Michaela Kršková is the first director for innovations of the Slovak government. As Director General of the Research, Development and Innovation Section at the Office of the Government, she is responsible for inter-ministerial coordination of innovation policy and implementation of the reform and investment component 9 of the Recovery Plan, which aims to revitalize the Slovak innovation ecosystem In the past, Michaela co-founded the largest Slovak venture capital fund, Neulogy Ventures, in which she has worked with many large innovative companies. She was a co-founder of the Startup Awards (now FTRNW), which played an important role in the development of the Slovak innovation ecosystem and whose participants now have a cumulative valuat…

Dr.h.c. prof.h.c. prof. Ing. Stanislav Kmeť, DrSc., Is a professor at the Institute of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Technical University in Košice. He is the rector of the Technical University in Košice. His professional background is the theory and design of intelligent adaptive support systems, their analysis and simulations by the application of nonlinear mathematical-physical computational models and artificial intelligence methods. He has experience with research and development projects funded by the EU Structural Funds (participated in 7 projects such as the Centre for Excellent Integrated Research of Advanced Building Structures, Materials and Technologies, Technicom University Science Park and others). He is …

Michal Nešpor is a Partner at Crowdberry, an alternative investment platform, and at CB Investment Management, where he manages a seed VC fund. Crowdberry has more than €100 million in assets under management, with investment tickets ranging from €0.1 to €5 million and driving the growth of more than 70 pre-seed, seed and growth-stage companies in Czechia and Slovakia. Michal has 17 years of experience working with start-ups, from both the investors’ and founders’ sides of the negotiation table. He prepared and accompanied tech start-ups through fundraising and negotiation with VCs and Business Angels, bringing hands-on experience from the tech VC firm GCP Gamma Capital Partners based in Vienna. At GCP, Michal was dealing with apprais…

Michal Truban combines politics, business and strategies. In high school, he founded the company WebSupport, which he later successfully sold. He is the vice president Progressive Slovakia. At the same time, he does strategic consulting for SMBs and talks about everything in his podcast and blog at: truban.sk