Steli Efti is CEO and Co-Founder of Close.io (a platform that makes calls, sends emails, and conveniently automatically tracks all activity) and ElasticSales, where he helps thousands of startups succeed in scaling their sales efforts.

He is an alumni of Y Combinator (they helped making companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, 9gag, and more). His company has received funding from Spark Capital, SV Angel, Start Fund, and Omidyar Networks as well as several notable angel investors.

Besides firing half his team by singing Bye Bye Baby from ’N Sync, Steli also published a lot of interesting articles, from “Why Startups Need To Visit Their Customers” to “Hiring for Startups: How to Recruit the Un-recruitable!“.

Joanna Alpe had a misspent youth photographing the biggest acts of the 00s like Bjork, Rage Against the Machine, Dizzie Rascal, Kasbian, Arcade Fire and many many many more. A few companies later, she led the founding of Makelight - an innovative mobile special effects & audience insight platform that turns people into pixels in 2012. She won Makelight a place in Telefonica's prestigious Wayra UK academy in 2012, the Red Bull Amplify accelerator in 2013 and has led the company to win multiple Event Technology Awards for their breakthrough Live Event Technology. 

Jakob Šušterič has entrepreneurship in his heart. He founded MESI at the age of just 22 and is now pursuing his dreams – bringing user experience from consumer electronics to medical devices. Even though he studied at a Faculty of Electronics, his passion was to establish a company and bring an innovative product to the market. 

Bojana Zupanič's biggest professional challenge is how to enable future growth of corporations by creating the environment where rapid innovation and daily operations can co-exist. Her passion is creating the workspace, where people grow and have fun. She is excited what Future of Work might bring. Therefore at Danfoss they often experiment with new approaches in unleashing people's potential, just like they did at the 24Idea event, a start-up-like event for their employees. No wonder their engagement is record high and business results superb.

Pavel Škerlj is CIO at Petrol d.d., Ljubljana with over 20 years of experience in IT. He is a digital believer who is always adapting to fast moving technology trends while managing core business projects, preparing stable and efficient IT and business architectures with a focus on business strategy execution and innovation. 

Mateja Zavadlal manages Sportina Bled d.o.o. and Sportina Zagreb d.o.o. at Sportina Group, a fashion retailer which represents more than 50 globally known brands across every price range and has more than 310 stores in the region of South-East Europe. As General Manager, Mateja is responsible for running all the facets of the business on the Slovenian and Croatian markets. She has a proven executive management track record and over 8 years of experience driving sales growth in the retail and tourism industries. Prior to managing Sportina Bled and Sportina Zagreb, Mateja was in charge of Sportina Tourism, where she led the establishment of a new business unit consisting of four hotels in Bled. Mateja also worked as Financial Manager at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. Mateja developed her entrepreneurial skills already during her studies. Her first project was obtaining funds for the reconstruction of an old homestead into the Pliskovica hostel. 

Marko Javornik is an expert in software technology innovation and digital transformation. With more than 20 years of experience, he has led large scale software technology projects developing global business solutions in various industry verticals, including financial services, energy management, automotive and travelling. Marko is an enthusiastic believer in forming strong partnerships based on the principles of Open Innovation. Currently, he holds the position of VP/GM Mobility & Travel at Comtrade, one of the largest IT companies in South East Europe. Marko’s area of focus is on reinventing auto mobility by bringing advanced back-end technology to the market to enable new concepts of Mobility as a Service, such as car sharing, ride sharing and shuttle services. He has published several thought provoking articles on how the automotive industry will be disrupted with significant changes in the business models and user experience.

Sonja Šmuc, is in her third mandate as the executive director of the Managers’ Association of Slovenia, through which she is dedicated to the development of Slovenian managment and encouraging competitiveness of Slovenian businesses. Within this association she is also specialised for business ethics and female managment. 

Jure Mikuž has established RSG Kapital, the first Slovenia-based VC Fund, raising private commitments mostly from domestic industrial investors such as Gorenje, Sava, Kolektor, FMR, Instrumentation Technologies and others. He serves on several boards of the investee companies, including Celtra, TAB Systems and MountVacation.
 
Jure is actively promoting entrepreneurship and regularly holds lectures on finance and fundraising procedures for the start-up communities in Slovenia and across the Balkans. Prior to establishing RSG Capital he was a deputy head of asset management in KD Group and stock broker on the Ljubljana stock exchange.

Dejan Roljić is cofounder and director of the new ABC accelerator that aims to connect innovative startups with bigger established companies in all of South-East Europe.
 
Roljić also has first-hand experience in the inner workings of acceleration programmes, as his company Formtaste innovations had been accepted into the Amsterdam-based Startbootcamp. Formtaste created Printie – a multifunctional vending kiosk where users can print, copy and scan. The integrated service brings personalised advertising with access to a broad range of consumers.
 
The young entrepreneur is founder of Shanghai Summer School, where ambitious students learn the Chinese language, get to know the culture and discover business opportunities of the huge market. He has been leading the summer school since 2011 and so far, 204 students have already taken part.
 
He studied at the University of Ljubljana at the Faculty of Engineering, but he also attended The Entrepreneurial University in Munich and the University of International Business and Economics in Shanghai.
 
He is also the initiator of the charity action Bread for a friend (“Kruh za pr’jatla”) which gives customers in bakeries the option of buying additional bread for those who can’t afford it.  

Matej Zalar is a Startup entrepreneur in love with everything containing a microprocessor. He studied economics and high-tech management in Slovenia and Finland.

Currently he is a co-founder and CEO at Visionect ltd., a Slovenian startup company developing tablet devices based on electronic paper technology. Visionect received many international awards and was backed by both Angel and VC investors. Today Visionect is a development partner of EPSON and E Ink holding and has customers in many companies across the world.

Julij Božič is distinguished by years of experience and achievements in information and communications technologies, and long-standing experience in marketing, sales and management. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics (Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana), having upgraded his knowledge and was awarded the MBA title at the University of Warwick, UK. Julij joined IBM in 1999 as a product manager, continued to work as key account manager and later assumed the position of a software sales manager. From September 2013 he is in a position of Country leader for Slovenia and Bosnia & Hercegovina.

In his work, he remains focused on ideas that go beyond frameworks. About himself, he says that he is an "out of the box thinker", who is successfully leading his team in achieving business goals. His personal motto is: “If you don’t go, you don’t have a story”.

Julij is a member of numerous business and economic interest groups in Slovenia, such as AmCham Slovenia, the Manager Association and IEDC, where he uses his experience and knowledge while consulting as a mentor many young talents – future representatives of the Slovenian economic environment.

He is a father of two children.

Valter Leban, a member of the managment board of Kolektor, started his career in Kolektor 30 years ago. In his rich career he has dealt with many different fields, including establishing an informational infrastructure, managing manufacturing companies, operative excellence and the principles of a lean company, internationalization of the group, establishing new business model and lately with digitalization as one of the strategic directions of Kolektor.

An industrial engineer with MBA knowledge, a “change manager” by belief, believes that every organization has to adapt, innovate, test new things and constantly follow challenges.

It is his opinion that working in a world renowned company, which is undoubtedly Kolektor, is at the same time, luck, a challenge and a responsibility. Especially if one is held accountable for managing important business fields of the whole group. Growth is embedded in Kolektor’s DNA, and the group will try to achieve this also in the field of industrial internet of things and innovation in the field of digitalization. This is also a challenge that Mr. Leban will deal with for the next few years.

Primož Škerget has his formal background in Visual communications and has been working in this field for the last 5+ years. Already at the University he acted on a few of his ideas and transformed them into startups.

Currently he is a lead UX Designer Generalist at D.Labs where he has an opportunity to work with a variety of clients on variety of domains which has broadened his skillset. He has been involved on many mobile and web projects providing services for the entire app or just sections of the app. His latest passion is in understanding processes and how to create the best design flow end-to-end. In his free time he enjoys brewing beer, tasting wine and playing drums.

Laszlo R. Czirjak, Co-Founder, Co-Managing Partner at iEurope Capital, a private equity/venture capital fund management firm. Investment and board role experience includes successfully building businesses in services, Internet, software, manufacturing and media including: ATech, Autohop (sold to BlaBlaCar), Tjobs, Vatera (sold to Naspers), Wunder and many others. Earlier was Managing Director at Bankers Trust Company/BT Alex Brown in the London Investment Bank. Also current or past Chair roles at American Chamber of Commerce in Hungary, Fulbright Foundation Hungary, United Way Resource Foundation, and Columbia University Club. Received an MBA and BS in Industrial Engineering, both with honors, from Columbia University in New York.