Past projects
Ariadna digital classroom assistant
In 2017, Matija was invited to take part in the Applied imagination masters program at Central Saint Martins, a prestigious art academy mostly known for fashion design. There his thesis work focused on a new concept for classroom teaching called Ariadna, solving the problem how to make in-classroom teaching as engaging and fun as viral social media content. The solution was a hybrid between real-life and virtual teaching in the form of a virtual AI-powered teaching assistant. The teacher would use it just like a powerpoint slide deck, but unlike a static presentation, the software would have a conversation with the students – supporting the teacher in three areas where teachers face the most difficulty: by sharing attractive stories that would serve as a hook to dive deeper into the material, by leading interactive activities and games that would engage the students and by generally making the classes more fun. The key research question for Matija was how to use the »dirty tricks« of reality television to improve the engagement in the classroom. A pilot was created and delivered in select schools around the country.
Foundation for talented youth - scholarship program for upcoming innovators
Realising that talented young people who excel in their work outside the classroom don’t have enough opportunities to get scholarships, Matija brought together 10 largest corporations in Slovenia to establish a scholarship fund that provides a monthly stipend to the most promising students in the country. It provides funding, individual mentorship and connections to start a successful career and is aimed to high school and college students that are pursuing an entrepreneurial endeavour, artistic or community projects. The foundation was the first of its’ kind in Eastern Europe and was co-founded in 2019 by the President of Slovenia at the time. It has supported 25 of the most talented students in Slovenia who have gone on to become leaders in their respective fields.
Startup Train 2019
As hackathons and startup weekends have become very common and not exciting anymore, and with almost every institution trying to attract the best entrepreneurs, a key differentiating factor for successful programs became how to attract the best mentors. A challenge here is that while everyone would in theory love to contribute, there are time constraints and many opportunities to volunteer already. In order to stand out, the programs themselves must become much more attractive and include elements of holidays, excitement and increase in size. Startup train was a concept created with the aim to use the well-established methodology of a weekend hackathon, but place it in an attractive setting, namely a sleeper train that would go 1.500km from our host institution in Ljubljana, Slovenia, to the headquarters of a large regional investment fund, LauncHub in Sofia, Bulgaria, where a pitch competition would take place. The train journey, lasting 3 days, is a perfect place for 25 teams to interact with 50 mentors traveling with them, while the return journey serves as a time to relax and engage with participants in an informal setting. Much more emphasis was given to the social aspect of the program than to the formal part. This attracted some of the most well known entrepreneurs, investors, company owners and a number of the wealthiest individuals in Slovenia. This project far exceeded the success of all other startup events and created mentor relationships that last to this day.
Start it up, Slovenia TV show
Matija helped form a collaboration between the biggest TV station in the Slovenia, the biggest retailer in the country and the mentorship network Ustvarjalnik to bring about awareness for early stage entrepreneurship. The key challenge was to change the perception in a post-socialist society that private business with the goal of earning a profit is a bad thing and that it is impossible to start a company. For this reason Matija co-created a format of a prime-time reality tv show where viewers follow 10 entrepreneurs from their first idea to launching a product and setting up a supply chain to finally bring it into supermarket stores around the country. The TV station provided attractive media coverage, while the supermarket chain paid in advance to stock the products and sell them exclusively. This enabled participating entrepreneurs to bring their products to the market with enormous exposure. The project included scouting for appropriate entrepreneurs, mentoring them and offering support ranging from legal to incorporation. The show is still ongoing and has been renewed for season 8, as well as licensed to three other countries.
Consulting work for starting the regional business incubator in Bela Krajina, Slovenia
Between 2017 and 2021 Matija was hired as an outside consultant to help the local municipal administration launch a business incubator that would provide support, mentorship and education to future entrepreneurs and small businesses in the region. Matija worked with the founding team to create a program of activities for the new incubator, conducted training of employees in business mentorship and led the entire educational program for new founders for the first few years. The incubator established itself as one of the best regional entrepreneurship hubs in Slovenia and helped over 200 entrepreneurs successfully enter the market.
“CocaCola youth challenge” skills training for high school students
Matija was invited to create and lead a series of workshops, funded by CocaCola HBC aimed towards helping students starting careers in the hospitality industry. During this project, over 5.000 students took part in entrepreneurship, business communication and career skills workshops which helped them securing future opportunities. Due to the success of the program it has been renewed for the last 5 years and has become the longest-running corporate social responsibility program in Slovenian schools.
Ustvarjalnik entrepreneurship program
In 2010, Matija founded Ustvarjalnik, a sandbox for young entrepreneurs with the mission to teach students how to earn a living by doing what they love - by learning how to turn their skills into a source of income and a career. This was done by creating a network of entrepreneurship clubs where students met once per week with a mentor, an experienced entrepreneur, who helped them start a real small business. Students would go on to compete for an annual award of the best youth startup of the year, and through this, learn the steps needed to launch any kind of company they wish later on. This was enormously successful, as the program was soon considered as the gold standard in entrepreneurship education in Europe. It spread into 6 countries total on three continents, reaching over 10.000 students who started over 1.500 companies, with many still in business to this day.
The program started from zero and was fully self-sustainable with schools paying a license fee to run it, which enabled it to scale quickly. It was awarded the “Best social venture in Central Europe” award in 2015. It became the first social venture in Slovenia to receive outside investment.
Entrepreneurship in practice - a 100% practical curriculum for learning how to start a business
Matija’s initial work in entrepreneurial education, and the program for which he is most known for, started when he was invited as a former founder with a successful exit to run an entrepreneurship program for high school and college students that had business ideas but no prior experience. This led into the creation of a year-long course that would guide students through all the steps necessary to become successful business owners. As opposed to just teaching how to do this, Matija created a set of weekly challenges students would need to complete in the real world, in front of customers – in a progression that would give them the foundations required to tackle their own business idea. After that, the students would follow a playbook on executing a small business that would help them create everything a business needs to have, as well as guiding them through several iterations leading up to profitability. This curriculum produced drastically better learning outcomes compared to what was then available and was quickly picked up by over 1/3 of the school system in Slovenia, and then in other countries as well.