New York Tech Week: How TuuTap founders landed in Manhattan
From Košice to the heart of Manhattan, New York Tech Week took the TuuTap founders from pitching nerves to new confidence, new contacts, and a clear view of where our gaming platform can go next.
The places TuuTap takes us… From a small idea on a screen to the bright lights of New York Tech Week. And we didn’t get there alone – huge thanks to ICKK (Innovatin Center of the Košice Region), whose support turned “maybe one day” into packed bags, a New York itinerary, and our team right in the middle of it all in Manhattan.
Monday: The first session of an intense SOSA bootcamp, where we met the Czech startup cohort (long live the Czecho‑Slovak brotherhood). These guys had some serious ideas, and a few of them already had solid backing reaching into eight digits. After that came the first pitch session. I’d give myself 3 out of 10 – it was catastrophic, but the upside was obvious: huge room for improvement. A long day defined by jet lag and an unhealthy amount of coffee ended with a Happy Hour in a nearby bar, but it was far from over, because we still had serious work to do on our pitch.
Tuesday: The morning started at JP Morgan, in their impressive premises filled with world‑class art. We quickly learned that if we ever want to bank with them, we need to level up quite a bit. From there, we headed back to SOSA and straight into pitching. Progress! This time I’d give myself 4 out of 10. Basically, still not good – but that’s the life of any startup: lots of imperfection and plenty of mistakes. Your job is to learn instantly, improve relentlessly, and never look back. For us, that meant pivoting our entire pitching narrative to a new angle. We squeezed every drop out of the day and only closed our laptops at midnight.
Wednesday: Big day. The intense SOSA bootcamp culminated in its final session. An afternoon pitching block served as our last rehearsal before the evening. We got a big boost from our mentors Anna, Bianca and Ariel. We left SOSA for the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic in New York, walking into a very chilled atmosphere. It was so powerful that any anxiety about the upcoming Pitch Night simply vanished. Five Slovak startups presented to an audience and three jurors. TuuTap presented how VAS services keep losing revenue and we can fix that. This time I’m not going to rate my pitch; I’ll just say I was finally happy with it, and for the first time I felt truly at ease on stage. That’s what having a great product and a strong story does.
Thursday: A visit to Amazon in their Lord & Taylor building, which they bought for 978 million dollars in 2020. The interior matched the exterior – a visually tempting place to work. As a big fan of interior design, I loved it and couldn’t stop complimenting it.

Friday: Free day. We used it to walk around Manhattan: along the High Line, down to Little Italy, through Chinatown, to the Financial District, 5th Avenue and Central Park, fuelling ourselves with New York–style pizza and bagels. In the evening, we boarded an overnight flight to Vienna and then headed home – hoping that after last year’s San Francisco trip and this year’s New York adventure, visits to the USA will become a regular thing for the TuuTap founders. Fingers crossed.
Our own gaming platform is becoming a reality!
TuuTap is out in the wild: our own gaming platform is now live on Google Play and tuutap.com, with the first partner distributions underway and an exciting 2026 ahead.
TuuTap started as a simple idea: a place where anyone can jump into quick, satisfying games without hassle or heavy downloads. After a lot of late nights, experiments, and testing, that idea has now turned into a real product you can finally try yourself. As of today, TuuTap is live on Google Play for beta testing and at tuutap.com, so you can play on the go or straight from your browser.
This year we’re taking a big step forward. We’ve begun rolling TuuTap out as an mVAS service across multiple distribution channels, so you’ll start seeing our games show up in more places where people already spend their time. We can’t share all the details yet, but the first launches are underway and early feedback is very encouraging.
Below you’ll find a short video that walks through what TuuTap looks like today:
Looking ahead, 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for us. We’re expanding the game catalogue, testing new reward mechanics, and pushing TuuTap into more partner channels while continuing to grow the direct‑to‑consumer version. There is still a lot to learn and improve, but the foundations are finally in place, and we’re excited about the business opportunities and collaborations that are already opening up around TuuTap this year.