Dear readers,

This week we have a feature story that sits slightly outside the usual startup and tech cycle coverage. Instead of another funding round or product launch, we look at Liberland: a self-declared microstate on a disputed stretch of land between Serbia and Croatia that continues to position itself as a “Singapore of the Balkans”. 

It is part political experiment, part startup logic applied to governance, and part long-running geopolitical curiosity that refuses to fade. But while Liberland takes the spotlight, it is only one layer of a broader regional picture.

Across Europe and the Balkans, deep tech is accelerating despite persistent scaling challenges, with new data from the D2XCEL programme showing strong follow-on funding momentum. In parallel, Europe’s autonomous mobility race has reached a milestone with the launch of the continent’s first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb.

As always, we close with a view from the ecosystem, this time with an investor - SMOK Ventures’ Borys Musielak talks about where smart capital is heading, and what still separates signal from noise in early-stage markets.

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

The Danube does not follow politics - it bends when it needs to, redraws its own path over time, and occasionally leaves behind pieces of land that do not quite belong anywhere. Somewhere along one of those bends, between Croatia and Serbia, a small patch of territory slipped into legal ambiguity. For years, it remained just that: a technical dispute, a leftover of shifting borders and unresolved claims.

Then, in 2015, someone decided to treat it differently, naming it Liberland. At first glance, Liberland reads like a provocation - it is a self-declared state on unclaimed land, built on libertarian principles, promising voluntary taxation, minimal governance, and a digital-first society. 

But over time, it has become something more persistent: a project that continues to attract attention from across the world, particularly among those disillusioned with traditional systems of governance.

Liberland celebrates its 11th anniversary this week. To understand what drives its idea and community forward, it helps to look beyond the idea and into the people carrying it forward. One of them is Samuela Davidova.

A country that emerged from a river

Officially, Davidova is Liberland’s representative to Georgia. In practice, she operates as a kind of global envoy - moving between conferences, meetings, and informal networks, explaining a country that many still struggle to place on a map.

Her entry point into Liberland was not diplomatic, but personal. “To me, Liberland reflects my values. Instead of fighting the system in the usual way, through protests or frustration, it’s more like, let’s create what we actually want to see.” she tells IT Logs. 

That sense of creation, of building something where nothing formally existed, begins with geography. Or more precisely, with a geographical accident.

“But the thing is, there used to be a different flow of the river. The Danube changed its course, and that’s what defines the borders. Because the water moved, this piece of land basically appeared in between. It’s like three times the size of Monaco, so it’s not really that small.”

What exists today is less an island than a patchwork of forest and riverbank. formed not by design, but by the slow, indifferent movement of water. In geopolitical terms, it is an anomaly. In Liberland’s narrative, it is a starting point.

Building a country like a startup

Liberland’s founders and leaders, including former Croatian member of parliament Ivan Pernar, have consistently framed the project in terms that feel closer to Silicon Valley than to traditional diplomacy. Governance, in this context, is something to be designed, iterated, and optimized. Davidova also leans into that comparison.

But the comparison only goes so far.

This hybrid model - part state, part startup - comes with both flexibility and complexity.

Unlike traditional governments, Liberland aims to operate without mandatory taxation. Instead, it relies on voluntary contributions, aligned with the idea that citizens should support only what they believe in.

“We don’t want to force people. If you like what we do, you contribute. If you don’t, you don’t. It pushes us to create things that are actually valuable.” Samuela says. 

It is a model that assumes a high degree of trust and a shared understanding of incentives. However, whether that can scale remains one of the central questions around Liberland.

Life on the ground

For all its global ambitions, Liberland remains, physically, a work in progress. On most days, it is not a functioning city or even a village, but a sparsely populated territory with limited infrastructure and logistical constraints.

Now, the basics are slowly being established. “We have Starlink there, so people can work remotely. We built the first few houses. It may not sound very exciting, but there’s hot water - we figured out those things already,” she says.

Getting materials in, however, remains one of the biggest challenges. “We cannot drive there from Croatia. We have to walk or cycle, or bring things by river. So from a logistics perspective, it’s quite limiting. But slowly, people are building. Some citizens can now claim land and start constructing.” Samuela explains.

That connection is not accidental. “I think a lot of people in crypto care about freedom - especially ownership of money. And that naturally aligns with libertarian ideas, even if they don’t think of it that way.”

A global community without borders

If the physical presence of Liberland remains small, its global footprint is anything but.

Much of that visibility comes from its presence in blockchain and tech communities, where the idea of alternative governance resonates. “We travel a lot and speak at conferences. We position ourselves as the first meritocracy on blockchain. It’s about innovating governance on a global level.” she explains.

For many supporters, Liberland is less a place to live today and more a long-term proposition. “I think a lot of people see it as an investment for the future. They might not move there now, but they want to be part of it early.” she says.

That future-facing mindset extends beyond the territory itself. Liberland has ambitions to develop the surrounding region, including parts of both Croatia and Serbia. “We don’t want to build only in Liberland. We want to develop the whole area around it. There are already some investments - millions of euros - and we want to expand that.” Samuela notes. 

Between friction and recognition

No matter how ambitious the vision, Liberland’s biggest constraint remains its legal status. No country formally recognizes it as sovereign. Its existence depends on resolving a complex relationship with its neighbors, particularly Croatia.

“We were suing Croatian police in Croatian courts, and we were winning. It’s a bit ridiculous, but it also helped clarify things.” she says. 

In recent years, the situation has stabilized somewhat. “We officially opened the borders with Croatia about three years ago. There’s a border crossing, Croatian police check your passport, and then you enter Liberland. That’s actually a big success.” she explains.

It is not recognition in the formal sense, but it is a form of operational acceptance - which is enough to keep the project moving forward.

The Singapore analogy

Liberland’s long-term vision tends to surface in conversation almost casually, but it carries a certain weight when it does. At one point, Samuela frames it in the simplest possible terms - less as a slogan, more as a direction of travel.

“We would like to be kind of like Singapore in a few years, but in Europe,” she says.

It is an ambitious comparison, and not an accidental one. Singapore, in this context, is shorthand for something very specific: a state that moves quickly, governs efficiently, and prioritizes economic dynamism over bureaucratic inertia. For Liberland, it represents a model that feels largely absent across much of the European landscape.

Liberland positions itself in that gap, an attempt to reimagine what a European state could look like if it were built from scratch, without the weight of legacy systems. It is, at least in theory, a space where governance can be tested rather than inherited.

Whether that idea can translate into something durable remains uncertain. There is the physical territory - remote, partially accessible, still shaped by basic constraints like transport, weather, and terrain. Then there is the network: a dispersed, global community of supporters, investors, and observers, many of whom may never set foot there but remain invested in its trajectory. And above all, there is the idea itself: a proposition that governance, like technology, can be redesigned.

While we are telling this story, the Danube continues to pass by without pause, indifferent to the narratives forming along its banks. For now, Liberland exists somewhere in between - part concept, part experiment, not fully a state, but no longer just an abstract idea either.

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