Untold Speakers
We invite top-caliber speakers, so our community can learn from the best. Founders, operators and investors join us from all around Europe and beyond to share their untold stories.
More speakers to be announced soon!
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
speakers untold stories conference
Ábel Galácz
CEO of Lead Ventures
Ábel Galácz
CEO of Lead Ventures
Founder and CEO of Lead Ventures. He started his career in 2000 in corporate M&A at MOL, in 2006-2007 he worked in Investment Banking of Morgan Stanley International.
Between 2008 and 2011 he was the Vice President of Corporate Business Development at MOL being responsible for all acquisitions and divestments of the Group.
Between 2011 and 2017 he was Commercial Senior Vice President of MOL running the global commercial operations, later the Downstream business in Hungary. He has been in the boards of INA d.d. (Croatia), Slovnaft a.s. (Slovakia), IES s.p.a. (Italy), MSZKSZ (Hungary).
He graduated from the Budapest University of Economic Sciences and earned his MBA at the University of California at Berkeley.
Adam Springer
Startup B2B Sales Strategy at Startup Sales
Adam Springer
Startup B2B Sales Strategy at Startup Sales
Adam has been the first sales person for four B2B startups. He has worked with over 100 startups to build their sales processes and structure to grow from zero to one million in less than a year then scale to 10+ million in revenue. Adam is also VP of Sales for Trusstor, and Advisor for Kaholo, Copilot.cx and many others.
Ágnes Gólya
Journalist at Forbes Hungary
Ágnes Gólya
Journalist at Forbes Hungary
Alex George
Principal at Point Nine
Alex George
Principal at Point Nine
Andrea Skaliczki
CFO, Tresorit
Andrea Skaliczki
CFO, Tresorit
Andrea is a passionate and results-driven finance leader with over 15 years of experience in building up and leading successful finance teams. Currently she is the CFO at Tresorit, a Swiss-Hungarian SaaS company that provides an end-to-end encrypted productivity solution for ultra-secure collaboration. She accompanied the company through fundraisings, became a shareholder and played a key part in the acquisition in 2021.
Angelo Burgarello
Partner at AI Startup Incubator
Angelo Burgarello
Partner at AI Startup Incubator
Angelo is one of the partners at AI Startup Incubator (AISI, Prague) and AISI's newly built Ventures Fund SICAV, called LOOK AI VENTURES. He is also a partner in PragueMorning, the most popular online news site for foreigners living in the Czech Republic, and a private investor in a number of European startups. Angelo recently joined The Recursive as part of a deal with PragueMorning to make The Recursive the largest English-language media outlet in Central and Eastern Europe that focuses on startups, innovation, and investment.
He has been a manager in a number of different roles, like business development, project management, and planning for the implementation of IT solutions. With an engineering educational background and further specialization in early stage ventures, Angelo's job at AISI and LOOK AI Ventures is to find promising startups during AISI's evaluation process and to negotiate investment contracts.
Aurél Pásztor
Partner at PortfoLion
Aurél Pásztor
Partner at PortfoLion
Aurel handles early-stage investments at PortfoLion and his specialties include EduTech, AgriTech, Future of Work, and Robotics. He is now focused on Sustaniable businesses and in the past two years alone, he has closed transactions with Novakid, OneSoil, Mindgram and Deligo Vision.
He first transitioned into the venture capital world in 2011, as an Investment Director and later became Partner at Day one Capital. He will tell you all about his journey in Budapest!
Balázs Haszonics
Partner at Lead Ventures Zrt.
Balázs Haszonics
Partner at Lead Ventures Zrt.
Balazs started his career in the finance sector, working at ING Bank, MSCI Barra and PwC M&A.
After joining MOL Group in 2011, he held various advisory and managerial roles in Strategy and Finance areas, including being the CFO of trading and retail operations, before joining Lead Ventures, as Chief Financial Officer.
Lead Ventures is a Budapest-based VC fund focusing on scaleups in the CEE region.
Balazs Vinnai
Serial Entrepreneur, Startup Hungary Co-Founder, ICT Association President
Balazs Vinnai
Serial Entrepreneur, Startup Hungary Co-Founder, ICT Association President
Balazs is a serial entrepreneur, local fintech legend turned angel investor. He was the cofounder of IND which was acquired by IND.
He invested in many startups including Codecool, Finshape and he is also a president of ICT Association and a co-founder in Startup Hungary.
He is one of the key successful entrepreneurs who give back.
Bálint Orosz
Founder & CEO at Craft Docs
Bálint Orosz
Founder & CEO at Craft Docs
Bálint Orosz is the CEO and founder of Craft Docs, an interactive note-taking app supporting writers and researchers with a frictionless sharing and collaboration platform.
Since Craft’s launch in 2019, the startup has already secured an $8M Series A round investment led by Creandum and many ex-Skyscanner tech entrepreneurs.
Barnabas Birmacher
Co-founder and CEO of Bitrise
Barnabas Birmacher
Co-founder and CEO of Bitrise
Barnabas is the Co-Founder & CEO of Bitrise, one of the most successful tech companies ever started from Hungary, serving more than half of the world's mobile unicorns with its world class CD/CI service and DevOps platform.
The company was founded by Barnabás, Dániel Balla and Viktor Benei back in 2014, after trying to solve their own problem with manual and time consuming mobile app deployment.
To this date, Bitrise has been the only company from Hungary that went through Y Combinator. They raised $60 million in Series C funding, led by Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors, including Partech, OpenOcean, Zobito, Fiedler Capital and Y Combinator.
In 2021, Bitrise transitioned towards a talent first remote approach so currently it has team members across continents. Before Bitrise, Barnabas was also a CEO of Bitfall, a software developer company focusing on mobile app development for the iOS, Android and Windows Phone platforms.
Bernat Nacsa
Co-founder of Guild.xyz
Bernat Nacsa
Co-founder of Guild.xyz
Bernat is a co-founder of Guild.xyz, working on product, growth and community. Previously he was a VC investing in early stage Eastern European founders with Day One Capital. He has a background in quantitative finance and game theory.
Bogdan Iordache
General Partner of Underline Ventures
Bogdan Iordache
General Partner of Underline Ventures
Bogdan is the solo General Partner of Underline Ventures, a venture capital firm which partners at the earliest stages with Eastern European founders building high-growth startups with global ambitions.
Also founder of the How to Web Conference, one of Europe’s leading startup and innovation events, Bogdan is advising early stage startups on raising capital, building useful products, or crafting great pitch decks.
Previously Partner with Gecad Ventures, entrepreneur (founded and exited Conectoo, an enterprise email marketing service), he was involved with MVP Academy, MVP Angels, TechHub Bucharest, and 3TS Capital Partners.
Borys Musielak
Founding Partner at SMOK Ventures
Borys Musielak
Founding Partner at SMOK Ventures
Borys is a founding partner at SMOK Ventures, a VC fund bridging Silicon Valley to Poland and CEE. Previously he co-founded Filmaster, a personalization service acquired in 2015 by Samba TV.
He also co-founded ReaktorX, a startup acceleration program for first-time founders from CEE, and Startup Poland, a foundation that became a voice of Polish startups.
Csaba Kakosy
Managing Partner, CEO at Day1
Csaba Kakosy
Managing Partner, CEO at Day1
Csaba brings over 12 years regulatory and financial experience, a strategic mindset and an extensive international network to our Fund. Csaba was a regulatory expert in the Hungarian banking sector representing the Hungarian central bank at the Permanent Mission of Hungary to the OECD in Paris for 5 years. In 2004 Csaba moved to become chief of staff at the Ministry of Economy and Transport where he played a key role in its operations and rationalization. In 2007 he became Minister of Economy and Transport in Hungary where he served until the break-up of the coalition in 2008. Since then, Csaba has been a Founding Partner at Reservoir Strategies, a strategy consulting firm with a strong focus on the energy, transport and telecommunications industries.
Daniel Farkas
Co-Founder, Drops
Daniel Farkas
Co-Founder, Drops
Daniel Farkas is co-founder of Drops, where he helps people all around the world learn languages in a new, enjoyable way. Following an epiphany that most of us are never actually taught how to learn, Daniel spent over a decade researching how to do it right and created a language learning app (Drops) that really worked. In 2020, and after hitting 20 million users and a $10M revenue run rate, the company was acquired by Kahoot! for $50 million. Drops has not raised any VC funding.
Dani recently stepped down from leading the team of Drops.
Daniel Balla
Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Bitrise
Daniel Balla
Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Bitrise
Daniel Vallas
VP of Finance at Shapr3d
Daniel Vallas
VP of Finance at Shapr3d
Senior leader with 12+ years of experience within the finance arena including startup, big4 and large corporation experience.
Diana Koziarska
Founding partner at SMOK Ventures
Diana Koziarska
Founding partner at SMOK Ventures
Founding partner at SMOK Ventures. Co-founder of accelerator ReaktorX. Forbes 30 under 30. Ambassador of Startup Poland.
SMOK Ventures is a US/Polish venture capital fund. We invest between 50k USD and 1M USD in early stage startups in Poland. Our primary focus is software and gaming. We love to work with serial entrepreneurs with a global vision who aim to build global leaders in their industries.
Dora Palfi
Co-founder and CEO at imagiLabs
Dora Palfi
Co-founder and CEO at imagiLabs
Dora is co-founder and CEO of imagiLabs, an edtech gaming company making products that empower girls with the skills, confidence, and community to create with technology.
Dora has a bachelor's degree in Neuroscience with a minor in Computer Science from New York University Abu Dhabi and has studied Human Computer Interaction at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, as part of the European Union’s EIT Digital Master School, receiving merit based scholarships for both of these programs. She has worked as a developer at Morgan Stanley and as a UX Designer at Cisco, and has substantial experience teaching programming to children and teenagers as well as advocating for women in technology. Dora is Hungarian, and true to her fictional namesake Dora the Explorer, has lived, studied, and worked in 10 countries across four continents. In addition to her work to bring technology closer to girls, Dora is also a yoga instructor, bringing mindfulness closer to engineers.
Dora has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 2021 list as one of Europe’s leading social entrepreneurs and serves as a Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellow.
Dorka Horváth
CEO and Co-Founder of BOOKR Kids
Dorka Horváth
CEO and Co-Founder of BOOKR Kids
Over the last few years the BOOKR Kids won numerous awards ranging from Toy of the Year to Central European Startup Awards.
Besides her true passion for publishing and education, she is also engaged in women's entrepreneurship by encouraging young girls and women to make a difference
Enis Hulli
General Partner at 500
Enis Hulli
General Partner at 500
Enis Hulli is a General Partner at 500. Educated as an engineer he has a firm grasp of the technological aspect of the startup world and the ambition and knowledge to see the global potential in the regional startup scene. That is why, rather than venturing on the civil engineer path, he founded firstseed, a network of investors focusing on early stage investments. He aims to cultivate and grow the startup ecosystems in Emerging Europe, help talented entrepreneurs of the broader region and the diaspora in building explosive businesses that will integrate with Silicon Valley. His goal is to position 500 as the leading actor in the region in order to re-shape the future of innovation at Emerging Europe.
500 Istanbul is an early-stage fund within the 500 Global network, a leading global venture capital seed fund and startup accelerator with over 2,600 investments in more than 75 countries and venture partners in more than 25 countries. 500 Istanbul's mission is to back seed-stage technology companies targeting sizable markets and help them scale globally. Launched in August of 2016, 500 Istanbul has 50 portfolio companies that have collectively raised more than $1B from international investors.
Guillaume Fournier
General Partner at Credo Ventures
Guillaume Fournier
General Partner at Credo Ventures
Guillaume is a General Partner at Credo Ventures. He started his career with Goldman Sachs in Boston facilitating securities lending transactions. After a move to London, he spent three years as a management consultant working for various Fortune 500 companies, mainly on healthcare and FMCG projects. In 2014, he made the jump to Venture Capital, initially at Athene Capital, then joining Credo in 2016 after a move to Prague. After a good amount of travelling across CEE and leading or co-leading 9 investments, he jumped to the other side of the table. He joined his own portfolio company, Pricefx to help navigate its first acquisition, Series C fundraise and budgeting exercise through COVID. He wrapped his operational experience with a product strategy role to help inform the product roadmap of the company's complex enterprise SaaS pricing optimization solution. In the second half of 2021, he rejoined Credo as a partner ahead of the fourth fundraise to resume his investment role.
Gyula Fehér
General Partner at Oktogon Ventures
Gyula Fehér
General Partner at Oktogon Ventures
Imre Branyiczki
HR Director at EPAM Systems
Imre Branyiczki
HR Director at EPAM Systems
Irina Obushtarova
Co-founder & CEO at The Recursive
Irina Obushtarova
Co-founder & CEO at The Recursive
Irina began her professional career in media at popular Viennese transcultural magazine Biber. Later on, she joined the sales team of Kobza Media, formerly one of the largest groups of media & communication agencies in Austria.
In 2016, Irina makes her first attempt as an entrepreneur and co-founds WelcomeBuddy, a platform serving the needs of expats when relocating to Austria. In the course of her work, she observes more closely the migration trends in Europe resulting in massive brain drain in Bulgaria and Romania and decides to switch directions. In the same period, Irina develops her passion for the startup world and new disruptive business models.
Irina gained experience in digital marketing and sales working for various tech product companies in DACH. In 2018, Irina decides to move back to Bulgaria and the media sector, founding the first international outlet of Trending Topics in Sofia. Later on, she launches her own media project The Recursive. As an aspiring leader, Irina is currently responsible for the long-term vision of The Recursive as a sustainably growing media for the innovation ecosystems and emerging new economy in Southeast Europe.
István Csanády
Founder and CEO at Shapr3D
István Csanády
Founder and CEO at Shapr3D
Janos Matyasfalvi
CFO at SEON
Janos Matyasfalvi
CFO at SEON
He is currently the CFO at SEON the go-to fraud prevention solution for any online business. By offering rapid integration and pay-as-you-go flexibility, SEON is able to offer a simplified, modern way to fight fraud.
Jared Schrieber
Unicorn Founder turned Angel Investor
Jared Schrieber
Unicorn Founder turned Angel Investor
In 2011 Jared founded InfoScout, a marketing intelligence company providing household purchase information by item across all retailers. They went through every type of investment round, including a 2017 merger with Market Track whereby the 2 companies rebranded themselves as Numerator. After integrating the two companies, Jared stepped down from the company’s CEO position, moved to Hungary as a “love-refugee” and started focusing more on his angel investment activity. Now he’s here to stay and to shake up the Hungarian startup world.
His continuously growing portfolio of 25 angel investments has him well on his way to becoming Hungary’s first super angel.
Jenny Dreier
Venture Lead at EQT Ventures Berlin
Jenny Dreier
Venture Lead at EQT Ventures Berlin
Jiří Nečas
Employer Branding Manager at Productboard
Jiří Nečas
Employer Branding Manager at Productboard
Jirka helps companies grow faster by building powerful employer brands, meaningful communities, and driving PR and communications. He helped scale Kiwi.com from 1,000 employees to 2,500 in three years and Productboard from 100 to 500+ in two years and become a unicorn.
Educational projects are close to his heart. He is the co-founder of Hiring On Ramp, an educational platform where he helps startup founders and HR professionals enter the modern hiring ecosystem, and build a solid and stable foundation for scaling their startups.
Jose Roca
VP of Product and Engineering at Prezi
Jose Roca
VP of Product and Engineering at Prezi
Jose is the VP of Product and Engineering at Prezi, the online virtual presentation tool that brings hybrid teams closer together like never before.
As a product and engineering leader he has built and led multiple platform and experience teams. He has experience working with public and private sector companies, from startups to fortune 500. He also contributes to communities by organizing, talking and even MCing in conferences and meetups.
At Prezi he is responsible for building and scaling the data, security, growth, editing API and reliability platform that serve millions of users.
Kálmán Kiss
Consultant at Day One Capital
Kálmán Kiss
Consultant at Day One Capital
Karol Szubstarski
Partner at OTB Ventures
Karol Szubstarski
Partner at OTB Ventures
Karol is currently a Partner at OTB Ventures, deep tech Series A/B VC fund focused on opportunities in Europe (especially CEE). He has joined OTB after 5 years spent in Intel Capital, the corporate VC arm of Intel. Prior to this role he was involved in the Insight & Market Research team in Intel and has taken part in the Talent Development Program in L’Oreal. Karol holds a double major from Warsaw School of Economics & Poznan University of Economics.
Karol Lasota
Principal at Inovo Venture Partners
Karol Lasota
Principal at Inovo Venture Partners
Karolina Mrozkova
General Partner at Credo Ventures
Karolina Mrozkova
General Partner at Credo Ventures
Karolina is a General Partner at Credo Ventures. She was born and raised in Prague before moving to New York in her early 20s. She began her professional life at 18, building a successful career as a fashion model. While modeling, Karolina graduated cum laude from NYU Stern School of Business with a dual degree in Finance and Marketing. In 2018, she joined White Star Capital where she spent five years investing in North America with focus on consumer internet and marketplace businesses across different verticals.
Kate McGinn
Analyst at Seedcamp
Kate McGinn
Analyst at Seedcamp
Klára Losert
Co-founder & CEO at Talkbase
Klára Losert
Co-founder & CEO at Talkbase
Kristóf Székely
Partner at Lead Ventures
Kristóf Székely
Partner at Lead Ventures
In 2010 Mr. Szekely joined the M&A team of MOL as an analyst, then a project manager. Later he worked at the Commercial Department of MOL Group where he participated in developing two new business lines (natural gas trading and renewables).
He earned his Finance degree at Corvinus University, Budapest and his MBA at the University of Warwick, UK.
Lars Jörnow
Partner at EQT Ventures
Lars Jörnow
Partner at EQT Ventures
A gamer at heart, Lars joined King in 2009 and spent his first year there playing more than 10,000 different flash games. As VP of Mobile, Lars led the team that went on to develop and launch the global, cross-platform phenomenon Candy Crush Saga - the most downloaded and top grossing mobile game in history.
With his track record, Lars has been at the forefront of the casual gaming revolution, opening up gaming to people that had never played (or even thought of playing) games before.
László Kishonti
Founder and Chief Executive Officer at aiMotive
László Kishonti
Founder and Chief Executive Officer at aiMotive
Stellantis, a top 5 global automotive player and the maker of Fiat, Opel, Chrysler, Peugeot, Maserati among others will keep and develop Aimotive as a separate entity within their group.
Martin Rehak
CEO & Founder of Resistant AI
Martin Rehak
CEO & Founder of Resistant AI
Marvin Liao
Partner at Diaspora, ex 500 startups
Marvin Liao
Partner at Diaspora, ex 500 startups
Marvin is an investor, executive coach and ex-Operator, who invested in and worked with over 414 pre-seed and seed stage startups.
He is currently Partner at Diaspora VC and Board Member/Partner at GameGroove Capital, and invests in Digital Media, Enterprise SAAS, Marketplace, Mobile, AdTech/MarketingTech, Digital Health, Internet of Things & Fintech startups.
Marvin is a former partner of 500 Startups, with over 19 years of experience in venture capital, technology businesses, and startups in Silicon Valley. Previously, he was an executive at Yahoo! for over a decade.
Max Gurvits
Partner at Vitosha Ventures Partners
Max Gurvits
Partner at Vitosha Ventures Partners
Max Gurvits is a US/European entrepreneur and investor. Graduated as a lawyer, Max founded an online legal services company in Amsterdam in 2008. In 2011, he sold the business and moved to Bulgaria, where he co-founded one of the biggest regional tech acceleration programs and seed funds (Eleven Startup Accelerator and EUR 12m seed fund), and later an angel investment syndicate, called Teres Angels. Active in Europe and the Middle East as startup advisor and investor, Max is particularly focused on Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In 2014, Max co-founded CCC Startups, a partnership focused on investments and ecosystem-building across Europe and the Middle East, producing Startup AddVenture events with leading speakers from Silicon Valley and launching a new regional investment fund in 2015. Also, Max runs TRACTION Camp, a series of three-day workshops with Silicon Valley operators, for top founders in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Max Gurvits is the chief host of Summit Summit- invite-only event for good people doing great things in the venture industry.
Michal Koor
Co-Founder and CEO of Vectary
Michal Koor
Co-Founder and CEO of Vectary
Michal Koor is the co-founder and CEO of Vectary, a leading platform for creating and sharing interactive 3D and AR experiences. Vectary is a no-code design platform that is entirely web-based, making it accessible from any device, including Chromebooks and SmartGlasses. Built entirely from the ground up over the course of eight years, Vectary has collected millions of users, with the free and pro plans being used by thousands of schools and businesses. Michal is an industrial designer with over 14 years of experience bringing designs and concepts to life. He designed over 50 products, that are manufactured and sold in millions each year. Michal has also co-founded several companies, including FORMLAB, one of the first design and prototyping studios in CEE.
Michał Mroczkowski
Principal @ Market One Capital
Michał Mroczkowski
Principal @ Market One Capital
Mike Reiner
General Partner Acrobator Ventures
Mike Reiner
General Partner Acrobator Ventures
Mike is an early stage investor in B2B data intensive startups and invested in around 40 companies. Previously he co-founded several ventures and built a global AI community. With Amsterdam based Acrobator Ventures he is investing pre-seed to seed stage and he is primarily interested in machine learning or Saas type of companies.
Miklós Máder
Strategy and Innovation Management Consultant at Frontira Strategy Design Agency
Miklós Máder
Strategy and Innovation Management Consultant at Frontira Strategy Design Agency
Miklós Máder, PhD strategy and innovation management consultant at Frontira Strategy Design Agency. Decades of experience of innovation management in large enterprises.
Myladie Stoumbou
Senior Regional Director CEE at Microsoft
Myladie Stoumbou
Senior Regional Director CEE at Microsoft
Myladie Stoumbou is an experienced digital executive, leader and strategist. She specializes in building and transforming global and diverse high performance teams, as well as in assisting businesses to leverage opportunities from 4th industrial revolution and current exponential technologies. She has worn many hats in her professional career – started as systems engineer and a programmer, developing into a digital technology and innovation evangelist and later into a regional executive. She has been working in multinational environments for many years and has a unique ability to manage multi-disciplinary projects, to navigate non-standard challenges and to solve complex problems. She is currently working as a regional director for Microsoft, and she goes beyond that. She supports digital entrepreneurship as a mentor for MIT Enterprise Forum in Greece, The People's Trust and Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub. She is a women leadership advocate. Chair of Women in Business committee for Hellenic American Chamber of Commerce, and a mentor for Women Leadership Programme in European Innovation Council. She is an international keynote speaker addressing topics like leadership, future of work, diversity and inclusion, artificial intelligence and digital entrepreneurship. She has 2 TEDx talks and she is the author of many articles in LinkedΙn as well as many prestigious sites, incl. Huffpost.
Ondrej Bartos
Partner at Credo Ventures
Ondrej Bartos
Partner at Credo Ventures
An entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Ondrej experienced his first successful business endeavor before he graduated from college in 1996.
Several business enterprises later, he is now managing the early stage venture capital firm Credo Ventures, which he co-founded in January 2009. Based in Prague, Credo Ventures is a venture capital company focused on early-stage investments in Central and Eastern Europe. Since it was founded in 2009, the VC has invested in 45 startups, its most successful being the Romanian-founded unicorn UiPath that became the shiniest decacorn of the region.
Until December 2008 he served as the Senior Investment Director of MCI Management S.A., where he was responsible for managing investments in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and former Yugoslavia.
Petar Tsachev
VC Investor at LAUNCHub Ventures
Petar Tsachev
VC Investor at LAUNCHub Ventures
Petar is an Investor at LAUNCHub Ventures- a leading early-stage venture capital fund, investing in tech startups in the Seed and Series A funding stages.
Prior to joining LAUNCHub Ventures, Petar was a part of the EMEA Go-to-market team of BitTitan - a scale-up company and a market leader in the field of productivity cloud migration space. He was responsible for all aspects of commercial sales, account management, and business development across France, Scandinavia, and South Africa. Before BitTitan, Petar was responsible for the new business development of Metrilo - a LAUNCHub Venture portfolio company providing engagement and analytics tools in the eCommerce space.
Peter Szabo
Country Manager of Microsoft Hungary
Peter Szabo
Country Manager of Microsoft Hungary
Peter Szabo, Country Manager of Microsoft Hungary, is responsible for managing the local subsidiary and driving digital transformation of the company’s customers and business partners. Peter has joined Microsoft 6 years ago, first taking over the Customer and Devices Sales division in the Hungary-Czech-Slovakia region and later, leading the development of Microsoft Hungary’s Partner ecosystem and safeguarding compliant partner operations in Hungary.
Peter is also an advisory board member in Startup Hungary and has worked with the organization over the past two years to support the growth and international competitiveness of Hungarian Startups.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Peter spent 17 years in the FMCG industry, working for Unilever, where he has assumed a variety of marketing, sales and general management roles.
Peter Szlavik
Founder and CEO of EDUardo Business Simulation
Peter Szlavik
Founder and CEO of EDUardo Business Simulation
Peter is the Founder and CEO of EDUardo Business Simulation, an online business simulation platform which helps the learning and understanding of business and management topics.
The EDUardo platform offers a vast sandbox of real-world scenarios that push learners to solve comprehensive problems with real-time feedback.
The company provides services for both the corporate and academic sectors in 20+ countries like Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Germany, Spain or Singapore. EDUardo’s reference clients include OTP Group and is an active member of the Microsoft Partner Program.
Prior to his current role, Peter worked at the corporate sector (MOL, Hungarocamion / Waberer’s) and worked as the managing partner and management consultant at Boda & Partners.
Peter Balogh
Territory Manager of Google Cloud Platform
Peter Balogh
Territory Manager of Google Cloud Platform
Peter is a Territory Manager of Google Cloud Platform in Hungary. His goal is to help Startups to move forward with Cloud Technologies and encourage Startups to use the Google Cloud funding program.
Peter Szekeres
CEO, co-founder at Neticle
Peter Szekeres
CEO, co-founder at Neticle
Peter graduated as a Business Information Technologist from Corvinus University of Budapest (BCE). In 2012, he founded the text and media analysis company Neticle. During his studies, he realized that providing solutions to businesses with a lot of textual data was something that he could be good at. That’s how Neticle came to be. Neticle is now one of the fastest-growing B2B SaaS scale-ups in Hungary, providing text analytics solutions in 19 countries, mostly in the CEE and DACH region. Their clientele ranges from SMEs to large enterprises, as the company boosts business decisions with two major products. Neticle Media Intelligence is a smart social listening tool that collects and analyses an enormous amount of publicly available online content – including the text’s underlying sentiments – in real-time. Another flagship product is Zurvey.io, a professional survey maker and feedback analyzer geared for a better customer and employee experience.
Péter Halácsy
CEO at Budapest School & co-founder at Prezi
Péter Halácsy
CEO at Budapest School & co-founder at Prezi
Peter is an engineering manager, entrepreneur, software engineer, scientist and teacher. Today he fills several positions: Founder and CEO of Budapest School, a network of community-funded microschools. Co-Founder and ex-CTO at Prezi, where he built the engineering team from 0 to 70 - before that he was Head of Product and helped the company develop and polish its product that is loved by millions today. Last but not least, Founding Father and Board Member at Startup Hungary.
Petra Mo
VC Investor @3VC
Petra Mo
VC Investor @3VC
Petra Mo is – in her own words – a queen of pivots - an architect gone techie, gone VC investor. Currently, she is part of the 3VC investment team working closely with companies such as Tatum and RapidCompact by DGG. She used to be a freelancer working with various startups based in Europe, China, and Silicon Valley and later took on multiple product-oriented roles in cybersecurity European unicorn Avast. As a product enthusiast, Petra loves to challenge product roadmaps and gets easily excited about delightful UX and product demos.
Petra Kaiser
Consultant, Ex Klarna
Petra Kaiser
Consultant, Ex Klarna
Petra has extensive sales and venture acceleration experience gained in the tech startup/scaleup industry in the past 12 years. She was leading the global GTM tooling & sales operations at fintech unicorn, Klarna during its peak valuation period of $45bn in Sweden. She is currently fully focusing on her consultancy, helping companies grow in a smart, sustainable, and predictable way.
She started to work as a sales advisor for companies with investors from i.e. BlaBlaCar and Banco Sabadell in Spain after she bootstrapped tech startups on a European & global scale as European VP of Sales in Hungary, up till one successful exit.
She has a background in STEM and studied Engineering and Management at BME, which provided her with a great base for her current "sales as a science" approach in her business. She's a multicultural commercial lead - having lived in 4 countries, and counting - passionate about art, science, social enterprises, and mentoring younger peers.
Ratko Mutavdzic
Digital Natives Lead at Microsoft
Ratko Mutavdzic
Digital Natives Lead at Microsoft
Ratko Mutavdzic is Digital Natives, Late Stage Startups and Unicorns lead for Central Eastern Europe, with Microsoft. He was working on several position in Microsoft starting in a consulting practice, driving startup developments and then leading several different sales and technology teams. He also spent some time running his own ventures and startups, from just-in-time learning to artificial intelligence use for event management. Founder and cofounder of Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Intrapreneurship communities in the region. He frequently speaks on conferences, meetings, workshops, coffee shops and generally at every place where people like to explore, challenge, investigate, think and innovate.
Robert Zawiasa
Founder at ZGEN
Robert Zawiasa
Founder at ZGEN
Robert started ZGEN to create a forward-thinking work environment for gen Z. Their first project with significant traction is Guild.xyz
He is an angel investor and early supporter of the DeFi, NFT and DAO ecosystems on Ethereum.
Robert Hegedüs
Founding Partner at Fiedler Capital
Robert Hegedüs
Founding Partner at Fiedler Capital
Robert is a Founding Partner at Fiedler Capital, a first check fund helping overlooked founders from peripheral European ecosystems. Robert started doing pre-seed investments in 2014, following a decade-long career in Management Consulting across Europe, Middle-East and Asia, and he was instrumental in getting companies such as Bitrise & SEON off the ground as their first investor.
Sam Eisenberg
Co-founder of Design for Decks
Sam Eisenberg
Co-founder of Design for Decks
Sam Eisenberg is co-founder of Design for Decks, a boutique pitch-deck firm that has helped founders and investors build pitch decks raising upwards of $1B dollars. Sam is active in the start-up scene as a consultant, mentor, and founder.
Sergei Zunajev
Business development coordinator for the Estonian e-Residency
Sergei Zunajev
Business development coordinator for the Estonian e-Residency
Sheel Mohnot
GP at Better Tomorrow Ventures and Seed Stage Fintech Investor
Sheel Mohnot
GP at Better Tomorrow Ventures and Seed Stage Fintech Investor
Sheel is a Seed-stage Fintech investor and Co-founder and GP at Better Tomorrow Ventures, a seed-focused venture capital firm investing in exceptional founders building transformative fintech companies around the world. Sheel has been exclusively investing in fintech companies in the past 6 years and has 2 exits in the FinTech space, FeeFighters and Innovative Auctions.
Sheel is also the co-founder of Thistle, a food company serving tens of thousands of customers every week. And he co-founded the podcast “The Pitch” which was acquired by Gimlet Media/Spotify, reaching around 100k listeners weekly.
Shiri Granot
Global Head of Accelerator, Citi Global Innovation Labs
Shiri Granot
Global Head of Accelerator, Citi Global Innovation Labs
Shiri Granot from Citi’s Tel-Aviv innovation lab team. Passionate about innovation, financial industry, fintech, investments, startups, strategy and everything in between. Over 14 years of managerial positions in Capital markets, Venture Capital, Innovation Banking, Credit Insurance, Fintech and Digital Payments.
Steve MacDonald
Founder of MacDonald Ventures
Steve MacDonald
Founder of MacDonald Ventures
MacDonald is a titan angel investor and serial entrepreneur who is committed to nurturing, mentoring, and investing the next generation of world-changing tech startups. With more than $400 million in exits in companies he founded, his rise to success began with the founding of TechHealth in 1999 and myMatrixx, his pharmacy benefits firm, in 2001. Together with his wife, Lindsay MacDonald, Steve formed MacDonald Ventures following the 2017 sale of myMatrixx. MacDonald Ventures focuses primarily on the most promising early-stage tech startups who are disrupting industries plagued by paper-and-human-based legacy problems with innovative solutions. An active angel, Steve has invested in more than 130 startups, among them seven tech unicorns.
Steve’s depth of experience in early-stage tech, healthcare tech, and pharmaceuticals make him uniquely suited to providing a critical source of funding and mentorship to a range of startup sectors including cannabusiness, DeFi, fintech, crypto, and more. He actively serves on the board of many of his investments, including Softwear Automation, HealthSnap, Ideal Agent and Chattr.
A Tampa Bay native and current resident, Steve is heavily invested in the local startup ecosystem and his portfolio, having been named the 2020 Tampa Bay Tech ‘Community Dedication and Leadership Award’ Winner and serving as an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Tampa Bay Wave, Florida’s #1 accelerator. Steve is also an important board member of Florida Funders, the state’s most active angel network, and part of the Founders Circle for Tampa’s Embarc Collective, Florida’s fastest-growing startup hub. In 2022, he was a founding sponsor and advisor to Tampa Bay Wave’s highly-specialized 90-day FinTech|X Accelerator. In 2019, he was named Catalyst’s TiETAN Super Entrepreneur, which recognized his decades of work as one of Florida’s tech pioneers. He is frequently asked to speak on investing, entrepreneurship, and successful startups and is featured in Bloomberg, FinTech Magazine, SUCCESS, The Business Journal, and many more.
Stewart Oldroyd
Head of Sales at UiPath
Stewart Oldroyd
Head of Sales at UiPath
Stewart is the head of sales as UiPath, having extensive experienced in sales and general management, as well as international experience, while being very passionate about the CEE region. He is currently working with UiPath to deliver successful automation projects.
UiPath is leading the “Automation First” era – championing a robot for every person, delivering open and free collaboration and enabling robots to learn new skills through Artificial Intelligence. Led by a commitment to bring digital era skills to more than a million people, the company’s enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform has already automated millions of repetitive, mind-numbing tasks for business and government organizations all over the world, improving productivity, customer experience and employee job satisfaction.
Szabolcs Nagy
Co-founder and CEO Turbine
Szabolcs Nagy
Co-founder and CEO Turbine
Szabplcs used to consult for The Medical Futurist and is the former Head of Marketing for Tresorit, a leading, global, secure cloud technology startup. With his understanding of molecular biology, oncology and AI, he translates simulated biology into real world impact by pinpointing the most challenging aspects of the current drug development workflow. Today, he is responsible for building a team dedicated both to sound science and delivering results, and for turning Turbine's disruptive technology into a ground-breaking business.
Tamás Kádár
CEO and Co-Founder at SEON
Tamás Kádár
CEO and Co-Founder at SEON
SEON was born out of a real necessity, developing fraud detection and prevention solutions to protect online businesses. Fast-forward a few years, and SEON is on track to becoming the Internet’s fraud prevention of choice, being spotted by investors who previously had taken interest in companies like Bolt or Spotify. Recently, SEON raised $94M for their Series B bringing them one step closer to the goal of democratizing fraud-fighting.
Tamas Abraham
Co-founder of DevQuarterly
Tamas Abraham
Co-founder of DevQuarterly
Tamas is the co-founder of DevQuarterly, an early-stage tech careers research platform, which provides transparency, data and insights for career-savvy developers.
DevQuarterly has been tracking tech job posts and analyzing hiring companies for the last two years and the global platform launches in early 2023.
Tereza Machackova
Head of Talent at Deepnote
Tereza Machackova
Head of Talent at Deepnote
Tom McGinn
Legal Counsel at Northzone
Tom McGinn
Legal Counsel at Northzone
Xenia Muntean
CEO and Co-Founder of Planable
Xenia Muntean
CEO and Co-Founder of Planable
Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o. she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams, and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing.
Zach Coelius
Founder-turned-angel & Syndicate leader
Zach Coelius
Founder-turned-angel & Syndicate leader
Zach is a four-time founder, including founder and CEO of Triggit, which was acquired by LinkedIn.
Today, he's a full-time angel investor (Coelius Capital) and advisor to startups.
One of his first investments in Cruise Automation turned into the first billion-dollar exit on AngelList.
He’s invested and advised many startups including HelloSign, Bare Metrics, Booksy.
Zoltan Vardy
Startup Mentor, Founder @ The Launch Code
Zoltan Vardy
Startup Mentor, Founder @ The Launch Code
Zoltan Vardy is a startup mentor, trainer and speaker who guides entrepreneurs on how to build a successful global business by combining his 30 years of experience as a senior corporate executive (SVP/Global Ad Sales @NBCUniversal, CEO @ TV2 Group), entrepreneur, investor, and advisor.
As a startup mentor, Zoltan helps B2B startup founders generate predictable, recurring revenues globally by applying his three-pillar business development system called The Launch Code. As a trainer and speaker, he shares the principles, tools, and techniques he’s used to close $2 billion in B2B sales over his career and educates and inspires audiences with stories about entrepreneurship, leadership, and international business development. Zoltan’s purpose is to integrate corporate and entrepreneurial thinking to help entrepreneurs experience the personal satisfaction and rewards of building a successful global business.
Zoltán Györkő
Co-Founder and Member of the Supervisory Board at Startup Hungary
Zoltán Györkő
Co-Founder and Member of the Supervisory Board at Startup Hungary
Zoltán Györkő and his colleagues founded Balabit in 2000, right after graduating. The company has gone international as a large enterprise cyber security software manufacturer. It had customers in fifty countries, served with the help of 100 reseller partners, and had offices in 8 countries. Balabit received $8 million in growth capital in 2014, and was acquired by One Identity in 2018. Zoltán won the E&Y Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2014 and the Tibor Gyúros Award. Currently an angel, Co-Founder and Member of the Supervisory Board at Startup Hungary.
Zosia Wanat
Journalist at Sifted
Zosia Wanat
Journalist at Sifted
Zosia Wanat is Sifted’s Central and Eastern Europe reporter. Before Sifted, Zosia was a POLITICO Europe’s policy reporter, covering agriculture and food safety.
Previously she worked for MLex in Brussels as a Brexit correspondent and for the Financial Times as a reporter in London, Paris and Warsaw.
She has also published in various Polish and international media, including Polityka Insight, Visegrad Insight and fDi Magazine, covering mainly developments in Central Eastern Europe.
Zsolt Weiszbart
Partner at Day One Capital
Zsolt Weiszbart
Partner at Day One Capital
Past speakers
Adam Springer
Startup B2B Sales Strategy at Startup Sales
Adam Springer
Startup B2B Sales Strategy at Startup Sales
Adam has been the first sales person for three B2B startups, one a unicorn and another nearly half way there and growing.
He has worked with over 100 startups to build their sales processes and structure to grow from 0 to a million In less than a year then scale to 10+ million in revenue. Adam is also VP of Sales for Trusstor, and Advisor for Kaholo and Copilot.cx.
Aki Balogh
Co-founder & CEO of dlc.link, Co-Founder and President at MarketMuse
Aki Balogh
Co-founder & CEO of dlc.link, Co-Founder and President at MarketMuse
Aki Balogh has recently co-founded and is the CEO of dlc.link, bringing DeFi and smart contract to Bitcoin. He co-founded and is currently the President of MarketMuse.
Prior to MarketMuse, he worked with the CEO of InfiniDB, a Series B startup that made an analytic database for Big Data engagements.
Before joining InfiniDB, he was an Associate at OpenView Venture Partners where he looked at Series B investments in Big Data & Machine Learning.
Prior to that, Aki was a software developer and a management consultant in the Data Science practice of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants (now PwC Diamond Advisory).
Alex Kudelka
VP of Sales at Bitrise
Alex Kudelka
VP of Sales at Bitrise
Alex Kudelka is the VP of Sales at Bitrise, previously VP of Revenue at Doodle and Global Business Development Director at Algolia.
He's an expert on how early stage startups should approach scaling with their sales team.
Did you know that Bitrise is the first (and as of yet, only) Hungarian company to make it into Y Combinator?
Since then, it became a leader in the mobile CI / CD space, serving +50% of the world’s mobile app unicorns, and turning into a holistic DevOps platform helping developers build better mobile applications, faster.
Alexei Chemenda
Founder and CEO at Stealth and Angel Investor
Alexei Chemenda
Founder and CEO at Stealth and Angel Investor
Alexei Chemenda has recently founded and is the CEO of Stealth, while is also investing and advising startups as an Angel Investor.
He was previouslyis the CRO and Managing Director, Americas for Adikteev. He joined Adikteev in 2015 when the latter acquired Motionlead, a company he co-founded in Paris.
MotionLead was the first ever French company to be accepted in YCombinator. Since then, Alexei actively invests in early stage tech companies. He has been selected in Forbes 30 under 30 in 2019.
Amrit Dhir
Director of Partnerships at Recidiviz
Amrit Dhir
Director of Partnerships at Recidiviz
As Director of Partnerships at Recidiviz, Amrit is building partnerships to leverage technology in accelerating progress towards a smaller, fairer criminal justice system.
Previously, he was Director of Business Development at Sidewalk Labs, and launched the commercialization for their new technology products, secured the first set of customers and revenue-generating strategic partnerships, and built out the company's business development and sales teams from scratch.
Before joining Sidewalk Labs, AAmrit was the Head of Startup Connections for Google for Startups. He draws from his network and experience in new business development and operations for some of Alphabet’s most innovative products and groundbreaking technologies.
Previously he was Head of Campus London and the Co-Founder of FTSY.
Andreas Klinger
CTO at On Deck and Investor at Remote First Capital, previously Angel list, Product Hunt
Andreas Klinger
CTO at On Deck and Investor at Remote First Capital, previously Angel list, Product Hunt
Andreas is leading the engineering team at On Deck and he is also a pre-seed and seed Investor at Remote First Capital.
He previously led the remote strategy for AngelList, where he also focused on the integration of ProductHunt, which was acquired by AngelList.
Andreas was founding team member and CTO at ProductHunt, and VP of Engineering at CoinList, where he helped set up the product/engineering team and led the world’s largest (regulated) crypto airdrop for DFINITY.
Aurél Pásztor
Partner at PortfoLion
Aurél Pásztor
Partner at PortfoLion
Aurél Pásztor handles early-stage investments at PortfoLion and he recently closed the Yieldigo and Novakid transactions.
He has significant experience in the fields of venture capital investment, accelerator management, and entering the international market with the unique experience he gained by studying and working in Japan.
Balazs Komar
Co-Founder and CEO at xLaboratories
Balazs Komar
Co-Founder and CEO at xLaboratories
Balazs is an experienced Co-Founder with a demonstrated history of working in the recruitment and events services industries. He co-founded xLaboratories, where he focuses to create the next generation of designers with specification on Product design, UX design/UX research and UI design.
As Co-Founder of IseeQ, he is focusing on professionals who are heavily involved in technology, recruiting for deep technical roles mainly software developers, security and infrastructure professionals.
He is also an Angel Investor at DokiApp and bedrock.farm. Next to his duties, he is also involved in organising Startup Safari Budapest.
Bálint Orosz
Founder and CEO at Craft
Bálint Orosz
Founder and CEO at Craft
A product design expert and serial entrepreneur, Balint Orosz has built a career on creating intuitive and user friendly software innovations.
He grew his first company, Distinction, from three to 35 employees in four years, before the organization was acquired by Skyscanner in 2014. Launched just a year after his graduation, the company was named the fastest growing company in Central Europe in 2014 and achieved Deloitte's esteemed Rising Star Award.
Since launch, apps developed by Distinction have been used by 30+ million users globally. In 2019, frustrated with his experience of creating and sharing documents in existing apps, he went on to create Craft Docs, a cradle-to-grave writing tool that allows users to write, store and share documents seamlessly and quickly.
Balint is focused on accelerating the development of Craft Docs to become the go-to writing tool for individuals, teams and companies.
Bence Jendruszak
Co-Founder and COO at SEON
Bence Jendruszak
Co-Founder and COO at SEON
Bence and SEON help high risk merchants accurately prevent fraud with their integrated machine learning fraud prevention API.
SEON’s aim is to combine the ease of integration with the depth of functionality, taking into consideration all of the relevant risk vectors.aim is to combine the ease of integration with the depth of functionality, taking into consideration all of the relevant risk vectors. The team consists of talented consultants who are passionate about Cyber Security and possess a range of skill sets to deliver simple solutions to complex problems. The cohesion of the SEON team is what drives them us to become a leading service provider in the industry.
Benjamina Bollag
Founder & CEO of Higher Steaks
Benjamina Bollag
Founder & CEO of Higher Steaks
Benjamina is the founder & CEO of London-based food tech start-up Higher Steaks, a cultivated meat company that recently presented the first cultivated bacon and pork belly.
Previously, she co-founded a London-based B2B electronics company selling to FTSE500 companies.
Benjamina has also worked at Israeli 3D printing company, Stratasys, at the digital marketing division of PepsiCo's joint venture with Strauss and was the lead developer of an ed-tech startup.
Benjamina holds a Master of Chemical Engineering from the Imperial College, where she completed a project focusing on the design of a peptide plant, conducting a lab-based research on synthesis and liquid exfoliation of graphitic carbon nitride.
Can Ertugrul
Founder of triplestory and Co-Founder of AustrianStartups
Can Ertugrul
Founder of triplestory and Co-Founder of AustrianStartups
Can has recently founded triplesotry, focusing on marketing innovation, communication training and event moderation.
He is also Co-Founder of AustrianStartups, Austria’s largest, non-profit startup association.
After working in various senior roles at three tech companies since 2010, and moderating at Pioneers Festival for 6 years, he currently focuses on communication consulting & coaching, advising startups and writing.
Cinzia Silvestri
Founder & CEO of Bi/ond
Cinzia Silvestri
Founder & CEO of Bi/ond
Cinzia believes that as every person is unique, our medicine should reflect that as well. She is a resilient and creative entrepreneur who brings real and inclusive innovation to society by applying her passion and knowledge in microelectronics. She is the founder and CEO of Bi/ond, a deep-tech company that empowers diversity in biological studies by engineering microchips.
Before going "Bi/ond", she did her Ph.D. in microelectronics at the prestigious Technical University of Delft. During her academic experience, she realized that her mission is to shorten the distance between academics and industry.
Cinzia strongly believes that entrepreneurial role models are needed. She built up a diverse and multidisciplinary team to address the significant challenges in the Organ-on-Chip field. In 2018, she was named one of the 50 most inspiring women in Italy's technology sector (InspiringFifty – Italy).
Thanks to her vision, Bi/ond has been included in the Fund Right Initiative both as a women-lead company and diversity in the team.
Fredrik Cassel
General Partner at Creandum
Fredrik Cassel
General Partner at Creandum
Fredrik is one of Europe’s most experienced investors. He is an early backer of category-leading companies such as Spotify, KRY / LIVI, depop, and Kahoot!.
Focused on B2B and B2C companies disrupting large markets, often with marketplace models, he also leads Creandum’s work with Virta Health, Shapr3D, Xeneta, Soundtrack Your Brand, Cint (sold to Nordic Capital), Videoplaza (Ooyala), 13th Lab (Facebook) and Autobutler (PSA Group).
Before Fredrik joined Creandum, he ran the largest online search service in the Nordics at Scandinavia Online and was part of the team launching 20 Minuten, a free daily newspaper.
He has a degree in engineering physics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and is a Kauffman Fellow. In 2018, he was `rank`ed #5 on the European Midas List and in 2020, he made it to the global Midas List as one of the very few European investors.
Gabor Pozsonyi
Director of Digital Technology and Products at Banca Etica Latinoamericana
Gabor Pozsonyi
Director of Digital Technology and Products at Banca Etica Latinoamericana
Gabor has been in commercial banking, corporate finance and financial institutions advisory since 1991.
Among other things he served as corporate finance advisor in Eurocorp, EBRD’s corporate finance boutique; as strategy director/investor relations head of OTP Bank; then he joined KPMG CEE Financial Institutions Advisory Services as Senior Manager in 1997. He became Partner in FY2000 and was responsible for the firm’s banking consulting business in Central- and Eastern Europe. In 2003 Gabor joined CIB Bank, a BancaIntesa subsidiary in Budapest as Managing Director. After serving on strategic initiatives of various multinational companies as an independent advisor, he joined MagNet Bank in 2012 and served the Bank`s value-based strategy as Deputy CEO, Member of the Board and as minority stakeholder.
Gabor was also a member of the Board of Power Angels, a seed investment private equity firm that invests heavily in Fintech propositions and Advisory Board Member of DayOne VC. Before Banca Etica Latinoamericana, Gabor joined PorfoLion Venture Partners as Investment Director for PortfoLion's Digital Fund.
Gemma Bloemen
Principal at Creandum
Gemma Bloemen
Principal at Creandum
Gemma previously worked as COO at Elder, as Senior Manager at Uber, and as a consultant at McKinsey.
She’s passionate about complex B2C businesses, marketplaces, digital health and sustainability.
She’s an angel investor in 10+ startups and has a lot of stories to tell about operations, recruitment and strategic planning.
Gerald Pollak
Co-Founder at Blocktorch
Gerald Pollak
Co-Founder at Blocktorch
Before onboarding on his own entrepreneurial journey, Gerald was Investment Manager at 3VC, a Series A focused fund partnering with founders in CEE to support them on their way to build global category leaders.
Gerald has a special interest in startups in Quantum Computing Software, FinTech, AR/VR, Developer Tools, MLOps and No-Code.
Prior to 3VC he worked for Apple and co-founded ChinaTechBlog.
Gyula Fehér
General Partner at Oktogon Ventures
Gyula Fehér
General Partner at Oktogon Ventures
He is a four-time founder, including founder and CEO of Triggit, which was acquired by LinkedIn.
Today, he's a full-time angel investor (Coelius Capital) and advisor to startups.
One of his first investments in Cruise Automation turned into the first billion-dollar exit on AngelList.
He’s invested and advised many startups including HelloSign, Bare Metrics, Booksy.
Jasmina Henniova
Moderator and Writer, Real Deals and PER Future 40
Jasmina Henniova
Moderator and Writer, Real Deals and PER Future 40
Jasmina has been an active member of the international startup scene for the last 4 years.
She was previously Investment Manager at 3TS Capital Partners and Head of Startups and Community at Pioneers.
She has been identifying and supporting the top tech startups across industries, curating the startup program at various events and working closely with the key ecosystem stakeholders, mainly VC funds and accelerators.
Jasna Rokegem
Founder of Jasna Rok
Jasna Rokegem
Founder of Jasna Rok
Jasna Rokegem is an award-winning pioneer combining innovative fashion and cutting-edge technology. She founded JasnaRok, the first FashionTech design lab in Belgium, which was created to reconcile advanced technologies with interactive fashion and does so by collaborating with technology partners globally. Her visionary thinking helps decision makers in different industries imagine how to come up with more sustainable solutions.
Jasna is fascinated by space and the idea of having one unique garment which becomes a living organism on its own, an extension of our bodies which creates a new way of human communication that reshapes our responses to our innermost feelings, a brand new dimension of interaction.
John Bonten
Tech executive, advisor and investor
John Bonten
Tech executive, advisor and investor
John is helping companies to scale, actively invesiting, consulting and advising US and EU entrepreneurs and startups. He co-founded SpotiAngels and is an investor at Chroma.
He is also an advisor and early investor in companies like Calm, Headspin and Facemoji. Previously he worked at Spotify on Growth & Expansion for ~9 years.
Julien Coustaury
Founding Partner at Fil Rouge Capital
Julien Coustaury
Founding Partner at Fil Rouge Capital
Julien is a Managing Partner at Fil Rouge Capital, a Croatian-based Venture Capital investment fund.
Julien has 20+ years of experience in manufacturing and services, much of it at CEO level.
He has worked in more than 80 countries across five continents and participated in over $1.7bn of purchase, sale and financing transactions.
He has invested in 70+ early-stage startups and attended Y Combinator in 2011.
Kinga Jentetics
CEO and Co-Founder at Publish Drive
Kinga Jentetics
CEO and Co-Founder at Publish Drive
She helps indie authors distribute their eBooks to over 400 stores worldwide, including Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play Books, and Barnes & Noble. The user-friendly model of PublishDrive streamlines the self-publishing process across multiple sales channels and empowers authors with helpful analytics.
She was a finalist for the Digital Book World 2018 Awards in the categories of Publishing Entrepreneur of the Year and Best Use of Data in Publishing, made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Media in 2017, named one of the Top 100 European Female Founders by The Hundert, also secured investment for PublishDrive through Google’s Launchpad Accelerator program, as well as Startup Wise Guys.
Kristof Bardos
Co-founder & CEO at Green Fox Academy
Kristof Bardos
Co-founder & CEO at Green Fox Academy
Kristof Bardos defines himself as a socially sensitive tech entrepreneur. At Green Fox Academy they teach the future proof skills for the tech-driven labor market. This is a university-size education center currently with two campuses in Prague and Budapest and growing.
Kristof experiments with non(less) hierarchical structures, de-centralised social collaboration and distributed, employee ownership models. Earlier, he has spent over a decade in the tech startup scene, while he was founding and closing startups, working for SMEs and corporations through his product development agency in 3 continents. Kristof also co-founded an accelerator house to bring CEE startups to global markets. In recent years, he has turned my attention towards mentorship and project-based education and the social impact of the ventures.”
Lászlo Kishonti
Founder & CEO at AIMotive
Lászlo Kishonti
Founder & CEO at AIMotive
László, Founder and CEO at aiMotive, is a serial entrepreneur. aiMotive evolved from his first venture, Kishonti Ltd., which quickly became a leading high-performance graphics and computing solutions company.
The firm then turned its focus to automotive as artificial intelligence, and autonomous driving started to gain global momentum.
László has an education in Economics and Finance.
Laura Behrens Wu
Founder and CEO at Shippo
Laura Behrens Wu
Founder and CEO at Shippo
Laura Behrens Wu is the founder and CEO of Shippo. Shippo is the shipping platform for 21st century e-commerce.
Every single e-commerce store needs to ship, and Shippo is an e-commerce enablement tool that addresses all the shipping complexities in a single platform.
Shippo powers over 35k SMBs and direct to consumer brands shipping everything from skincare to mattresses to pet food.
Mark Palfalvi
Principal at PortfoLion
Mark Palfalvi
Principal at PortfoLion
Mark is in charge of Venture Capital at PortfoLion Capital Partners, the venture capital and private equity arm of OTP Bank, the largest bank in Central Eastern Europe.
He is investing in SaaS companies, at seed, series A and series B stages. Among his portfolio companies: SEON, FLOWX.AI, Packhelp, Mindgram, Tresorit, VCC Live. Mark is also a board member of SEON, FLOWX.AI and VCC Live.
Max Azarov
Co-Founder and CEO at Novakid
Max Azarov
Co-Founder and CEO at Novakid
Max Azarov, an evangelist for bilingualism, and founder of Novakid Global.
Before venturing on #edtech with NovaKid, Max worked for Google and LG and ventured to launch a cloud platform: CloudLike. Founded in 2017, Novakid recently closed a $35 million Series B financing, led by Owl Ventures and Goodwater Capital. And it’s just the beginning of a unicorn story.
Novakid's active client base is growing 350% year over year, and its team will soon double. Great news which also requires great adaptation.
Melanie Aronson
Founder & CEO of Panion
Melanie Aronson
Founder & CEO of Panion
Melanie Aronson is the founder and CEO of Panion, a community management platform and app for meeting like-minded people through common interests.
She has a bachelors in anthropology from Columbia University and a masters in documentary filmmaking from the School of Visuals Arts in NYC. She is also a Fulbright recipient.
Melanie worked in sales for Apple for almost 3 years and for more than 10 years as a freelance filmmaker, photographer and designer.
Melanie has lived an international life, residing in NYC, Barcelona, Florence, Malmö and now in Lisbon.
Nathan Williams
Founder and CEO of Minespider
Nathan Williams
Founder and CEO of Minespider
Nathan Williams is the Founder and CEO of Minespider, a blockchain system for tracking responsibly-sourced materials along the supply chain, with ongoing projects with Fortune 100 companies such as Volkswagen and Google.
Nathan has facilitated blockchain workshops as a visiting expert for the UNECE and the World Economic Forum. He has been featured in Bloomberg, Forbes, Huffington Post, and Wired Germany.
Nuno Brito Jorge
Co-Founder & CEO of GoParity
Nuno Brito Jorge
Co-Founder & CEO of GoParity
Nuno Brito Jorge is an environmental engineer and an innovation and sustainability enthusiast.
He has worked in the European Parliament in Belgium, in innovation consulting in Spain and as a project manager for large renewable energy projects in Portugal before becoming a dedicated entrepreneur.
He is currently the CEO and co-founder of GoParity, a crowdlending platform for sustainability projects and the president of the board of Coopérnico, Portugal’s first renewable energy cooperative.
Patrick Vlaskovits
Co-founder and CEO at Superpowered (acq by Splash), author
Patrick Vlaskovits
Co-founder and CEO at Superpowered (acq by Splash), author
Patrick co-founded Superpowered, a cross-platform low latency audio SDK, which was granted two patents and acquired by Splice in 2020.
He has also bootstrapped the #1 Paleo Diet website in the world into a successful acquisition, PaleoHacks.
He has written three books, two of which are New York Times bestsellers, and serve as course text for classes at top universities, such as Stanford.
Pavel Karagjaur
VP of Growth at Bolt
Pavel Karagjaur
VP of Growth at Bolt
Pavel Karagjaur is VP of Growth at Bolt, Europe’s leading mobility platform with 30 million users in over 35 countries across Europe and Africa.
He has been at Bolt since 2015 and has been instrumental in the company’s fast growth, expansion strategy and lean operations.
He is a natural growth hacker with his head deep in the data. Pavel studied Computer Hardware at the University of Tallinn.
Raul Popa
Co-Founder and CEO at TypingDNA
Raul Popa
Co-Founder and CEO at TypingDNA
Raul, Co-Founder & CEO at TypingDNA, serial founder & machine learning enthusiast, Techstars Alumnus (NYC '18).
With his team, Raul has built a technology that recognizes people by the way they type. It is currently being used in cybersecurity for 2-factor and multi-factor authentication, fraud prevention, and risk-based authentication.
As he pitched over 100 investors in both US and EU and raised over approx $9M from 30+ VCs and angel investors – the last one being $7M series A round led by Google’s AI fund Gradient Ventures, while going through 3 intensive startup accelerators and building breakthrough AI-based technology, you will surely get inspiration through the stories he has to share.
Robin Wauters
Founder of Tech.eu
Robin Wauters
Founder of Tech.eu
Robin is a seasoned European technology journalist and founding editor of Tech.eu, the premier source of European technology news, data analysis and market intelligence.
He was formerly the European Editor of The Next Web, and before that a senior editor at TechCrunch.
Among his roles, he is also a Co-Founder and President at Startup Europe Lens, an international non-profit organisation, aiming to facilitate direct, regular and constructive dialogue between European policymakers and tech startup entrepreneurs, and Co-Founder at BeCentral, a grass-roots initiative from 28 co-founders who are committed to boost the Belgian digital scene.
Sheel Mohnot
GP at Better Tomorrow Ventures and Seed Stage Fintech Investor
Sheel Mohnot
GP at Better Tomorrow Ventures and Seed Stage Fintech Investor
Sheel is a Seed-stage Fintech investor and Co-founder and GP at Better Tomorrow Ventures, an early stage venture fund focused on building the future of fintech by leading seed and pre-seed rounds.
He is a former partner at 500 startups, has 2 exits in the FinTech space, FeeFighters and Innovative Auctions. He is also co-founder of Thistle.
Previously, he was head of business development at Groupon, after selling FeeFighters to Groupon in early 2012.
Shruti Shah
EIR at Nike, Formerly Co-founder and COO at Moveloot
Shruti Shah
EIR at Nike, Formerly Co-founder and COO at Moveloot
Shruti is currently Entrepreneur In Residence at Nike and Chief Operatin Officer at Activest.
She was previously Entrepreneur in residence at Silicon Valley Bank.
She also co-founded and was COO at MoveLoot an online full-service marketplace for buying and selling used furniture.
Shruti raised $22M in Venture Capital and is an Alumna of Y Combinator.
Simon Schmincke
General Partner at Oktogon Ventures
Simon Schmincke
General Partner at Oktogon Ventures
Simon is a developer, a venture capitalist, and is a seasoned entrepreneur.
Before Creandum, he joined Earlybird Venture Capital in Berlin. Fintech is one of his primary focus areas, and throughout his VC career, he led the investments in N26, Taxfix, Billie, Tide, and SEON.
Before becoming an investor, he was a global founder and CFO of Foodpanda, helped launch an online payment provider as CPO and launched HelloFresh in North America as CEO.
Sriram Krishnan
Startup builder and Investor
Sriram Krishnan
Startup builder and Investor
Sriram is currently engaged as Advisor at Calm (consumer subs), Khatabook (fintech), Akash Systems (space tech), AngelList (fintech) and as Board Member at Alter.xyz (consumer, web3).
His previous roles include SVP Product, Partnerships & Marketing at HeadSpin, valued at $500M, and one of the fastest-scaling software companies ever.
Previously Sriram has also helped to scale Spotify and Tinder as the Head of Growth & New Markets.
He started a fund, Kearny Jackson, to invest in early stage startups, and he is also investing in later stage startups with Angel Collective Opportunity Fund.
Val Scholz
Founder and CEO at Kiko, Forbes 30U30, ex-Head of Growth at Revolut
Val Scholz
Founder and CEO at Kiko, Forbes 30U30, ex-Head of Growth at Revolut
Val founded Kiko, a simplified rental platform that eliminates the hassle for tenants and landlords alike.
Previously, he led Revolut’s product growth department, where he was awarded the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2018.
He also was a product manager at Seedrs, a platform that helped raise over £1.4 billion for 1500 businesses.
Yonca Braeckman
Founder & CEO of Impact Shakers
Yonca Braeckman
Founder & CEO of Impact Shakers
Yonca is a connector and community builder with extensive experience in strategy and startup acceleration.
She is the founder of Impact Shakers, a global impact ecosystem tackling complex societal challenges through inclusive entrepreneurship.
She has built a body of work that demonstrates the power of collaboration across the private, social, and public sectors.
She helped build the Belgian and European tech startup ecosystems and as a mentor at SXSW, Slush Tokyo, General Assembly, Village Capital and startup programs across the globe, she guided many startups on their first steps abroad.
She built a new smart city hub in Ghent, Belgium, with an in-house acceleration program called Watt Factory. She serves on the board of different non-profits and is the curator of TEDxGhent and the Techstars Startup Digest Reading List on Impact Entrepreneurship.
Most recently she initiated the Horasis Young Visionaries for the Global Vision Community Horasis to add to her mission of lifting diverse social entrepreneurs.
Zsolt Weiszbart
Partner at Day One Capital
Zsolt Weiszbart
Partner at Day One Capital
Zsolt Weiszbart has been an active angel investor in the Budapest tech scene for more than 10 years and he joined Day One Capital in 2020.
Some of his notable investments include Distinction, a mobile app development company, which was acquired by Skyscanner 2014. He was also the first investor of Shapr3D.