Our thoughts in words
ICKK blog
Blogging is an opportunity to present things through our personal words
On this subsite, we will bring you regular blogs of our employees or partners, which will be related to our activities, programs or other things that are directly or indirectly related to the development of the regional innovation ecosystem.
My name is Denisa Kušnírová and in the Košice Region Innovation Center I am responsible for building the startup ecosystem in the Košice Region. Together with our team, we started working on the first regional startup program, which we called Kośice region startup factory. In today's blog, I would like to tell you something more about the initial phase of this program and therefore about Meet your Founder.
In the initial stage of founding a startup, the team is the key factor that investors first emphasize. It is important to have a strong team that can turn a great idea into a successful startup. Therefore, as part of our Košice Region Startup Factory program, we launched the Meet Your Founder campaign, which helps teams find their "key teammate".
Meet Your Founder focuses on teams that participated in the Founders challenge high school innovative idea competition. These teams showed great interest and enthusiasm to work on their ideas, but realized that in order to successfully implement them, they needed to add an expert with specific skills to the team.
The goal of the Meet Your Founder campaign is to connect teams with experts who could strengthen their team and help them move forward and realize their ideas. A "key teammate" should be a person who can complement the skills of other team members with his skills and contribute to the fulfillment of their vision.
How can an expert join the Meet Your Founder program? Just visit the website of the Innovation Center of the Košice Region and choose a team that you would like to help with your expertise. After completing the application, teams and experts will be connected to share their expectations with each other. If they agree, they can start working together to complete the project. This campaign is only open until June 20, 2023, so professionals have limited time to get involved.
This phase is followed by a planned autumn acceleration program to which teams and budding startups can apply. This program will offer additional support and mentoring for the teams and culminate in a DEMO DAY where they will have the opportunity to pitch to an investor.
Meet Your Founder is a unique program that helps teams and startups find and connect with key teammates. It provides an environment where people with different skills and experiences can meet and collaborate. Teamwork and synergy between team members are key to success, and the Meet Your Founder program does an excellent job of supporting this.