One night, one place, lots of personality and a great atmosphere. The Startup Awards reached its final on September 12 at the Gabriel Loci complex in Prague with the ceremonial announcement of the competition, which recognizes the most exciting things in the startup world. Winners receive statuettes and other prizes, participants enjoy networking, and we capture it all. See what the event is like.

The second year of this event brought together 270 representatives of young technology companies, advanced startups, business world experts, investors and other interesting figures. Apart from the important networks, everyone is waiting for the most important thing – who will win this year? The Startup Awards give awards to creators, founders and investors in four categories: most popular startup, best young startup, investment hit and person of the year.

The most popular startup this year was Qerko, which allows people to quickly pay for restaurants via mobile without having to communicate with staff in any way. This winner was determined by the public, apart from Qerk, Amazing Places, and the Testuj.to platform which took the top position.

The award for startup personality of the year went to Jaroslav Beck, creator of the popular game Beat Saber, who in the past year has supported several startups with investments (including Qerko), is about to launch the Giving Back foundation and is launching his own foundation. Canned beverage project. “For many people, Beat Saber is synonymous with virtual reality gaming, and it’s amazing to see that the world’s icons of successful startups are not necessarily just traditional developers or SaaS company founders, but also people with more creative backgrounds. “ expert jury member Pavla Bobošíková, founder of startup WFHomie, explains her choices.

The investments that took a hit this year were moves by two funds, Novira Capital and Reflex Capital, which previously backed the Brno Smartlook tool. It was later sold to Cisco for over a billion.

And the title of Young Startup of the Year, that is, the one that has the potential to become the next unicorn, has now been won by Upheal, a platform that, with the help of artificial intelligence, fundamentally makes the work of therapists easier. He recorded the sessions, sequenced them and made sense of them. “For me, Upheal connects two very important areas – mental health and artificial intelligence. I am a big fan of startups that enter decades-old businesses and are able to produce major innovations,” explained David Pavlík, CTO of Nano Energies and one of the judges. The winner of this category is also selected by an expert jury.

What else happened at the event? Check out the photo gallery directly at Startup Awards website. We’re not done with the competition yet, we’ll be giving out more awards next year. And once again, both the public and experts, not only startups and investors, will make the decisions. The highlight is of course a festive evening. Will we meet you there?

The Startup Awards is an award that aims, among other things, to draw attention to young, fast-growing companies, and to show how their ideas influence everyday life in the Czech Republic and beyond. In the same way, to showcase Czech talent publicly and draw attention to the fact that startup ideas are all around us.

The event was organized by CzechCrunch with support from the company’s general partner Eset, key partners namely Sedlakova Legal and Work Lounge, partners Blackfish, Abra Software, edgy.digital and Yord, car partner Hyundai and venue partners Gabriel Loci and Mo-Cha. The companies Papelote, Ristre, Liftago and Google Cloud are supporting this year’s event.