Dear readers,

This week’s IT Logs Brief looks at the Western Balkans’ next startup challenge: turning strong products and technical talent into repeatable, global revenue. We explore why the region’s shift from outsourcing to building global product companies requires a stronger culture around sales, marketing, business development and go-to-market execution. 

Across the region, we look at Eastern European founders and investors increasingly finding their way into major global deep tech deals, from Veeda AI’s $90 million seed round to Bulgaria’s Graphwise exit. 

We also have the investor perspective of Max Gurvits from Vitosha Ventures, who discusses execution, valuations and where the smartest money is going in 2026.

Enjoy!
Bojan Stojkovski
Editor-in-Chief, IT Logs

For years, the Western Balkans has been trying to convince the world that it can build tech companies. And the region did make progress - startups raised larger rounds, founders expanded internationally and regional unicorns demonstrated that globally competitive businesses can emerge from relatively small markets.

But there is another part of the startup equation that has received considerably less attention: revenue. For Ema Hasicevic, a revenue ecosystem builder and co-founder of revenue community Dealion, this is one of the biggest structural weaknesses facing tech companies across the Western Balkans.

The region has engineers, founders, products and increasingly access to capital, but what it lacks is a sufficiently developed culture around sales, business development, marketing and commercial execution, Ema argues.

Her conclusion came from years of working across the region and talking to hundreds of companies. “We have different products, we have different companies, but when we talk about sales, marketing, commercials, that's something that we lack as a region.” she tells IT Logs.

That gap is imperative to close because the region is entering a different phase of its tech journey. Building a product is no longer enough, and for startups moving from early traction to international expansion, the most important question becomes whether they can consistently find customers, close deals and build repeatable revenue. And all of that requires a different ecosystem.

From outsourcing to building global companies

Hasicevic's career gave her an unusually broad view of the Western Balkans. She started in recruitment, working primarily on business development and operations alongside CEOs. Rather than simply filling positions, she was talking to companies about their expansion plans and helping them understand where they should build teams.

That meant looking at markets such as Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, N. Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina from a business perspective. Companies began asking her where they should establish offices and teams. That eventually led her into expansion consulting, helping known BPO companies establish operations in the region.

White that experience taught her how international companies viewed the Balkans, she wanted to understand the tech ecosystem at a deeper level. Then, she joined Kilka, Bosnia-based IT outsourcing company, where she expected to find a predictable sales pipeline and structured commercial operation. Instead, she found another challenge. To understand why, she began speaking with people involved in business development, sales and marketing.

More than 200 conversations later, the pattern was difficult to ignore. “In the vast majority of conversations, the same patterns kept coming up as companies were struggling with structured sales processes, and didn't quite understand sales as it should be approached.” Ema recalls.

That became the starting point for Dealion, which she describes as a curated revenue network for B2B leaders and people actively involved in growth. The idea is deliberately broader than a traditional sales community. Revenue, in her view, cannot be isolated inside a sales department.

The region learned to wait for customers

One of the reasons the problem exists is historical. The Western Balkans spent years building its technology reputation around outsourcing, a model that created thousands of jobs and helped establish the region as a source of relatively affordable technical talent.

The region was in demand as an outsourcing destination, and customers came looking for engineers and service providers. That meant companies did not necessarily have to develop sophisticated outbound sales organizations, international marketing strategies or repeatable commercial processes.

The Western Balkans needs to stop thinking about itself primarily as a cost-efficient technology destination and start thinking about itself as a source of valuable products. But that also requires a psychological shift.

Hasicevic sees another issue that is harder to solve with training or funding: the way regional companies price themselves. “A lot of people are quite shy to actually charge the price in front of the Western European and US clients.” she points out. 

While the region has spent years selling cost efficiency, competing primarily on price can become a trap. If the main selling point is that a company is cheaper than its Western European or American competitor, it becomes difficult to build a global tech brand around quality, expertise and differentiated value.

A Western Balkans company should not necessarily be selling a cheaper developer, a cheaper engineering team or a cheaper service. It should be selling a product or capability that solves a valuable problem - a proposition that changes the entire revenue strategy.

Revenue needs investment too

There are signs that the mentality is changing, particularly among startups. Hasicevic points to Croatia as an example, where the success of companies such as communications giant Infobip has helped create a generation of founders and operators who have already seen what international scale looks like.

The effect goes beyond individual companies. “They are building the ecosystem within Croatia, and building the network of those people that already scaled the company.” she points out. 

The diaspora also plays an important role. Founders who have spent time in San Francisco, London or other major technology hubs can bring back not only capital connections, but commercial expectations and a different understanding of how global companies operate.

Bootstrapping itself is not the problem, but the problem emerges when founders interpret independence as a reason not to invest in commercial growth, which is perhaps the most important lesson Hasicevic wants founders to understand.

Revenue does not simply happen because a good product exists - it requires people, systems and money. “You need to invest in sales, you need to invest in growth, you need to invest in people.” Ema says, noting that for many regional startups, that investment remains difficult.

Founders often remain responsible for sales long after the company has reached the point where someone should be building a dedicated commercial function. Others invest heavily in engineering while treating sales and marketing as secondary expenses, and the result is a company with a strong product but an inconsistent pipeline.

Hasicevic argues that AI could make this imbalance even more obvious. As software development becomes increasingly efficient, the relative importance of go-to-market execution rises. “As AI allows a lot of products to be developed pretty fast, you now need to invest 75% in GTM and 25% in engineering, which is not something that we do here.” Ema says.

The exact ratio will differ from company to company, but the underlying point is important: if building software becomes faster and cheaper, distribution becomes a larger competitive advantage.

Revenue is not just sales

As a result, the bottleneck moves from building to selling. This is where Hasicevic's approach differs from the traditional sales-versus-marketing debate, as she sees revenue as the responsibility of many departments.

Furthermore, product, sales, marketing and customer success are all interconnected. A company can generate demand and close customers, but if the product does not deliver, revenue disappears through churn. Likewise, a strong product without distribution may never reach enough customers.

The region therefore needs a broader revenue culture. That means founders need to understand commercial strategy earlier, product teams need to understand customers better, sales teams need to work closely with product and marketing needs to be tied to measurable business outcomes.

This is the thinking behind Dealion. The community currently has around 30 paid members, with the goal of reaching roughly 50 members before focusing on larger-scale expansion. The particular pace is in place because Hasicevic does not want to create just another large networking group where people exchange business cards and disappear. 

The focus is practical value, as members share leads, exchange referrals, discuss live deals and help each other solve commercial problems. The network is intentionally kept small and curated, with a focus on active participation. One of its formats is a “deal lab,” where a member brings an actual enterprise deal to the community and allows other members to challenge the strategy, ask questions and suggest approaches. “I have the opportunity to talk to 30 revenue people with experience in different industries.” Ema explains.

That is particularly valuable in a region where markets are small and fragmented. A company from Bosnia may need customers in Germany, a Serbian startup may need an introduction in the US, or a Croatian company may be looking for partners in another Western European market. The expertise already exists across the region, but what has been missing is the infrastructure to connect it.

The next milestone isn’t another pitch competition

The Western Balkans has spent years teaching founders how to pitch, but now the harder work begins.

Founders need to learn how to price, build pipelines, qualify customers, and create repeatable sales processes. How to sell outside the region, and how to build marketing that generates demand. And, perhaps most importantly, how to stop treating revenue as something that happens after the product is finished.

Hasicevic's philosophy here is blunt: “What is the purpose of business if not revenue?”

That does not mean reducing startups to spreadsheets or sales targets, but recognizing that revenue is what gives a company the ability to keep investing in its product, people and technology. “You need revenue in order to bring that product even on a higher level, and bring basically more benefits to your own people.”

The next question is whether the region can build the commercial machinery required to do that repeatedly. If the answer is yes, then the Western Balkans may finally move from being a place where international companies come to find talent to a region that consistently produces companies capable of finding customers anywhere in the world.

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