A new Silicon Valley?

The young generations of researchers and entrepreneurs grown up in the Balkan region will guide tomorrow’s technological revolution in Europe. It is the thesis of Boryana Dzhambazova, a freelance journalist in Sofia (Bulgaria) who followed up-close a number of professionals aged 20-40, raised in this stretch of land often devastated by poverty and civil wars that for years have looked at Europe and America with admiration. Today they want it to be the time to act and be known. How? By transforming this region into the new Silicon Valley, as the journalist wrote in “Balkan Insight”. The research has shed light on an unknown aspect of the economic, business – and occasionally youth-related  – Balkan landscape. Start-ups kick off. In the past, large European companies used to outsource high-tech jobs to East European countries, since it implied lower costs of labour carried out by skilled programmers with maths and engineering degrees obtained during the communist period. This triggered a set of studies, researches and initiatives that prompted connections between investors and programmers, researchers and scientists in Eastern Europe. It is the case of Ivan Vesiæ, computer engineer, and Mirza Sejdinoviæ, veterinarian, both originally from Niš, in southern Serbia. They happened to meet for medical care to Ivan’s cat, and eventually started developing a software application for managing the veterinary clinic in Mirza. An idea soon grew into a successful start-up,¸VetCloud, “but the involvement of a third partner, Milan Djordjeviæ from Sofia, a member of the Eleven Group that provides training and assistance programs in exchange for shares of the companies it supports, played a crucial role”, explained the Bulgarian journalist in her remarks on the research. The VetCloud group thus received a 200thousand euro grant, and thanks to a three-month training course in Bulgaria it acquired the skills to run a high-tech company. Now their software is being officially promoted in London, after a testing-period in the Balkans and in the United Kingdom. How to use the funds. This is just one of many examples that emerged from the inquiry by Boryana Dzhambazova, who underlined that the countries in the Balkans have also started financing these initiatives through EU funding programs. Serbia, for example, has financed 53 projects, amounting to 6 million euro. Another interesting reality is “Sofia Tech Park Jsc” (www.sofiatech.bg), whose objective is to further the development of research and technological innovation in Bulgaria. The purpose of the initiative that avails itself of European, public and private funding, is to create an environment for the development and implementation of educational programs, whilst providing support to the commercialization of new technologies, products and services. “Yes, we can”. For many entrepreneurs, financers and innovators this is not enough to create a favourable climate for the creation, development and global dissemination of high-tech start-ups in the Balkans, owing to a lack of tax cuts provided for in the United Kingdom, for example. A solid, active network of financiers, the boom of accelerators and incubators, along with the adoption of government measures ensuring support to new enterprises, are but some of the features whereby London is the only European hub that bears comparison with the Silicon Valley or New York, described as the “digital capital of Europe” by the city’s mayor Boris Johnson in an interview with Wired magazine. For Johnson, this fact is due to an unusual combination of courses attended by international students, a vibrant community of investors, international transport connections, along with a wide range of accelerators and incubators. But education and training is what most worries the Balkan region, especially when it is coupled, as in this case, by a lack of cooperation among the university systems, start-ups, and investors. The Silicon Valley might still be a distant dream, but growing numbers of youths from Eastern Europe are ready to invest on themselves and on their territories, with the motto “Yes, we can!”