Michal Stencl
Founder & CEO of Sygic
As only an 8 year old, Michal got his first computer and in 13 he started to programm his own operating system. He graduated from University of Economics in Bratislava and few years later he also attended Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Even during his studies he was programming an operating system for mobile phones. After he graduated, he got an offer to work in the USA, but he declined and stayed in Slovakia. In 2004, when he was only 25, he founded his own navigation company – Sygic. Sygic develops, markets and sells the leading gps navigation software Sygic GPS Navigation for smartphones, keeping the top positions on both Android and AppStore market places. Sygic has been recognized as the very first company worldwide that has launched the gps navigation software for Apple AppStore (in 2009) and second in the world, which introduced navigation for Google Android.
Now, Sygic has reached 100 million users milestone (is used in more than 101 countries) and more than 10.000 business customers including governments world-wide. This Slovak GPS is installed in over a 50 million mobile phones, which makes it the world´s most downloaded offline navigation! Sygic also partners with premium car makers to delivery incar connectivity to its products.
Michal, with his company, recieved many awards, such as Deloitte Fast 50 (2007, 2008, 2009 – Rising star in Central Europe ranked on 6th and also 2nd position; 2010 Central Europe and EMEA 500 with 995% growth in last 5 years), Ernst & Young (Entrepreneur of the Year 2009) and Slovak award called „Kristalove kridlo“ in Economy sector for the year 2012.
His desire is to work on public transport and its solutions, how will people move in the future.