Why is it crucial for Serbian startups to gain domain expertise and “smart money”?

Serbia recently saw the emergence of its first unicorn, a startup valued at over a billion dollars. However, the case of the company Ominimo also carries a bitter truth: unicorn status cannot be achieved by remaining solely on the local market.

Founder Dusan Komar made no secret of the fact that the critical leap forward required entering major global markets, securing international capital, and scaling beyond Serbia’s borders. As the state prepares a new strategy for developing the startup ecosystem, a key question arises - are we drafting a document merely for the sake of statistics, or are we ready to acknowledge what has not actually happened during the past decade of development?

Dejan Randjic, a business consultant specializing in innovation, tells Biznis.rs that there are several areas where we have fallen short, but that remain essential for the development of the startup ecosystem.

– First of all, this shouldn’t be a startup strategy, but rather a strategy for developing innovative entrepreneurship. When you call it a startup strategy, it sounds hasty, as if startups exist for their own sake. They cannot be the goal or a mere statistic. Instead, the true value lies in the innovative product that remains in their wake – Randjic points out.

The first wave of startups in the early 2010s emerged as a response to high youth unemployment and the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. At that time, it became fashionable for corporations to flirt with startups. However, the crucial thing did not happen - experts with significant domain experience did not leave secure corporate positions to join startups.

– People without domain experience cannot successfully build startups. Successful global startups emerge from sectors like medicine, logistics, fintech, retail, and agriculture. Here, too few people from major organizations had the courage or motivation to step out of their comfort zones and launch their own businesses to solve real industry problems. They opted for the path of lower risk and stuck with secure salaries. There is no disruption without domain knowledge – explains Randjic.

Another major shortcoming, in his view, relates to the decade-long boom of the domestic software development industry.

Although software exports have surpassed billions of euros, even overtaking agriculture, a model has emerged that is vulnerable in the long run. Our IT industry has largely turned into a business of renting out talent to work on other people’s products.