Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Thanks to Young Innovative Entrepreneur Contest announced by The Entrepreneurs Association of Slovakia and Junior Chamber International, a wider Slovak publicity is now aware of a numerous group of young interesting entrepreneurs. This group has grown thanks to five diligent entrepreneurs, the finalists of this year’s contest. Five young people who are not different from their peers at first sight. But there is something special about them though. They are not waiting for external help, hoping for perfect conditions and easy work. They know they are the only ones who hold their future in their own hands with all its temptations, traps and risks.

Five noteworthy and various business stories. One of them is about a young businesswoman who is at the very beginning of running a business and who with her colleagues set up a company for production of kids’ furniture in June 2013. The second one is about an entrepreneur who as a student started to provide services in a unique field: security management followed by practical steps for construction and management companies which come across protected animal species while reconstructing houses. The third entrepreneur’s story is about an idea to offer a competitive product in the face of Slovak Post: electronic assurance of physical delivery from the comfort of our homes or offices without having to go to the post office. The fourth entrepreneur, despite his young age, is a representative of the second fastest-growing technology company in Central Europe which owns a big range of well-known web projects with breathtaking total turnover of 20 million € in 2013. Thanks to these parameters he was awarded by the Minister of Economy for the most inspiring business story. And finally, the absolute winner: a young entrepreneur who is driven forward by finding out solutions that make people’s lives easier and who is not only able to develop them, but also produce them in his own garage to the very last item.

Entrepreneurs in Slovakia have not the very best reputation. In media they usually appear in connection with negative matters, so that the publicity wrongly divides them just into two categories: those who stole money during the privatization and those who are stealing today by public procurement. Our young entrepreneurs not only prove that it is not true, but mainly that they are our only hope for the future. Thanks to their creativity and willingness to „change the world” they deserve to be told: „Thank you, you’re doing it well. Thumbs up!”

 

Translation: Kristína Lorková