European finals of the global startup competition Startup World Cup were a part of Prague’s event Startup World Cup & Summit.

This SWCSummit was entirely conquered by the Czech projects Tatum and Readmio. The first offers a platform that revolutionizes blockchain creation.

The second project makes reading more attractive to children through a mobile application by complementing storytelling with sound effects in real-time. Startup Tatum won the main prize of the jury and the title of European champion with it. Readmio stole the hearts of the spectators and won the audience prize.

Both projects continued their successful journey from the previous day when they also dominated the regional competition of the Visegrad Four region. 

During the continental finals, nine startups from all over Europe fought their way out of other regional rounds and associated startup competitions. Each project had four minutes for its presentation, followed by another four minutes of questions from the jurors.

This time, a five-member jury admits to having a hard time determining the winner. “In the regional round of V4, the victory of the Tatum project was unequivocal. In the continental final, however, we considered other candidates until the last second – for example, in the field of medicine. In the end, however, a pragmatic investor consideration decided which project has the most significant potential to value our potential investment. Tatum is the furthest in this respect; other exciting projects have yet to mature a bit,” explained the juror Václav Pavlečka from Air Ventures VC fond.

Air Ventures, together with another organizing company UP21 VC, will offer the winner the possibility of an immediate investment of half a million dollars.

Steve Wozniak revealed his business plans.

The Startup World Cup & Summit program was far from just a startup competition. During the day, several exciting speakers, panellists and mentors spoke at the event. One of the key personalities who conquered the audience was the journalist and pedagogue Esther Wojcicki – often nicknamed the “Godmother of Silicon Valley”. The author of the bestseller about raising successful people talked, among other things, about how she once mentored Steve Jobs’ daughter and how Steve Jobs himself often attended her classes.

Another bright figure was Kyle Corbitt, president of Y Combinator – one of the largest startup incubators in the world, and the author of a software solution that can connect the ideal startup co-founders (like a startup Tinder). Kyle later participated in the competition jury.

However, by far the brightest star of the day was Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

In an unusually open video interview, he recalled the ancient beginnings of Apple and then, for the first time, revealed in more detail his plans with the newly established company Privateer Space. Through it, he would like to clean up the “mess” in space.

“We would like to work with Woz next year as well. This year, due to the pandemic, he still had to be online, but if it is possible, we want to bring him to Prague physically,” concluded Tomáš Cironis, director of SWCSummit.