What is StartupFactory

Startup Factory is a NGO that develops the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the IT community in region Ruse and in Bulgaria. The mission of the organization is supporting early stage startups, building key skills in demand by the market and cultivating the favourable infrastructure and environment for turning ideas into real products with potential for commercialization.

Startup Factory functions as a centre that attracts people sharing common goals, interests and ambitions – managing own business as an expression of personal freedom and responsibility, sharing knowledge in our blog, skills and know-how, mutual support in the undertakings and achieving success through creating real value with great products.
Startup Factory carries out activities in the following directions:

• Managing co-working space;
• Organizing events and conferences;
• Carrying out courses and trainings;
• Supporting early stage startups;
• Individual mentorship and consulting;
• Building skills in demand by the market;

We incentivize blockchain startups and we’re proud to be one of the first blockchain oriented startup development program in Bulgaria. Our most prominent member on this category is ReCheck. Our mission behind blockchain is to help to build more decentralized systems and processes and our vision is to be one of the blockchain hub center for startups worldwide.

• Blockchain know-how;
• Blockchain Developers;

IVAN PEPELOV

Ivan Pepeolv is a Project Maneger in a Concer-System Integrator of Identity & Access Management, and Provisioning. He has graduated Computer Science at Darmstadt Technical University. He has experience in conducting large projects, analyzing client requirements, and as a team member communicating with clients, suppliers and other stakeholders. As a mentor, he can help in organizing the project, communicating with stakeholders, analyzing project requirements and initial architecture.

Ivan Belchev

Ivan Belchev lives and works for 6 years in Munich, Germany, and has been successfully developing his website and his web design activities. He graduated as a design engineer at University of Ruse and later as a graphic designer in Germany. There are prominent clients standing in his portfolio like Microsoft, Disney, Philips, BMW, Osram and others. He has been working for himself for two years and has been making personal web projects that he has funded through advertisements. He believes that behind a successful project on the Internet is the good idea, a large number of visitors and the correct positioning of the ads in it. As a mentor, Quick Start will help with online advertising and web traffic. More about it can be found on its personal website www.ivanbelchev.com.

Galena Nikolova

Gal is an economist, marketing consultant and Master in Sustainable Development and Environmental Protection. Some have worked with her on one of Bulgaria’s most successful start-ups, and others, partly on specific campaigns, looking for a fresh professional insight into the marketing of the product and organization. She is one of the first professionals in the country to work on an organization to have sustainable development (economic, environmental and social) but also to communicate well to its audience. She finds in every product / project potential for social impact and develops it. She also manages her own start-up project in which she experimented with a provocative business model to solve a serious social and market shortage. As a mentor, she would like to help start-up entrepreneurs and those who lost their muse to be brave and creative, to build their network and get support.

Deyan Mihaylov

Deyan Mihaylov is a Co-founder of software development company for Quantum Computers. He is a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Numerical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge and has a Bachelor’s degree from Oxford. Deyan has many years of experience in programming and web design, but is now more focused on programming C ++, Python and PHP. “I have experience and I would like to give guidance on projects related to on-line and mobile applications as well as projects related to large data analysis.”

Emiliyan Enev

Emiliyan Enev is a mobile technology entrepreneur and manages his own product – a blockchain startup called ReCheck that adapts itself as a ready technical solution for the needs of different businesses. Emiliyan has several online projects and digital products behind him, his strengths being related to business process management, online marketing, content creation, validation of ideas, customer engagement and monetization strategies. Among its achievements are winning the App Challenge 2.0 contest, participating in the CeBIT exhibition as a specially chosen startup, attracting business angel investment, and working with clients like UniCredit Bulbank.

Martin Panayotov

Martin Panayotov has been in the IT industry since 1997 with a major focus on web development and online marketing and he is an SEO expert. His company have built a successful social network targeting the audience from the United States and the UK. Currently he is the director & manager of the online marketing agency Weberest.

Ivaylo Sholekov

Ivaylo is an entrepreneur in the field of web-based applications. Manages several own projects as well as for different companies. After some “failures” in offline, entrepreneurship he is currently focused on the web-based applications. Ivaylo believes in that technological development will be on rise in Bulgaria and economy will thrive thanks to this technological development in the country. For this reason, he tirelessly works on web-based applications for specialized training in Information and Communication Technologies. Another major factor for technological development of the IT field in the region is the contribution of Startup Factory. Ivaylo is satisfied with good quality tools that can contribute to his success on his projects and well done job. He likes people who do not use expressions like I can’t and that can’t happen (especially if he is going to work with them). More than that, you can find on sholekov.com

Kaloyan Tsvetkov

Kaloyan Tsvetkov has worked over the last decade on the next generation of one of the most promising e-commerce platforms. His work offers inexhaustible challenges where a cohesive and motivated team grows every year, attracting some of the best and most talented young talents in the city. Along with this, he works on his own software product (which is acquired several years later) and several open-source PHP projects, including the popular Krumo library. The past few years he has been engaged as a WordPress evangelist.

Vihren Ganev

Vihren Ganev is a software engineer and a start-up IT entrepreneur. Vihren strives to help people who are thirsty for knowledge of all ages to develop and succeed by conducting programming courses and guiding them to develop their personal projects. Among his most interesting awards are a project of Technostart, a charity and an innovative seminar, third place for the best student company. He is highly motivated and incentivized to continue with events such as Ruse Hack, where students demonstrate in-depth knowledge in IT and entrepreneurship, and more experienced people present quality and ready-to-use projects. Vihren invested effort to brand the Startup Factory as the preferred meeting place for IT people in the city. Here, during the day, work is booming, then courses, meetings, presentations of businesses and IT projects and ideas are held.

Radostina Ganeva

She holds a bachelors degree of Computer Systems and Technologies at the Technical University of Varna and Masters “e-Business and e-Governance” at University of Sofia. Develops professional applications for Android devices for more than 4 years. She took part in programming and entrepreneurial competitions as a participant, mentor and jury. Currently she is working remotely from the Startup Factory co-working space. She strives to help in organizing the association and supporting co-working spaces.