First Serbian accelerator StartLabs added another company, WhoAPI to their portfolio. WhoAPI provides its customers with “extensive domain data and simplifying WHOIS”. WhoAPI has already gone through acceleration program with 500 Startups, and is being used by Twitter, Wikipedia, King.com among others.
Rade Joksimovic, Boban Karisik and Dragan Leonidov are the team behind Loyalis – a Belgrade-based startup, providing retailers with integrated loyalty programmes. The trio made headlines this week after raising an investment from a local tech accelerator and a Slovenian angel investor. In the following Q&A, CEO Joksimovic talks about the deal, the future of the company, and about being part of a team of “three very diverse and insanely motivated individuals”.
Give us some more information about the investment. What is its official amount and who are the participating investors?
Joksimovic: Participating investors are StartLabs, the first and only tech accelerator in Serbia with tight connections in the Valley (story on inventures.eu), and Jugoslav Petkovic, probably the most notable angel investor from the region (covered by inventures.eu). The amount raised will remain undisclosed due to an agreement with the investors.
How long did it take to raise this money?
Joksimovic: This is an interesting story actually: We met Voja and Nebojsa (founders of StartLabs) about a year ago on a pitching event in Belgrade. At that time, we were very active in the region’s startup scene, but were not looking for an investment. Our plan was to finance ourselves from my previous startup’s acquisition, and then jump straight into Series A round.
Almost a year later, we had almost signed a large investment round led by a VC fund from the UK, but something wasn’t right – they didn’t have the expertise we were looking for at this early stage. We were looking for “smart money”.
At that point we had arranged another meeting with Voja, Nebojsa and Jugoslav, where we were very much convinced that they would be our perfect investors at this stage, as they have vast experience in our industry and all the contacts we need. Everything was agreed upon within a few weeks and the process went very smoothly. I would like to add that the offered terms were all industry standards and very founder-friendly.
How many pitches did you make before you decided for the current investors?
Joksimovic: We’ve done about a dozen pitches altogether, ranging from localstartup events to pitching in front of institutional VCs in London. After talking to dozens of angel investors and VCs, we finally decided to go with this combo as it was the “smartest” money we could ask for, and are very happy with the support we are receiving from their end.
Rade Joksimovic, CEO of Loyalis; Photo credit: LoyalisWhat was it that helped you the most in raising the money?
Joksimovic: In my honest opinion, I believe that our biggest advantage was the quality of the team itself.
Boban Karisik for example, my co-founder, has over ten years of engineering experience in tech startups from the Sillicon Valley, UK, Germany to Dubai, and has personally launched a software used on 3+ million websites. He knows the technology inside out.
Dragan Leonidov is in charge of sales, and was named the top 3 sales people in the banking sector, with one of the highest volume of SMB loans sold in a year, so he knows this customer segment very well.
On the other hand, I founded a B2B tech startup at the age of 19 and sold it within 18 months, with 400+ B2B e-commerce customers – which is in the same customer segment we are targeting at Loyalis.
The other advantage was the fact that we took a very strategic approach to pitching. We have prepared a lot of research documentation to show that we know what we’re doing and are able to think long-term with the business.
How are you planning to use the investment?
Joksimovic: The investment will be used to further develop our product and properly position ourselves on the market.
What’s your next big thing?
Joksimovic: We at Loyalis are very motivated in our goal to position ourselves as the group of mad scientists whose product engages and retains customers with minimal effort from the merchant’s side.
What is one thing about you and your team that our readers would never guess?
Joksimovic: Interesting fact: If you visit our office, it is more likely to stumble upon a motorcycle helmet than anything else, as the three of us are all motorcycle riders 🙂
It’s no secret that having a business idea and actually applying it on a real company are two different things and accomplishing the latter can be quite challenging. However, if you’re planning to build your own startup and happen to be from Serbia or the region, you might want to consider StartLabs. Based in Belgrade and San Francisco, the accelerator has recently launched to provide new companies with mentorship, technical infrastructure, networking opportunities and most importantly, financial support.
The mentor-led programme, co-founded by Serbian entrepreneurs Voja Lalić and Nebojsa Lazic, consists of two stages: one in Belgrade and another in San Francisco. Lazic told inventures.eu that “either stage is optional, meaning that a startup can go through both of them, or through only one – depending on what is the best for the startup, and on its performance.”
The mission is to create a bridge to Silicon Valley for local startups. Teams will get to spend some time – one to three months – in the US, work from a shared office space, establish networks and further improve their product. The programme aims to offer startups “valuable mentorships both in Belgrade and in San Francisco,” said Lazic.
Flexibility, customisation and $$
StartLabs is willing to invest up to 50.000 dollars in exchange for 10-15% share of a company, yet, they do not have an offering that is carved in stone and equal for all startups in terms of money, percentage of equity acquired and the duration of the programme. “Since the Western Balkans is still a young environment for startups, we believe that we should tailor our programme for every startup that joins us,” said Lazic.
Unlike many accelerators, StartLabs has no fixeddeadlines for accepting applications meaning that teams can apply all year round. Lazic is convinced that “an open application process is better suited for us at this time. So, we … are receiving pitches, evaluating them and deciding to act on a continuous basis.”
Split between Belgrade and San Francisco
StartLabs’s co-founders Lalić and Lazic are both entrepreneurs, who have been working together for over 20 years, developing technology products and companies. Lalić is based in San Francisco and Lazic in Belgrade, and in this formula, they have successfully run a number of ventures. Launching StartLabs resulted from their willingness to share their successes and failures with up-and-coming entrepreneurs. The goal: Support startups from an early stage to one where they would be able to raise outside funding.
