There is a particular kind of frustration that comes with building good companies in a country nobody thinks to look at. Slovenia has two million mostly highly educated people, a top-ten global ranking in economic complexity, the seventh most robotised workforce in the world, and a startup scene that has produced Bitstamp, Celtra, and Outfit7. And yet, when European investors draw up their maps of where to find the next big thing, the pin rarely lands between the Alps and the Adriatic.
For years, the standard response was to encourage founders to go abroad: get into a Berlin accelerator, pitch in London, move to where the capital is. It worked for some. But it also meant that every success story became an export story, and the ecosystem at home stayed invisible.
At SPIRIT Slovenia, the national business development agency, we decided to try something different. Instead of sending founders out one by one to fend for themselves, we started building a systematic internationalisation programme: curated national delegations to the events that matter, with startups, investors, and ecosystem leaders travelling together—not as tourists, but as a coordinated national presence with structured access to the right rooms.
The logic is simple. A single founder at a 10,000-person conference is noise. A national delegation with a dozen startups, some investors, a government representative, and a partner-country booth is a signal. It tells the international community: this ecosystem exists, it is organised, and it is open for business.
A year of showing up
We started in earnest in late 2025, when SPIRIT Slovenia brought a delegation to Web Summit in Lisbon. It was our proof of concept: a small group of startups with a shared presence, coordinated pitching, and real introductions to investors. Several of those companies came back with concrete leads.
In April 2026, we took a deep-tech delegation to Startup Grind Global Conference in Silicon Valley. Different format, different audience — same principle: go where the right people are, and go prepared. Later this year, we return to Web Summit and will be present at Slush in Helsinki for the first time.
Vienna: the CEE–DACH bridge
This brings us to ViennaUP 2026, where Slovenia is making its most ambitious appearance yet.
From May 18 to 20, SPIRIT Slovenia is bringing over 30 people to Vienna: 12 selected startups, 8 angel investors from Business Angels of Slovenia, and representatives from the Ministry of the Economy, Tourism and Sport.
The delegation is anchored around two events: Connect Day, the festival’s flagship pitching and matchmaking event at the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, and the CEE Innovation Forum, organised by The Recursive at weXelerate. There, our companies will pitch, join panels, and meet investors from seven countries in curated one-on-one sessions.
Why Vienna? Because the CEE–DACH corridor is where Slovenian startups have the highest probability of early international traction. The markets are close, the regulatory frameworks are familiar, and the investor networks overlap.
Vienna is not a detour on the way to Silicon Valley. For many of our companies, it is the front door.
Ten companies, one working thesis
The startups in this delegation weren’t selected just to look impressive on paper. They were chosen because each has something concrete to contribute — and something equally specific to gain in Vienna.
ReCatalyst has developed a nanotechnology platform for next-generation catalyst production targeting decarbonisation. They are an EIC Transition grant recipient with over 20 pilot projects across five continents and are preparing their Series A. They will join a Tech Transfer panel at the CEE Innovation Forum.
Trivial Group builds AI systems for automated assessment in education, already in production with clients in the Netherlands, the UK, and Switzerland. One client alone projects annual savings of nearly €1 million from the integration.
Alpdev, through AI Convert It, offers an AI sales assistant for e-commerce that has been shown to drive 5–20% revenue growth. They bootstrapped to €20–30k in monthly revenue within five months and are targeting DACH expansion.
ELIXITI tackles the operational chaos of workforce management in labour-intensive industries. Their AI platform finds the best shift replacement in seconds and auto-generates compliant documentation. Validated through 30+ conversations with company directors across multiple countries, they will pitch at the CEE Innovation Forum.
Vizije Mobilnosti operates ViziDrive, a registered EU trademark and all-in-one AI platform for EV charging infrastructure management at TRL 7–8, combining fleet optimisation, charging, and renewable energy integration.
Hoply runs a live pilot with the British International School of Ljubljana for its children’s transport platform, connecting parents, schools, and vetted drivers with route optimisation and real-time safety monitoring.
StarKid creates multimedia mindfulness content for children, with methods tested on over 1,000 kids at a US paediatric clinic. A Web Summit 2025 alumna and angel-backed, they are preparing to scale into English-speaking markets.
NEOanalytics is behind Peaksters, an AI training app for children, with 18 sports clubs lined up for pilots and 10 letters of intent signed.
Two more companies — Mover, a crowd-powered football transfer platform, and J&A Marsian, a mobile gaming startup — join for Тhe Recursive CEE Innovation Forum.
The invisible infrastructure
What separates a delegation from a group of founders who happen to be at the same event is preparation and follow-through.
Every startup in our group goes through a mandatory pitch seminar before departure, led by Business Angels of Slovenia. Eight angel investors travel with the delegation, creating three days of organic interaction that no matchmaking algorithm can replicate.
After we return, every company reports on outcomes.
The long game
Slovenia’s startup ecosystem is at an inflection point. The government adopted a new national startup strategy in early 2026 with the ambition of doubling the number of startups per capita and significantly increasing venture capital investment.
SPIRIT Slovenia’s internationalisation programme is one piece of that puzzle — the part that ensures Slovenian innovation is visible where decisions get made.
We are not trying to compete with Berlin or Paris on volume. We are building something more targeted: a small, well-connected ecosystem where founders have direct access to international capital, where investors travel with the companies they might fund, and where a public agency acts not as a gatekeeper but as a bridge.
Vienna is our third major delegation in less than a year: It will not be our last.
