Check out the stories of selected successful Czech startups
In the last few years, the Czech Republic has been experiencing a startup Renaissance. We have chosen for you several successful companies that celebrate success with Czech and foreign customers. Below you can see the success stories of several of them
AVAST
Avast’s history dates back to the late 1980s, when its founders – Pavel Baudiš and Eduard Kučera – began development of the first anti-virus software. Since then, the company has become a player on the global scale and currently offers its services to more than 435 million users and its products are the number-one most used anti-virus programs in the world. This is also due in part to Avast’s takeover of its former competitor AVG Technologies at a cost of USD 1.3 billion. In 2018, Avast went public on the London Stock Exchange and in the summer of 2021, under the leadership of CEO Ondrej Vlček, announced its intention to merge with US security firm NortonLifeLock. The merger is expected to be completed in April 2022, creating the world’s largest cybersecurity company, protecting more than half a billion people worldwide.
Tags: #czechcompanies #successstories #IT #Avast #AVG #Norton #cybersecurity
Twisto
Twisto is a smart solution for payments and shopping. In 2013, it was the first to bring BNPL (buy now pay later) services into Czechia. With Twisto Pay, people can defer the payment for their online shopping for 30 days with a single click, without registration and for free. Registered Twisto users have the possibility to pay with virtual or physical Twisto cards, settle their invoices by taking a picture or to split a bill between friends. And they can defer payments for their shopping for up to 45 days. Twisto also enables them to divide the payment into installments and pay in three without any fees. In 2018, Twisto successfully entered the Polish market. In 2021, the Australian fintech leader Zip acquired Twisto. Ove 1,6 milion people already tried paying with Twisto and it is supported by 22 thousand eshops in both markets.
Tags: #fintech #czechstartups #successstories #Twisto #app #application
Liftago
Liftago is a Czech start-up that has established itself among customers, even in the face of billion-dollar competition. The company was founded in 2012 by Martin Hausenblas, Juraj Atlas, and current CEO Ondřej Krátký with the idea of autonomous management and the future of urban mobility. In the beginning, Liftago was only focused on taxi transportation, and was the only company on the market offering customers the ability to choose from professional taxi drivers based on driver rating, arrival time, vehicle category, and price estimate. Over time, it has transformed into a shared transport network, which is increasingly expanding in the field of courier and delivery services, while fulfilling its vision of sustainable mobility. While still in its infancy, courier and delivery services now account for nearly a third of Liftago’s shipments and have doubled year-on-year. The overall GMV in 2021 increased by 29 % to CZK 342 million. Liftago operates in 21 Czech and Slovak cities with taxi services available in 14 of them, and further expansion is being planned. The company currently connects over 2,000 active drivers with more than 500,000 customers. Liftago’s primary mission is to increase the efficiency of city transportation by creating a network that better utilizes existing transportation capacity.
Tags: #doprava #app #Liftago #successstories
STRV
STRV is a software design and engineering team. Established in 2004, it was built on US partnerships exclusively but has since become a global leader found in the top 1% of B2B companies worldwide, according to Clutch. STRV has delivered web apps, mobile apps and AI/ML solutions for partners ranging from startups to enterprises including ClassDojo, Microsoft, Barry’s, The Athletic, MedMen and hundreds of others. In 2018, Deloitte and the Financial Times ranked STRV second among the fastest-growing European firms. Apart from client projects, the team of 190+ also works on its own products under STRV Labs.
Tags: #technology #strv #successstories #siliconvalley
Warhorse Studios
Warhorse Studios is a Czech independent development studio focused on creation of computer games. The studio’s founders are Dan Vávra, who gained notoriety with the world-famous Mafia and Mafia 2 games, and Martin Klíma, who found success with his Dračí doupě. In 2018, the studio achieved fame with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a game set in the Middle Ages, which enjoyed success around the world. More than one million units were sold in a single month and sales figures exceeded four million, while the company’s revenues are estimated at CZK 1 billion.
Tags: #technology #strv #successstories #siliconvalley
Emplifi
Emplifi as a brand was launched in 2021. The business was born out of the marriage between Astute Solutions, a customer engagement business, and Socialbakers, a leading social media marketing platform, founded in the Czech Republic in 2008. Today Emplifi is the leading unified CX platform that brings marketing, commerce and care together to help businesses close the customer experience gap. More than 7,000 brands, including Ford Motor Company and McDonald’s, rely on Emplifi to provide their customers with outstanding experiences at every touchpoint. Emplifi still has offices and a large portion of employees in the Czech Republic. In 2022, Emplifi announced a Growth Equity Investment from Sixth Street at a Valuation of Over $1 Billion, making the business the next startup unicorn.
Tags: #brandmarketing #SocialBakers #czechstartups #successstories #SaaS #media #unicorn
Avocode
Avocode is a software tool that simplifies the work of designers and developers around the world. Avocode makes it possible to export individual elements from graphics files without the aid of a graphics editor. Stated simply, Avocode translates designs into code for websites and mobile applications. Avocode’s customers include, among others, Intel, Accenture, Salesforce and Panasonic. A major success for Avocode was its acceptance into the 500 Startups accelerator.
Tags: #czechstartups #successstories #avocode #software
Brand Embassy
Brand Embassy is omnichannel cloud-based customer-service platform providing firms with a tool for effective communication with customers on the internet. Brand Embassy’s customers include, for example, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Puma, Lenovo and Air Bank. Since 2015, the platform has achieved a 95% customer-satisfaction rating on the prestigious TrustRadius website. The company announced the establishment of new sales offices in Argentina and Mexico in 2010. Established by Vít Horký and Damian Brhel in 2011, Brand Embassy is based in Prague and has branches in San Diego, Boston, London and Dubai. Originally a Czech firm, Brand Embassy was acquired by the Israeli company NICE in May 2019.
Tags: #omnichannel #czechstartups #BrandEmbassy #successstories #app #platform
ProductBoard
Productboard is a customer-centric product development management platform that helps organizations build the right products and get them to market faster. More than 5,400 companies, including Microsoft, Zoom, Disney, Avast, JCDecaux, Zendesk, and UiPath, use Productboard to better understand user needs, better prioritize development, and unify their entire team around their development roadmap. Productboard is the most valuable Czech startup unicorn valued at $1.725 billion and is backed by investors behind some of the world’s most successful startups such as Dragoneer Investment Group, Tiger Global Management and others including Czech Credo Ventures and Rockaway Capital. The team of more than four hundred now operates from offices in Prague, Brno, San Francisco, Vancouver, London and Dublin.
Tags: #investice #SiliconValley #ProductBoard #sucessstories #platform
Kiwi.com
Founded by Oliver Dlouhý and Jozef Képesi in 2012, Kiwi.com is an online search engine allowing users to combine transportation from non-cooperating carriers. It is powered by its proprietary algorithm (Virtual Interlining) that allows users to combine flights and ground transportation from over 750 carriers, including many that do not normally cooperate, accompanied by industry-leading Kiwi.com Guarantee. Today, the company sees more than 100 million searches every day and employs over 2,800 people worldwide. Kiwi.com ranked seventh in the 2017 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA list, becoming the highest-ever rated Czech company. Following the previous success, Kiwi.com ranked fifth in the very same program in 2018.
Tags: #flytickets #search #successstories #kiwicom
FTMO
FTMO was founded as a student project by three enthusiastic forex traders, who, during their university studies, decided to face their common trading issues collectively. It didn’t take long until they realized that it’s not only them dealing with such problems and that there are traders all over the world in a similar situation. Today, FTMO helps and progresses through its platform traders in more than 180 countries. In 2021, FTMO also managed to rewrite the history of the Deloitte Fast Technology 50 award that honors technology companies in Europe as they won the prize thanks to the astonishing growth of 39,342% over the past 4 consecutive years.
Tags: #fast50 #FTMO #traders #capital
ROI Hunter
ROI Hunter is a B2B SaaS scale-up. As the world’s first Product Marketing Platform (PMP), ROI Hunter was created to unlock the full potential of online retailers by connecting them to the insights they need but didn’t know they could get: cross-channel, product-level performance data. The PMP gathers product-level data from across a retailer’s channels (Google Analytics, Google Shopping, Meta, custom sources, etc.), combining it with their product inventory to eliminate data silos between departments and create a single source of truth. This automatically plugs into the PMP’s creative tools: Creative Factory for making product videos in minutes, and the Template Editor (TEDI) to create beautiful dynamic ads without needing a graphic designer. ROI Hunter’s 90+ employees work all over the world, including offices in London, Boston, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Brno, and Prague. ROI Hunter received CZK 125 million in investment in 2018, and hit a financial milestone of 400,000 Euro in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in 2021.
Tags: #ecommerce #czechstartups #successstories #roihunter #productmarketing
Zásilkovna
Zásilkovna is a Czech franchise logistics and technology project by Simona Kijonková, which was established in 2010. Since then, Zásilkovna has developed into one of the most successful companies in the Czech Republic, providing comprehensive logistics and technology services for online stores. Today, Zásilkovna is part of 14 Packeta holding companies, which operate in 6 countries, and delivers to 34 countries. The holding is managed by Simona Kijonková. Packeta also runs the successful Between Us service for the delivery of shipments between individuals. In 2020, Packeta launched Z-BOXes, ecological automatic pick-up boxes. The number of Z-BOX installations exceeded 3,000, in addition to the Czech Republic, they also operate in Slovakia and Hungary. Packeta currently has more than 10,000 own pick-up points (in the Czech Republic it is more than 7,300 VMs), almost 100,000 partner pick-up points, and cooperates with more than 32,000 e-shops. The group’s turnover in 2021 was 4.9 billion crowns, and the number of shipments shipped 73.2 million.
Tags: #ecommerce #czechstartups #successstories #zasilkovna #shipping
Whalebone
Whalebone develops cybersecurity products that protect millions of Internet users from various forms of threats such as malicious links spread through emails, ransomware, programs used to obtain and then misuse sensitive data, programs that use users’ devices to mine cryptocurrencies without their knowledge, and other forms of attacks. Whalebone protects users and devices without the need to install any software on them. The innovation lies precisely in not needing to install software on endpoint devices, which greatly improves the user experience and does not burden the computing power of the machine. It currently protects millions of users of three hundred companies worldwide. Their goal is to protect a billion users in the next few years. Whalebone, a Brno-based company, raised 65 million crowns in a Series A investment round led by the Hungarian fund Day One Capital. It was complemented by investors led by Czech Fazole Ventures.
Tags: #cybersecurity #AI #protection