Serbian tech is no longer “emerging.” It’s here – scaling, solving, and shipping across borders.

From bootstrapped SaaS tools built in Novi Sad to AI infrastructure startups scaling out of Zurich, these founders aren’t chasing exits. They’re building for impact, ownership, and global relevance.

Some of the companies on this list are just getting started. Others have already crossed the $10M, $50M, or even $100M mark. World players have acquired a few. Together, these companies represent an ecosystem now worth over $1 billion.

What unites them isn’t geography. It’s ambition. It’s execution.

So if you’re a founder reading this – keep building.
If you’re an investor – start paying closer attention.
And if you’re not on this list yet – maybe you’re just one version away.

The Startups Defining the New Wave

Tenderly

Tenderly is a blockchain development platform that helps Web3 developers develop, test, and monitor decentralized applications (smart contracts) with an integrated dashboard and API. It focuses on smart contract debugging, simulation, and monitoring to simplify building on Ethereum. The company is frequently recognized as one of Europe’s top blockchain developer tooling startups, credited with setting a high standard for Web3 developer experience.

Location & Founding: Belgrade, Serbia – founded in 2018 by Andrej Benčić, Bogdan Habić, Miljan Tekić, and Nebojša Urošević.

Funding: Tenderly has raised approximately $58.6 million in venture funding across three rounds. This includes a $3.3M seed in 2021 (Point Nine Capital led), a $15.3M Series A in 2021 (Accel led), and a $40M Series B in 2022 (led by Spark Capital). Additional investors across these rounds include notable angel investors like Guillermo Rauch (CEO of Vercel), Jinglan Wang (CEO of Optimism), Eric Ries, Tihomir Bajić (Long-Term Stock Exchange).

Users: The platform is used by “tens of thousands” of developers, including teams behind major Ethereum projects like Uniswap, Yearn, Circle, Chainlink, and more. Tenderly says it works with the majority of the top 100 Ethereum apps.

Growth: They demonstrated dramatic growth in both usage and revenue. As of the Series B announcement in 2022, the company reported 500% YOY revenue growth and a 420% YoY increase in its number of users.

🔑 Key Features

• Tenderly Virtual Machine (VM) & Simulation
• Smart Contract Debugger
• Real-Time Monitoring & Alerting
• Web3 Gateway (Node Infrastructure)
• API and SDK for Integration

The platform supports multiple networks, including Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Optimism, and Arbitrum, processing over 25M simulations daily.

SkyLead

Skylead is a cloud-based sales engagement platform that automates multi-channel outreach to accelerate B2B lead generation. It combines LinkedIn messaging and cold-email campaigns into “smart sequences” with conditional (if/else) logic. Skylead’s target users are sales, marketing, and recruiting teams (including agencies) in the B2B sector. The company brands itself as “your smart LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software”, emphasizing lead capture and nurturing through automated, personalized outreach.

Location & Founding: Belgrade, Serbia – founded in November 2019 by Jovan Jovanović, Nikola Ćurčić, Jovan Milovanović, and Kristian Živković.

Funding: Bootstrapped – no outside funding to date.

Users: The platform serves around 10.000 users across 93 countries and provides support in 7 languages. This global reach has driven strong business adoption, with over 15.000 companies using Skylead for lead generation. Notable clients include Minut, NewPoort, and Toplevel Performance, demonstrating the platform’s versatility across different business sizes and industries.

Growth: Skylead has achieved growth since early 2021, with its active user base more than doubling, showing a 127% increase. The founding team expanded rapidly, growing fivefold between 2020 and 2021. By 2021, the co-founders reached a crucial milestone: profitability. The company has since reported consistent growth in both revenue and customer acquisition. This organic growth demonstrates their strong product-market fit and sustainable business model.

🔑 Key Features

• Smart Sequences: 
• LinkedIn Automation
• Email Outreach
• Personalization
• Deliverability Tools
• Global Support

ActiveCollab

ActiveCollab is a project management and collaboration platform tailored for service-oriented businesses, including creative agencies, consultancies, and marketing teams. It offers an all-in-one workspace that integrates task management, time tracking, invoicing, and client collaboration, aiming to streamline workflows and enhance productivity. 

Location & Founding: Founded in 2007 by Goran Radulović and Ilija Studen, ActiveCollab originated in Novi Sad, Serbia. 

Funding: ActiveCollab is a privately held, bootstrapped company without external funding. 

Users: Over the years, ActiveCollab has been adopted by more than 200.000 people worldwide, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Notable clients include NASA, Apple, Samsung, Nike, IKEA, Adobe, Cisco, BBC, Universal, as well as institutions such as Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Princeton University. The platform’s versatility has made it popular among various industries, including IT services, advertising, and education. 

Growth: ActiveCollab has demonstrated steady growth since its inception. The company has maintained profitability while expanding its user base globally. According to some estimates, ActiveCollab generates approximately $5 million in annual revenue, with around 50 employees contributing to its ongoing development and customer support. 

🔑 Key Features

• Project and Task Management
• Time Tracking and Invoicing
• Client Collaboration
• Reporting and Analytics
• Customization and Integration

AuthoredUp

AuthoredUp is a browser extension and SaaS platform that helps users create, format, and optimize LinkedIn content more easily and precisely. Built for professionals who rely on LinkedIn to share insights and grow their personal brand, such as consultants, marketers, recruiters, and creators, AuthoredUp provides a richer content creation experience than LinkedIn’s native tools. Its interface allows users to preview exactly how a post will appear, use rich formatting (like bold, bullet points, and emojis), track engagement metrics, and save high-performing posts for repurposing, all without ever leaving their browser.

Location & Founding: Founded in 2022 by Ivana Todorović and Ivan Pantić, and is officially headquartered in London, England, though it retains strong roots in Serbia, where both founders are based. 

Funding: AuthoredUp is a bootstrapped startup, built without external investment or accelerator participation. The entire product development and early growth were self-funded by the founders. This lean approach enabled the team to stay close to users, respond quickly to product feedback, and prioritize long-term sustainability over short-term scale. 

Users: Since its launch, AuthoredUp has gained over 30.000 users in less than 2 years, spanning solo creators, startup teams, and professionals across various industries. The tool is especially popular among frequent LinkedIn users, such as agency owners, coaches, and thought leaders, who rely on the platform for visibility and lead generation. As of 2024, more than 3.000 users pay for AuthoredUp’s subscription plans, representing a conversion rate of approximately 10% of its free user base to paid users. This impressive early traction was achieved completely organically.

Growth: In just 13 months post-launch, it amassed 30.000 users with $0 spent on marketing. By 2023, AuthoredUp reached around $20.000 MRR purely from word-of-mouth, demonstrating a clear demand among power users. The team remains a small but profitable SaaS, since the expectation is that they are now above $1M in ARR.

🔑 Key Features

• Rich text editor (bold, italics, bullets, numbered lists)
• Post preview (desktop and mobile)
• Draft management system
• Content calendar
• Post analytics dashboard
• Hook and CTA template library (350+ templates)
• Snippet library for reusable content blocks
• Saved posts management
• Readability scoring tool
• Chrome extension with secure LinkedIn integration

OTA Sync

OTA Sync is a property management system (PMS) and channel manager platform for hotels and short-term rentals. It streamlines hotel operations by combining multiple functions, including a room reservations calendar, guest management, an online booking engine for the hotel’s website, and channel management (syncing listings across OTAs like Booking.com, Airbnb, and Expedia.com). Additionally, OTA Sync features a guest communication app and tools for automating hospitality workflows. It’s essentially an all-in-one cloud software for independent hotels to manage bookings and increase online sales.

Location & Founding: Established in 2021, the company is legally headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, but its founding team and core operations are in Serbia. It was founded by Đorđe Jevtić and Ilija Milović.

Funding: OTA Sync has raised approximately €1.3 million in seed funding. In October 2023, it closed an extended seed round of €1.1 million led by Presto Ventures, with participation from Startup Wise Guys, TS Ventures, DOJO Group, and others. This followed an earlier €200.000 from accelerators, including Katapult Accelerator and Startup Wise Guys in 2021. Additionally, the company received a €300.000 grant from the World Bank’s acceleration program. 

Users: As of late 2023, over 2.000 properties across 17 countries utilize OTA Sync’s platform. Its customer base primarily consists of small to mid-sized hotels, guesthouses, and rental apartments, with a significant presence in the Balkans and East Mediterranean regions. The company is expanding into other markets, and clients have praised the software’s affordability and effectiveness in improving occupancy by efficiently managing all booking channels from a single system.

Growth: The company has shown strong regional traction – it became a leader in hotel tech in the Western Balkans within two years. The COVID-19 pandemic initially slowed adoption in 2020, but as travel rebounded, OTA Sync benefited from post-pandemic digitization in hospitality. Its user count doubled between 2022 and 2023. 

🔑 Key Features

• Cloud Property Management System
• Booking Engine 
• Channel Manager
• Guest Experience app 

Collabwriting

Collabwriting is a collaborative online research platform that makes it easier for teams and individuals to save, organize, and share information across the web. At its core is a browser extension (Chrome) that lets users highlight and save snippets of web content, add notes, and build a structured knowledge base of findings from various websites. The platform aims to turn web research, which is often scattered across bookmarks and documents, into a collaborative, traceable workflow.

Location & Founding: Founded in 2021 in Belgrade, Serbia, by Sandra Idjoski and Ivan Ralić. The company is based in Serbia.

Funding: In April 2024, CollabWriting secured a €1.1 M seed round In April 2024 led by SMOK Ventures, with participation from Underline Ventures, Credo Ventures, Fiedler Capital, Fortech Investments, Startup Wise Guys, V7 Capital, and angel investor Xenia Muntean. Additionally, the company received a €300.000 grant from the Katapult Accelerator, supported by the World Bank. 

Users: They have a growing community of researchers, students, and the product team, and as of early 2024, they had a few thousand active users. The team indicated that many early users were university students and content writers collaborating on literature reviews and startup teams conducting market research.

Growth: Since its beta launch in 2022, Collabwriting has experienced steady growth, particularly within academic and professional communities, but remains an early-stage startup. It launched major updates between 2022 and 2024, like “Collabwriting 2.0” and “Collabwriting for Teams” in April 2024, and the platform’s visibility increased following its participation in Product Hunt.

🔑 Key Features

• Highlighting & Annotation
• Organization
• Collaboration
• AI Research Copilot
• Integration
• Export Options

MotionOps

MotionOps is an all-in-one SaaS platform for field service and construction companies, combining project management, invoicing, HR/payroll, and customer communications in one interface. They built the platform on real-world experience in service businesses, aiming to eliminate the inefficiencies of using multiple disconnected apps for scheduling, proposals, invoicing, and payroll. The company emphasizes a unified “field operations” ecosystem that centralizes planning, resource allocation, and client interactions. 

Location & Founding: Trevor Maddux and Nikola Cvetković co-founded MotionOps in the summer of 2021. The company maintains a Utah-based team and a Serbia-based development team.

Funding: In June 2023, they raised approximately $175.000 in an early pre-seed round, and in August 2023, they announced a $1.2 million pre-seed round led by Alpine 100 (Utah). The August 2023 round (reported by TechBuzz News) was led by Alpine 100 and included participation from Katapult Accelerator and other early investors. No additional funding rounds have been reported in 2025.

Users: MotionOps is currently “focusing on gathering feedback and market research” with these pilot customers, with the product aimed at small-to-midsize field-service contractors; marketing materials specifically name industries like plumbing, HVAC, solar installation, and general contracting. Reviews cited by the company are reported as “overwhelmingly positive” from its user base.

Growth: They remain in an early go-to-market stage. As of late 2023, the team consisted of around 9 employees, and the company was actively onboarding pilot users while continuing to ship new features and refine the product for broader market adoption. While revenue has not yet been disclosed, the secured funding and early customer interest suggest solid early traction.

🔑 Key Features

• CRM & job scheduling
• Proposal and bid creation
• Invoicing and payments
• Employee time tracking & payroll
• Mobile accessibility for field teams
• Automated workflows to reduce manual entry
• Real-time dashboards for visibility into job status and team utilization

Nextesy

Nextesy is an AI-driven enterprise software startup developing an “enterprise operating system (eOS)” designed to automate business processes. The platform integrates accounting, invoicing, and workflow automation, leveraging AI to streamline financial and administrative tasks. It aims to eliminate repetitive manual work, such as invoice processing and bank reconciliation, thereby improving efficiency by over 30%. The solution combines financial expertise with AI to enhance business process management.

Location & Founded: Headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, Nextesy AG was founded in 2023 by entrepreneurs with Balkan roots: Aleks Grujić, Dario Fazlić, Milan Kuzmanović, Stefan Mitrović, and Milos Calija. The company is affiliated with academic AI institutes, including the ETH Zurich AI Center and the LMU Munich AI Institute.

Funding: In early 2025, Nextesy secured a €3.6 million pre-seed funding round led by Fifth Quarter Ventures, along with participation from business angel investors. This funding is allocated for product development and scaling operations.

Users: Nextesy targets small and mid-sized businesses (SMEs) and accounting firms seeking to automate bookkeeping and financial workflows. While specific customers have not been publicly disclosed, the platform is designed to serve SMEs aiming to streamline operations and enhance productivity.

Growth: As a startup founded in 2023, Nextesy’s growth is currently measured by team expansion and product development milestones. The company is actively building an AI-driven enterprise operating system and early adopters have already experienced over 30% efficiency gains. Team size ranging from 11 to 50 employees. Affiliations with institutions like ETH Zurich suggest strong research and development capabilities.

🔑 Key Features

• AI-driven automation for financial processes
• Integrated platform for accounting, invoicing, and workflow management
• Automated invoice capture and expense management
• Payroll integration and bank reconciliation
• Reporting dashboards and unified data visualization
• Collaboration tools for accountants and business owners
• Cloud-based solution tailored for SMEs and accounting firms

Blinking

Blinking is a digital identity and user onboarding platform based in Serbia, designed for enterprises that need secure, GDPR-compliant customer authentication and data management. It combines biometric verification, eKYC, and blockchain-backed consent management to help businesses onboard users remotely and securely, while giving individuals control over their personal data. Blinking enables banks, telecoms, and fintechs to streamline KYC processes, verify identity in real time, and build trust with customers via secure data exchange.

Location & Founding: Founded in 2017 in Belgrade, Serbia, by a group of university researchers and engineers with expertise in biometrics and blockchain, including Miloš Milovanović. The company is headquartered in Belgrade and operates primarily in the European market.

Funding: Blinking has raised an estimated €2.3–2.5 million in total funding. Its last publicly reported funding came around 2019–2020, with total capital raised including early investments from Katapult Accelerator, DIFC Innovation Hub (Dubai), AI Venture Labs, Serbia Innovation Fund, and various regional angel investors. 

Users: Blinking serves enterprise clients, primarily in the banking, fintech, and telecom sectors. As of recent estimates, its platform has been deployed across 35+ enterprise customers in Europe and the Middle East. The company has also supported tens of thousands of end-users with identity verification, though precise active user counts are not disclosed. 

Growth: While Blinking hasn’t pursued aggressive VC expansion, it has demonstrated steady and sustainable growth. Revenue reportedly grew from ~$3.0M in 2020 to ~$5.4M in 2024, with a corresponding increase in clients and partnerships. Its growth is primarily attributed to enterprise contracts and consistent performance across regulated industries that demand strong compliance.

🔑 Key Features

• Biometric authentication (face/fingerprint with liveness detection)
• OCR document scanning and ID verification
• Digital onboarding workflows (e.g. eKYC)
• Private blockchain-based consent management
• User-controlled identity vaults
• Real-time audit trails and revocation controls
• Integration options with core banking, CRM, and telecom systems.

Hunch

Hunch is a creative performance platform that enables brands and agencies to automate and scale paid social campaigns through AI-powered creative production and media buying. Designed for marketers working across platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Snapchat, and Google, Hunch helps teams deliver personalized, localized, and dynamic ads at scale, without sacrificing brand consistency or operational efficiency.

Location & Founding: Founded in 2017 by Siniša Raković, Nikola Milenković, and Igor Simović, Hunch operates with offices in Belgrade, Serbia, and Los Angeles, USA. The company has grown into a global player in the social commerce marketing space, having launched over a billion automated creatives for hundreds of brands.

Funding: Hunch has raised a total of $4.3 million in funding, with its most recent round closing in May 2022. Investors include Catalyst Romania and Euroventures.

Users: Hunch serves a diverse range of clients across industries such as e-commerce, travel, retail, and automotive. Notable clients include Qatar Airways, Telenor, Carrefour, Beliani, and Ruokaboksi. The platform is particularly popular among mid-market brands and agencies seeking to efficiently scale their paid social efforts.

Growth: As of 2025, Hunch employs between 51-200 people and reports annual revenue in the range of $10 million to $50 million. The company has achieved significant traction by focusing on automation, creative testing, and campaign localization, leading to measurable improvements in return on ad spend (ROAS) and reductions in CAC for its clients.

🔑 Key Features

• Creative Studio
• Hunch Autopilot
• Localization: 
• Catalog Product Video
• Performance Insights

Trickest

Trickest is built for modern cybersecurity professionals, its platform automates the entire penetration testing workflow — from reconnaissance to reporting – using a visual drag-and-drop builder backed by hundreds of open-source tools. What once took hours of manual scripting can now be orchestrated in minutes, making Trickest a centralized hub for scalable, repeatable ethical hacking.

Location & Founded: Founded in 2020 in Belgrade, Serbia, by security experts Nenad Zarić and Mihailo Tomić. The company operates entirely from Serbia with its U.S. parent entity.

Funding: The company raised €1.4M in a 2021 seed round led by Credo Ventures and Earlybird Digital East Fund, with participation from UiPath’s CEO and CTO. In 2023, Trickest secured additional capital from Underline Ventures and Vlad Ionescu, bringing total funding to around €3 million. 

Users: Trickest is used by security researchers, red teams, MSSPs, and enterprise infosec teams. Its Community Edition, launched in late 2023, opened access to academics and solo practitioners, while enterprise versions power more complex use cases. Named customers include Dialog Axiata, and the platform is also integrated into Hack The Box’s cybersecurity training environment.

Growth: From a niche tool in beta to a publicly launched platform, Trickest has grown steadily through product maturity, strategic partnerships, and recognition within the security community. Its lean team in Belgrade continues to build and release advanced tooling, including the 2025 launch of CLI 2.0. The company has been recognized in developer-focused startup lists and is gaining traction as automation becomes essential in security ops.

🔑 Key Features

• Visual workflow builder (drag-and-drop + scripting)
• 300+ integrated open-source tools
• 80+ pre-built offensive security workflows
• Full coverage: discovery, scanning, exploitation, reporting
• Scalable cloud infrastructure with cost control
• Community and enterprise editions are available
• CLI support for production-ready automation

B2Bee

B2Bee is an emerging B2B SaaS startup specializing in AI-driven sales and procurement automation for wholesalers. Founded in 2020 in Belgrade, Serbia, the company has quickly expanded across Europe. It now serves 100+ wholesale clients in 7 countries, with over 40,000 end-user accounts on its platform. Recognized for its innovation,  including a 3rd place award at GITEX Asia 2025 – B2Bee continues to grow rapidly.

Location and founding: It was founded in 2020 by a Serbian team: Dejan Jeremić, Denis Radovanović, and Luka Radovanović, with operations in seven EU countries, but its core development and management are Serbian. 

Funding: B2Bee has secured multiple funding rounds. Early support came from a Serbian Innovation Fund grant (~€78k) and the Katapult accelerator. The startup raised a seed investment of about €1.1 million in March 2024, led by Fil Rouge Capital, and most recently announced a Series A round in January 2025. (Total funding to date is not publicly disclosed.)

Users: Over a remarkably short period, B2Bee has scaled its platform to serve more than 100 wholesale distributor clients across seven European countries, demonstrating strong market traction. This rapid client growth is matched by impressive user uptake – today, over 40,000 individual user accounts, including sales reps, merchandisers, procurement teams, and end customers, are actively using B2Bee’s software to streamline ordering and distribution workflows.

Growth: This growth in both enterprise customers and end users underscores B2Bee’s early product-market fit. The company’s recent announcement of pre-Series A activities and expansion plans into Asia, DACH, and the U.S. indicates a strategic pivot toward broader global markets. It’s a signal that B2Bee isn’t just securing accounts – it’s building real scale across multiple international regions.

🔑 Key Features

• B2B eCommerce Portal 
• AI Order Automation
• Field Sales & Merchandising Apps
• Warehouse Management Integration
• Omnichannel Capability 

LeanPay

Leanpay is a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) and point-of-sale financing platform focused on higher-value transactions. Unlike standard BNPL providers, which target small purchases, Leanpay enables consumers to split larger payments into monthly instalments directly at checkout, online, or in-store. Licensed as a credit institution, Leanpay offers fully digital financing with real-time credit checks and flexible repayment options. Its risk analysis system is designed to prevent over-indebtedness, ensuring responsible lending.

Founded: LeanPay was co-founded by Janko Medja, Tilen Zugwižt, and Miša Živić. The company started in Slovenia, but initial development occurred at the Science Technology Park Belgrade in its early days (2016–2017). 

Funding: Leanpay has raised several funding rounds, the latest being €10 million Series B in 2024 led by BlackPeak Capital and Catalyst Romania Fund II. In late 2021, Leanpay raised about €2.5 million (seed/Series A) to expand into new markets, with additional investment of €1 million for expanding its services to the Romanian market starting from April 2023.

Growth: Along the way, Leanpay has earned the trust of over 1.500 merchants, from electronics retailers to furniture giants, enabling them to offer seamless financing to more than 120,000 customers. With over €200 million in loans issued, the platform isn’t just facilitating transactions – it’s helping people access what they need, on fair terms, when they need it. In 2023 alone, Leanpay’s revenue grew by 2.5x, and since its Series A, that growth has reached 4x.

🔑 Key Features

• Instant Credit Assessment
• Flexible Instalment Plans
• Merchant Integration
• Transparent Terms
• Merchant Dashboard
• Customer Portal
• Omnichannel Capability

Videobolt

Videobolt is a browser-based video creation platform that allows users to produce high-quality videos from templates – no editing experience required. With a growing library of more than 15.000 customizable templates, the platform helps content creators, marketers, and businesses quickly generate branded visuals for intros, social media, ads, and more. Users simply add their text, logo, or media, and Videobolt handles the rendering. It’s built for speed and simplicity, removing the need for timeline editing and replacing it with intuitive forms and sliders.

Founded: 2016 in Belgrade, Serbia. The company was co-founded by Momčilo Stojković, Uglješa Stojanović, and Igor Halilović.

Funding: Videobolt has raised approximately €500.000 to €562.000 in seed funding. Initial investment came via the ABC Accelerator, followed by a seed round led by South Central Ventures in 2018. The company also received support from Google for Startups, though not as equity investment. Videobolt remains lean, growing organically without raising a Series A.

Users: Videobolt has a global user base spanning 174 countries, with over 7 million videos created as of 2020. Its users include YouTubers, DJs, freelancers, and businesses looking for quick, high-quality content. The platform runs on a freemium and subscription-based model, with tens of thousands of registered users. Exact active user figures are not publicly disclosed.

Growth: Videobolt gained visibility after being named a top 10 company in the CEE Scaleup Challenge in 2020. Growth has mainly been organic, driven by SEO and word of mouth among creators. In recent years, the platform introduced new integrations and data-driven video creation features, enabling users to generate video variations from data inputs like CSV files. These additions align with increasing demand for automated, scalable video production.

🔑 Key Features

• 15.000+ customizable motion graphics templates
• Browser-based video editor with no timeline editing
• Template marketplace for third-party designers
• Integrations with royalty-free media platforms (Pexels, Pixabay, Epidemic Sound, etc.)
• Data-driven video generation via CSV (personalized video automation)
• Supports intros, logo animations, music visualizers, ads, and slideshows

Reputeo

Reputeo is an AI-driven data intelligence platform that specializes in real-time data collection, analytics, and reputation management to help businesses protect intellectual property and brand image. The platform combines high-performance computing (HPC) with AI-based analytics to transform vast amounts of online data into actionable insights. Reputeo’s solutions support tasks such as due diligence, Know-Your-Customer (KYC) checks, brand reputation monitoring, and risk assessment. Its website notes that the platform “automates the gathering of data from diverse digital sources” and provides “AI-driven analytics, real-time tracking, and advanced data structuring” to serve modern enterprises.

Location and Founding: Based in Belgrade, Serbia, co‑founded by Ivan Kadić and Aleksa Vučković.

Funding: In 2024, Reputeo raised its first venture funding: an early-stage round of roughly €750K. This seed/Series A round was led by TS Ventures Fund (Telekom Srbija’s corporate VC), with support from Serbia’s Katapult Accelerator program. These funds are intended to expand Reputeo’s “knowledge-as-a-service” platform for brand and IP monitoring. No further funding rounds have been publicly reported as of 2025.

Users: Reputeo serves enterprise clients in brand protection and legal/IP compliance. Its customers include large consumer brands, financial institutions, and intellectual-property law firms. Exact user or customer counts have not been publicly disclosed.

Growth: Reputeo operates with a lean, agile team of under 20 people and, since launching the company, has grown steadily by targeting high-stakes use cases in legal, financial, and IP-intensive industries. Rather than pursuing mass adoption, Reputeo has focused on enterprise clients that require real-time data intelligence at scale.

🔑 Key Features

• Real-Time Data Aggregation
• AI-Driven Analytics
• Brand & Reputation Monitoring
• Compliance & Risk Tools
• Multilingual and Localized Search
• Conversational Search Interface

Dynamic Mockups

Dynamic Mockups is a SaaS platform that automates mockup generation for print-on-demand merchants and ecommerce sellers, creating realistic product images at scale without manual design work. Its core value is delivering real-life quality product visualizations “on autopilot” through API and integrations. It eliminates the need for photoshoots while efficiently handling multiple design and color variants. They become the go-to mockup solution that every POD platform integrates with, rather than each platform trying to build its own mockup tools. Essentially, they are the behind-the-scenes technology that makes product mockups seamless everywhere – so good mockups become automatic instead of a headache for sellers. 

Location and Founded: Dynamic operates primarily from Belgrade, where its development team is based and where it actively participates in the local tech ecosystem. Founded in 2023 by Luka Filipović and Miloš Medić.

Funding: Secured an EU-backed Innovation Fund grant with a project valued at €163.020. Dynamic Mockups has not publicly announced any seed or venture funding rounds, and its growth so far has been achieved without VC investment. The company’s reliance on revenue indicates a focus on sustainable growth over aggressive fundraising.

Users: They target all ecommerce sellers who have learned that professional-looking product images are essential for online sales. The company reports it is trusted by over 13.000+ users (POD platforms, sellers, and brands).

Growth: In 2024, Dynamic Mockups experienced rapid traction, with a ~3,035% increase in monthly signups over 10 months, scaling from just 67 to over 2,100. This growth, paired with a consistently high visitor-to-trial conversion rate (~23% in late 2024), highlights strong product-market fit and rising demand for automated mockup solutions. 

🔑 Key Features

• Bulk Mockup Generation API
• AI-Powered Mockups
• Custom Photoshop Template
• Embeddable Mockup Editor (Product Configurator)
• E-commerce and Workflow Integrations
• Template Library and Variants

HeartCount

HeartCount is an employee engagement and digital employee experience platform designed to help companies measure and improve workplace satisfaction in real time. It utilizes weekly pulse surveys to gather employee feedback, enabling managers to proactively address issues like burnout, disengagement, or intent to quit.

Location and Founding: Founded in 2019 in Serbia by Saša Popović (CEO of Vega IT), Alexander Kjerulf (a Danish expert on workplace happiness), and Tijana Anđelić. The company later established its headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, and maintains a presence in Serbia (development) and Charlotte, NC, USA (business development)

Funding: The company has been primarily funded internally by Vega IT and its founders.

Users: HeartCount is used by mid-sized companies across industries like IT, fintech, and manufacturing, mostly teams between 50 and 500 people, and it has over 20.000 users worldwide. These companies want quick, regular insights into how their employees feel, without waiting for annual surveys. One example is Ocean Investments, a VC firm that uses the platform to align culture across its teams. 

Growth: HeartCount operates with a lean team of 11–50 people, focusing on steady growth and product improvement. Post-COVID, demand for tools that track employee well-being increased, prompting HeartCount to evolve its platform. In 2021, HeartCount formed a non-equity partnership with US-based HR consultancy Purpose & Motion to support its expansion into North America.

🔑 Key Features

• Weekly Pulse Surveys
• Real-Time Analytics Dashboard
• Predictive Turnover Analytics
• Anonymous Two-Way Feedback
• Automated Weekly Reports
• Custom Surveys
• ESG & Social Metrics Reporting
• HR System Integration
• Personal Fulfilment Tracking
• Gamification Elements

The Ones That Set the Standard

Fishing Booker

FishingBooker is the world’s largest online marketplace for booking fishing charters and trips. It enables users to discover and compare guided fishing trips worldwide, complete with reviews, pricing, and online booking. In short, it’s like an “Airbnb for fishing charters,” connecting anglers with captains and charter companies.

Location & Founding: Belgrade, Serbia – founded in 2013 by Vukan Simić.

Funding: The company received modest support through Serbian tech initiatives and a small World Bank-backed grant, achieving profitability in its first six months, though it later temporarily shifted from profitability to focus on expansion. The company won the Audience Choice Award at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014. Today, FishingBooker takes pride in having grown through strong product-market fit and customer revenue.

Users: As of 2025, the platform lists over 12.500 charter boats across 110+ countries and more than 2.000 cities on six continents. Having served hundreds of thousands of anglers with consistently high satisfaction (4.8/5 rating), the platform has transformed from a startup that booked 12.000 trips in its first two years to the dominant marketplace in the fishing charter industry worldwide.

Growth: Their growth has been steady and organic from the start, driven by customer satisfaction, referrals, content marketing, and strong SEO. This enabled them to capture 20% of the global fishing charter market by 2016, and even during COVID-19, when cancellations spiked by 180%, the company showed remarkable resilience. Today, the platform dominates the US market with over 8.400 charters listed across coastal states, cementing its position as the global leader in online fishing trip bookings. The company is profitable and continues to grow organically.

Clockify (CAKE)

Clockify is a leading time-tracking and timesheet application tailored for individuals, teams, and organizations to monitor work hours across multiple projects efficiently. It supports features such as manual and automatic time logging, project and task tracking, detailed reporting, billable hour tracking, team scheduling, and timesheet approvals. Designed to support remote and in-office teams alike,

Clockify operates via web and mobile apps with seamless syncing. One of its standout features is the “free forever” plan with unlimited users, which has contributed significantly to its mass adoption, especially among freelancers, startups, and lean teams.

Location & Founding: Clockify was created in Serbia (headquartered in Novi Sad) and launched in 2017 by founder Nenad Milanović. It is part of the CAKE.com productivity suite of tools (alongside Pumble and Plaky).

Funding: No external funding was raised. Clockify is bootstrapped and has not taken venture capital. The company grew organically, initially reinvesting consulting revenue into product development. This independence has allowed it to maintain complete control over its roadmap and profitability from early on.

Users: Clockify has amassed millions of users worldwide. It reached its first 1 million registered users within two years (by 2019), and has since grown to over 5 million users globally.

Growth: Clockify’s growth has been driven by a freemium business model, with powerful core features available at no cost and premium tiers offering advanced functionality (such as invoicing, labor cost tracking, and administrative controls). The company has reached over $25 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) as of 2023, with tens of thousands of paying customers across more than 100 countries.

3Lateral

3Lateral is a technology studio specializing in “digital humans” – ultra-realistic computer-generated human characters for video games and media. The company develops facial motion capture, 3D scanning, and character rigging technology to create lifelike digital avatars and animations. Its innovations enable real-time capture of human facial expressions and emotions for use in interactive applications.

Location & Founding: 3Lateral was founded in Novi Sad, Serbia, in 2008 by Vladimir Mastilović.

Funding: No public funding rounds – 3Lateral grew primarily through project revenue and partnerships in the game industry (bootstrapped). It did not raise venture capital before the exit.

Clients: 3Lateral’s technology has been used in numerous AAA video games and virtual production projects. The studio contributed facial animation and digital character work to titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man, God of War, Devil May Cry 5, Red Dead Redemption, Until Dawn, and the famous real-time “Siren” demo with Epic. In total, 3Lateral is credited on 40+ major game projects, and many top game studios were its clients.

Growth: By 2018, 3Lateral had established itself as a leading industry innovator in facial capture – its tech powered a show-stopping Unreal Engine keynote at GDC 2018. This success led to Epic’s interest. Post-acquisition, 3Lateral’s team remained in Serbia and became Epic’s international hub for digital human R&D. By its acquisition, the team had grown to 60+ employees in Serbia.

Nordeus

Nordeus is a mobile gaming company best known as the creator of Top Eleven, the world’s most popular online football (soccer) management game. Top Eleven allows players to manage their own football club and compete with others, and it has become the top sports management simulation globally. Nordeus also experimented with other games (e.g. Heroic: Magic Duel), but Top Eleven remains its flagship product.

Location & Founding: Headquartered in Belgrade, Serbia, Nordeus was founded in 2010 by three ex-Microsoft engineers: Branko Milutinović, Milan Jovović, Tomislav Mihajlović, and Ivan Stojićević. From a small self-funded team in 2010, the company grew to over 200 employees by 202, with offices in Dublin, London, Skopje, and San Francisco.

Funding: Nordeus was entirely self-funded (bootstrapped) and did not take venture capital. The huge success and revenue of Top Eleven from its early Facebook launch (2010) allowed Nordeus to grow profitably. In June 2021, Nordeus was acquired by Take-Two Interactive (the US gaming giant behind GTA and NBA 2K) in a deal valued at up to $378 million. 

Users: Top Eleven has attracted over 300 million registered players worldwide over its lifetime. The game has been played in every country, and its community is highly active.

Growth: Even after a decade, Top Eleven continues to grow – by its 10th anniversary (2020), it had 220 M+ users, which grew to 300 M by 2023. Nordeus reported strong financials (it was profitable for many years) and became an attractive acquisition target. Its 2021 sale to Take-Two helped the buyer expand into the European mobile market. Nordeus’s revenue was not disclosed, but Top Eleven consistently ranked among the top-grossing sports apps.

The Ones That Completed the Journey

Penta (acquired by Qonto)

Penta was a Berlin-based financial technology platform launched in 2017 to serve small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with digital business banking solutions. Founded by Luka Ivićević, Lav Odorović, Gabriel Holbach, Aleksandar Orlić, Igor Kuschnir and Jessica Holzbach. Penta positioned itself as a one-stop digital bank for startups, freelancers, and SMEs across Europe, particularly in Germany.

The platform allowed businesses to open accounts quickly, issue debit cards, automate expense management, handle payments, and integrate accounting, all through a streamlined web and mobile interface.

Over the years, Penta has built a solid customer base of around 50.000 business clients, drawn by features like multi-card management and sub-accounts. The company grew rapidly, quadrupling its user base between 2019 and 2021. Despite its momentum, the market was highly competitive, and the landscape began consolidating.

By 2022, Penta had raised approximately €51 million (roughly $60–$72 million) across several funding rounds. Notable investors included fintech company builder Finleap, HV Capital, RTP Global, Presight, and insurer Signal Iduna. The company had around 200 employees across offices in Berlin and Belgrade.

In July 2022, French fintech Qonto – fresh off a €486 million raise, announced its acquisition of Penta as part of its strategy to expand more aggressively in the German market. Penta’s brand and operations were gradually integrated into Qonto’s platform throughout 2023, marking the end of Penta as an independent entity but extending its legacy through a larger European fintech player.

Orgnostic (acquired by Culture Amp)

Orgnostic was a people analytics platform designed to help companies unify and interpret their HR data to drive smarter workforce decisions. By integrating information from various HR systems, including recruiting platforms, HRIS tools, and engagement surveys, Orgnostic delivered comprehensive dashboards and analyses on key metrics such as turnover, hiring, performance, DEI, and employee engagement.

The platform effectively served as a business intelligence layer for HR teams, enabling data-driven decision-making in organizations aiming to scale efficiently.

Founded in 2019 in Belgrade, Serbia, by Luka Babić (former Head of People Operations at Infobip) and Igor Bogićević (co-founder of Seven Bridges Genomics), Orgnostic was born out of the founders’ deep operational experience with fast-growing companies. While it later established a presence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the product development and core team remained in Belgrade.

The company raised a total of approximately $6 million. This included a $900.000 pre-seed round in September 2020 led by 122West and South Central Ventures, followed by a $5 million seed round in October 2021 led by Earlybird VC. Prominent angel investors such as Eric Ries (author of The Lean Startup) and Rony Kahan (co-founder of Indeed) also backed the company.

Within its first year on the market, they onboarded around 40 companies, mainly high-growth tech startups and scale-ups seeking clarity in their people data. By 2023, the company served over 20 mid-sized enterprise customers, including InDrive, SmartRecruiters, and Suzy.

Orgnostic’s traction and technology culminated in its acquisition by Culture Amp in March 2024. The acquisition allowed Culture Amp to strengthen its data infrastructure and analytics capabilities by incorporating Orgnostic’s technology and team into its broader platform. The deal, though undisclosed in value, marked a strong validation of Orgnostic’s product-market fit and technical execution.

What comes next isn’t just more startups.
It’s more second-time founders.

We’ll be watching.
And probably rewriting this list a lot sooner than expected.