You don't see many startups coming out of Eastern Europe, and even fewer who receive Silicon Valley capital. Roman Stanek is an exception. He is a technology visionary who has spent more than 15 years building world-class technology companies.
Currently Founder & CEO of Good Data that provides collaborative analytics on demand, he also co-founded NetBeans, the leading Java IDEs which he then sold to Sun Microsystems for $10 million back in 1999.
In the same year he founded Systinet, the leading SOA Governance platform on the market, later acquired by Mercury Interactive/HP for $105 million.
Good Data is backed by venture firms and private investors like General Catalyst Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and in 2009 the company raised a total of around $4.5 million in capital. Since its founding, the company has built a complete cloud-based business intelligence service hosted on Amazon Web Services, and last year won the third annual AWS Start-Up Challenge.
Without exaggeration, the Czech Republic is an anti-virus and internet security software superpower. Products produced by two of the biggest Czech anti-virus companies are utilized around the world by almost 250 million users.
AVG was founded in Brno in 1991 by Jan Gritzbach. Recognizing that the Czech market was too small for his company, in 1998 Gritzbach established an American based company called Grisoft, Inc. that became the owner of the Czech branch.
He then decided to move the headquarters to the Netherlands. The company used to be owned by about 80 shareholders; today the majority owners are Enterprise Investors, Intel Capital, Benson Oak and TA Associates. TA Associates bought their share last year for about $200 million, becoming the biggest private equity transaction in the Central and Eastern European region of that year.
Last year, net profits totaled about $14 million.
There are not many countries in the world where Google is not the leading search engine. One of those countries happens to be the Czech Republic, where for many people the Internet and Seznam are synonymous.
Seznam was founded by Ivo Lukačovič in 1996 as the first local search engine on the market, and it has kept that leading position ever since. In 2005, Lukačovič sold 30% of Seznam to Lycos, Inc.
In 2007, Lycos sold its share to Tiger Holding Four and Miura International for €65 million. During 2007 and 2008, when two other local search engines were sold to Wartburg Pincus, Lukačovič resisted the temptation.
In 2008, it was revealed by the media that Seznam was offered about $850 million for the company as a whole, but the offer was refused.
Logos is a privately held, Czech-based leading IT services and consulting company. It was founded in 1994 and has been one of the fastest growing IT services and solutions providers in the Czech Republic. In 2008, the company was awarded the "Best Investor of the Year" in its sector by CzechInvest.
That same year it was also chosen by Microsoft as having the best pro-consumer behavior. Logos' customer list includes prominent banks, telco companies, and many others.
In the middle of 2008, the company was sold by all four shareholders for 629 million CZK to Ness Technologies, Inc., a global provider of IT services and solutions. It turned out to be a great deal for its former owners because the deal was closed shortly before the financial crisis hit the sector.
Only five months after the transaction, Ness Technologies estimated the real value of the company to be 555 million CZK. In 2008, Logos generated revenues of €29.7 million and was profitable.
Advertures is a local Internet & mobile marketing agency founded in 2001. It provides services for the Czech Foreign Ministry, Czech Airlines, Nokia, SUN Microsystems, and other prominent clients. It assists companies with their communication strategies and provides an advertising place in media.
Advertures also runs an affiliate advertising marketplace called Potenza. In 2007, it had 71 million CZK in revenue.
A year later Advertures was acquired by the international company WPP, which owns brands such as Ogilvy & Mather, and others.
The negotiations took about a year and the total price of the deal has not been revealed. With its strong partner, the company is expected to grow significantly.
Kerio Technologies provides enterprise internet messaging solution and firewall products. Kerio represents one of those success stories whose growth all companies can only dream of.
It was founded in 1999 in Silicon Valley as Tiny Software by a group of Czech IT specialists and managers, and quickly became a strong player on the global market. Not long after its foundation, Tiny Software signed a contract with the U.S. Navy as well as the U.S. Airforce to provide them with a security solution for their computer networks located around the world.
Kerio Technologies was established in 2002 after Tiny Software was divided into three separate companies.
Computer Associates later acquired Tiny Software.
Kerio has continued in the development of WinRoute Firewall. In April 2002 it launched Kerio Mail Server (now Kerio Connect), the first groupware alternative to Microsoft Exchange.
