Founders Force

Tomáš Matějček is an expert in specialty retail, having built and run the Czech Republic's leading photography, video, and audio equipment retailer over more than two decades. He founded Megapixel.cz in 2001 as a single Prague shop and grew it under sole ownership into a nationwide chain with stores in Prague, Brno, and Ostrava and revenue exceeding half a billion CZK, before selling a majority stake to European Imaging Group, part of the UK's Aurelius Group, in late 2024, while remaining CEO through a transition period and retaining a minority stake. He has said he plans to move into investing and further entrepreneurial ventures next.

Honza has worked in public relations since 2011, moving from a small PR agency through a large content-marketing agency and a freelance stint before founding his own agency, Hustá. After early work with corporate clients like ČSOB, Sanofi Zentiva, Hamé, and Home Credit, he found his focus in dynamic tech companies and startups — transforming the PR of Slevomat, DameJidlo, Rohlík, Le Premier, and be3D, and going on to work with Twisto, Productboard, Mews, STRV, VC fund KAYA, Estonian unicorn Pipedrive, FTMO, and others. He stands out for his proactive approach, openness with clients, and full ownership of their PR image, acting less as a content supplier than as a genuine partner.

Vladimír Jaroš is a financial-markets expert specializing in capital markets, IPOs, and SPAC structures across Central and Eastern Europe. He has built this expertise over his entire career at WOOD & Company, the region's leading investment bank, where he is now CEO and a partner/co-owner; there he led the launch of WOOD SPAC One, the first SPAC listed on the Prague Stock Exchange, and oversaw the 2021 IPO of online pharmacy Pilulka, which was oversubscribed roughly five-fold against its original target. In 2022, he extended into digital assets, co-founding VEROBLOCK, a venture bridging traditional finance and cryptocurrency, alongside fellow entrepreneur Igor Pauer. WOOD & Company itself manages more than 150 billion CZK and is the largest trader on the Prague Stock Exchange.

Alexis Jarroir is a data scientist and machine learning engineer specializing in real-time fraud detection. Based in Paris, he currently applies this expertise through Openvalue on an engagement at Société Générale, building machine learning systems that flag suspicious credit transfers

Petr Zlámalík is a private investor with expertise in finance, executive management and M&A.  Since 2015, he has led Augere Capital, a Prague-based family office, together with his brother Jan Zlámalík, who oversees its real estate arm. Petr currently serves as a Member of the Board of Directors for Augere Capital SE, with responsibility for the asset allocation to both private and public markets, special situation deals and venure captital as well. He started his career in PwC, followed by engagement in Corpin (exclusive partner of Rothschild (M&A) on CZ market) and was responsible for the family investment in TES Vsetín (company exited in 2008).

Michael Oschmann is a media and digital-ventures leader with deep expertise spanning local business directories, broadcasting, publishing, and internet businesses. He has led müller x net (formerly Müller Medien), a fourth-generation, Nuremberg-based family media group, since 2000 together with his sister Constanze Oschmann, and earlier founded and chaired ad pepper media, an internet company that listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2000. He sits on the economic advisory boards of BayernLB and Sparkasse Nürnberg, and in recognition of his contributions to the Bavarian economy has received both the state's Staatsmedaille and its Finanzmedaille.

Pavel Kysela is an expert in data, AI, and technology-consulting leadership, with a specialty in growth through M&A and large-scale corporate transactions. He spent over a decade as CEO of Adastra Czech Republic, leading the group's acquisitions of creative agency Proboston Creative and AI firm Blindspot Solutions, before moving in late 2023 into a global role as Adastra Group's Chief Operating Officer -- a capacity in which he helped lead the group through a landmark 2025 transaction in which global investment firm Carlyle acquired a majority stake in Adastra, valuing the international data and AI consultancy at roughly $400 million.

Rémy Pataillot is an independent IT consultant and freelance Lead Data Engineer based in Paris. Operating independently since 2020, he specializes in architecting cloud-based data infrastructures and deploying large-scale data pipelines. His core technical stack includes BigQuery, Databricks, Airflow, and dbt, alongside monitoring and testing tools such as Elementary. In his freelance practice, Rémy serves as a technical referent and data solution architect, aligning data systems with direct business needs. His recent consulting work includes collaborating with the Moët Hennessy Financial team, where he led and upskilled a team of four data engineers on finance and HR-related data projects, and currently leading the architecture of a high-scale Identity Resolution pipeline on Databricks for IQVIA (US), using PySpark and ML-based entity matching to identify Key Opinion Leaders across billions of scientific publications.

Christian Mruck is a private equity expert with over two decades of experience across Central and Eastern Europe. He opened and led Advent International's Prague office from 2007, later becoming the firm's Managing Partner responsible for its CEE investment activity, after an earlier senior role with the EBRD's Czech office, and now serves on the Advisory Board and Investment Committee of ESPIRA Investments, a Prague-based private equity firm focused on established SMEs across the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Thomas Luschmann is an expert in superconducting quantum computing hardware. He co-founded Peak Quantum, a Munich-based startup spun out of the Technical University of Munich's Walther-Meißner-Institut, building quantum processors with a novel hardware-level error-protected qubit design. The company has raised over €5 million, including EU Chips Act support, with investors including United Founders. He holds a PhD in physics from TU Munich.