Empowering Slovak Startups with Deutsche Telekom IT

Silver Partner of the Startup Awards Event

Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Slovakia is proud to be a partner of the Startup Awards. We are a subsidiary of the Deutsche Telekom Group, primarily providing a range of ICT services and solutions, such as IT infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, application operations, software development, and digital transformation.

Key Characteristics of a Startup

So, what makes a startup? What are the relevant characteristics? Well, there are many, but for us, they would be:

• Entrepreneurship
• Innovation
• Perseverance
• Love it – because it is hard.

The Startup Community in Slovakia

At Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Slovakia, we strongly believe in ecosystems, in particular, the collaboration with universities and schools. We organize and participate in Hackathons, Live IT Projects, and assigned research tech days for students, among many others. We can see a lot of good ideas and innovation in hackathons, but we also observe that not too many of these hacks or ideas make it to the next level or into an incubator status. Of course, this requires endurance, hard work, and dedication, and we try to encourage students to do so. But quite often, it stops after the hackathon.

Innovlab: Bridging Startups and Corporations

This is also why we have Innovlab, our own startup hub, to foster innovation, collaboration, and digital transformation by supporting startups, tech talents, and innovative projects. Our Innovlab aims to act as a bridge between startups and large corporations, helping to develop and scale technological solutions.

But most importantly, it is to try – and you cannot always win. And then we can still offer talent opportunities to work for us and perhaps use some of the ideas for our products.

Boosting EU Competitiveness

Lastly, we are facing a risk of less competitiveness within the EU, which will deepen our lagging status compared to other member states and, consequently, the country's deficit, and ultimately the sustainability of companies like us with sister sites across the European Union.

So, by supporting startups, we must continuously work on the vision of Slovakia as a globally competitive country that can thrive in this ever-changing world!

Good luck.