At ZICER, the Zagreb Innovation Center, the eighth edition of the startup conference Zagreb Connect and the sixth final of the Startup Factory acceleration program were held. The program took place live, while viewers followed it virtually. Along with inspiring stories from successful local startups, awards were given to the best startups at Croatia’s largest startup conference, with a total value of 800,000 kuna. Of the 12 Startup Factory teams, the best pitch in the final competition was presented by the startups PsyFlux, Digicyte, Go Green Ozonator, and Polipharm Solutions.
– I congratulate all participants of the sixth Startup Factory generation. The quality of our teams is growing year by year. We could see that today at Zagreb Connect. All of them are either scientists or experts in their fields. The achievements they are developing have the potential to change the quality of life. This year, the victory went to medical solutions and solutions for the green economy. These are niche areas that need to be encouraged, and that is why this direction is good. I urge all participants not to give up on realizing their solutions. Through the program, they have shown persistence and resilience, and with those characteristics, they can achieve market sustainability – said Frane Šesnić, director of ZICER, congratulating the participants and winners.
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Zagreb Connect was officially opened by Tomislav Tomašević, the mayor of the City of Zagreb.
– Some of these small companies will one day become major players in the Croatian and global markets, and from that position, they will be able to help new startup companies with their advice, experience, and investment. In addition to developing startup companies with the help of ZICER mentors and support from the City, they also collaborate and share experiences with each other, as they face similar challenges. Quality collaboration creates fertile ground for the development of new ideas and innovations, and is often more important for new companies than financial support itself. I believe that startup companies will continue to function as a community because we all benefit from such collaboration – said Tomašević.
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PsyFlux
PsyFlux is an interdisciplinary team focused on developing a device for measuring intracranial pressure. The team’s vision is to make the measurement of intracranial pressure comparable to measurements of other physiological functions, in terms of availability and simplicity. They hope for a future without expensive and complex monitoring of intracranial pressure.
– The idea was initially conceived by Hrvoje Barić, a neurosurgery resident and PhD, thinking about a problem he encounters in his daily work. He shared his thoughts with the other team members, including myself. Together we found a solution – a device for monitoring vital functions in the human body – says Marsela Polić, a team member and electrical engineer.
Hrvoje is the only medical doctor on the team, Marko Car is a robotics engineer, and Tomica Car is an electronics technician.
Digicyte
The analysis of tissues and cells in medicine is still based on slow and manual, often subjective examination of samples under a microscope. By developing a more affordable tissue sample scanner and using fast neural networks, the Startup Factory team Digicyte is developing technologies that will enable widespread use of digitization and artificial intelligence in tissue analysis.
– It all started with working on the application of artificial intelligence in the analysis of tissue samples. However, we soon realized that ‘printing’ papers would not achieve anything, but that if we really want to make a bigger ‘impact’, we must look at the whole issue. Namely, digitization in tissue and cell analysis has not yet taken off. Without digital images, there is no computer image processing, and thus no artificial intelligence. For that reason, we started developing our scanner Marvin – says Krunoslav Vinicki, the team leader of Digicyte.
Krunoslav is in the team with Dora Machaček, both coming from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Krunoslav is responsible for software development, while Dora primarily focuses on developing AI applications. The team also includes Dominik Sremić as the main person responsible for hardware development. Dominik brings rich industry experience to Digicyte, having worked as a robotics engineer.
Go Green Ozonator
GGO3 – Gogreenozonator is an environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides in food production and storage. It is being developed by the Startup Factory team GGO3. This is a team of scientists from the Faculty of Agriculture who started developing technology for the precise and timely application of ozone dissolved in water or as a biofumigant to protect plants from harmful organisms in greenhouses and storage systems last year.
– The GGO3 project arose as a continuation of research on the effects of ozone on insects that we started in 2019 at the Faculty of Agriculture. Given the good results, we saw broader applications in agriculture. The idea emerged as a response to the Green Deal introduced last year. It is a strategy ‘From Farm to Fork’ by which the EU committed to reducing pesticide use by 50% by 2030 and increasing the area under organic production threefold – says the team leader Helena Virić Gašparić, a scientist and assistant at the Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Phytomedicine, Institute of Agricultural Zoology, who is currently finishing her doctorate.
– It is important to emphasize that without the use of pesticides, production losses can reach up to 70%, so it is necessary to work on developing new technologies and new active substances for plant protection to ensure a sufficient quantity of safe food – adds Virić Gašparić.
The best ‘wind in the back’ for Helena comes from her friend and colleague doc. dr. sc. Darija Lemić from the same Institute. Darija is a co-founder and member of the team primarily responsible for managing scientific activities. As an outstanding scientist, she has been awarded a state award for science and numerous references in her work. She deals with population genetics, integrated pest management, entomology, and phytopharmacy.
The third member of the GGO3 team is Pave Ninčević, an excellent final-year student of the master’s program in phytomedicine. Pave has all the competencies to become a fantastic expert. He is very dedicated to the team and open to new knowledge. For his team, he works on marketing and visibility on social media, and pitching is not foreign to him.
Polypharm Solutions
Polypharm Solutions is an algorithm for recognizing interactions between drugs that will be available as a professional and consumer product in the form of a web application. By calculating the metabolic burden using artificial intelligence, it identifies overloaded metabolic pathways and recommends alternative therapeutic regimens. By preventing interactions between drugs at the time of their prescription, it reduces the likelihood of side effects and protects patient health.
– We came up with the idea for our product while researching current pharmacokinetic models where we could not find one that we considered adequate for solving the problem of drug interactions. Our position is that a product can be made that is much more precise and simpler. That is why we started to develop it ourselves – says Marko Bošković, the team leader of Polypharm Solutions, a medical doctor and clinical pharmacology researcher.
He is joined in the team by three other top experts – Dionizije Fa, a chemical engineer and machine learning expert, Šimun Matešić, a full-stack developer and data security expert, and Filip Relković, an information scientist and medical student.
‘Startup becomes successful when it stops being a startup’
As part of the conference, a panel discussion was held with successful Croatian startups titled 'Zicer we have successful startups' moderated by journalist and co-founder of DiVan Matina Tenžera.
Petar Reić, founder and director of the startup OmoLab (Omoguru), emphasized at the panel that a key moment for them was when they presented themselves to the public and investors at Startup Factory in 2017.
– After that, things ‘rolled’ – said Reić, concluding that ‘startup becomes successful when it stops being a startup’.
Reić also shared several top business tips, including the importance of patience and persistence.
– ‘Overnight success’ takes seven, ten, fifteen years. We can have a brilliant idea, but realizing that idea and bringing it to market and making the public aware of your idea is hard work – said Reić and added another tip related to the fear of public speaking, which is that ‘nobody cares’.
The startup Sportreact, backed by a team of students, won Startup Factory last year, and as Anto Širić mentioned at the panel discussion, they are soon going to Las Vegas, after which they expect to achieve exponential growth.
Edo Mujkić, co-founder and director of B!TE ME Nutrition, emphasized that a key moment that pushed them further and directed them was participating in Zagreb Connect in 2018. During the panel, he stressed that for him, the team, or people, always comes first, a sentiment echoed by Marin Mrša, founder and director of Peekatora, who joined the panel discussion online from London.
Mrša added that a key moment for them came when they were least working on the product, and it provided the client with the greatest value.
– That meant we finally had a scalable product and that there was great potential for growth – said Mrša.
All these successful startups today were part of the Startup Factory program, through which 88 innovative technology teams have been developed so far.
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