A Company Must Not Rely on the Memory of a Few People What Will Determine Which Companies Succeed in
42 ǀ POSITIV 3/2026
FINANCE
A Company Must Not Rely
on the Memory of a Few People
What Will Determine Which Companies
Succeed in the Years Ahead?
Aer compleng his secondary educaon at the 1
st
Internaonal School of Ostrava, along
with the IB, Jan Kuča went on to study in Gothenburg, spent a semester in Chile and worked
in procurement in the defence industry. Today, he values investment fund assets at the investment
company TILLER. He also co–founded and leads Eteron Group, which helps Czech companies,
parcularly those in Moravia and Silesia, break their dependence on emails, spreadsheets
and knowledge held only in the heads of a few key people. Why can a company’s gures
somemes be misleading? And what will determine which Moravian–Silesian companies survive
and grow over the next ten years?
Did you have your journey abroad planned
out from the beginning, or did each step
develop gradually?
It wasn’t planned. For a long time, I believed that
everything was worse in the Czech Republic
and better everywhere else. The longer I lived abroad,
the more I realised that the things we take for granted
here – safety, freedom, the quality of healthcare –
cannot be taken for granted at all. During Covid,
I was unable to return home from Australia for two
years – and for the first time, I realised that freedom
of movement was not something I could simply take
for granted. I followed one rule: go wherever I could
learn the most. And ultimately, that drew me back
home.
What did studying in Australia and at the
1
st
International School of Ostrava give you?
In Australia, for the first time, I experienced a school
where you are assessed on what you create rather than
what you memorise: projects and long essays that you
work on throughout the semester. Your brain learns
to work and think more creatively; it is very different
from preparing for tests. Returning to Ostrava meant
returning to a Czech environment – and the 1
st
ISO
allowed me to complete both the IB, which is based
on essays and projects, and the Czech maturita. I owe
a great deal of thanks to my teachers for that, particularly
Mrs Helebrantová for Czech and Mr Hollander
for economics. Above all, though, what I took away
from that combination was that nothing is set in stone:
a school, a company or even a country can work
differently from the way you are used to.
What attracts you to the world of investment
and valuation?
The fact that a company’s value is far less straightforward
than it may appear from the outside. I want to understand
companies from both perspectives – the operational
side, which we deal with at Eteron, and the investment
side, where you have to determine what a company
is actually worth. My internships gave me a grounding
in data analytics and accounting – the essential skills you
need whether you are running a company or valuing
one. At TILLER, an investment company specialising
in projects involving highly complex transactions
and requiring significant expertise, I am learning
how companies are valued and financed in practice.
In the long term, I am interested in what will happen
to Czech companies established in the 1990s when
their founders begin handing them over to the next
generation. I would like to be part of that process –
and to do so, you need to understand both the value
of a company and how it operates.
What do the numbers reveal about a company’s true
health, and what can’t they tell you?
Numbers are the foundation: revenue, profit, cash
flow and, above all, how they develop over time.
But forecasts are always someone’s opinion,
and comparisons with similar companies can only
ever be an approximation. Numbers also reflect
the past, so there is always a time lag – they show what
The next ten years will determine how
many companies become businesses
that operate as a system.
| Text: MonikaŠevčíková, foto: JanKolman