StartUp Battle - Live Showcase - 7 minutes to sell your idea

Maciej Zientara

Entrepreneur · Angel Investor · Poland

Investor and business angel focused on artificial intelligence, with more than twenty-five years on the Polish capital market. Founder of Supernova Group, which runs its venture, development and financial services lines, and since 2023 a partner and co-investor in the listed fund JRH ASI. He has taken part in financing over a hundred capital projects. In 2025 he acquired more than 6 million shares in the Prime ASI fund. Before that he put 10 million dollars into CampusAI, the record pre-seed round in the history of Polish startups, backing a virtual campus where people learn to work with AI through avatars and courses. His words: “AI is changing the rules of the game”.

Piotr Zientara

Founder · CEO · Poland

Warsaw entrepreneur and engineer who bridges the tech community and business: CEO of the software house Xfaang, co-founder of AskQL Technologies, co-owner of the K MAG magazine and an investor in Stimy AI. As a co-founder of the WarsawJS Foundation he has led Warsaw's JavaScript community of over 6,500 members for a decade, organized five editions of the ConfrontJS conference and founded Edukaton, a hackathon built around training new developers. A philosophy graduate of the University of Warsaw, he mentors at Rails Girls and WarsawJS and teaches mathematics and programming on YouTube.

James Drake

Philanthropist · Founder

British entrepreneur and philanthropist, founder and chairman of the scientific publisher Future Science Group before its sale, co-founder of James Drake Media, and founder and chairman of The Drake Foundation, whose multi-million-pound research programme changed how professional sport understands head injuries. Through the Drake Calleja Trust he backs exceptional musicians at the start of world-class careers, and through Of Lost Time publishes collections of the best letters left behind by iconic figures, from writers to scientists.

Jaroslaw Grzywinski

CEO · Lawyer · Poland

The former CEO of the Warsaw Stock Exchange and Cybersecurity State Agency NASK, member of the Board of Directors at Aquis Exchange in London. He is a recipient of the prestigious AS Bankier Award for his contribution to market transparency and the development of Poland's financial sector. He currently serves as Head of Capital Markets at the Business Centre Club, where he leads strategic initiatives supporting innovation, technology financing, and the advancement of modern market infrastructure.

Edi Pyrek

Futurist · Author · Poland

Futurist, author and psychologist, co-founder of the Global Artificial Intelligence Alliance and the Academy of Future, and an advocate of compassionate AI. Over a career spanning more than three decades he has advised three Polish prime ministers and several cabinet ministers, worked as a peace negotiator among tribal chiefs in Afghanistan after 9/11, and lectured as a dean of psychology at SWPS University. He has written ten books, including titles published by National Geographic, produced documentary series for Discovery Channel and TVP, and spoken three times at TEDx. His decades of fieldwork among traditional cultures, from Siberian shamans to the Blackfoot nation that adopted him as a Sun Dancer, inform his work on peak performance: pairing the state of flow with technology instead of losing ourselves to it.

Adi Sideman

CEO · Founder

Pioneer of participatory media with more than two decades building consumer platforms at scale. He founded the interactive media firm Oddcast, known for Elf Yourself, and in 2011 launched the live social platform YouNow, which grew to over 40 million users. He also co-created KSolo, the first online karaoke service, and has made more than thirty online games, including the Matrix game for Warner Bros. He currently runs the AI moviemaking platform Popcorn.co and is CEO of the personal media platform Revel.

Aureliusz Gorski

Founder · Entrepreneur · Poland

Serial entrepreneur with close to two decades in venture building, known in Poland for popularising the idea of innovation districts. For several years he ran the development of the country's key ecosystem projects and took part in building innovation districts abroad, work that shaped a good part of the Polish startup landscape.

He was behind AIP Business Link, the first Polish startup ecosystem, between 2012 and 2016; the CIC innovation centre in Warsaw, from 2015 to 2023; and Venture Cafe Warsaw, a foundation supporting the local innovation community, from 2019 to 2023.

In 2023 he founded CampusAI, the world's first virtual AI-native school, and DistrictORG, a platform that uses game engines to build digital replicas of local innovation ecosystems. CampusAI was quickly recognised for its approach to teaching AI: personalised, efficient and affordable. In June 2024 it raised ten million dollars in a pre-seed round and began expanding globally.

Andre Danek

Music Producer · Composer · Poland

Music producer, composer and songwriter, a vocal graduate of the City University of New York with years of Broadway theatre behind him. During the pandemic he founded a US label representing young performers; one of its artists now plays the lead in the Broadway musical MJ. He has composed for advertising and theatre, wrote the music for Friends a New Musical, and works with Kuba Badach, Andrzej Piaseczny and Nick Sinckler. He also led a choir of young people from New York correctional facilities, teaching confidence through music.

Piotr Senkus

Scientist · Educator · Poland

Habilitated doctor of engineering and a professor at the University of Warsaw and the University of Siedlce, for over fifteen years he has combined the science of process management with hands-on AI deployments across the public and private sector. He co-created AI4Executives at the University of Warsaw, a programme preparing leaders for the AI era, and co-founded the BPM Competence Center. A recipient of the US Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award and a member of Sigma Xi, the international scientific research honor society.

Mike Wolniak

CEO · Founder · Poland

CEO of TasteRay and former president of VML Poland, with two decades spent where marketing, technology and storytelling meet. He built VML Poland into the country's number one digital agency, a run crowned with eight Cannes Lions and a 23 million dollar exit to the WPP group, and the industry named him IAB Poland Person of the Year. Today he leads TasteRay, a company rethinking how audiences discover entertainment and matching viewers with films and series that genuinely fit their taste, wherever they choose to watch.