Jakub Hostačný comes from Slovak Prievidza. He finished his Master’s degree at IES in 2017 and was an active member of the Prague Banking Club throughout his studies. He finished the Banking and Finance program with excellent results (GPA 1.01). His Master’s thesis Non-Linear Classification as a Tool for Predicting Tennis Matches even became the basis for one of the best-performing predictive models for tennis match outcomes.
At Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, he completed an Erasmus study stay, and later spent a semester at Aarhus University in Denmark studying Business Innovation and Management.

Since March 2025, he has been leading the Czech branch of Bolt Food, where he is responsible for full P&L ownership and the management of a high-speed business worth hundreds of millions of euros. Before joining Bolt, he held senior management positions at Foodora. He had already gained experience at MallGroup, where he led analytics, key commercial teams, supply chain, and sales backoffice across six countries.

His professional growth was also shaped by earlier roles in consulting companies and start-ups. At McKinsey, he worked on strategic projects in banking, energy and the non-profit sector. At the tech start-up Shipvio, he led finance and business intelligence. He has also been significantly active in education: as co-founder of the non-profit organization Minervo, he helped bring courses in data analytics, programming, and soft skills to hundreds of students and helped to secure partnerships with companies such as Microsoft, KPMG and Avast.

Jakub, you graduated from IES eight years ago. How do you look back on your studies today? What stands out the most in your memory?
It may surprise some people, but from an academic perspective, the most important courses for me were the mathematics ones. Their difficulty and the amount of time they required during the first two years at IES taught me humility, discipline, and the ability to deal with failure without giving up. These are qualities you can rely on for the rest of your life.
I also fondly remember my inspiring classmates — IES was a uniquely stimulating environment full of very smart and incredibly diverse people. They pushed me to improve every single day and constantly challenged my views of the world. And as a bonus, most of my closest friends today are former IES classmates, and we’re still in daily contact. If I had to choose a school again, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second — I’d follow the same path.

During your studies, your work experience ranged from a “relaxing” job as a tennis coach to more demanding roles in banking and positions in start-ups such as Sens or GROWTHGARAGE. What guided you the most toward what you’re doing today?
I would highlight three experiences, each of which gave me something different.

McKinsey was an excellent school of structured and analytical thinking. It also gave me confidence when interacting with top business leaders in the Czech Republic and helped me overcome the sense of intimidation I used to feel.

Start-ups taught me not to be afraid to “roll up my sleeves,” adapt to rapid day-to-day changes, and appreciate how important it is to stay close to customers. Most importantly, I realized how essential it is for me to see the real impact of my work.

Mallgroup gave me my first opportunity to lead a team — and later more than 60 people across six countries and seven teams. I learned how crucial soft skills are; without them, you simply can’t progress in a large-scale business environment.

Overall, I believe that if you can think analytically and structurally, avoid getting stuck at the theoretical level, aren’t afraid of execution, and combine that with soft skills such as communication, resilience, empathy, and the ability to motivate others, you can achieve far more than you think.

Is the path to a start-up always through a classic corporate environment — in your case through McKinsey and Raiffeisenbank?
I don’t think so. Many of my classmates started directly in start-ups or even founded their own as their very first work experience. In my view, right after university it’s mainly about identifying what excites you and where you can learn the most — and then going for it. For some people that’s a start-up, for others a corporation, and for others still a non-profit or the public sector.

You spent four years at Mall. What exactly did you do there? And what opportunities does the company offer to IES graduates?
Personally, I consider e-commerce and related fields — such as food delivery or online groceries — to be very attractive alternatives to the traditional career paths of IES graduates, such as consulting, investment banking or research. The industry evolves quickly thanks to new technologies and rising customer expectations, and it’s extremely complex: to make everything work, you need a good product, a strong customer experience, operations, logistics, sales and marketing. At the same time, you face intense competition from both local and global players.
The main benefit, in my opinion, is accelerated learning — you touch many different areas — and the opportunity to work with extremely capable people.

For IES graduates specifically, there are opportunities in analytics, finance, and internal teams such as consulting or strategy.

You currently work as a General Manager at Bolt. What is the biggest challenge there? Has anything surprised you?
Yes, since March 2025 I’ve been leading the Czech branch of Bolt Food. The biggest challenge is that we have five to eight times fewer employees than our two main competitors, even though our goal is to become the market leader. This places extraordinary demands on prioritization and on the quality of people in the team, because only then do we have a real chance of succeeding. At the same time, I cannot afford mistakes in decision-making — every wrong turn costs us much more time and resources than it costs companies with much larger teams.

What surprised me the most was how quickly I changed my mind about whether it’s possible to win the market with such a small team. It turned out that in knowledge-intensive work, people quality plays an enormous role. World-class professionals don’t do just a bit more work than average ones — they get five to ten times more done. A smaller team also brings major advantages in decision-making speed, flexibility, and alignment. I strongly believe that in the long run, the companies that win are those that iterate and innovate the fastest — and that may be our greatest strength.

How do you spend your free time? And do you even have any?
I spend time doing sports, seeing friends and family, and occasionally playing board games. Nothing extraordinary. I try to read at least an hour a day and travel somewhere three or four times a year. My lifelong passion is learning and mentoring, so from time to time I give talks or share my experience with others.

People often assume that managers don’t have a good work–life balance, but that’s not the case for me. Most days I don’t work just eight hours, but I also don’t work twelve or more. I believe success is mainly about choosing a few priorities and executing them consistently and with discipline — and not getting distracted by things that don’t matter. And that applies to both personal and professional life.