How to turn a university research into a successful startup?

Startup success stories will be discussed at BME on 20 May, at an event organised by the university, the Hungarian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association and the American-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce (AmCham). The English-language event, for which you can register here, will feature presentations by Hungarian start-ups and a discussion with venture capital experts on the ups and downs of building a business.

The event, called Start Your Business!, has a number of BME links beyond the venue. One of the moderators will be Gábor Dehelán, lecturer at the Department of Management and Business Economics (the other is Judit Budai, lawyer and expert at AmCham and HVCA).

The first speaker will be the co-founder of Radoop, which started from the Department of Telecommunications and Artificial Intelligence. The big data and data mining company was acquired by Rapidminer in 2014, leaving Zoltán Prekopcsák as CEO. Although he has since become vice president of Prezi, he will talk about how to turn a university research into a thriving startup.

He will be succeeded by Szabolcs Patay, CEO of Commsignia, a company developing vehicle-to-vehicle communication solutions, who also graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics at the BME. He will talk about converting the smart city dream to reality and building an internationally expanding start-up.

The two speakers will then take part in a panel discussion with András P. Tóth, Technical Director of STRT Holding, Vivien Róka, M&A Lead at PwC and Judit Budai. The audience will be able to ask questions at the end.

The programme will start on 20 May at 18:00 in room 402 of BME's QB building and is expected to last until 21:00.

Rector's Office, Communications Directorate