At the IT start-up contest of the company Dell and the Initiative Start:up Slovenia, the jury was convinced by the company Keyboarder, which won the prize in the amount of five thousand euros.
The company Dell and the Initiative Start:up Slovenia jointly prepared an IT start-up contest with the purpose of encouraging young entrepreneurs to develop their own business. 30 young Slovenian companies applied, but the jury was convinced by an IT company Keyboarder, which thus won the prize in the amount of 5,000 euros.
An app for easier use of signs and symbols
Keyboarder is a free desktop app for laptops that simplifies and speeds up the use of signs and symbols on various keyboards. When using the app, you don’t have to use combinations of different keys anymore for finding the wanted symbol, as similar suggestions immediately appear in a caption on the screen.
The two young innovators, Luka Perčič and Nejc Lešek, have put all their knowledge and free time into the implementation of their idea, with which they wish to break through amongst the millions of laptop users all across the world. “The solution is very similar to the iPhone software keyboard, the difference being that Keyboarder solves problems when writing on the computer. Local keyboard layouts become a thing of the past,” said the members of the winning team after the victory.
The 25-year old Luka and 22-year old Nejc think that this app will ease the work of translators, professors (accentuation, phonetic and mathematic signs), inhabitants of multilingual areas and nations that use the Cyrillic alphabet.
The winners of the Start-up contest received Dell’s computer equipment in the value of 5,000 euros, as well as additional support of the Initiative Start:up Slovenia and the option of participating in the programme Start:up, which is intended for the most ambitious start-up companies focused on the global market from the very beginning. “The victory is bringing us an easier transition into a financially durable model and simultaneously raising our self-esteem while we’re on the path to building a company. Being a part of the Geek House will enable us flexible conditions and collaboration with co-workers as well as mutual encouragements and motivation,” said Luka and Nejc upon receiving the award.
The Dell representative and administrative director for the Adriatic region, Ivan Bolfan was also thrilled about the winning idea and said: “We are very happy that we can support modern development and the realization of innovative ideas that will contribute to the development of entrepreneurship as well as improve the offer of services. Ever since the very beginning, Dell has been focused on enabling solutions that will ensure people that they reach business goals with maximum efficiency.”
When choosing the winner, the leader of the expert committee, Filipa Petrović said: “The Start-up contest, which was brought to life with the collaboration between the Initiative Start:up Slovenia and Dell, attracted many projects from various fields and at the same time showed that youth doesn’t lack creativity and market potential. It wasn’t simple to pick a winner, since all projects are of incredibly high quality.”
Blaž Kos, programme director within the Initiative Start:up Slovenia, confirmed that Slovenia contains a lot of potential amongst young companies: “When collaborating with Dell, we have achieved all the pre-set goals – together, we have encouraged young, ambitious and talented individuals and business teams to realize their ideas. This is shown by the most important fact that we have received 30 applications with innovative business solutions. Slovenia has excellent experts with knowledge from engineering and natural sciences, and they create products with high value added. It is crucial and urgent that we encourage these people to develop start-ups that open new workplaces and create economic dynamics and growth.”
The opinion of the Boštjan Špetič, co-founder of the successful Slovenian company Zemanta, is that contests for young and not yet established companies can serve as an important leap to recognisability, which is why they are very welcome in Slovenia as well. “This type of contests is an excellent opportunity for young entrepreneurs to show themselves to the public for the first time and some of them take excellent advantage of this for their own start. The presented start-ups were surprisingly diverse – content- as well as maturity-wise – and the winner mostly stood out because of the global stance of the idea. Start-up companies in Slovenia should mostly avoid candidatures for national and European subsidies, because that leads them away from clients directly to bureaucrats.”
Jure Forstnerič, laboratory leader at the magazine Monitor, thinks that start-up companies are the ones that dare to take risks even in today’s crisis. “Start-up companies, namely young and small companies, have incredible potential. Because these companies dare to take risks, they can be more flexible and more aggressive. They bring their founders not only the possibility of income but also a lot of useful knowledge and experience. This type of entrepreneurship activity should thus be necessarily and usefully supported, since even those start-ups that maybe don’t succeed still bring a lot of benefits. The winning company offers a good relationship between the value added, technical implementation and market viability.
About Dell
IT solutions from company Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) are today used by all governments of G20 countries and 95 percent of 500 biggest companies in the world according to the ranking of the magazine Fortune. More than a billion people connect through inbuilt Dell’s servers each day. Visit the website www.dell.com for more information.
About the Initiative Start:up Slovenia
Initiative Start:up Slovenia is the answer to the increasingly bigger lag that is threatening us in the evolution of the Slovenian start-up ecosystem. Within the initiative, the most important stakeholders of the Slovenian entrepreneurship ecosystem are connected and they pledge that they will co-create a contemporary national entrepreneurship ecosystem with all their knowledge, will, vision and social responsibility. Central national programmes carried out by ecosystem partners:
An app for easier use of signs and symbols
Keyboarder is a free desktop app for laptops that simplifies and speeds up the use of signs and symbols on various keyboards. When using the app, you don’t have to use combinations of different keys anymore for finding the wanted symbol, as similar suggestions immediately appear in a caption on the screen.
The two young innovators, Luka Perčič and Nejc Lešek, have put all their knowledge and free time into the implementation of their idea, with which they wish to break through amongst the millions of laptop users all across the world. “The solution is very similar to the iPhone software keyboard, the difference being that Keyboarder solves problems when writing on the computer. Local keyboard layouts become a thing of the past,” said the members of the winning team after the victory.
The 25-year old Luka and 22-year old Nejc think that this app will ease the work of translators, professors (accentuation, phonetic and mathematic signs), inhabitants of multilingual areas and nations that use the Cyrillic alphabet.
The winners of the Start-up contest received Dell’s computer equipment in the value of 5,000 euros, as well as additional support of the Initiative Start:up Slovenia and the option of participating in the programme Start:up, which is intended for the most ambitious start-up companies focused on the global market from the very beginning. “The victory is bringing us an easier transition into a financially durable model and simultaneously raising our self-esteem while we’re on the path to building a company. Being a part of the Geek House will enable us flexible conditions and collaboration with co-workers as well as mutual encouragements and motivation,” said Luka and Nejc upon receiving the award.
The Dell representative and administrative director for the Adriatic region, Ivan Bolfan was also thrilled about the winning idea and said: “We are very happy that we can support modern development and the realization of innovative ideas that will contribute to the development of entrepreneurship as well as improve the offer of services. Ever since the very beginning, Dell has been focused on enabling solutions that will ensure people that they reach business goals with maximum efficiency.”
When choosing the winner, the leader of the expert committee, Filipa Petrović said: “The Start-up contest, which was brought to life with the collaboration between the Initiative Start:up Slovenia and Dell, attracted many projects from various fields and at the same time showed that youth doesn’t lack creativity and market potential. It wasn’t simple to pick a winner, since all projects are of incredibly high quality.”
The winner was decided by an expert jury that knows well of the current state in the field of IT entrepreneurship. Besides Filipa Petrović, marketing leader for SE Europe Dell, the jury consisted of Blaž Kos, programme director within the Initiative Start:up Slovenia, Boštjan Špetič, co-founder of the successful Slovenian company Zemanta, and Jure Forstnerič, laboratory leader at the computer magazine Monitor.
Blaž Kos, programme director within the Initiative Start:up Slovenia, confirmed that Slovenia contains a lot of potential amongst young companies: “When collaborating with Dell, we have achieved all the pre-set goals – together, we have encouraged young, ambitious and talented individuals and business teams to realize their ideas. This is shown by the most important fact that we have received 30 applications with innovative business solutions. Slovenia has excellent experts with knowledge from engineering and natural sciences, and they create products with high value added. It is crucial and urgent that we encourage these people to develop start-ups that open new workplaces and create economic dynamics and growth.”
The opinion of the Boštjan Špetič, co-founder of the successful Slovenian company Zemanta, is that contests for young and not yet established companies can serve as an important leap to recognisability, which is why they are very welcome in Slovenia as well. “This type of contests is an excellent opportunity for young entrepreneurs to show themselves to the public for the first time and some of them take excellent advantage of this for their own start. The presented start-ups were surprisingly diverse – content- as well as maturity-wise – and the winner mostly stood out because of the global stance of the idea. Start-up companies in Slovenia should mostly avoid candidatures for national and European subsidies, because that leads them away from clients directly to bureaucrats.”
Jure Forstnerič, laboratory leader at the magazine Monitor, thinks that start-up companies are the ones that dare to take risks even in today’s crisis. “Start-up companies, namely young and small companies, have incredible potential. Because these companies dare to take risks, they can be more flexible and more aggressive. They bring their founders not only the possibility of income but also a lot of useful knowledge and experience. This type of entrepreneurship activity should thus be necessarily and usefully supported, since even those start-ups that maybe don’t succeed still bring a lot of benefits. The winning company offers a good relationship between the value added, technical implementation and market viability.
About Dell
IT solutions from company Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) are today used by all governments of G20 countries and 95 percent of 500 biggest companies in the world according to the ranking of the magazine Fortune. More than a billion people connect through inbuilt Dell’s servers each day. Visit the website www.dell.com for more information.
About the Initiative Start:up Slovenia
Initiative Start:up Slovenia is the answer to the increasingly bigger lag that is threatening us in the evolution of the Slovenian start-up ecosystem. Within the initiative, the most important stakeholders of the Slovenian entrepreneurship ecosystem are connected and they pledge that they will co-create a contemporary national entrepreneurship ecosystem with all their knowledge, will, vision and social responsibility. Central national programmes carried out by ecosystem partners:
- iTime+
- Start:up Geek House
- National competition Start:up of the year
- International business conference PODIM
- Programme Go:Global Slovenia
| Media contact | ||
| Filipa Petrović | Dell SEE Marketing | filipa_petrovic@dell.com |
| Manca Šalehar | Propiar Ltd. | Manca.salehar@propiar.com 00386 40 666 009 |
| Elvisa Basailović | Initiative Start:up Slovenia | elvisa.basailovic@tp-lj.si; 00386 41 850 115 |
