Dear readers,

This week we look at what it takes for Southeast Europe to build globally competitive technology companies, with Serbian investor Zoran Vasiljev explaining why the region needs to move beyond outsourcing and start thinking bigger. 

We also cover fresh developments across the ecosystem, including Croatia’s latest unicorn, new AI funding in Bulgaria and Postbank’s plans to bring investment services into its mobile app.

Plus, our Rumor Has It section examines a high-profile public grant investigation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Good Game Global founder Nikola Stolnik shares his take on startup speed, deep tech and the challenges facing founders in Europe. 

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

Southeast Europe has spent decades building technology for the rest of the world. Its engineers have helped power global companies, its outsourcing industry has created economic value, and its startups have gradually earned a place on the international tech map. 

But for Zoran Vasiljev, the region has become too comfortable playing a supporting role in an industry where the biggest rewards go to those who own the products, build the brands and reach customers directly.

The fund’s mission is shaped by Vasiljev's own career, which has taken him from Belgrade to Singapore and Dubai, through senior roles at international technology companies and multiple ventures built, scaled and sold. Now, he wants to bring those lessons back to a region he believes has plenty of talent and ideas, but still needs more founders willing to take risks, think bigger and turn promising concepts into globally competitive businesses.

From Belgrade to Singapore and back

Vasiljev's professional journey began in Belgrade after he graduated from a university in the US. entering the internet economy at a time when the industry was still taking shape. However, the political and economic circumstances of the region soon pushed him elsewhere. 

“I was immediately thrown into the internet economy at a very, very early stage, but because of the sanctions (in Serbia) and everything else, I obviously moved to Asia,” he recalls.

Singapore became the base for the next two decades of his career. There, Vasiljev worked across internet businesses, telecommunications, management consulting, digital ventures and platform-based companies. He also spent five years in Dubai, witnessing the development of a market that was building its own commercial identity and international connections.

His career took him through senior executive roles at companies including Xsolla, Infobip, Centili, Apigate, Sportfolio Group and Axiata Digital. Across these businesses, he worked on sales, marketing, partnerships and go-to-market strategies, gaining experience in the mechanics of taking technology products beyond their original markets.

By the time he returned to Belgrade in 2020, Vasiljev had also accumulated experience in building and selling businesses, including ventures that were eventually acquired by US investment funds. The return gave him a different perspective on the region's technology ecosystem. He could see the potential, and also see the limits imposed by the way that potential was being developed.

SEE had built a significant technology services industry, supplying engineering talent and outsourced expertise to companies abroad. That model had generated economic value and created jobs. But Vasiljev believes the region was becoming too comfortable with its position in the global technology supply chain.

“What I didn't like is that the region and country itself, but I'm talking about the SEE region as well, is that it was still perceived as cheap labor, selling hours, outsourcing,” he tells IT Logs. 

The concern was not that outsourcing had no place in the economy, but that the region needed to move beyond it if it wanted to create companies with their own intellectual property, products, distribution and global market positions.

As Vasiljev puts it, selling development hours can build a profitable services business, but building a product company requires a different set of capabilities: understanding customers, developing a repeatable sales process, finding the right markets and competing against companies that may have considerably more capital and international reach.

He had spent years working across those markets, and wanted more founders in his home region to have access to the same experience. “I always said we need to find a way to move away from selling hours into building companies, building products,” he tells IT Logs, arguing that founders need support to market their products better, structure their go-to-market organisations and learn to sell differently.

That conviction eventually became the foundation for Forty.5 Ventures, which began as a venture advisory firm in 2020 before developing into an investment platform.

A fund built around three global corridors

The launch of Forty.5 Ventures brings together three markets that have shaped Vasiljev's career: Southeastern Europe, the US and Asia Pacific.

The geography is deliberate, as SEE provides access to founders and technical talent, the US offers a market in which ambitious technology companies can scale and compete for significant capital, while Asia Pacific offers exposure to large consumer markets and business models shaped by mobile-first users.

“If you really want to truly be global, you have to be in Asia,” Vasiljev says.

His argument is that founders should not treat international expansion as something to consider once they have conquered their domestic markets. “If you have identified a very good, significant problem in manufacturing in Skopje, trust me, the same problem exists in Minnesota, and the same problem definitely exists in Bangkok,” he says.

Forty.5 is designed to help founders make that connection. Its initial investments will range from $200K to $1 million, with a focus on pre-seed and seed-stage companies. The firm is looking at vertical AI, fintech and cybersecurity, as well as businesses operating across gaming, sports, media, entertainment and the infrastructure supporting the creator economy. Health technology is also among the areas Vasiljev sees as attractive.

Rather than chasing disruption for its own sake, he is interested in startups that solve substantial problems in established industries. A company does not necessarily need to replace a traditional business; it might become valuable by helping that business operate more efficiently, opening a new revenue stream or changing how an industry delivers its services.

The approach reflects an operator's perspective on venture capital. A compelling technology is not enough on its own, because it must produce a sustainable outcome, find customers willing to pay for it and establish a business that can grow beyond its initial market.

Forty.5's structure is intended to support that process through a combination of capital, venture-building assistance and advisory expertise. Its venture partners bring experience from the US, Singapore, Serbia, Croatia and other markets, with backgrounds spanning go-to-market strategy, fundraising, fintech, automotive and other sectors.

The value, Vasiljev argues, is not simply having people stationed in different countries. It is having people who understand how business is conducted in those markets and can help founders navigate the differences. “This is not about us having offices there. This is us having access, giving presence, and exactly presence and lessons learned,” he tells IT Logs.

That’s particularly relevant for founders in smaller European markets. A startup can develop an excellent product locally and still struggle to sell it internationally because it lacks the relationships, market knowledge or commercial experience required to reach customers abroad, Vasiljev explains.

Forty.5 wants to help close that gap, connecting regional founders with people who have already built, scaled and sold businesses across the markets they hope to enter. The fund has also committed 25% of its capital to female-led ventures, reflecting Vasiljev's stated belief that women founders need better access to investment and networks. 

He sees this allocation as an opportunity to address some of the differences in how founders access the relationships and resources that can help a company grow. For a first fund, the ambition is broad. But Vasiljev believes the team's operating experience and international relationships provide a foundation for pursuing it.

Conviction matters more than another pitch deck

The fund's initial fundraising experience suggests there is appetite for its approach. According to Vasiljev, the $30 million in commitments came from family offices, operators, angel investors and other limited partners, some of whom have chosen not to be publicly identified.

He credits the relatively quick fundraising process to the team's professional track records and relationships rather than any special advantage in the current investment climate. “All of us were scar-driven operators. People that built companies, sold companies, turned around companies,” he says.

Those experiences helped establish trust with investors who understood what the team was trying to accomplish. But Vasiljev is clear that raising the first fund is only the beginning: the next challenge is execution, and the firm's long-term credibility will depend on the companies it backs and the results they deliver.

The same emphasis on execution informs his view of the wider startup ecosystem, where founders often complain about the lack of available venture capital while investors argue that too few compelling companies are emerging.

Vasiljev does not entirely dismiss either side. Access to funding can be difficult, and founders need to be prepared to approach investors. But he believes the ecosystem sometimes overlooks a more fundamental issue: the difference between having an idea and committing to build a business.

“There is always money for a good idea, and for a good product, and for a good company,” he tells IT Logs.

He is particularly sceptical of founders who continue to experiment with a business idea while remaining in full-time employment elsewhere, without making a clear commitment to the venture. That does not mean everyone should quit their job before testing an idea, but Vasiljev argues that investors need to see evidence of conviction, risk-taking and a willingness to build something substantial.

“We want to sit or groom founders that are actually able to move us, that are actually able to educate me on a vertical and change my mind about it,” he says.

That is the essence of Forty.5's conviction-led investment philosophy. The firm is looking for founders who understand their markets deeply enough to challenge existing assumptions, explain why their approach is different and demonstrate how it can create a meaningful business.

Building more than unicorns

For all the attention venture capital pays to billion-dollar valuations, Vasiljev is less interested in predicting which sector will produce SEE's next unicorn than in building a deeper pool of successful technology companies. He would rather see the region produce more businesses valued at $100 million, $300 million or $500 million than obsess over the next company to cross the billion-dollar threshold.

It is a more practical way of measuring progress. A healthy ecosystem needs companies that grow, employ people, develop products and eventually provide returns to investors and founders. Some will become unicorns, but others can generate meaningful exits and help establish a track record that makes the next generation of companies easier to finance.

Vasiljev points to the region's impatience with this middle ground. Everyone wants a spectacular success story, he argues, but the ecosystem cannot skip the years of company-building needed to produce one.

His ambition for Forty.5 is therefore partly financial and partly cultural, as the fund wants to invest in promising startups, but also encourage founders to think differently about what they can build and where they can sell it.

“I have never arrived. I continuously want to move things,” he says, describing a mindset he wants to see reflected in the companies the firm backs.

That philosophy also shapes his advice to founders considering Forty.5. They should be ambitious, seek good advice, hire people who are better than themselves and make decisions rather than waiting for perfect conditions. “The biggest killer of good ideas and good businesses is indecisiveness,” Vasiljev says.

He believes today's technology makes experimentation cheaper than it used to be, allowing founders to build, test and change direction faster. The greater risk is spending too long contemplating an opportunity while competitors move ahead. “Today being wrong is actually cheap. Being late is very, very expensive,” Vasiljev concludes.

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