The Story Of Navigara With Jirka Bachel

Written By xavi umeh

Our guest in this episode of Ace Founder is Jirka Bachel, founder of Navigara.

Jirka is one of those founders you come across on LinkedIn and just have to get on the show.

A 20-year software engineering veteran who built a browser that competed with Chrome, survived a plane crash over Venice, and then went on to build a data-driven platform that Fortune 500 companies and unicorns came knocking for after just one LinkedIn post.

In this conversation, Jirka shares the story behind Navigara — a platform that gives engineering managers the data they need to run their teams like a business, not on gut feeling.

📚 What We Talk About:

  • 01:10 The plane crash over Venice that almost ended everything

  • 14:29 From selling burned CDs at 12 to 20 years in software engineering

  • 15:47 How he built a Google competitor and a Chrome competitor in the Czech Republic

  • 22:04 What Navigara does — and why customers call it Engineering Moneyball

  • 27:33 How one LinkedIn post landed him two Fortune 500 companies

  • 29:00 Why he believes one exceptional person beats three average hires every time

  • 44:59 The biggest challenge — getting engineers to trust data over instinct

  • 54:17 The biggest win — watching engineers compete to be the best developer of the week

💭 Key Quotes:

  • "A man has two lives. The first one ends when you realize you have only one life."

  • "Engineering teams are managed by guts and experience. There is no data."

  • "Our customers call this Engineering Moneyball — and I love that."

  • "One exceptional person with AI can do amazing stuff. More people just makes it harder to align."

  • "Roadmap delivery is our mantra. Everything else follows from that."

🔗 Connect With Our Guest:

xavi umeh
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