Start locally, act globally — SKOPJE
An overview of SKOPJE, by Storytelling 4 Startups - Nina Nikolikj, a CEE Changer.
Skopje ❤, that’s my hometown (or as I like to call it SkopYeah), the city where I have created so many opportunities for myself and for many other young people in the startup ecosystem.
Keywords: “I have created so many opportunities!” because this city, or the system, didn’t place any of these opportunities on a golden platter for me…
Oh, the love/hate relationship we all have with the country and the region, especially the youth, where the youth unemployment rate is 47%, and that is a totally different topic, yet we are still here, working from here (haven’t emigrated like the majority, yet) creating opportunities, hiring people, putting our money in the state budget, in hopes of a brighter future for our country. Why?
With this article, I’d like to shine a light on my generation, some call us entitled Millenials, where all the people I know and work with, are everything but entitled. We are hard working, some even burn out trying to figure out the balance of running a business, personal time, social life, giving back to the community…
Why the #MKstartups community is important for economic prosperity and empowerment of our country? Why some of us are ‘volunteering’ much of their time, in the past 5 years to build a strong startup eco-system? What we’d like to see happen in 2019? Startups to watch?
Stars have aligned for this 2019 to be our year, #MKstartups have worked hard ‘in the shadows’ of neighboring countries, yet now we have tangible results and we’ll just grow stronger together from here…
SkopYeah has been placed on a list — Startup cities 2019: the 5 hubs vying to become the world’s next Silicon Valley! and now the pressure is on, to prove that YES we can build startups locally and grow globally!
To set a layout on our joint 2019 vision for this eco-system, I’ve decided to ask some of the ‘usual suspects’ from our #MKstartups community:
What would you like to happen in the #MKstartups eco-system in 2019?
In order for this eco-system to grow, what do you consider as number 1 priority to be done in 2019?
“Given that on one hand, many people left the country (might be helpful on the long run), and the fact that many foreign companies opened their branches here, leaves us with a shortage of skills, therefore I expect that the EdTech trend will grow even more in 2019. The e-commerce market is becoming more liberal which will result with higher profits for the already existing e-commerce companies, but also new FinTech startups in the area of e-banking and micro-financing that will actually support the growth of the already existing e-commerce players and encourage new ones to go online.
I would love to see more #MKStartups solving real problems with technology, but in reality, brick and mortar companies will still lead the way in 2019.
Some of the already existing and profitable ones will definitely try to establish a presence in some form in the neighboring countries.
There will be more VC money, some in purely Macedonian companies, but most of it will be invested in Some Other Country / Macedonian partnerships.
Towards the end of the year, we should be able to see the first results from the companies that got funded by the Fund for Innovation and Technology Development (FITD), a large portion will fail, either by completely closing doors or by shifting from product to service. And again, from the successful ones, brick and mortar will prevail.
Great teams are composed of strong individuals. The same goes for the eco-system. We need successful companies and strong founders. People that already walked the walk and now they want to give back to the community.
Without this, we can have as many accelerators, NGOs, motivational speakers, etc… as we want, it’s not going to work.” — says Teddy.
“The first most important thing I would like to happen in the #MKstartups ecosystem is that we finally start working together, stop with the fragmentation and consolidate our forces towards the common goal.
More Access to Great Talent. Successful entrepreneurs, preferably serial entrepreneurs that have learned from prior mistakes and wins, to start sharing more with the community and the new generations of entrepreneurs.
Bigger Access to Capital. Great ideas and great talent are useless without the capital to fund their vision. Maybe we can see more local capital in 2019 or even capital from our successful entrepreneurs that have made it abroad. More proper VC firms with clear goals and expectations. Government support. But not the government mimicking accelerator. Government support in terms of legislation, tax laws, e-commerce, anything depending on the government that can be liberated for easier work and communication.
In 2019 I would like to see a great platform to bring all these things together under one roof forming the #MKstartup ecosystem.
If I have to single out the most important goal for 2019, that would be a clear vision and mission. What is the eco-system that we want to make? How can we make it? Make a plan, break it down to actionable items and start working. Growth will come as a product of our joint venture.” — said Mitko.
“Macedonia has lots of inspiring young people with great ideas, but every idea will remain just an idea without execution. And the execution asks for lots of hard work, constant learning, self-discipline, adapting and facing challenges on a daily basis. In 2019 I wish we see more doing — less “talking” so that those great ideas can see the light of day. Ideas are important but making things happen is what really matters.
Entrepreneurship is like a very complicated maze. Navigating through requires making lots of decisions, overcoming challenges, hard-work, creativity and “moving-mountain attitude”. If we picture this maze there would probably be lots of “rocks” on its pathways. Some of these rocks represent the administrative burdens, the complicated procedures and other obstacles that founders face. And we should make our number one priority to remove these rocks. We should raise and grow “rock-star entrepreneurs” instead of “rocks”. If we want to encourage more startups, we as a country should make it easy for entrepreneurs to develop their ideas, to access finance, to conduct business and flourish.” — says Nina.
“Better collaboration between corporate and startups and hopefully more young people to be encouraged to turn their ideas into realities into startups. Our government can play a very important role here. А detailed national strategy for developing innovation and startups can be a good starting point.” — said Petar.
“We’ve seen increased interest from many different stakeholders, like universities, donors, the Government, etc., in the startup eco-system during 2018. What I would like to see happening in 2019 is more startups entering the scene and more and more teams working on solutions that have a fighting chance beyond the borders of our country. This, in turn, would justify greater involvement and support from other stakeholders by the sheer increase in demand for such support.
There are some initiatives already started in 2018, like the ecosystem mapping exercise driven by Startup Macedonia that should bring all the stakeholders closer together and ensure greater alignment between them and their respective programs and activities. Also, I would like to see the Government stakeholders focused more on creating a stimulating environment for the ecosystem growth by focusing on solving our key political issues, thus ensuring greater stability of the country in a macroeconomic sense and making it more attractive for both foreign and domestic investors.” — says Ivana.
“Less talk-more action, more support for the small newcomers aka startups from the government, local community, and local companies.
Predictions: just more community events, I don’t expect that anything else will really change, that will help the startup community, or that will inspire more entrepreneurial mindset than outreach, awareness, mentoring!
Government support, although impossible :) That is the n.1 priority; and more involvement from the universities in the startup ecosystem.”- said Dragana.
“I can note that we have a lack of mutual cooperation between businesses. We have many ideas and many new startups, but most of them work in isolation. Especially in our sector, we as a Business Impact Accelerator want to encourage such cooperation where it’ll be complementary for both sides and the combination of different values will help the acceleration on the global market.
From the moment when startups became a ‘hot topic’ in our country, many stakeholders appeared, that everyone in their own way wants to contribute to strengthening the community. I think that we should have some kind of unification and mutual cooperation so that we can offer a more concentrated service and support for our startups.” — says Kristijan.
“To see a successful story in the true sense of the word, but a bit more local. We have Cognism and InPlayer who are growing rapidly, but they are UK driven, Macedonian developed companies. Can we make a similar story with full-stack local talent led by homegrown entrepreneurs? Of course, it will happen, and we’d like to see that happen sooner.
Success will not come on its own, that’s why we are building an ecosystem infrastructure that fosters visionary entrepreneurship and encourages risk-taking and a culture of innovating.
This type of culture is something we as an organization and ecosystem stakeholders can influence, so our personal goal is to start building an ecosystem infrastructure. We are having a good start with the support provided by partners, and hopefully, we’ll see the first product to launch pretty soon.
Cooperation between stakeholders. This is why we were formed and this is what our research showed with factual data. It seems our views weren’t far off. This is why we are building a startup platform that will try to connect the whole ecosystem. And this is why we continue to work with all stakeholders and startup to encourage cooperation and partnerships. Everything else will fall into place once organizations and startups start working together towards either a common goal, or specific objective that they need most to perform and progress.
We see that there is a will for collaboration, and this is how we’ll tackle challenge by challenge!”- said Startup Macedonia team.
In 2019 our MISSION is to establish a structure that will allow better collaboration between all eco-system actors, getting state support in policy change and administrative burdens and smart money to come from experienced entrepreneurs, where they give back to the new wave of startup teams!
#MKstartups to watch in 2019:
- Elevate Global — “We mix the state of the art technologies and our remarkable experience to elevate your business to the next level.”;
- Embed Social — Platform for social media tools;
- Paket.mk — “Your online supermarket”;
- Mama Organa — Sustainable living and permaculture;
- Pixyle — Sustainable Fashion found Easy;
- Cognism — Event Triggered Sales Platform where opportunities find your sales people;
- InPlayer — Next generation video and digital asset monetization platform;
- Airport Briefing — New generation flight operations and training platform, and an ultimate situational awareness tool for any operating aviator;
- Laika (to be launched soon)
As community leaders we have still a lot to look forward to in 2019and to accomplish. However, this startup eco-system is known for being very welcoming and coachable. So, to all the experienced entrepreneurs, sales experts, digital marketing managers, go to market strategist, accelerator managers… Give back to entrepreneurs in our up-and-coming startup hub by spending 1 to 3 months as #SwissEP Entrepreneur-In-Residence. Sign up today!
“Start locally act globally” Let’s set it as our #MKstartups motto this 2019! Cheers, Nina
