A presentation website for a corporate incubator
We contributed to the development of the digital presentation for UpSteer — a technology startup incubator under the Asseco Central Europe brand, supporting early-stage IT projects on their path to success.
Asseco Central Europe is one of the strongest software houses in Central and Eastern Europe. It operates in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and employs more than 3,000 people. The company traces back to 1990 and the founding of ASSET; its software division spun off as ASSET Soft in 1999, in October 2006 it became the first Slovak company listed directly on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, and after entering the Czech market in 2007 the integration of Asseco Czech Republic and Asseco Slovakia formed today's Asseco Central Europe group. UpSteer is its incubator for technology startups — a six-month program combining intensive mentoring, hands-on workshops, and access to the network of customers, partners and investors Asseco has built over 35 years in the IT market.
UpSteer runs in yearly editions, and nearly all communication with applicants rests on a single public site. It has to introduce the program and the six areas where Asseco can move a startup forward — finance, ERP, healthcare, utilities and Industry 4.0, public administration, and cloud solutions and infrastructure. It has to show the mentors, who are people from the group's leadership, walk a prospect through the edition's timeline from applications through the deadline and Elevator Pitch to the incubator's start and Community Day, and answer the recurring questions before anyone decides to apply. Alongside that the site runs bilingually and publishes program news on its own blog.
Collaborating on the project, we tackled several technical challenges.
- Integration into an existing ecosystem
New components had to fit the infrastructure and processes already running on the project — without touching the rest of the site, and without changing how the client's team manages content.
- A surge inside a short application window
Applications are open for only a few weeks — in the current edition from January to 25 March — so traffic concentrates into a narrow window. The site has to take the peak, not the average.
- A bilingual audience
The program addresses Slovak and Czech teams and also communicates outward, so the content has to run in Slovak and English in parallel.
- The mentors are the argument
The programme's strongest draw is its mentors, drawn from the group's leadership. The site has to introduce them as specific people with roles and track records, not as a row of names under photographs.
We worked alongside UpSteer's internal team on selected parts of the platform — delivering the technical implementation of the agreed components, their optimization, and support during rollout. We stayed with the standards already in place on the project so our work fitted the whole rather than becoming a second, separately maintained layer.
- Technical implementation of selected components
- Performance and responsiveness optimization
- Support during rollout and testing
- Ongoing technical consultation
- Kept to the conventions already in place on the project
- Ongoing coordination with UpSteer's internal team
Requirements analysis
We went through the technical requirements and the points where the new components touch the existing system, so the scope settled before any code was written.
Implementation
Development of the agreed components to the client's specification, following the conventions already in place on the project.
Testing and rollout
Thorough testing and support during deployment to the production environment.
Handover and support
After rollout we handed the components over to the internal team along with the notes they needed to maintain them, and stayed available for consultation.
The site now carries a whole edition of the program — from applications through the Elevator Pitch to Community Day — and is the main channel through which startups hear about UpSteer and apply to it. In the current, fourth edition, ten teams are developing their products on it with the support of mentors from Asseco's leadership.