Bled, Slovenia, September 9, 2025 – The first Future 500 Forum concluded in Bled, Slovenia, last week, uniting policymakers, investors, and founders to address Europe’s scale-up gap and create a platform for the continent’s most promising companies to become global leaders.
To capture the key discussions and messages of the Forum, BOSQAR INVEST is presenting two video features:
- Future 500 Forum 2025 Conference Video – an overview of the day’s sessions and exchanges between policymakers, financiers, and founders.
- Closing Speech by Stjepan Orešković – remarks from the founder of BOSQAR d.d. and Future 500, emphasizing the initiative’s long-term mission.
Forum Highlights
The program brought together leading European voices to:
- Define the role of governments in creating conditions for scale-up growth.
- Examine how banks and institutional investors can close Europe’s funding gap.
- Debate Europe’s exit dilemma and strategies for retaining local impact while scaling globally.
- Share insights from founders of high-growth ventures and unicorns across Central and Southeastern Europe.
Stjepan Orešković’s Closing Remarks
In his closing speech, Stjepan Orešković outlined the ambition and responsibility of Future 500 in shaping Europe’s innovation landscape.
“It was a beautiful sunny morning here in Bled, and from the very start we said: this cannot be just another conference, just another round of speeches. Personally, I would be the most frustrated person in the world if this ends up as just that.
“Our objective was simple: to bring into the same room everyone a company needs in order to grow globally. And looking around this room today, I see those people.
“When preparing for this Forum, I kept thinking: there are probably six or seven essential elements a company needs to become truly global. Of course, there are more, but a handful are absolutely critical. And often, one of the most overlooked is design. How you look, how your brand is remembered – is your ‘apple’ the one the world will recognize forever? That matters. And we can support you in that. The person who branded BOSQAR INVEST is here today – one of the best in the world. That’s part of what we want to bring: to help companies look attractive and compelling.
“But that’s not enough. You also need access to capital. And here in this room, we have five of the region’s leading banks. When you talk to their leaders, you see they are not only ready but eager to finance difference-makers. They are not simply watching the balance sheet or counting dividends. Some may – but the ones here are ready to fuel growth. Alongside them, we have investment funds, international financial institutions – essentially, everyone you’d want at the table if you were building a global company.
“Yet, what I believe we need most is to ‘defreeze.’ Too often, we are frozen by the feeling that we’ve already lost, that others are better. We complain, we write papers as alibis for why we can’t win. What we are doing here is the opposite.
“Just imagine 500 people like Jure Knez, Mark Pleško, Rafał Brzoska, or our colleague Branko from Nordeus – all in one room. Imagine that energy, supported by all the resources we’ve brought together.
“So, let’s defreeze. Let’s stop being afraid. Let’s start thinking differently. Only 15 years ago, Europe was almost on equal footing with the United States. Ask yourself: what happened in just 15 years that they outpaced and outperformed us? Not so we continue crying about it, but so we understand what we can do in the next 15 years to change it.
“I believe it is possible. It is always about people. The defining evolutionary difference of humankind compared to all other species is our capacity to work together. Our greatest risk, our downfall, comes from the inability to work together. Future 500 is an effort to change that – to work together.
“And because we are all here as Europeans, with a few Americans – and because this is also a transatlantic project – let me close by quoting an American poet. I’ll let you guess who the author is:
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
So – let’s do the change.”
Looking Ahead
Future 500 now moves into its operational phase, with a methodology under development by Oxford University, Deloitte, EY, and other partners.
The first list of Europe’s 500 most promising scale-ups will be presented in 2026.