Tovarna podjemov - Venture Factory
Matej Rus is the CEO and Co-Founder of Venture Factory, as well as a Senior Lecturer at Univerza v Mariboru. Matej also serves as the Head of the PODIM Conference, an influential startup and tech event in the CEE region. Matej is the Head of Start:up Slovenia, an independent platform supporting innovative entrepreneurship in Slovenia. Matej is a Member of the Presidency Board at Europe Startup Nations Alliance and an Ambassador for Startup Europe at the European Commission. Matej is also a Member of Združenje Manager and Rotary International, as well as an Advisory Board Member at SXSW Accelerator. With a Master's degree in various business fields, Matej Rus is actively involved in fostering entrepreneurship and innovation.
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Tovarna podjemov - Venture Factory
Venture Factory is a purpose-driven business & ecosystem building organisation that helps ambitious founders and companies challenge the status quo and build invincible businesses. In doing so, we offer our advice, fresh perspective, concrete outputs and valuable connections, while working on strategy development, business design and ecosystem collaboration. We use our 20+ years of acceleration experience and leverage our Podim conference and Start:up Slovenia ecosystem platforms to achieve the set goals. We are actively involved in the startup and innovation ecosystem by operating a business incubator at the University of Maribor. We have developed Start:up Slovenia, a platform for the Slovenian startup ecosystem, and have transformed the PODIM conference into one of the most influential startup and tech events in the CEE region, attracting over 1,000 participants annually. Venture Factory has participated as a partner in the Startup Europe project and has been involved in several EU-funded projects that support entrepreneurs and innovators. We are a co-founder and the Slovenian member of the European Startup Network, and are proud to represent Slovenia in the European Startup Nations Alliance (ESNA), demonstrating our active engagement in the European ecosystem. In 2018, Venture Factory became a proud Startup Europe Ambassador, joining key influencers on a mission in the European startup ecosystem to provide information and advice and link pools of talent to promote entrepreneurship, startup creation and growth, giving them a fair chance to succeed. We connect a vast network of entrepreneurs, mentors, experts, investors and institutions to create business ties and strategic partnerships for a better tomorrow. We firmly believe in working towards a more regenerative future and helping businesses, communities and the planet with measures of sustainability and inclusivity, and we do so by partnering with visionary entrepreneurs and passionate leaders.