Startups
CzechInvest, JIC and Start it @ČSOB: Grading the State's Startup Support Machine
Prague — Czechia's start-up ecosystem runs on a mix of state, regional and bank-funded support programmes that rarely get evaluated together. Individually, each has a credible record. Collectively, they raise a harder question: whether the country's public and quasi-public support infrastructure is built to produce scaled companies, or simply to produce more start-ups.
By Vanek · Contributor · Independent Journalist · Published
Vanek is an independent contributor to the Czech Business Review; his views and sourcing are his own.
| Programme | Funding type | Equity taken | Typical support |
|---|---|---|---|
| CzechInvest Technology Incubation | State grant, non-dilutive | None | CZK 1.1m–4.5m + CZK 500k indirect |
| JIC (South Moravian Innovation Centre) | Regional incubation + VC fund | Equity via fund investments only | CZK 500m fund; incubator space and services |
| Start it @ČSOB | Corporate-sponsored acceleration | None | 5-month programme, mentoring, HQ workspace |
CzechInvest: the national layer
CzechInvest, established in 1992 as the Czech Republic's Investment and Business Development Agency, remains the state's central vehicle for foreign direct investment promotion and, increasingly, domestic start-up support. Its flagship Technology Incubation programme, delivered through seven technology-specific incubators, has targeted supporting 250 start-ups with what the agency describes as exceptionally innovative, feasible and scalable projects. Selected companies receive direct financial support of between CZK 1.1m and CZK 4.5m (roughly €44,000-€180,000), plus a further CZK 500,000 (about €20,000) in indirect support — workshops, incubation-manager assistance, and expert consultations — over up to two years, without the start-up giving up equity.
That non-dilutive structure is a genuine differentiator by international standards; many national innovation-agency programmes take a small equity stake or warrant in exchange for support. CzechInvest's own positioning frames this generosity as central to its broader mission of transforming Czechia into "an innovation leader in Europe" — though the agency is honest that the harder metric, translating incubated companies into scaled, internationally competitive businesses, is precisely where public data remains thinnest.
JIC: the regional specialist
At the regional level, JIC — the South Moravian Innovation Centre — offers a useful comparison point, both because it predates CzechInvest's current start-up focus and because its results are more granularly documented. JIC manages three physical incubators (including a dedicated biotechnology facility), operates a venture capital fund with CZK 500m under management, and runs the KYPO Cyber Range training facility, which puts roughly 1,500 cyber security professionals through its programmes annually. Regional start-up formation is strong — 147 new companies registered in South Moravia in 2023 alone, against a JIC incubator occupancy rate of around 95 per cent.
The gap JIC's own analysts have identified is not formation, but scaling capital: only around 8 per cent of Czech ICT venture capital has historically flowed to South Moravian companies, meaning that when a JIC-incubated company is ready to scale, the capital to do so typically has to come from Prague, London or Berlin — and tends to pull the company's centre of gravity away from Brno when it arrives. A further CZK 450m in EU cohesion funding has been earmarked to expand JIC's capacity for AI/ML start-ups and cyber security spin-offs specifically, a bet that more targeted regional funding can partially close that gap.
Start it @ČSOB: the corporate model
The third leg of the support ecosystem operates on a different funding logic entirely. Start it @ČSOB, run by the Czech arm of the Belgian-owned KBC banking group and modelled on the parent group's Start it @KBC programme, offers a free, five-month acceleration programme that — like CzechInvest's incubators — takes no equity and charges no fee. More than 500 projects have applied to recent waves of the programme, with roughly ten start-ups selected per cohort, receiving workplace access at ČSOB's Prague headquarters, mentoring, and structured support across fundraising, go-to-market strategy and pricing.
The programme's most credible proof point is its alumni list: Resistant AI — now one of the country's more commercially mature AI companies, having completed a Series B round with reported annual recurring revenue growth of roughly tenfold — came through Start it @ČSOB's acceleration programme, as did sustainability-data start-up Green0meter, which went on to sign a 50:50 joint venture with ČSOB's parent group KBC. For a corporate-sponsored accelerator, that is a genuinely strong hit rate, and it illustrates a structural advantage banks bring that state programmes generally cannot: a built-in channel to introduce alumni start-ups directly to the sponsoring institution's own corporate client base.
The comparative verdict
Judged side by side, the three programmes are complementary rather than competing, but the comparison exposes a consistent pattern: Czechia is good at seeding start-ups and comparatively weak at the capital-intensive middle stage between incubation and international scale. CzechInvest's non-dilutive funding and Start it @ČSOB's zero-equity mentoring both lower the barrier to starting a company; JIC's infrastructure lowers the barrier to building a regional engineering team around one. None of the three is designed to solve the scaling-capital gap that JIC's own data shows most clearly — meaning that gap remains the responsibility of a private venture capital market that, per broader ecosystem data, is still concentrated overwhelmingly in Prague and in a small number of "whale" late-stage rounds.