. That’s a very good position to be in.

We have VCs from Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest. Everything is in English, which also creates value and pushes startups to recognize that, if they want to build an international or global company, they need to work in English. That gives some of them a wake-up call too.

We no longer have to persuade mentors to come. We have a very long list and select people strategically. Many also volunteer, and unfortunately, we have to consider some of them for the following year instead.

How the startups are selected

Martin Brath: You’re currently selecting the next finalists, or the people coming to the bootcamp. What criteria do you use as part of that selection process?

Peter Kolesár: For the shortlist—the semifinal, in a sense, which is the bootcamp—we select 20 to 25 startups.

We consider the usual criteria: how long the company has been operating, how much it has raised, and its traction relative to that funding. It isn’t simply a case of more money being better.

If a company has achieved a lot with little money, has its first customers, perhaps paying customers, and has genuinely validated something that makes sense, we might select it over a company that has raised €800,000 but has been going around in circles for three years.

The exception would be a deep-tech startup that genuinely needs substantial capital before it can bring anything to market.

We look at the founders. What kind of people are they? What have they done? Do they have credibility in their field?

For the first time, we required founders to record a video. That makes it much easier to get a feel for them, their ability to tell the company’s story, and whether they have a clear understanding of it.

A selection committee considers all of this. We score the companies, create a ranking, and discuss it.

We also care about diversity of solutions. We don’t want three very similar products. If we have an agritech startup and two or three recruitment platforms, we’d rather include the agritech startup.

We want capable women founders represented, and we consider regional representation as well. Those are softer criteria.

The firm eligibility criteria are that the company must not have raised more than €1 million, must have a Slovak founder or be registered in Slovakia—some connection with Slovakia—and must have at least an MVP or prototype.

There should be something with a reasonable chance of validation, some market response, and they shouldn’t be entering an extremely saturated market.

Founders who fall apart on pitch day

Martin Brath: Have you seen cases where someone had a good product but completely fell apart on pitch day in front of investors because they didn’t have the necessary presentation skills?

Peter Kolesár: Yes, there are stories like that.

One I often mention is Paláček from Multiplex [name and company unclear in the source]. He came to the bootcamp in 2016 as a nervous scientist. He was upset because the shortest presentation he’d ever given was 45 minutes, and suddenly he had to condense all his scientific knowledge into two minutes—or four minutes. [The source gives both durations.] For a scientist, that seemed impossible.

But he worked incredibly hard over those three days, reached the final, and then won.

There are many such stories. It’s something I often see with Slovak founders: they struggle to tell the story of their product and their own connection to it.

Why them? Why this product? How does it solve a problem?

They fall in love with the product. They can explain its technical features in detail, but struggle to place it in the broader context of the market, competitors, and a vision.

We have founders like that at every bootcamp. From what I’ve seen, we’ll have founders with excellent products this year who will struggle to present them. But we work on that with them too.

We run a pitching workshop. They work and practice all night from Saturday to Sunday, then present on Sunday at Tuli Cinema in x-bionic, which is already a huge stage.

Some fall apart and some don’t, but we try to assess them comprehensively. It isn’t a beauty contest where the best presentation automatically wins. We consider the product, the market, and the potential as a whole.

At the bootcamp, all the mentors evaluate them. More than 40 mentors have score sheets, take notes, and score every startup. We then add up the results and discuss who advances to the final.

I can’t imagine a more objective way of deciding. These are people who’ve spent three intensive days with the founders and know them extremely well.

The ones that didn’t reach the final

Martin Brath: I won’t ask about startups that reached the final and then failed. I’m more interested in those that didn’t reach the final, or even the semifinal, but then took off—in a positive sense.

Do you have stories where you thought, “Okay, I missed that. These people turned out to be really good”?

Peter Kolesár: Definitely.

First, let me mention startups that reached the final, didn’t win, and then took off. Andrej Pánčík with Prizeo didn’t win. I think even some of the judges were skeptical, and then came a major exit.

We had an extremely strong Science category in 2015, if I remember correctly: Photoneo, Blue Vision Labs, and Capturing Reality.

Obviously, only one could win, but all three are wonderful Slovak success stories: Photoneo exited to Zebra, Blue Vision Labs to Lyft, and Capturing Reality to Epic Games.

Slido, for example, didn’t win Startup Awards in 2013 or 2014, not even its own category. But Peter Komorník and the whole team built a beautiful story and eventually exited.

You can’t predict everything. Many startups didn’t advance from the bootcamp to the final because, even with a diverse group of judges and mentors, you can’t capture everything in three days.

Someone might narrowly miss the final because we’re considering different factors, and later take off.

Whalebone is a good example. Richard Malovič, whom I mentioned, didn’t reach the final, but the company took off.

He’s grateful and gives back to the community. He comes to mentor very willingly and is genuinely one of the bootcamp’s top mentors.

He still says he doesn’t mind not reaching the final because it changed his life anyway.

This isn’t just something we say to console people who don’t get through. Reaching the final really isn’t the most important thing.

Yes, being in Košice’s beautiful historic theatre and on television is an extra bonus. But they’ve already won by attending the bootcamp.

Should the bootcamp grow?

Martin Brath: Wouldn’t it make more sense, then, to set Silicon Valley aside and expand the bootcamp so more people can attend?

Peter Kolesár: It’s worth discussing, but I feel that 50 people from 25 companies is already a lot. It’s at the limit of what we can manage within a given space and timeframe while still delivering value.

There are actually around 100 to 120 people at the bootcamp across the different groups.

Martin Brath: And children.

Peter Kolesár: And some children, exactly.

So I don’t think there’s much room to expand it. But we do think about how to help startups throughout the year.

Again, we don’t want SASK to be just an event. We want it to be a helpful, supportive platform.

This year, for the first time, we opened applications in June and offered workshops to applicants, helping them at least with their pitch decks and the stories they tell about themselves.

We ran two workshops with Andrej Dúl [name uncertain in the source], who does it brilliantly. That alone helped many startups. It was our first way of supporting them.

Some advanced to the bootcamp, and some will later reach the final. But we keep widening the funnel of people we can offer at least some interaction or help.

Next year, we’ll consider how to open that funnel further, perhaps by doing something valuable for companies in the spring as well.

Our main thinking is about widening it as much as possible and providing support at every stage. Of course, the further down the funnel you go, the more intensive the help we can give.

But Slovakia does have a problem with a narrow funnel. That’s our challenge, and we need to widen it.

Not money: storytelling and a global outlook

Martin Brath: What do you see as the biggest problem for Slovak startups: a lack of money, know-how, contacts, or perhaps the global mindset you’re trying to develop through Silicon Valley?

Peter Kolesár: We recently carried out a startup ecosystem survey with Slovenská sporiteľňa, asking startups and investors what they saw as the biggest problems.

Startups said a lack of capital. Investors said a lack of investable startups.

I think there may be a funding gap in certain areas, but generally, a lack of financing isn’t the biggest problem Slovak startups face.

At certain times, funds may have finished investing, and less money may be available. But good founders will find funding. Absolutely. So funding isn’t the main issue.

I’d highlight two things.

The first is something I’ve already touched on: how founders tell the story of their product, how their previous experience gives them credibility to develop it, and how they connect that with the market.

It isn’t enough just to talk about the product. You need to explain what it means in the market, what problem it solves, what the vision is, and where you want to take it, backed by data and evidence.

That’s probably Slovak founders’ weakest area: explaining things clearly to different audiences and target groups in a way they can understand.

We were still struggling with that in Silicon Valley. Even though we’d brought the winners and excellent companies, meeting after meeting showed that even top VCs didn’t understand what they did.

Even by Friday, we were still telling them, “You really have to explain it in 30 seconds so the other person wants to ask questions. If they don’t ask questions, you’ve failed to communicate it well.”

And these founders had already been through the bootcamp, the Startup Awards final, preparation for the final, and then Silicon Valley. It’s a constant battle.

I could mention many other things, but these are the two fundamentals. First, storytelling and the ability to sell yourself. Incidentally, startups also said in that survey that the ability to sell themselves was one of their biggest constraints.

Second, a global outlook: being able to see around the corner and testing your idea in other markets from the beginning, rather than only with your friends.

Staying with Startup Awards

Martin Brath: As you leave Civitta, are you staying with Startup Awards? What does that look like for you now?

Peter Kolesár: My goal is for Startup Awards to continue, so I’ll stay involved to whatever extent is needed.

But our goal, both for Startup Awards and the community more broadly, is to expand the community. I’d be happy to see more people joining the organizing team.

I still want to help because I see it as a game changer for the community in many ways, a kind of gravitational force.

I want to do everything I can to keep it going, help it grow, raise awareness of Slovakia’s outstanding companies, and motivate young people to become entrepreneurs. Whatever I can do to support that, I’ll do.

Advice to his 25-year-old self

Martin Brath: One last question. If you could go back and give your 25-year-old self some advice, what would you say?

Peter Kolesár: Don’t be afraid. Be hungrier and more ambitious.

If I were 25 again, I’d definitely try to study at top universities abroad. I did study not only in Brno but also in New York and at CEU in Budapest. But I still don’t know why I didn’t apply to universities in Britain or America.

I feel that our generation—or at least I, at that time—was more fearful and lacked self-confidence.

I’d tell myself not to be afraid. If it doesn’t work out, nothing terrible happens. You’ll only regret what you didn’t try.

That sounds like a cliché, but looking at it through the eyes of my 25-year-old self, I’d encourage myself to be braver.

Martin Brath: Great. Peter, thank you for the conversation.

Peter Kolesár: Thank you very much for inviting me, Martin.