About startups, accelerators and ecosystems

It is the middle of November in the year 2022 in Bucharest, Wednesday around noon, a seemingly ordinary day. In one of the new office buildings where BCR is headquartered - Banca Comercial? Roman?, the second largest bank in Romania owned by Erste Group, the elevator pitch of the third scaleup generation of the InnovX BCR accelerator is currently taking place. It is a startup accelerator that is primarily financed by BCR bank, and around which an impressive business community and investors from the region are gathered.

The elevator pitch consists of a 60 seconds pitch in the elevator, followed by an interview with the jury consisting of the entire management of BCR Bank, CEO of Allianz-Tiriac insurance, CFO of MedLife Group, Partner in EY Romania, CFO of IBM Romania, General Manager of Euroweb Romania and General Manager A-T Cargill – all top C-level hot shots. The entire event is streamed live on the Facebook and LinkedIn channels of BCR bank, which have a total of over 400,000 followers.

Along with nine very interesting and ambitious Romanian scaleups that passed the initial selection and an additional filter after six weeks of the pre-acceleration program, I am also here as a representative of the tenth company in the cohort, Croatian Legit and our product Data Privacy Manager.

I'm the first one to pitch, I know the pitch by heart. First part in the elevator goes great. I arrive in the board room where twelve serious managers of large companies welcome me with applause. Not some kind of lukewarm clap-clap, but serious applause. After answering very serious questions, another round of applause. After me, the representatives of all the other nine startups experienced the same treatment. You can watch the entire elevator pitch event at the link

Nice story, isn't it? There have been a lot of pleasant surprises throughout this accelerator program, but this was somehow the most pleasant. Of course, some questions arise. So let's start from the beginning...

What is a Croatian IT startup doing in an accelerator in Romania?

Romania has 19 million people and is a five times larger market than Croatia. The accelerator program and the team that runs it are fantastic, we had the opportunity to meet them before we applied. The program is completely free for us - we do not pay anything and do not give equity. During the program, the door was opened to many potential users and partners. Don't think that we are not serious because we are at the same time in the Cyber Runway accelerator in London, which also accepted us with open arms. Neither of these two accelerators is Y Combinator, Techstars or 500 Startups. I can only imagine what kind of mentors and programs the world's best startup accelerators have.

Why didn't we apply for the accelerator program in Croatia?

And exactly which acceleration program could we apply for? There is simply no such program in Croatia - not in reality, not in the plans, not on the horizon, not even in the traces. I can claim this with complete certainty, since I myself have invested the last two years in setting up and developing the BIRD Incubator, which is intended for startups in an earlier stage of development and around which we have gathered an impressive team of mentors, and many foreign teams have also passed through our incubator program. During that period, I managed to get to know the Croatian startup ecosystem relatively well, that is, some indications of the emerging ecosystem that we who are part of it like to call the ecosystem.

Given the relatively modest means at our disposal, this kind of accelerator program is science fiction for the BIRD incubator. The closest high-quality accelerator is the ABC accelerator in Ljubljana, which is supported by BTC City, Petrol, Telekom Slovenije and Triglav Osiguranje - respectively blue chip Slovenian companies.

Can you imagine such an elevator pitch in Croatia?

Can you imagine the entire management of one of the largest Croatian banks, plus a few more CxO’s from large insurance, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and IT companies, to spend their two hours watching, listening, reading and applauding some startups there, and that bank is financing the whole show? Honestly, I can imagine such a scene, but not today or in a month, but in three or four years.

The ecosystem needs time to develop and Croatian corporations are not yet at that level of understanding. We can talk about the state and government being like this or like that, but in reality our corporations did not really got it either. Of course, their parent companies are much more active in that area. For example, Deutsche Telekom has a Hubraum Tech incubator, Raiffeisen bank has Elevator Lab and Elevator Ventures, Intesa Sanpaolo has Startupinitiative... Just google a bit and you will find startup programs and venture funds from A1, OTP Bank, Unicredit, Allianz and many others.

And what now?

I can say that I am really happy that I was able to get to know this story from two sides - from the side of scaleup, which is trying to position itself globally, and from the side of Poslovna inteligencija, which, through investing in an incubator, is trying to help the development of the ecosystem.

As for Legit, we know our path and the next goals that lie ahead of us - after the region and the EU, they are mainly related to America and Singapore. Like many other Croatian startups before us, we will find our way in the big World, because there is no ecosystem in Croatia that can help you in a slightly more advanced stage of development. One day we might be in the news when we get a big investment or do an IPO on a world stock exchange... Fortunately, we don't make a hyper-electric car, so at least we don't get hated like Mate Rimac.

And as far as the ecosystem is concerned, two years ago I set myself the goal that I wanted to raise our Croatian startup ecosystem to the level at which it is in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary or neighbouring Slovenia, and that I wanted to introduce corporations into that system that would see an interest in it like everywhere in the world. It's a good thing that I'm not alone in this mission, there are ?eljko Krizmani? , Hajdi Cenan , Marijana Sarolic Robic and many other enthusiasts who gathered in the Cro Startup association. The results of our work are visible and I believe that it is only a matter of time when both corporations and the state will become aware of all the potential of the startup community, which has been under their radar for years because they simply do not see the synergy and benefits that developed economies and large global corporations have seen even before twenty years and more, not only in the far west but also in our immediate neighbourhood, including some neighbours that we traditionally look down on.

Please feel free to comment or contact me directly to discuss in more details!

You can read my previous articles and blogs here?https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/dorescanin/detail/recent-activity/posts/

Dra?en Ore??anin / Data Privacy & Data Architecture

https://dataprivacymanager.net/

https://legit.eu/