Marija Dimovska is a project management professional with 10+ years experience in NGO and business sectors. She has coordinated projects across cultures, implemented projects in innovation ecosystems working with a focus on technology and youth capacity building.
When she was 14, Marija wanted to know what happened behind the scenes of a Disney theme park, that led to thousands of customers turning up every year to have a good time. She’s always been interested in the behind-the-curtain process and how to streamline operations creatively. She worked in organisations such as the U.S. Peace Corps and has built managerial expertise, while experiencing the power of a diverse team building an intradisciplinary know-how.
“When we bring together the human factor with the with digital tools/ technology we are creating and introducing a formidable instrument in the creative process of driving solutions to local and present-day global challenges!”
Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
Good morning, Maria, and welcome to the show.
Marija Dimovska 0:50
Good morning, Katherine. Thank you for having me. And thank you for reaching out and my pleasure to be here with you and share some information in detail about the startup and innovation ecosystem from North Macedonia.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:02
Tell us a little bit about the key drivers of the Northern Macedonian economy. I mean, I don't think a lot of people know enough about it. So why don't you start with that?
Marija Dimovska 1:11
Small and medium enterprises play a pivotal role in the economic growth of the Republic of North Macedonia. Actually, they comprise 99.8% of all businesses. And unlike its use in the Western Balkans, the Republic of North Macedonia has a more advantageous climate. And it comes in an advantage point in terms of providing support and developing policies for SMEs, startups included. We have one particular state institution, which is called the Fund of Innovation and Technological Development. They have made this far €76M in investments for startups, particularly for the autumn of 2020. They invested €2.35 M in startups and scale-ups that pertained to different sectors and find themselves in different stages of their growth and development.
Katherine Ann Byam 2:09
Fascinating startup success stories! Tell us what are the big stories that you have about Northern Macedonia’s work?
Marija Dimovska 2:18
Actually, you know, they say that crises such as the bubble crunch from several years ago and the COVID crisis in 2020 are the most fertile ground for innovative ideas and businesses to launch and that stands true for the Macedonian startup ecosystem. We have had a lot of progress noted in a number of startups. Such a startup is AirCare. It's actually an application that signals and attracts air pollution. Air pollution is a concern to communities and to certain cities in Macedonia, particularly the capital of the western region of Macedonia Southern Western part Bitola and Tetovo as well in the north western part of the country.
So the founder has decided to devise an application that will show areas of polluted air. And throughout 2020, before the time that COVID had emerged, he had already launched his application in every single Balkan country. But throughout COVID, he launched it in the United States on the western coast. And in early 2021, he launched it on the Asian continent in the United Arab Emirates and two other Asian countries, India and Turkey. And for 2020, Gorjan, the founder of AirCare was awarded the Young Innovators Award in Europe, which is quite a prestigious award for young entrepreneurs that are developing SDG-focused innovative business ideas and solutions. We have other successful startups. Brainster is in education and technology. Throughout COVID, they actually managed to scale up and set up an office in the EU market. So they opened an office in Vienna back in May 2020. And they're just about to open offices in Slovenia in Ljubljana .
Katherine Ann Byam 4:23
Well, it sounds like a great success. And how critical will it be to get this ecosystem and startups to support running and positioning North Macedonia around its neighbours as well? How critical is it that your startup community grows?
Marija Dimovska 4:42
Well, I can tell you that thus far we have actually formed a regional startup Innovation Group where we constantly are in collaboration and we make sure that the communication is unremitting, that there is a flow of data and news among ecosystem representatives from the western Balkan countries.
Back in 2019, I actually have been attending the regional hub where there were representatives from Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. We have very good collaborations with the startup ecosystem in Bulgaria. We also signed a Memorandum of collaboration with the Business Innovation Centre, an incubator at Tina, Rana Metropolitan University, which is situated in Albania. And we have good collaboration with a Greek startup ecosystem with OK!Thess. They're a very similar organisation to Startup Macedonia where I work as a project manager, and they focus on the development of startups within the northern part of Greece.
Katherine Ann Byam 5:50
Fantastic. How can foreign interest get involved in supporting the growth in your country and in the area and the region?
Marija Dimovska 5:59
For those particular purposes and start-up Macedonia as an umbrella organisation or that connective tissue within the national ecosystem is working on not just the development of the digital ecosystem platform, but also other services. Such a service is the soft-landing option where we basically invite startup-preneurs or people who would like to set up a business and launch it from North Macedonia. And it's very simple, and it's very easy in terms of the ease of doing business.
The World Bank has ranked on its last report, North Macedonia on the 10th position. Because of the digitalization of the administrative and bureaucratic procedures for setting up a business, you can set up a business within 24 hours, and you obtain a working permit and a residence permit within two weeks. Startup Macedonia offers those legal services, in particular to non-Macedonian citizens who would like to obtain all of the permits so that they actually can set up their own satellite office here or open and launch a business from North Macedonia.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:09
What are the incentives to living in Macedonia? Tell us a bit about the culture and the people?
Marija Dimovska 7:14
Like all the other Balkan countries, we have had a tumultuous history. But in terms of where we are heading and where we would like the country to further grow and prosper, we're a young democratic country, and we have a low living cost of expenses. Also, lower corporate taxes have a great tech talent pool due to the fact that we have 11 faculties within the state and private universities. The Employment Statistical Office shows that there are 10,000 graduates per annum, and 80% of them are bilingual. When I say bilingual speaking, I'm thinking from the terms of languages spoken in the European Union.
Most of them have between C1 and C2 English language proficiency. And between B1 and B2 second foreign language proficiency. In Macedonia, the second foreign languages that are most often spoken are German language and French language. We also have three startup cities within the country. Skopje, the capital, is probably the most developed in terms of startup resources and tools. Bitola also has a great tech talent pool.
And that was well, we have three co-working spaces in the capital two in the western part of the country, one in the north western, and another one in Ohrid, which is probably the most renowned city in the country due to archaeological sites and it's a famous tourist attraction. And we have three accelerators and one Science and Technology Park. Out of the three accelerators, one is positioned outside of the capital because we wanted to democratise innovation and make innovation resources available to young entrepreneurs outside of the Capitol so that we have startups headquartered not just in Skopje, but in the smaller communities of the country as well.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:20
Fantastic! Tell us about the platform that you've built and how beneficial it has been for getting this community up and running.
Marija Dimovska 9:29
The platform in itself is actually a technological tool to do precisely that - to democratise the resources and tools for those innovative ideas and transform into SDG-focused businesses. Back in 2018, Startup Macedonia made the research of the ecosystem. We wanted to map out the existing partner organisations. When I say partner organisations, I mean service providers institutions and organisations that offer growth services to startups and young entrepreneurs, and to see the pain points of the startups as well.
And the analysis showed that there was a mismatch between what the startups were looking for in terms of help and assistance. They struggled with access to finance. They struggled particularly with access to the market. Because we do have a club of founders. that constitutes not startups but more concretely scale-ups - startups that have already are positioned on foreign markets and want to expand on another market. And on the other hand, we had the service providers who offered some kind of help, but it wasn't the exact type of help that the startups were seeking.
So while this data-driven platform, which currently is up and running, (the beta version was launched back in 2019) we launched the 2.0 version throughout COVID. At the end of June, early July 2020, we are automatically matching the startups with the service providers. The most important thing is that startups provided us with the detailed information about their growth stage and the type of services and help and assistance that they're looking for and need so that we can actually make the respective match for the corresponding match.
We have an additional feature that is currently being implemented within the ecosystem platform that's a mentorship network where we are trying to aggregate not solely of domestic mentors that come in the form of experienced entrepreneurs that have already gone through the entrepreneurial journey, but also international ones so that we can provide the scaleups who want to reach another market with the adequate, seasoned entrepreneurial experience. The Macedonian ecosystem is not shy when it comes to having a business idea.
What we lack is basically sociological entrepreneurial support. And this is why the Ministry of Education and Startup Macedonia's as an umbrella organisation has tried to engage governmental representatives and academia so that we explain to them the challenges that there are within the national ecosystem, and also engage academia and governmental representatives in transforming the education and introducing varieties of entrepreneurial courses in secondary level education and university level education, so that we have more experienced emerging talent that will be more mentally ready or emotionally ready for starting a business.
Katherine Ann Byam 13:14
And does this include the experiential side of it? Because as an entrepreneur myself, I feel as if the experience of doing it beats any kind of book or text or course you can do to learn about it?
Marija Dimovska 13:27
Yeah, absolutely. In terms of sharing experiences, Startup Macedonia has been quite the focal proponent of different kinds of meetups, even failure sessions, where we invite the entrepreneurs who have failed several business ideas, and they're working now on their fourth or fifth. I've mentioned AirCare earlier. Gorjan is one of the most proactive ones. But if you look at his digital portfolio, you'll see that he's not only working on AirCare.
He has other business ideas, other applications that he has developed like volontiraj.mk, mypet.mk, and akreditator-mk. Some of them are dormant due to COVID. But with AirCare, he has expanded and he has launched it in other cities. So when we share, make sure that those entrepreneurs actually share the experiences of the failure and learn-as-you-go process with aspiring entrepreneurs, it's a lot easier to convey the message that it's okay to fail, which is not just something that goes against the type of Macedonian mentality but I would say European mentality in general. I think that the American model of thinking in try-fail, try-fail is a little bit more DNA-instilled rather than what one finds in the European continent?
Katherine Ann Byam 15:05
What advice is finally, would you give to a startup getting launched today and this is independent of Macedonia?
Marija Dimovska 15:11
I would say that they need to be agile and driven by a sense of urgency to adapt to the changing needs, especially those that have been brought about by COVID. And their social capital is probably their greatest currency that they have. The more people they know, the better because you never really know which one of your connections and networks will provide you with either an answer, or they might not have the answer, but they may have a connection that gives you the solution to the challenge that you meet.
And not to give up on your idea because if you give up on your idea, it will fade away. And if it's your idea, and you're passionate about it, only you have the passion and the resilience to make that idea come to fruition.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:10
Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us, Maria. Thank you for having me, Katherine. Thanks for listening. This podcast was brought to you today by career sketching with Katherine Ann Byam and the space where ideas launch. Career sketching is leadership development and coaching brand offering personalised career transition and transformation services. This space where ideas launch offers high performance group leadership, coaching and strategy facilitation to businesses and the food and health sectors. To find out more contact Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn