In recent years, our manufacturing company has been growing rapidly, but along with all the positives, it also brings many challenges we have not encountered before, such as expanding into new markets, constant investments, and production growth. When you are inexperienced, it is easy to slip on one of those steps – a situation often faced by domestic entrepreneurs, and this specific one was shared with us by Janja Pavetić, co-founder of MagisWall, who decided to seek advice from more experienced entrepreneurs, that is, to find a mentor. The mentor, she says, approached their story from both business and personal aspects, and they mostly discussed further investments and hiring, foreign markets, and their legalities. Anamarija Mujanović brings the experiences of mentors and mentored entrepreneurs in this week’s topic of the issue.
While President Zoran Milanović continues to shock the public with almost daily twists, mixing up the already secure HDZ cards, very few have been intrigued by any economic topic in this year’s super electoral circus. Surely, in a country where we are waiting for some membership again (that in the OECD), everything is great and everything is perfect. Including the situation in the numerous units of local and regional self-government (JLRS), even if we say that about four-fifths of them are fed by state subsidies. Of course, the question of territorial restructuring is significantly broader than the ‘banal’ financial criterion, but it is certainly useful to know what the financial basis of the Croatian territorial story is. This is especially true since we have had a new system of fiscal equalization for several years, which Gordana Gelenčer writes about.
The director of the Zagreb software company Oradian Antonio Šeparović has one of the most interesting entrepreneurial, but also life stories worth telling. His parents are from Korčula, he was born in Split, and he grew up and spent his childhood in the Republic of South Africa. Today he is married and runs the financial technology company Oradian in Croatia, which primarily operates in the African and South Asian markets, where his clients are banks and financial institutions. For a conversation about business and life in Africa and the differences compared to Croatia, Donatella Pauković caught him in Zagreb, between business trips to the Philippines and Nigeria, where his most important clients are, which is why he spends at least one week a month in those markets. His message is clear: it does not matter where you are in the world. If you want to solve global problems, you can solve them from anywhere, including Croatia.
