Exceptional

EY 7 Drivers of Growth: Eva Stejskalová, MicroStep
Growth Driver: Funding and finance
Finance on the cutting edge
Eva Stejskalová, cofounder of Slovak cutting machines manufacturer MicroStep, explains
the role finance has played in its success from the very beginning.
words Chris Anderson
MicroStep is a successful Slovakian
company with a different
approach to financing than other,
similar firms. When it was founded in 1990,
with share capital of US$14,000, founders
Alexander Varga and Eva Stejskalová wanted
to maintain their independence and not rely
on external investors.
As Stejskalová explains, “Our main
external stakeholders are banks, and all
they are really concerned about is whether
or not you can repay your loan. They are
not interested in finance projections or how
much you can grow; they just want to know
you can repay what you owe them. So for
communicating with banks, it is important
to have a long track record of being a
responsible entrepreneur — not going into
too risky a business, but always standing
by what you promise.”
“It’s very important
to manage risk.”
This is a company that has always
reacted to opportunity, and in its 25 years
of existence it has also had to find ways
to adapt and survive. Today it makes
computer numerical control (CNC) cutting
machines for the engineering industry.
“We started the company after the political
change in Slovakia,” Stejskalová explains.
“The centrally planned economy failed,
so everybody wanted to build a market
economy and be an entrepreneur.”
Varga and Stejskalová had both been
working at universities, but the end of the
Cold War in the late 1980s ushered in the
so–called Velvet Revolution in what was
then still Czechoslovakia, and that meant
opportunity. MicroStep began by creating
control systems for galvanization lines,
charcoal retort kilns and other equipment.
“At the start, we had hardly any finance,”
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