About GEN in Slovakia

The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) began its activities in Slovakia in 2008 with the launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), the worldwide campaign to celebrate and empower founders. The early Slovak campaign was led by the Slovak British Business Council (SBBC) in partnership with the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, with Marian Zajko, Associate Professor at the Institute of Management, providing the academic anchor. In 2009, the campaign hosted six events with 310 participants and a coalition of six partner organizations — a foundation that allowed GEW to grow steadily across Slovak universities and business networks in the years that followed. 

By 2012, the GEW campaign in Slovakia — still anchored at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava and its Institute of Management — had expanded to 12 events with 18 partner organizations and several thousand participants. From 2013 onward, the Young Entrepreneurs Association of Slovakia (YEAS), founded in 2010 to connect Slovak entrepreneurs under the age of 40, took the lead as national GEW host and continued in that role through 2020. YEAS positioned itself as the voice of young Slovak entrepreneurs, defending their interests in the policy environment and bridging today’s established founders with the next generation.  

Slovakia has been a notable point on GEN’s policy map. In 2017, GEN’s Startup Nations Atlas of Policies (SNAP) — a global, crowdsourced database of public-sector policies and programs designed to accelerate entrepreneurship — was presented at a conference in Bratislava, helping introduce the platform to Central European policymakers and ecosystem leaders. Slovakia has also participated in GEN’s Startup Nations Policy Dialogues alongside peer countries, including Singapore, Australia and Italy, sharing insights on the regulatory and program-level interventions that most effectively support new and young firms. GEN’s research community has separately profiled Slovakia’s policy environment, with a dedicated report outlining a comprehensive menu of entrepreneurship policy options for the country. 

Beyond GEW and policy, GEN connects Slovak founders to a wider set of programs and communities. Coworking and incubation venues such as The Spot Coworking, led by Michal Harustiak, have served as gathering points for Bratislava’s startup community and as natural hosts for GEW activities. Junior Achievement Slovensko, under the direction of Eva Vargova, has played a long-standing role in building entrepreneurial mindsets among Slovak students through classroom programs in entrepreneurship, financial literacy and economic thinking. Together, these organizations have helped GEW in Slovakia evolve from a one-week campaign into a year-round set of touchpoints for aspiring and early-stage founders. 

GEN maintains relationships with key Slovak ecosystem stakeholders, including the Ministry of Economy, the Slovak Business Agency, the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, JCI Slovakia, Junior Achievement Slovensko and The Spot Coworking. Through these partners, GEN connects Slovak founders, ecosystem builders and policymakers to its global community of researchers, investors and government peers. 

Jonathan Ortmans, Founder and President of GEN, has supported Slovak ecosystem leaders over the years through GEN’s policy and research networks, and GEN’s ongoing mission in Slovakia is to help local partners deepen their connections to international knowledge, programs and capital so that more Slovak founders can start and scale on a global stage.