At their 10th anniversary, the Slovenian high-tech company Zemanta d.o.o. announced that it was entirely acquired by Outbrain from the US, the world’s largest premium content discovery platform. The sum that Outbrain paid for Zemanta’s technology, products and team remains a business secret, and Zemanta’s co-founders Andraž Tori and Boštjan Špetič will join Outbrain. After becoming part of Outbrain Zemanta’s platform will continue to operate as a standalone product.
Slovene startup conference PODIM has gathered entrepreneurs from the whole CEE region in Maribor. We've had a chat with Gina Waldhorn from Evol8tion, one of the keynote speakers at the conference, who shared her views on collaboration between big corporations and startups.
PODIM, this year in its 35th year, is one of the largest conferences on entrepreneurship and innovation in CEE region. PODIM 2015 that will take place in Maribor, Slovenia on May 13th and 14th and will focus on collaboration between startups and established companies. The conference will be visited by more than 600 startupers, entrepreneurs and investors. We've had a chat with Mike Edelhart, lead partner at SocialStarts fund.
A group of entrepreneurs and investors gathered around Slovenian Silicon Gardens startup initiative launched Silicon Gardens Fund – a micro fund focused on investing in early stage startups coming from Slovenia and the broader region. The Fund’s main investors are entrepreneurs from the region. Also joining are established U.S. investors who believe in the potential of the region - Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Jerry Colonna and Paul Vidich.
During the last few months, the crowdfunding phenomena became a very hot topic on the sunny side of the Alps. Gathered around Crowdfunding.si initiative, Slovene projects have already raised more than 1 million euros on leading crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. This initiative is working closely with key decision makers to change Slovene legislation in order to help fund projects access their capital easily, without administrative complications and huge taxes. On the top of that, Slovenes already have their own translation of the word crowdfunding that is actually being used – množično financiranje (“mass financing”).
Slovene-British startup Flaviar announced today that it raised a seed round of 400k $ from American fund Speedinvest. This one year old company ships monthly tasting packs of 5 sample spirits (whisky, rum, gin, vodka, etc.) to their members, each month with a different theme.
Croatian consulting company DC&T, specializing in creative, efficient, and humane office space design, is setting out to conquer the world markets. First step: Dubai.
