Micro-entrepreneurship, professional social networking and using human potential in Central Europe

Micro-entrepreneurship, professional social networking and using human potential in Central Europe Radovan Kavický VBC – Visegrad Business Community BarCamp Bratislava A4 – zero space, Námestie SNP 12 14th june 2008 (Bratislava)

non-governmental organisation committed to maximizing the economic and social potential in Central Europe (CEE region)

global social network connecting a community of successful Central European professionals with professionals from the rest of the world

VBC was founded in March 2007

What is the Visegrad Business Community?

Why Visegrad?

our members are from Central Europe (CEE region; mainly from Slovakia, Czech rep., Hungary, Poland) and also they are either students or alumni of universities such as Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, LSE, Upenn,...

we have a strong belief in the potential of young people from CEE

What the hell does VBC mean?

Why Business?

positive change in this region (CEE) can be achieved by promoting and supporting micro-entrepreneurship, professional development and transparency

the people we connect are creative and have great ideas how to improve the world around, are already entrepreneurs or have ambition to do business in this region

we are here to help them develop the ideas

Why Community?

I think community is clear  , so it is not necessary to explain and we can move on.

V isegrad B usiness C ommunity

„ Inspiring, Connecting and Supporting the Future Leaders of Central and Eastern Europe.“

Forum for discussion on our website

Virtual contact, cooperation and discussion on our website (http://visegrabusiness.org - FORUM section)

There is already great discussion and brainstorming in progress about, for example, start-ups in this region, venture capital, and other interesting topics

Registration is required (for discussion) and people who contact us directly and show interest will recieve „associate“ status, so the new topics will be revealed to him and discussion can continue

Our projects (not all, but only few of them)

Forum for discussion on our website

If you want to have active contact with our organization for continuous interactive help from the community – on the forum on our website feel free to post your needs and start new topic (there are many, well educated, people willing to help you solve your problem or give you information you need, share useful links, etc.)

Project appropriate for think tanks in this region

There are so many events, workshops, lectures and so on, but as for information about them...

There's still information asymmetry, you know, often you find out, that the great event you would like to attend will be tomorrow or you discover that it's already over...

So the solution is that on our website in short time will be RSS feeds and mailing lists sorted out to categories like for example lectures, workshops, euro, politics, foreign affairs, pension reforms, health policy,...

Professional social networking (yeah, inspired by LinkedIn and International Association of Space Entrepreneurs)

Each our member has professional profile on our site (his/her information about education, work experience, contact information, hobbies, etc.)

After doing this, how to use information about „human capital“? We have many business contacts for example in London and NY, so next step is headhunting for companies such as McKinsey, J.P. Morgan, IBM, Merrill Lynch...

Also we organize meetings of our worldwide members in Prague, Wien, Brno, Bratislava and so on. Up to now three successful meetings took place (two of them in Bratislava).

University Counselling Project

To mediate information about the administration process and how to apply to university in USA, UK,...

Help people to arrange contacts in city where they would like to study (after contacting us through website forum or mail, we promise that we will do our best to help the person, who turn to us)

Than we contact our members, who are already there, first step is „virtual contact through internet“ but than we arrange meeting-up and help the person as much as possible.

The other projects, not mentioned yet:

Management consulting for start-ups

Help to develop business plans for companies

Set up companies (help them with administration process)

Mediate contact to venture capitalists as well as to help creative people bring their great ideas to reality (in other words to finance their new business)

Our other projects

Where and how to contact us: