Belgrade is one of Europe’s oldest cities with settlements existing around the city for more than 7,000 years. Today, the Belgrade and Novi Sad region is the economic hub of Serbia.
According to a research done by Startup Genome, Serbian Startup Ecosystem is in the Activation phase, meaning there is limited startup experience and low startup output of around 200-400 startups located in Belgrade and Novi Sad, two cities that have been recognized as one ecosystem.
The biggest problem Serbian startups face is early stage financing, which is quite limited and rather absent from the ecosystem.
Due to limited potential in the domestic market, majority of Serbian startups is oriented towards foreign markets, particularly US and Europe.
However, in their quest to reach these markets, Serbian startups need to receive support.
For that purpose, relying on a European Commission paper “How to assist European SMEs in their internationalization process – A Guidebook for the European Business Support Organizations” GT4SME project consortium created a document concerning the internationalization process. Namely, this process contains seven phases, all of which address different challenges startups face over time.
The aforementioned document starts with a detailed questionnaire which aims to assess the international potential of a particular startup. The remaining chapters then deal with Market Analysis and Selection of a target market, Strategy & Finance, Market Entry Modes and similar topics.
Each phase can be further adapted and customized to the needs of a specific startup.
Focus for this document will be on digital startups as opposed to traditional companies.