15th & 16th of May
Maribor, Slovenia
Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Start:up Slovenia joined the Visegrad partnership for building a collective regional startup platform!

On Tuesday, the delegation of the minister of economic development and technology Zdravko Počivalšek traveled to Budapest for bilateral talks with the Hungarian minister of national economy Mihály Varga, and was joined by Matej Rus, head of Initiative Start:up Slovenia. The main purpose of his attendance was to join the partnership for building a collective regional startup platform, which was originally joined by four countries of the Visegrad Group – Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and associate members Austria and Germany.  
The accession of Slovenia to the partnership for building a collective startup platform was signed by Imre Hild, head of the Hungarian Innovation Federation from Hungary (right) as the representative of the six original signatories, and by Matej Rus as the head and representative of Initiative Start:up Slovenia. The signing of the accession took place under the auspices of our minister of the economy Zdravko Počivalšek (top left) and the Hungarian minister of national economy Mihály Varga (top right). 

For tighter collaboration and more effective support for startups

The main purpose of the platform is even tighter collaboration of startup ecosystem stakeholders in countries that joined the agreement. They will be able to ensure even better support for the growth of innovative startups from the region into successful, world famous companies.

Countries and partnership organizations

The following organizations from the ecosystems of all seven signatory countries have joined the building of the collective regional startup platform:
 
The signing of the agreement between the mentioned countries is otherwise the result of negotiations that concluded last year at the Regional Digital Summit in Budapest.
 

Initiative Start:up Slovenia is an active connector and promoter of public and private stakeholders of the Slovenian startup ecosystem. In collaboration with the stakeholders, it also implements and promotes public national programmes for supporting startup companies. Together with partners, it is attempting to place Slovenia on the map of established European startup hubs. Leading partners of the Initiative are the strategically connected Venture Factory and Technology Park Ljubljana. Members of the Initiative are Primorska Technology Park, Pomurje Technology Park, Savinja Region Incubator, SAŠA Incubator, RC IKT, and RCR Zasavje.