Startup Kitchen

17/09/2026

💪 Our Fergus has made it into the Ukrainian media!

He met with Anastasiia Ivantsova from AIN in Kharkiv last month and talked about Ukrainian startups.

We won't spoil what he said, so read it here (you'll have to use autotranslate if you don't know Ukrainian): https://ain.ua/2026/09/14/blic-iz-redaktorom-startup-kitchen/

🙏 We're very proud to have one of our own be interviewed, thank you AIN and Anastasiia for your time!

Фергюс О’Салліван про український Defense Tech, конкурентоспроможність у Європі, виклики війни для засновників та залучення європейських інвесторів - AIN

17/09/2026

🔔 SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT 🔔 Jana Sedláková is the founder of SEDLAKOVA LEGAL, a Czech law firm working with IT, software, and AI startups.

She is also an active investor with a portfolio of fifteen startups and is currently building an AI legal tech platform that helps companies automate their routine legal agenda.

This and much more in her panel discussion.

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👉 Get your ticket at techhappyhours.com

20.10.2026
OX Club, Prague

And see you there!

16/09/2026

🔔 SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT 🔔 Kate Simkova is a serial entrepreneur, founder, and growth leader behind ventures such as CloseRocket, Deal Factory (Slovakia’s first sales agency), and the Bounce Chicks dance school.

Sounds amazing, right? 😀 She secured over €2 million in investment for her AI startup, CloseRocket, been named twice to the Forbes "30 Under 30" list, is a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year award, and features in the Forbes "Top Women in Business 2025" ranking.

A lifelong learner and AI enthusiast, she is a founder at heart who bridges sales performance with technology, values, and a human touch.

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More speakers coming soon.

16/09/2026

⚡Investment Announcement⚡ The San Francisco-based medtech startup Andromeda Surgical, co-founded in San Francisco in 2023 by Nick Damiano and Kartik Tiwari, who met through Y Combinator‘s Co-Founder Matching, developing an autonomous surgical platform designed to expand access to advanced surgical procedures and shorten the steep learning curve for specialized interventions, has raised 15 million USD in the round, bringing its total funding to 30 million USD from investors like Standard Capital, Y Combinator, VOX Capital, Lingotto Innovation, Alumni Ventures, WestWave Capital, Czech JSK Investments by Simona Kijonkova and others.

More here 👉

Investment fund JSK Investments SICAV a.s. has invested in American medtech startup Andromeda Surgical as part of its Series A round. The company raised 15 million USD in the round, bringing its total funding to 30 million USD.

16/09/2026

💰🪖Should you invest in Ukraine?

Fergus spoke to Czech and non-Czech investors, e.g., Tichomir Jenkut, Lola Onipko, Ondrej Homola, and Jan Korous, who say yes, though the going isn't always easy.

15/09/2026

💪 There is a very simple belief at Talentpilot, and that's that in a world where pretty much any company can buy intelligence in the form of an AI model, the real competitive advantage will be people who will turn this intelligence into results, says Tom Zrubecky, CEO and Founder of the company.

This and much more in the newest podcast episode, hosted by Fergus O'Sullivan here 👉 https://open.spotify.com/episode/07l2ZzxmPKrl6iNrFwgKu3

15/09/2026

🙋‍♀️🏛️ Sara P***k is introducing a new LIMINAL Centre at CIIRC, a new research centre at the České vysoké učení technické v Praze, which brings together artificial intelligence, cultural heritage, business resilience and social science to answer a deceptively simple question: how do people and institutions adapt when technology changes faster than society can?

LIMINAL will officially open on 25 September 2026 at CIIRC CTU in Prague. The opening event will feature speakers including Peter Mitchell and Dr William Kelly from the University of Oxford, Iain Standen FRSA of Bletchley Park Trust, and Sara P***k, alongside representatives of CTU and the new centre.

More here 👉

A new research centre at the Czech Technical University in Prague is bringing together artificial intelligence, cultural heritage, business resilience and social science to answer a deceptively simple question: how do people and institutions adapt when technology changes faster than society can?

15/09/2026

⚡ Investment Announcement ⚡ Polish TesterArmy (YC P26), the platform that uses AI agents to test web and mobile applications without requiring teams to write test code, co-founded by Szymon Rybczak and Oskar Kwaśniewski, has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding round baked by Y Combinator, AIP Seed, Eight Capital and Script Capital, alongside angel investors including Guillermo Rauch, founder of Vercel; Walden Yan, co-founder of Cognition, the company behind Devin; Charlie Cheever, CEO of Expo and co-founder of Quora; Zeno Rocha, founder of Resend; Fernando Rojo, Head of v0 by Vercel; and Fryderyk Wiatrowski, CEO of viktor.com.

The company will use the funding to grow its team, and to scale the platform to serve hundreds of companies. More than 50 clients, from seed-stage startups to Series C companies, already use TesterArmy, including Resend, bolt.new, Novu, CodeCrafters, Rork and Nando’s.

More here 👉 https://startupkitchen.community/testerarmy-raises-1-2m-for-ai-agents-that-test-software-the-way-users-do/

AI coding agents now write a growing share of the code that ships. But they tend to verify the feature they were asked to build, while broader user journeys and regressions go unchecked. As release cycles accelerate, traditional testing processes struggle to keep up.

15/09/2026

💹 Czech fintech FLOWPAY, led by William Jalloul, becomes the fastest-growing startup in Central Europe according to the Sifted 100: DACH & CEE Leaderboard. Sifted is backed by the publisher of the Financial Times.

Flowpay achieved an average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenue of 816.31%.

More here 👉

Small and medium-sized enterprises represent the majority of the European economy, but they face greater obstacles in securing operational financing than large corporations because their risk profile is difficult to evaluate quickly and objectively. Czech data and AI fintech Flowpay has built embedd...

11/09/2026

🍸🍹 #​TechHappyHours 2026 are back for their 3rd edition, with a focus on Networking, building Unicorns, international cooperation, or DefenseTech.

Our ambition is to exceed last year's participation of 500 Czech & European attendees, including startup enthusiasts, venture capital investors, top corporates, technological universities, and young people passionate about big entrepreneurship, and bring in even more big names. And we are part of the too!

Among Confirmed Speakers are ​
🔶 Richard Valtr from Mews, ⁠
🔶 Jan Rezab from Ravineo, ⁠
🔶 Kate Simkova from CloseRocket,
​🔶 William Jalloul from FLOWPAY,​
🔶 Mats Kuuskemaa from E-residency Estonia,
⁠🔶 Lola Onipko from Occam Industries,
⁠🔶 Jana Sedláková from Sedlakova Legal,
​🔶 Alain Wildanger from IVC Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital,
and many others...

Thank you to our Partners, without whom this event wouldn’t be possible:
💪 CzechInvest
​​​💪 Technologická inkubace
​​​​​​​​​​💪 Středočeské inovační centrum, SIC
💪 Raiffeisen Bank Česká republika
💪 ViennaBusiness Agency
💪 SEDLAKOVA LEGAL
💪 ​CzechStartups
💪 Pražský inovační institut
💪 iO Partners
💪 ​CERN Venture Connect

And supported by the City of Prague​ Magistrát hl. m. Praha

Grab your ticket and see you at Happy Hours https://lnkd.in/ePUEzam8
Tech Happy Hours🍸🍹