As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 21st of November, 2019, the largest VC fund investing in startups in the EU has announced that Croatia is the 20th largest in continental Europe in terms of investment and that its number of developers is growing. Investments in Croatian startups this year will reach a record 120 million US dollars according to Atomico, which is otherwise Europe’s largest startup fund.
In an annual review of “The State of European Tech 2019”, Atomico states that Croatia is twentieth in Europe in terms of received investments in startups.
This is the best description of the Croatian startup scene since the 2016 report, when Atomico put Croatia on the startup map of Europe for the very first time, and when it announced that 100 million US dollars had been invested in startups here between 2012-2016. Atomic’s announcement for 2019 is even better when one considers that this year is not the largest by number of major startup investments.
Back in 2015, there were five in Croatia. A year later, there were ten, then eight, and then ten again last year. Atomico also released some information about business angels in Croatia for the first time. It states that in 92 percent of cases, they are men. On the other hand, it is interesting that in the neighbouring countries of Bulgaria and Macedonia as many as 24 percent of business angels are women. The majority of business angel women are in Switzerland, making up 27 percent of the total business angels in that country. In neighbouring Slovenia, that figure stands at 13 percent.
According to the largest startup fund in Europe, there are 35,300 developers in Croatia, making it the 28th country on the old continent. Needless to say, this is a very poor position indeed. However, Atomico has recognised that the number of developers is increasing, and there were 29,700 of them last year alone.
Infobip is expected to reach the status of a company worth more than 1 billion US dollars during the first half of 2020, finally placing Croatia on the list of countries with such companies operating within it.
In Europe, unicorn startups exist in as many as 20 countries. Atomico concludes that the largest communities of Croatian startups are located in Zagreb, Split and Rijeka.
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