As someone who has built and sold an original software startup in Serbia, and has followed the evolution of the local tech scene in the Balkans over the last decade pretty closely, the one thing the region absolutely needs more of is this kind of positive press.

While there's been a fair bit written about the growth of the "IT Sector"[0] there, for the longest time that sector was mostly made up of outsourcers and body shops (as opposed to product-centric, funded original startups). As that outsourcing workforce has matured, I've started to notice an increasing number of individuals at the top end of the talent spectrum that have become too experienced/expensive to be considered 'profitable resources' for those outsourcing companies (i.e. their salaries have grown to be too high compared to the daily rate they're sold at while demand for them has fallen away as companies seeking staff augmentation already tend to depend on their own senior technical leadership).

What this means is that we're going to see more experienced, highly skilled technical experts in reasonably well-off financial positions start to ask themselves what they could do next, and what I'm hoping happens is that the more original success stories we evangelise - the more we publicise the Infobips and the Rimacs - the more likely it is that those experts will choose to develop their original idea and seek funding.

TL;DR The talent is absolutely there and growing, they just need encouragement.

https://www.ft.com/content/03f995f0-9c12-11ea-871b-edeb99a20...