As Josipa Ban/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Split Tech City, the first association of the Split technology community, has entered into an agreement with the Slovenian VC fund Silicon Gardens. The fund will invest between 50 thousand and 1 million euros in Croatian startups, providing a spring in the step of many.
It goes without saying how important this agreement is for the Croatian and more specifically the Dalmatian technology scene. Toni Trivkovic, the founder and president of Split Tech City, explained that Luka Abrus, one of the founders of the Five agency, initially connected them with the Slovenian Silicon Gardens.
A fund with a different mission
“After the first contact was initially made, we soon realised that we share many values. We also like the fact that Silicon Gardens is about smart capital, i.e. capital with which the startup also receives mentoring,” Trivkovic points out. The agreement, as he explained, is that Split Tech City proposes interesting Croatian startups to the Slovenian VC fund, that is, it connects them.
“After that, the Slovenian VC fund will evaluate a startup, and if someone doesn’t pass, they’ll receive guidelines on what needs to be done in order to make it more attractive to investors. Regardless of the outcome, the startup makes the best of the situation,” said Trivkovic, adding that this cooperation will significantly improve the Split technology scene, where there weren’t very many opportunities to get bigger investments in the recent past.
Cooperation with Silicon Gardens will change that. And we’re talking about a different fund that was designed by the founders of startups with successful exits, that is, that were sold out of the ownership of the companies they founded. Their slogan is ”founders for founders”, and in addition to capital, they offer mentoring and contacts to startups, which gives the investment added value, i.e. smart money.
The first Silicon Gardens fund, SGF I, was founded back in 2014 by 20 private investors, who invested 300,000 euros in it. The value of the second fund, SGF II, which has existed since the pre-crisis year of 2019, stands at a whopping six million euros, and they’re also about to establish a new, third fund, which will have about 30 million euros of capital in total.
That third fund, according to Kristian Asani, the head of community and programmes at Silicon Gardens, should be ready for investment this June. With its launch, as he pointed out, they’re turning to larger investments across the entire region, which includes Split. “The ecosystem for Croatian startups is still in its development phase, and I’m sure that there will be good opportunities for investment,” Asani points out.
Split as a tech Mecca
Trivkovic says that he hopes for the first investments in 2023, but he doesn’t want to speculate when it comes to how many there will be in the end. Everything will depend on the quality of ideas and projects of Split’s local startups, he says. In addition to that, he doesn’t want to reveal yet whether they already have potential candidates to propose to the fund.
Split Tech City, a community that has existed since 2015, has successfully gathered together 85 companies. The founder of this technological community added that, in addition to investments, they have also agreed on other collaborations with Silicon Gardens, such as workshops for Croatian startups. “It will be a dynamic collaboration and we’ll have at least two activities on an annual basis,” announced Trivkovic.
With this cooperation, he also hopes to attract young technology companies from all over the Republic of Croatia, as well as the wider region, to Split. And while fifteen years ago the situation in the second largest Croatian city was such that young people moved away and even abroad due to a lack of opportunities, with the change in work trends, i.e. the possibility of working remotely, this is also changing. Split is thus becoming an increasingly common choice for a place to live. Split Tech City has heavily contributed to this turnaround.
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