In the previous article, we’ve looked at the basic narrative behind the Slovak scale-up report. We’ve identified over 250 scale-ups in the Internet economy based on the OECD definition (OECD defines scale-up as a high growth firm with average annual growth in employees or turnover greater than 20% per year, over a three year period, and with more than 10 employees at the beginning of the observation period. [1]).
To map, identify and evaluate the impact of fast-growing firms in the Slovak Internet economy we have cooperated with Finstat, the largest database of companies in Slovakia using open data from various government registries, and selected 12 sectors based on their NACE codes (The Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community) that corresponded with companies active in the Internet Economy.
Based on our research there are 10871 companies founded between 2000-2016 that are active in the field of the Internet Economy.
These companies have been growing in the steady rate reaching 8,4 billion EUR turnover in 2015 with average annual growth from 2013-2015 of 12% compared to 8,6% of all companies registered in Slovakia.
The good news that the turnover of the Internet Economy has been steadily growing since 2012. The stories featured in the report, which we will look at in the following articles reflect this trend and even companies with a longer track record observed increased growth in this time period.
Reflecting the economic situation in Slovakia, the majority of scale-ups are in the Western part of Slovakia 56 companies with 133 based in Bratislava with 500 million of revenue in 2013 in Bratislava alone.
Surprisingly the majority of scale-ups were founded after 2006, despite the global financial meltdown.
Below is the list of NACE codes we’ve used to identify companies in the Internet economy.
In the next articles, we will look at the stories of Slovak scale-ups that managed to grow and create extraordinary value.
[1] For the purpose of this report we have used the OECD definition and expanded it with another criteria of minimum 200 000 turnover at the beginning of the observation period re ecting the fact that this amount approximately equals to salary requirements of minimum 10 employees.
This article is brought to you in cooperation with SAPIE. To read the previous post about the introduction to Slovak scale-up, click here. To read the next episode of the series about the Electronic Star scale-up, click here.
