We talked to Dejan Roljič, the director of the ABC accelerator, who in the last two years has thoroughly ventilated the Slovenian start-up scene and has already helped many companies in the beginning of their global journeys. After recently setting up an accelerator in Munich, an office in Silicon Valley is opening its doors these days. But it seems that this is only the beginning of an extremely ambitious global story.
How would you most simply tell readers what a business accelerator like ABC Accelelator actually does?
(Dejan Roljič) Our task is quite simple. We have to choose the most innovative start-ups and make a world breakthrough with them in the shortest possible time. In the last 18 months we set up entrepreneurial accelerators in Ljubljana, Munich and Silicon Valley. Our goal is to obtain the highest possible local and international investments for the start-up and to prepare the company's product and team for global market. ABC is directly connected to all the most advanced technology companies and major investment companies from all over the world. The main difference between us and other accelerators is that we have created a completely personalized approach, which means that we make a customized development program for each start-up. Everyone start-up, accepted in ABC, becomes part of the global family and has access to all the resources it has ABC in all countries. Our next step is to expand into India, v Bangalore.
Given the age (two years) of the ABC accelerator, do you still categorize yourself as a start-up? Is the ABC accelerator actually your personal start-up?
(Dejan Roljič) Every company that develops advanced technologies is a start-up at the beginning. A start-up is a way of thinking, a way of life. Therefore, I sincerely hope that we can maintain this way of thinking and the agility and speed of development for as long as possible. A start-up is not one person, but a whole team, a family that constantly gives up, constantly lives outside the comfort zone in all areas in order to start-up succeed. To set up a global, recognized accelerator in such a short time is a phenomenon even for the conditions in Silicon Valley.
The ABC accelerator should also become virtual or online. What is the long-term vision of this project?
(Dejan Roljič) The whole world is looking for innovative approaches and ways for people to connect faster, more efficiently and without major physical, global movements from one location to another. The world is looking for a way to gain knowledge and access to information and achieve technological breakthroughs virtually anywhere and anytime. V ABC we believe that the future lies in technologies that will allow people to access the above mentioned as easily as possible, which is why we are one of the first accelerators to create a virtual accelerator and enable all start-ups to access knowledge, the market and investors from the comfort of their home armchair.
You are officially opening your office in Silicon Valley, becoming the first European accelerator to set foot on 'holy' soil. How did you manage this rapid and actually unexpected growth of the project?
(Dejan Roljič) It is the first private, European accelerator in Silicon Valley and being here is a necessary evil that is actually a privilege. Daily cooperation with like-minded people, large corporations and the largest investment funds is the only recipe for even greater success that he intends ABC to be achieved in the next 18 months. Our goal is to become one of the top 3 best accelerators in the world with a self-sustaining business model, so this success, or such expansion and speed, is a matter of course. The key to development is to have a strong local team that has previous joint successes and understands the local mindset and knowledge from your industry. We were lucky enough to meet entrepreneur Ana Lukner and quickly realized that we share the same vision. The team in Silicon Valley it is simply the perfect set of diversity, but at the same time it still has a great desire to conquer the corporate world. The team is 99 percent of every company.
The claim that somehow always hangs in the air is that Slovenians are an extremely innovative nation. Can you agree with this statement?
(Dejan Roljič) Slovenians are a very innovative nation, but we may sometimes have a pronounced syndrome of smallness and lack of self-confidence. The world itself is very small, so the key is to try to bring other dimensions to our people in the simplest possible way.
Do we know how to work or do we really want to work?
(Dejan Roljič) This is not a question related only to the Slovenian nation. This is the question that every country in the world asks themselves when they are looking for solutions that would further increase the efficiency of people and at the same time make the ecosystem in which people work more interesting and attractive. Every person would like to do what makes them happy, but life is often unfair and not all of us are so lucky. If you have the desire, courage and will, everything is often possible.
Could you choose three Slovenian start-ups that have created an exceptional success story in the last 5 years - that is, they sold the company and made an exit, or are they so successful and have such high revenues that they don't have to? They started their journey as part of an accelerator at home or abroad.
(Dejan Roljič) Every company is a start-up at the beginning and every start-up has been directly or indirectly accelerated by accelerators, partners or investors. There is a huge number of successful start-ups in the world, as shown in the table of these "Unicorns" - unicorns that have been created in much greater numbers in recent years precisely because of the global infrastructure offered by the world of start-ups. Successful Slovenian start-ups or start-ups with Slovenian founders are, for example:
– Kosei, the start-up he owned Jure Leskovec and was bought by a company Pinterest.
– There are also companies like them here Celtra, Visonect and Outfit7 – all of them have a global presence and have an excellent income.
The following start-ups are very interesting, which are only really breaking through, but have already collected more than 50 million euros in investment: 4th Office, Layer, Lyst, Bitstamp, BellaBeat, TV Beat, etc. All of them have a global presence and have an excellent start-up mentality.
Which Slovenian start-up would you put first? So which is the start-up that really tells a global success story and can be a model example of how start-ups should work?
(Dejan Roljič) Every start-up has its own story and every one that decides to break into international markets is worth mentioning. There is no first place here because each start-up develops products in its own industry. The goal is to innovate this industry as much as possible and change existing business models.
So where are we failing and what should we be doing differently?! Does the Slovenian start-up scene even have enough knowledge to "wrap up" a global project that would really change the world?
(Dejan Roljič) Who says we've failed? The Slovenian start-up scene is one of the most developed ecosystems in Europe, which in recent years has shown excellent practice in integration and joint performance on foreign markets. We all realized that we are much stronger together if we connect Slovenian start-up initiatives and ecosystems in an organized structure. The number of start-ups is increasing every year and the number of successful start-ups is increasing every year. Start-ups and small, innovative companies are the future of the global economy and, despite the general public's still incomplete understanding, they change our lives every day and try to make them simpler.
We have heard many times that Slovenia could become the Silicon Valley of Europe. Why would this be possible and why not?
(Dejan Roljič) This is not so simple because Silicon Valley is a highly concentrated area of the best innovators in the world and such a structure did not emerge overnight. The biggest difference, and perhaps our biggest challenge at the moment, is how to change people's way of thinking to the way they think here. Culture really dominates here WE not ME.
Who is your biggest role model?
(Dejan Roljič) You are your own biggest mirror. But you look up to all those who prove that with effort, the right way of working and the right team, you can achieve a lot.
If you had 1 billion in your account, then you would…
(Dejan Roljič) Still eating burek on Miklošičeva.
More information:
abc-accelerator.com
