Airbnb was created when its founders could not pay their rent, so they welcomed guests into their apartment by offering them air mattresses, Virgin Atlantic emerged from Branson’s frustration after a canceled flight, and Spanx came from Sara Blakely‘s personal need to find a clothing solution that did not exist in the market. Such stories sound good, are easy to remember, and even easier to retell, but the reality is almost always less romantic and much more demanding. Even in the world of the most famous entrepreneurial ventures, ideas most often do not arise as pure genius, but as a response to a specific problem, although in entrepreneurship, there is still a tendency to believe in the myth of the big idea that appears all at once, almost like a movie, as a flash of inspiration that changes someone’s life overnight.
The common denominator of these stories is not only creativity but also the ability to recognize a broader market problem from one’s own experience. The same applies to many Croatian entrepreneurs, although the context is quite different, the market is smaller, and capital is often scarcer. In domestic circumstances, successful business ideas appear even less frequently as a miraculous moment, and much more often as a result of long-term contemplation, work in the industry, accidental insights, frustration with the current state, or a simple desire to do something better than what already exists.
Unused space
For many interlocutors, the first trigger was not a surge of imagination, but a feeling that something was missing in the market. This is exactly how the founder of the After5 portal, Hana Bartolović, describes her story, stating that the idea of her own business had followed her for more than a decade. Thus, it is not a project that arose impulsively, but an idea that matured over the years alongside her professional experience.
– The idea of my own business has been with me for a long time, I would say more than a decade. Even twelve years ago, I knew that one day I would start something of my own in the media space – says Bartolović.
The crucial moment occurred when she felt professionally ready, but also when she, as a reader and media professional, recognized the content gap in the domestic market. This combination of personal maturity and market insight is often much more important than the initial idea itself.
– The idea matured at the moment when I felt ready, with enough knowledge and experience, but also when I recognized that something was missing in the domestic market, both as a reader and as someone working in the media. I noticed a space that was not sufficiently covered, and there I saw an opportunity for a clearly differentiated project – explains Bartolović.
Interestingly, for her, the entire project materialized on the day she chose the name of the media. At that moment, in one afternoon, the concept, vision, and goals aligned. However, even then, there was no guarantee that the project would succeed. On the contrary: the decision was made consciously, accepting the risks, and further development depended on adapting to the market, the audience, and clients. Her additional emphasis on patience and continuity is an important reminder that brands are much more often built through a series of small steps than one big leap.
A similar pattern of recognizing unused space can be seen in the owner of Carwiz International, Krešimir Dobrilović. After more than twenty years of working in the rent-a-car industry, the idea for his own system did not come as a moment of inspiration, but as a result of a long-term understanding of the weaknesses of the existing model.
– Carwiz was actually born out of a desire to build a brand that is agile, modern, and ready to play on the international stage. I wanted to create a system that applies all the lessons I learned in my career, but in a way that is adapted to the new generation of mobility and the global market. The idea for Carwiz did not arise as a moment of inspiration, but as a result of maturity and long-term experience in the industry – explains Dobrilović.
In his story, a particularly interesting moment is when he realized, as he explains, that he no longer wanted to play by someone else’s rules and decided to establish his own company. Even more importantly, he emphasizes that global standards must be set from day one, regardless of which market you start from. Such logic is especially important for domestic entrepreneurs, who often think locally for a long time before trying to scale what should have been set in much broader frameworks from the beginning.
From science to market
On the other hand, sometimes a good business can also arise from highly specialized work, even academic, but only when knowledge is translated into a concrete problem that someone wants to solve and pay for. Co-founder of City Layers, Domagoj Krhen, describes how the idea emerged during long-term scientific research and development of what is now called spatial intelligence.
– The idea emerged during long-term scientific research, and it has persisted because it addresses a concrete need of cities, architects, and organizations to better understand the space in which they operate – emphasizes Krhen, who founded City Layers with Lovro Končar-Gamulin, Androniki Papp, and Angelos Chronis.
The first important impulse for them was the Venice Biennale 2021, where they began to record how people perceive space in real-time, and the biggest turnaround occurred when they decided at the Vienna incubator i2c that City Layers would no longer be developed solely as a scientific project, but as a solution with clear practical application. Krhen’s emphasis on the team and problem evaluation may sound like the most valuable advice from the startup world: the idea is just the beginning, and real value is created only through testing and adaptation.
From a very similar, professional need, Solvership was also born. Anita Cvetić Oreščanin, one of its co-founders along with Lidija Karaga and Dražen Orešković, emphasizes that their idea was born back in 2001 from a desire to be the consultants they themselves were looking for in the market but could not find.
– It was not an isolated ‘flash in the shower’, but a conscious decision by the three of us partners to leave secure corporate jobs and start building a company based on delivering real value to clients through data – says Cvetić Oreščanin.
When they started, business intelligence (BI) in the region hardly existed as a widely recognized term, and their initial ambition was much more modest than what the company is today. That is why her story well illustrates how much a business idea can and should change over time. What initially was BI has gradually become a field of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, and initial plans had to adapt to technological waves. Cvetić Oreščanin’s message to solve real problems, learn faster than the market, and choose people based on values, not just expertise, precisely summarizes what many young companies realize only when it is too late.
At the other end of the business spectrum, but logically very close, is Ante Mandić, the founder of the IN2 group and owner of INsig2, who perhaps most openly of all interlocutors breaks the myth of the glamorous entrepreneurial beginning. He reminds that he started his business in 1992, at a time when the Croatian state was being created, and entrepreneurship did not arise from a special vision, but out of necessity.
– That is why I often say that I actually started entrepreneurship out of necessity, even despair, so for years I was jokingly called ‘the desperate entrepreneur’ – Mandić is candid.
His story is particularly important because it shows that a good business does not have to start with a big idea, but with the realization that you have to survive and that you possess knowledge that can be turned into value. At a time when almost no one believed in a pure software company, as the IT market was then mostly revolving around hardware, Mandić started precisely from what he knew how to do. Everything else developed along the way, quickly adapting to the market and changes in the environment. His advice not to seek a big idea as a lottery win, but a problem you know how to solve better than others, may be the most prudent definition of entrepreneurship. It should be well remembered because he is an interlocutor who entered the IT sector when it practically did not even exist.
