2. Talent
Mentors University
Enterprenuers
Capital Corporations
Government Support
& NGO Services
Startup Ecosystem
Main principle – Inclusiveness
3. Key findings:
• Out of sync with a long term view
• Runs in a short cycles (less than four years)
• After an election few months for new administration to gears
up
• And than launches brand new initiatives.
• Startup communities can’t wait they are changing every day
• Government operates as top down hierarchy
• Startup communities operate as bottom up network
Government
Good news: Government is well intentioned!
4. "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill
• Lack of entrepreneurial culture
37% (by Infostud) - 50% (by Blic.rs) of young people
would like to work in state owned company
Top reason - safe salary.
• Fear of failure
• 27 per cent of Serbian students were planning to leave the
country permanently after graduating (Student Union of
Serbia)
• Despite everything we have stars like: Nordeus,
Limundo, Telescin, Prelovac Media…
Entrepreneur
State of mind or something more?
5. Summer of 2012
EUR 25K ? This must
be a joke! Our
minimum is 500K
Source: Kauffman Sketchbook
Startup Discovery - Espionage
Lessons learnt – startup communities must have regular activities
that engage the entire entrepreneurial stack.
Make sure all the founders and founding teams are visible and
connected to each other.
6. May I apply?
Not him again!
Emphasis is on learning and discovery
There is no fact inside the government, so get outside and learn
Startup discovery Program Validation
Startup creation Building the Ecosystem
7. Preparing startups:
• Mentorship driven education
• Incubators
Networking
Ready for growth and VC • Connecting investors and startups
Acceleration in
Seed investment
technology parks
Startup Serbia Cycle (Desired)
8. • Up to a million EUR financial support through three main components:
• Financial incentives for Startups & Angel Investors
Equity free capital
Up to 50% of total investment - not exceeding EUR 25 000
• Financial support for programs of networking and education
• Financial support for incubators and technology parks
• Legal Framework – set of laws are underway: e-Money, e-invoicing, Complete communication
of business entities and citizens with Tax administration will be paper free by mid-2014
• Tax Breaks for R&D by 20%
• Special procedure for payment of health and unemployment insurance
tax burden (taxes + contributions) against net earnings would be reduced by 35.5% (from 67%
to 43%).
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT: siepa.gov.rs
Serbian Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SIEPA)
MVP for 2013
9. CeBIT Hanover 2013 – Serbian corner
Launch
7th March 2013. - The Serbian government adopted the strategy
8th May 2013. – Startup Serbia Public call
10. Dejan Restak
Advisor - Ministry of Finance and Economy
t: @dejanrestak
e: dejan.restak@mfp.gov.rs
w: www.mfp.gov.rs
Editor's Notes
So where is the government on this picture? Most probably in a deep mud, but in another reality it should be in the role of feeder. This is not the first government program to support entrepreneurs, I’m sure it wouldn’t be the last one too, but this one is the best ever I can guarantee you that ;)
First task for me was to understand the government role in startup entrepreneurship
It is not easy task for government to understand its role in startup entrepreneurship. Startups are too small to be visible by government referent system. Governments work with big numbers in short time. It’s hard to get quick wins with startups. (Metrics, jobs created, investment attracted, export, profit…)For the beginning it was necessary to differentiate small businesses (like bakery) from high growth tech startup business, and accordingly to create different measures for each group.(What we found out was amazing discovery. We have almost all necessary components for successful startup ecosystem. We just need to scale and thrive. We have a very good seed and several very good camps here. Now we even have Seedcamp which is more than we pray for.)
Key sentence here is, What do you need? What can we do to make it easier for you? Grow startups from few to many
We are putting the public pressure on government by this incentive, because we are spending taxpayers money to help some clever guys from neighborhood which no one understand. Government will take care about the environment in which they invest money….
