“We had to change the game”: Three Bosnian startup stories

Furthemore, there are no local VC funds writing early-stage checks at speed. What exists as of late, though, is something more improvised: events, introductions, diaspora bridges, state grants, and a great deal of stubbornness (or as we call it in the Balkans - “inat”).

In Sarajevo, we spoke to three founders - Belma Sekavic Bandic, Dino Colakovic and Dino Trnka - who are building companies in corporate well-being, social media, and video games. While their sectors differ, their constraints do not, as they address the same themes: building a business in conditions where there is no suitable infrastructure.

When the core idea isn’t a tech one

For Belma Sekavic Bandic, founder and CEO of Zen2Fit, the starting point, was exhaustion. “It didn’t start as a tech idea. It started more from a human need and from my personal experience.” she says.

After years in C-level roles in Bosnia’s banking sector, she began questioning the imbalance between work and home. During a nine-month notice period, she found herself “mentally away,” detached yet still formally employed, and the result was burnout.

“I realized that exhaustion and stress and disconnection from health and well-being, might be something that most people also face. This wasn’t only in banking, but overall.” Belma recalls.

When she tried to find support for herself, she found very little that felt holistic. That gap became Zen2Fit: an all-in-one mobile and web-based platform

Her philosophy is simple: “Health is like a fitness journey. It’s not a destination, it’s a journey, and you have to live it every day.”

Today, Zen2Fit works with ten companies, supported by four full-time and several part-time staff. The product has moved beyond beta toward paying customers. Yet the structural challenges remain.

“Let’s start with challenges. You don’t have a system in one place. You don’t know who to talk to.” Instead, progress comes through iteration and presence. “You see one event, then you go there, and you get to know people. And then you ask, what is more around? Where can I go?” she explains.

The upside of Bosnia’s small size is the speed of networking. “The region is small. You get to know a lot of people in quite a short period of time, and you keep seeing them at events.”

Bandic acknowledges a personal advantage: years in the corporate world meant she already knew decision-makers. “If I started with 20, I don’t know if I would have the grit and capacity to do all of this,” she says. “When you see all doors are closed, you say, there must be something out there. Let’s call some other people.”

That mentality has brought Zen2Fit to viability, and now the next step is scale. “What we proved is that we have a viable product, what we need now is scaling.” And scaling, in Bosnia, comes back to the capital, which is hard to get, especially at an early stage. If the startup scene is to grow, she argues, funding cannot remain an exception. Furthermore, a mix of talent and experience can also help with the scaling, she explains.

Belma says:

Talent could be a great help for us, but also finding experienced people who have gone through a similar scaling process. We have some mentors and regional experts guiding us, showing us a path we haven’t yet taken. My experience comes from the corporate world in this region, and while I’m confident there, I haven’t personally led a startup through rapid scaling. That’s what I need to learn now.”

“When you are flying, only angels can support you”

If Bandic’s journey began with burnout, Dino Colakovic’s began with belief. “Once you have that idea, you are full of energy. You talk to everyone.” he says.

Industry professionals reacted positively to his idea, but the momentum shifted for better when the first investor stepped in. Former professional footballer Vedat Ibišević became an early angel investor in Colakovic’s media-tech startup Privee World - way before the company was even formally launched.

He was the first one to invest. We had just a slide deck idea. But this is the moment when you explode, the whole team. That’s why they are calling them angel investors. First guys who believe in your team.

Colakovic says, and adds, half poetically: “When you are flying, only angels can support you.”

Soon, more friends from the US and Bosnia followed and invested in the startup. But once the team began pitching more broadly, and sent hundreds of decks across Europe and America, they hit a wall.

“The most questions these guys were asking us was, from which part of the world are you? It would be great if you are in Berlin. If you are in London,” he says, adding that geography became the friction they had to deal with.

So they changed their strategy. “We said, okay, we have to change the game. And if the capital has a home, that’s Switzerland.” he notes.

Through diaspora networks, they reached a Bosnian executive at ARX Capital in Zurich. These were not typical modern venture capitalists, but long-horizon equity investors. “There were lots of questions about that, because we are from Bosnia. But internal lobbying helped convince clients to invest in a startup from Sarajevo,” he says.

The result was transformative. "They helped us scale. They helped us to get the first investment from abroad to Sarajevo. It was a really huge, huge thing."

Four years after midnight

While Dino was pitching to angels and Swiss equity investors, his namesake Dino Trnka was building a video game alone at night.

“It was more of a hobby for me. I was working full-time in an IT company, and I was working on this video game idea late in the evenings and on the weekends.” he says.

He had no gaming background, but over four years, he learned everything from scratch. In 2023, he shipped his first title on Steam and the Epic Games Store. “We were honestly surprised by the reception,” he says - first in Bosnia and the region, then from foreign streamers.

That momentum, combined with a state-sponsored grant, allowed him to formally open Chill Dragon Games in Sarajevo. The grant provided office space and also helped them attend workshops, including investor pitch sessions.
“The grant was a big boost,” he says. Eventually, he left his full-time job. “Right now, I’m fully dedicated to the startup.”

His new project is more ambitious: a narrative-driven action RPG. The studio has hired designers and a writer. The ambition is global from day one. “If we’re gonna make games, we’re gonna sell them everywhere,” he says, adding that their target markets are the US, Europe, and Asia.

However, as in the previous cases, structural obstacles persist. “Game development is quite novel here. There is no structured national association and at the moment, everybody is working independently,” he says.

Taxation and legal frameworks create additional friction, especially with international sales. Still, he sees enormous potential. “

There is huge potential in terms of people, in terms of talent, in terms of pure passion,” he says. Young developers message him offering services, sometimes even volunteering to collaborate for free.

Trnka is a firm believer that indie studios have one key advantage over AAA publishers: risk tolerance. Large corporations “cannot take as much risk because they invest huge amounts of money in the game creation process.” Indie teams, though, can experiment.

“We are living in this interesting era where everybody’s making remakes. But gamers are craving innovation.” For Trnka, the ambition goes beyond releasing games - he now wants more workshops, mentorships, even conferences that will eventually grow into a Bosnian gaming ecosystem.

Building belief before scale

What unites these three founders is how they operate in an environment without systemic support, for which they had to change the game. At the same time, the notion is also something that keeps them moving forward. They build networks across the region, reach out to diaspora connections, tap state grants and pitch investors abroad. And when an ecosystem is full of people who are stubborn enough to find a way, eventually they will.

As Bandic points out, “When you see all doors are closed, there must be something out there.”

Story by: Bojan Stojkovski