Dear readers,
In this edition, we take a look at whether Southeast Europe’s startup scene has what it takes to shift from raw potential to real structure, with Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as a standout case. Once known mainly for outsourcing, BiH is now building an ecosystem where founders, investors, diaspora, and institutions are beginning to connect.
Our main story from Sarajevo shows how continuity, community, and second attempts are slowly replacing isolation and one-off success stories - even as regulation, capital flight, and outdated systems continue to hold the region back.
Across the region, the momentum is clear: Bulgarian startup Plan A exits in an $80 million deal, Hungary’s ABZ Innovation raises €7 million to scale its drones, Ukrainian Preply becomes a unicorn, and Turkey’s e2vc launches a €100 million fund for early-stage founders.
We also look behind the scenes, with rumours from N. Macedonia’s indie game scene and the quiet rise of regional crypto wealth, while our Investor Take explores why execution and unit economics will define valuations in 2026.
Best regards,
Bojan Stojkovski
Editor-in-Chief, IT Logs
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s startup ecosystem is growing up
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), despite expectations shaped by stagnation and political fragmentation, is increasingly becoming a case study in what thoughtful ecosystem-building can look like in the Balkans. Of course, there are those who try and fail, and never try again - but the ecosystem is increasingly shaped by those who treat failure as iteration rather than an endpoint, and who remain engaged long enough for experience, networks, and second attempts to compound.
To better understand how all of this looks, I spent several days in Sarajevo last October, moving between meetings, side conversations, and local events tied to Slush’D and BAS (Business Angels Summit). I didn’t arrive with a fixed agenda. Instead, I listened and observed, speaking with founders, engineers, investors, and organizers who are trying to build something meaningful in a challenging environment.
Isolated talent that has the potential to connect the ecosystem
For years, BiH’s strength lay in engineering and outsourcing - developers working for foreign clients and companies delivering services to European and even global markets. One of the anecdotes that I heard was that during one closed-door dinner between the events, a traditional IT director pointed at a young Bosnian engineer and said, “This is the guy we’ve been trying to build internally.”
Bojan Lazić, one of the initiators of bringing Slush to BiH, responded immediately: “You can’t build that person inside a single company. He is a product of an ecosystem, of the environment he grew up in.”
That conversation captured a long-standing dynamic I’ve seen across the region. BiH always had IT skill, but what it lacked, as others in the region also do, was the evolution from outsourcing to entrepreneurship, from execution for others to creation for ourselves.
“For many years, we have developed a strong engineering culture here. What didn’t happen was the transition from pure engineering to building our own products. For example, there are around 270 people working directly for Apple out of BiH. Many successful global startups are founded by ex Apple employees, whether they are engineers, product people, business developers or designers. But how many times have we seen someone from Bosnia and Herzegovina that currently works for Apple through one of the large IT companies locally, leave Apple and start a company based on that experience - identifying gaps, building something new, and maybe even getting acquired later? It rarely happens,” Lazić told me during a candid conversation.
Events, momentum, and continuity
On paper, the ecosystem appears to be moving. Recent ecosystem-mapping data shows that BiH’s startup ecosystem grew by about 27.8 percent in 2025, ranking it 91st globally, with over $3.8 million in funding recorded. Sarajevo alone saw a 25.4 percent rise, with nearly $1.9 million raised.
Malcolm Duerod, professor of entrepreneurial studies at Sarajevo-based International Burch University, has lived in the country for more than a decade and has seen the ecosystem grow and mature firsthand. We spoke over coffee, away from the conference noise.
“In 2012 there was no awareness of entrepreneurship; today there is huge awareness. And students are finally seeing how talent becomes powerful only when paired with risk capital, community and mentorship,” Duerod told me.
Early growth metrics support that shift. Local incubators and acceleration programs are expanding. In the first half of 2025, the top 20 startups supported by ecosystem actors backed by Swiss EP created 361 jobs - up from 332 the year before. By global standards, these numbers are modest. In a country where youth unemployment and brain drain define social reality, they matter.
Structural barriers that still shape outcomes
Despite the momentum, major barriers remain. Duerod was direct about them. The ecosystem is fragmented, regulation outdated, and the standard “d.o.o.” legal structure inflexible when it comes to equity sharing or pivoting. “If someone tries and fails, they should be able to close in a month and try again,” he said.
Instead, founders face months of legal friction, expensive notary fees, and uncertainty for foreign capital. Listening to this during my stay, it became clear why so many companies incorporate in Estonia or Delaware. When companies leave on paper, capital follows.
“Right now many student companies are sole-owned because it is the only efficient structure locally. But that’s not scalable. And when companies register abroad, so does the capital - and the tax revenue. The government should be incentivized to fix this. If not, talent and capital will continue to leak out, and the country will be hollowed out,” Duerod warned.
Why Bosnia matters for the entire region
BiH’s emerging model through connecting local talent, diaspora entrepreneurs, global investors, and institutions also offers a possible roadmap for the wider region. This is something that can start with community-building, and it doesn’t have to end there. “We realised that one event per year is not enough. As of tomorrow, we start preparing for the next Slush’D, and for everything in between, because continuity is what builds an ecosystem,” Lazić told me.
The success of companies like Rolla, now one of the most financed Bosnian startups, reinforces a belief I heard repeatedly in Sarajevo: startup life is not only possible here - it is also now becoming more and more desirable.
Duerod framed the issue in broader terms. “The economy unites people - deals happen across borders and across groups. Take Bingo: it didn’t stay just in the Federation. It grew from nothing in Tuzla to the biggest supermarket chain in the whole country. That’s the mentality we should pass to young people - that ideas can scale across borders and identities.”
This story extends beyond BiH. A few years ago, I attended the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin, only later realizing that the team behind it had roots in BiH. I met its CEO, Sead Ahmetović, born in the small northern town of Odžak and now based in Vienna. At Slush’D, Ahmetović spoke about the power of developer communities to shape entire industries - and about the cultural role of the diaspora in particular.
“When we gather, we are from all over the world. We bring insights from different cultures, ecosystems and systems. And when you put all of that in one pot, interesting things happen. WeAreDevelopers has been providing a platform for communities all over the world to thrive - and in our case it’s also giving us the opportunity to pay back a bit to our own homes.” Ahmetović concluded.
The original story is published on the Swiss EP website.
Last Time the Market Was This Expensive, Investors Waited 14 Years to Break Even
In 1999, the S&P 500 peaked. Then it took 14 years to gradually recover by 2013.
Today? Goldman Sachs sounds crazy forecasting 3% returns for 2024 to 2034.
But we’re currently seeing the highest price for the S&P 500 compared to earnings since the dot-com boom.
So, maybe that’s why they’re not alone; Vanguard projects about 5%.
In fact, now just about everything seems priced near all time highs. Equities, gold, crypto, etc.
But billionaires have long diversified a slice of their portfolios with one asset class that is poised to rebound.
It’s post war and contemporary art.
Sounds crazy, but over 70,000 investors have followed suit since 2019—with Masterworks.
You can invest in shares of artworks featuring Banksy, Basquiat, Picasso, and more.
24 exits later, results speak for themselves: net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8%.*
My subscribers can skip the waitlist.
*Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Important Reg A disclosures: masterworks.com/cd.
Across the region…
Bulgaria-founded sustainability software firm Plan A has been acquired by Diginex in an $80 million cash-and-equity deal. The transaction combines Plan A’s decarbonisation and ESG technology with Diginex’s regulatory compliance and supply-chain solutions, creating a broader platform for corporate sustainability and risk management.
Turkey-based venture capital firm e2vc has closed a €100 million Fund III to back early-stage startups across Central and Emerging Europe, the Baltics, and Turkey, focusing on tech-exporting founders with global ambitions. Rebranded in 2024 from 500 Emerging Europe, the firm has invested in more than 50 companies since 2016, including four unicorns (fal, BillionToOne, Carbon Health, and Insider) and typically invests up to $1 million at the pre-seed and idea stages while operating from offices in San Francisco, New York, and London.
Hungarian startup ABZ Innovation has raised €7 million in a funding round led by Vsquared Ventures with participation from Day One Capital to scale production, speed up product development, and expand internationally. Founded in 2011 by Karoly Ludvigh, the company designs heavy-duty drones for agriculture and industrial use, including models that spray up to 16 liters per minute, seed up to 1,100 kilograms per hour, clean surfaces up to 60 meters high with high-pressure systems, and carry loads of up to 40 kilograms for extended flights.
Croatian startup Holonet has closed its first angel investment round, raising €220K with backing from prominent Croatian tech figures including Mihovil Barančić, Damir Sabol, Davorin Capan, Marijan Mumdžiev, and Hrvoje Zlatar. Founded in 2022 and initially self-funded, Holonet will use the capital to advance its platform, which aims to lower the barrier to entry for virtual worlds by enabling the creation of interactive 3D environments directly in the browser, without technical expertise or months of development.
Ukrainian-born language learning marketplace Preply has become a $1.2 billion unicorn after raising $150 million in a Series D round, with backing from investors including Horizon Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Owl Ventures and Techstars Berlin. CEO Kirill Bigai said the future of learning will be “human-guided and amplified by AI”, as the company already uses AI for lesson summaries, homework support and tutor matching.
Rumor has it…
A Skopje-based indie game studio has quietly slipped into turbulent waters, according to people familiar with the situation. The team is said to have rejected a €300K acquisition offer earlier this year, only to find itself struggling to stay afloat. While the game is still being sold and the servers are reportedly “technically stable”, insiders say the company is barely holding together.
Whispers from one of Ukraine’s leading tech communities point to a growing rift at the top. After more than a decade of building the country’s largest tech network, insiders say a sudden power struggle, public leaks, and an unexpected leadership removal have shaken the organisation’s core.
After last week’s rumour about our mysterious crypto billionaire, we started digging, and what we found goes far beyond a single name. We’ve now also heard from various sources that not one, but several crypto “royalties” are effectively hiding in plain sight in N. Macedonia, quietly moving capital across the region.
The Investor take…
Kevin Chavanne, Venture Partner at Tenity (Source: Startup Revolution)
In 2026, where do you think the smartest money will be going?
The smartest money is likely to go toward companies addressing well-defined, high-friction problems with solutions that deliver measurable value to customers. Rather than following broad thematic waves, investors will increasingly focus on execution quality, market understanding, and the ability to translate innovation into predictable revenue.
Do you expect bigger bets on fewer startups, or smaller checks spread wider?
This will largely depend on the stage and maturity of the fund. For newer or early-stage funds, I expect smaller checks to be spread across a wider range of startups, with a strong emphasis on portfolio construction and optionality. These funds are likely to remain cautious at entry, using smaller initial tickets to test assumptions, observe founder execution, and reserve capital for follow-on investments once traction is clearly demonstrated.
What will move valuations more in 2026: real traction, AI buzz, or solid unit economics?
Solid unit economics will have the strongest influence on valuations in 2026. As the AI narrative continues to normalize, investors are becoming more discerning about what constitutes real differentiation versus commoditized capability. While AI will remain a powerful enabler, it will no longer justify premium valuations on its own.
Upcoming events in the region…
Money Motion 2026 has emerged as a major regional hub for fintech and innovation, bringing together more than 900 companies and 5,000 professionals from over 20 countries. The event connects financial and technology leaders, serving as a platform for new ideas, cross-border collaboration, and the latest industry trends.
“This is the fourth year of Money Motion and as it matures into a "grown up conference", the whole financial world is flipping on its head. This year is going to be really interesting and hopefully we are going to have answered at least a little bit of the big questions - how do we build payment rails that actually work in a fragmented world? With tariffs, stablecoins going mainstream, and cross-border payments finally getting the attention they deserve, MoMo 2026 is going to have a tough job, but hopefully we'll be on the level of the task.”
Luka Sucic, co-founder of Money Motion.
Unlockit Conference 2026 - Feb 19-20, Belgrade
BWIGA 2026 - Mar 25, Belgrade
Adriatics Tech Summit 2026 - March 30 - Apr 1, Sarajevo
Albania Dreaming 2026 - April 2026, Tirana
