“We’d like to link British and Slovak technology firms and also direct financial resources from Great Britain towards Slovak companies, as attracting resources poses one of the greatest challenges that start-ups face today,” British Ambassador Andrew Garth said at a recent press conference. “The British market is very strong in this respect, with the financial sector providing significant aid to start-ups.”
The Finance Ministry say it is looking for ways to allow innovation to play a greater role in the economy. “Start-ups and innovative small- and medium-sized firms are integral to economic and innovative growth. The potential of the country lies in them,” said Zuzana Nehajová, director of the Department for Financing Economic Growth Strategy.
The ministry plans to unveil its strategy for supporting start-ups in the next few weeks. “We’ve focused on individual start-up development phases,” Nehajová told TASR. “We’d like to provide support during the initial valley of death but maybe even for later growth phases.”
The measures should include a simpler legislative environment, financing via Slovak Investment Holding, support for education, cooperation among the Visegrad Four countries (V4 – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and also tax licence payment exemptions for start-ups, she said.
About 300 participants, mainly from the V4 countries, the UK, the United States will exchange ideas concerning networking, and exchange of know-how in financing start-ups, the SITA newswire wrote.
The event, under patronage of Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kažimír, British businessmen Michael Jacobsen and Gideon Joseph and the Enterprise Slovakia company, will offer speakers like. Jon Bradford, CEO of TechStars, Andrew Humphries, founder of The Bakery, Emma Jones, founder of the initiative Startup Britain, Julie Meyer, founder of the Ariadne Capital, Jambu Palaniappan, regional manager of the Uber start-up, and others. Key personalities of Slovak business will be present as well, according to the SITA newswire.