Trip Status: 9/15 Cities ✅
If you don’t know yet, I crossed 15 countries to discover and invest in the top 1% builders U25 from CEE before anyone else.
But…let’s rewind to why
CEE founders are incredibly well-prepared and developed, yet most of them aren’t even aware of that.
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The speed at which they learn, adapt, and think problems all the way through is extraordinary.
What they’ve been missing is the infrastructure to convert that talent into global companies.
So, with every stop, we find them early, cultivate that raw talent, and plug them into the SF ecosystem.
This time, straight from the Apify office in Prague.
Apify didn’t get the memo about CEE founders not being ready for the global stage.
They just went ahead and built a company trusted by Siemens, Microsoft, Groupon and 25,000+ customers worldwide.
This is one of Europe’s fastest growing tech companies, and our young builders stepped with both feet into the startup world straight from their office.
*Apify organizes the $1M Challenge for developers and hosts Prague Crawl, the first web scraping and automation conference in Czechia, becoming the global reference point for the industry.
The tools to build globally are being built right here in Europe. Apify is proof of that.
PRAGUE: The room that moved on its own
Maybe it was the “I’m the next Unicorn of Europe” energy.
Maybe it was the brainstorming session at Golden Hour.
Or maybe it was the fact that these builders aren’t waiting for permission to be great either, since…
Nobody waited to be told what to do. They moved, they questioned, they verified.
I mixed real, validated problems with some I made up for the brainstorming exercise.
They immediately called out the fake ones, pushed back, questioned the assumptions, asked where the data came from.
That’s critical thinking operating at full capacity:)
The ability to question the question is the clearest sign of founder material. Their brain was wired for proof and validation.
Three behaviors stood out that you won’t find by just reading their CV:
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The best leaders don’t take up the most space. They make more of it.
Prague had four of them.
Every time someone new approached a group, they opened the circle, made space, and pulled the person into the conversation.
When they spoke, they made eye contact with the newcomer and spoke for them too.
That’s not a skill most people are taught. It’s a social intelligence that makes a founder someone people want to work with, invest in, and follow.
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High agency means knowing what you need and going to get it, without being asked.
I told them to form groups, as usual.
But after they finished with one idea, they switched groups on their own.
They just went: “I’ve gotten what I need here, let me go find the next conversation.”
The ability to self-direct, to identify what you need and go get it without someone managing you, is one of the clearest signals of a founder mindset.
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Before you take advice from someone, verify they’ve actually done the thing they’re telling you to do.
After the event they took me out for a beer and asked to see my startup.
I pulled out the gaming platform prototype, they tested it and asked me questions about it.
That’s due diligence: they weren’t just absorbing information all evening, they were evaluating the source.
Smart move:)
Yet, what impressed me most was how they worked together.
They were asking each other real questions, building on each other’s thinking, and actually listening to the answers.
Empathy combined with the technical ability to execute is a combination worth paying attention to.
Shoutout to Michelle Macias Mendez and Jan Čurn for hosting us and making Prague possible!
See you at the next Debrief;)