Prague hosted the European finale of Disruptors Summit

The largest Czech startup event - the Disraptors Summit - culminated on Tuesday evening with the pan-European finals of the Startup Champions League. And both Czech contestants walked away as winners . The jury awarded the winning trophy to the energy saving project Flowbox, who also won the regional round for the Visegrad Four region. The audience award was awarded to a cybersecurity startup GoodAccess. 

The winning startup Flowbox focuses on the energy saving in buildings. Their software not only monitors, but also controls and optimizes energy consumption. Thanks to the data, electricity consumption can be reduced by roughly a third, and water and heat consumption can then drop by more than half. As a result, the solution reduces carbon dioxide emissions by up to 70 percent.

GoodAccess, the audience prize winner, which made it to the European finals as the winner of the Ynovate startup competition, creates cyber security software designed especially for smaller businesses. The solution responds to the current world built on remote collaboration and cloud solutions and bets on the simplicity and user-friendliness.

Of the nine finalists, the jury was also impressed by the Swiss project Keego, which aims to replacing plastic sports bottles with innovative bottles that will be sustainable and harmless to health. The patented solution of layered materials, where the inside of the bottle is a titanium layer and the outside is plastic, so that the bottle retains its flexibility, brings countless advantages. It does not affect the taste of the drink in any way, does not release microplastics into it, and is extremely durable. The jury appreciated the potential of the project especially for angel investors.

In addition to the startup competition, the program also featured number of inspiring speakers from all around the world. Michal Šmída, the founder of the fintech startup Twisto, sold last year  to the Australian company Zip for 80M USD, was the first to speak on the main stage. 

A great dose of inspiration came from Erika Piirmets representing the Estonian government digitization agency e-Estonia, which is referred to as the Apple of government organizations. Although Estonia started out in the 1990s as a small post-Soviet country marked by poverty and crime, the government of the time set out to change that, betting on digitization in the process. What started as a digital identity has evolved over the years into a comprehensive solution that includes everything from public transport, communication with authorities and banks, to an online voting system and a perfectly welcoming business environment.

One of the main stars was also Daniel Hejl, one of the founders of the most valuable Czech startup Productboard. Among other things, he explained how complex the solution, which streamlines the work of product managers and is used by such companies as Avast, Microsoft, Disney or Zoom initially was. Despite established startup practices, Daniel advocated a slow process based on long-term testing on clients.

Source: Disruptors Summit