Native Teams: A Regional Success Story from North Macedonia

The startup's platform, designed to enhance work conditions for freelance and remote workers, offers a unique one-stop solution for various employment-related needs, including seamless employment management, taxation, mobility, and payments.

With offices in Skopje, Bitola, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Novi Pazar, Tirana, Zagreb, Lisbon, Istanbul, and Yerevan, Native Teams is not just a regional success story but a global one.

In addition to its positive impact on the freelancing industry, the company is also enriching the startup ecosystems of the countries where it is present, especially North Macedonia and Serbia. Native Teams team members actively contribute to the growth and quality of the local startup communities. They are 'giving back' by sharing their knowledge, experience, and insights—and offering an inspiring role model to a new generation of entrepreneurs in the entire region in the process.

The Native Teams origins

Native Teams was founded by freelancers who understood the challenges and opportunities in that industry. The team was driven to improve work conditions for remote workers and employers, creating a seamless and efficient platform to manage their daily affairs.

The company is fully embracing all the advantages of remote work, employing people from all over the globe. One of the co-founders, Aleksandra Mitrevska, shares some of the benefits and challenges of managing a remote team:

Having a global team is fantastic; you get exposed to many different cultures and people, so everyone quickly gets out of their comfort zone and learns to communicate and work with each other. Another advantage is access to talent; we have no boundaries, and local people contribute their local knowledge to our business, so we have a great cultural understanding and market penetration in this way. Regarding challenges: logistic complexities, sometimes cultural barriers, and coordination and scheduling across different time zones can be tricky.

It seems that Native Teams have found a winning combination for global expansion. Today, they have more than 200 team members (69 of whom are employed in its North Macedonia offices), and the platform is available in over 70 countries worldwide.

Investments and Growth

Strategic investments have fueled the company's growth. With 2 million euros raised in 2022 and a follow-on round of 800,000 euros in 2023, Native Teams is expanding globally. The recent 6.275 million euro round further solidifies their position and paves the way for accelerated expansion.

Sharing her extensive experience in fundraising, Aleksandra emphasizes the importance of finding a good fit with your investors:

When it comes to fundraising, the most important advice is not to accept just any investor :) Be careful because you don't only need capital; you also need support and experience. It is essential to find a good balance of investors who will invest in the capital and support your startup with their experience and a large community of portfolios. It's necessary to skip some mistakes that others have made or be supported in a journey someone else has been through rather than to raise tons of money. Because ultimately, you need to know how to manage your funds to scale.

By establishing long-term collaboration with local VC funds, Native Teams seems to have found reliable partners. Their previous investors include Eleven Ventures (Bulgaria) and Fil Rouge Capital (Croatia), and in the latest round, MFG Invest (Lebanon), Begin Capital (UK), and others have joined. These partnerships have provided the necessary funding and valuable local insights and connections, contributing significantly to the company's success.

Daniel Tomov, Managing Partner of Eleven Ventures, highlights the strategic importance of the latest investment in Native Teams:

As the world becomes increasingly decentralized, so does employment. This trend requires cutting-edge technology to handle the increasing complexity of managing work-related matters, including proper employment, taxation, mobility, and payments. We have been working on this with Native Teams over the last couple of years, and we are confident that the company is well-positioned to become the leading global platform for managing your portfolio jobs. The advancements in fintech and AI are propelling Native Teams forward, significantly accelerating its adoption on a global scale. The current funding round will enable the company to accelerate its expansion plans and product development, ensuring that the platform's capabilities align with the evolving needs of modern workers.

Giving back to the community

One crucial ingredient for the growth of a startup ecosystem is 'giving back'. The 'giving back' principle refers to the practice where successful entrepreneurs and professionals contribute to the community that supports their growth. Such activities can involve mentoring new startups, sharing knowledge and experiences, providing networking opportunities, and offering resource support. This creates a supportive environment where startups can thrive by leveraging the expertise and resources of those who have already succeeded, and fosters a culture of reciprocity, collaboration, and long-term sustainability within the community.

Native Teams has been 'giving back' on several tracks:

• Nikola Bubevski (co-founder and CPO) is an active mentor. One of his latest engagements was mentoring in the Startup Club Skopje incubation program.
• Igor Radošević (VP of Sales) is a frequent speaker at regional events and conferences all over the WB region.
• Aleksandra Mitrevska (co-founder and chief evangelist) is one of the company's strongest voices, active as a speaker and mentor throughout the region.

Aleksandra's engagement is significant for our team—she was one of the participants of the Women Entrepreneurs Week (WEW) organized by Swiss EP in Zurich in March 2023. Aleksandra's role was to support the women entrepreneurs delegation from North Macedonia as a mentor. She excelled in her task by sharing her experience with all the participants of the WEW and staying in touch with some of them (from Serbia) well after the week they spent together.

What is next for Native Teams?

Native Teams is ready for the future. The company is set to continue its global expansion with the ambitious goal of becoming a dominant platform for managing remote employment. This vision is a testament to the company's commitment to innovation and its potential to shape the future of work.

As they leverage the best the region has to offer—talented teams and experienced regional VCs—and mix it all with global knowledge and know-how, they bring a fresh perspective, a new skill set, and inspiration back to it.

Native Teams' ongoing success testifies to what startups originating from the Western Balkans can achieve when backed with proper funding and partnerships.

We hope that the success of Native Teams will inspire other regional startups to be persistent in their work and wise in their decision-making, as well as to share their journey and learnings with their communities and help them grow.