The largest and most successful music festival in the Czech Republic is back in full force after two years marked by the pandemic that made cultural events impossible. This year the festival, which has been around since 2002, as always featured the biggest global stars and dozens of other international musicians, plus gained a strategic investor, the Rockaway Capital group.
It would be hard to find a bigger expert on film and cultural PR than writer, dramaturge, scriptwriter, and above all PR manager and spokesperson of the Karlovy Vary MFF, Uljana Donátová. Her name has been linked with the festival for over twenty years now, and so there are really very few situations she hasn’t experienced. And each year she looks forward to the festival as much as she did at the start of her career. Except – as she admits – she’s much more sure of herself now.
As part of the activities of its Rockaway Ventures Fund, the Rockaway Capital Group held an exceptional event during this year’s film festival in Karlovy Vary – the Creative Czechia conference. Its goal was to connect talented filmmakers with the digital economy and business community. During the conference, projects that were born as part of the new KVIFF Talents programme were also presented.
After recent investments in the Czech Campiri platform and the Greek Spotawheel start-up, Rockaway Ventures has announced another interesting investment. This time, it’s into Germany’s FreewayCamper, also supported by the founders of the successful Germany company FlixBus. Rockaway Ventures thus once again has set its sights on a company focusing on a camping product. FreewayCamper, which operates primarily in Germany, recently expanded to the Polish and Italian markets. Altogether it raised over EUR 30 million of financing, consisting of equity, venture debt and bank debt. Rockaway Ventures was the lead equity investor in the round.
Despite his youth, Max is an old hand at Rockaway – as a member of the Ventures team, he examines and evaluates investment opportunities, monitors the start-up market, creates financial models, and helps maintain the current portfolio. Investment he recently had “on his conscience” (in the best sense of the word) include companies such as Viviere or Lingvist.
Zuzana Prokšová has been working in marketing since 2009 – during this time she worked her way up from a catalogue registrar to marketing manager at Vivantis, where in May she will mark her sixth year. At the Chrudim-based e-shop, which specializes in perfumes, cosmetics, jewellery, and fashion, and which last year achieved revenues of CZK 1.5 billion, she is responsible for a team of 30 people including contractors, and 13 e-shops. You can read about how she deals with such great responsibility in the next issue of the Rockaway Insider newsletter.
