We met this time Augustin Jarak, the most passionate person about entrepreneurship and startups. Not only that he is an entrepreneur himself but he is initiating in Zagreb many startup events that are great for networking. An inspiring source of new ideas and a way to discover your way to what Zagreb offers in the business world.
Coming form an IT background, Augustin is now specialized in social media marketing and working on a mobile app. called BodyRecog™ a Croatian start-up by Anita Bušić. BodyRecog™ is one of the top 50 most innovative companies in the world of sports”. The app won eleven innovation awards and it uses the camera in a Smartphone, together with some user input, to digitally measure the human body. It analyses the data provided, explains the bio-metrics and offers expert recommendations.
Augustin is organizing Startup Grind Zagreb. The event begins with one hour networking, then a Fireside chat that hosts a speaker who is an entrepreneur to talk about his/her project welcoming questions of course. Last event speaker was Hermes Arriaga who is the co-founder of Impact hub Zagreb, a place that promotes and supports entrepreneurship. The event ended with another hour of networking.
Augustin is hoping to share in creating a startup Eco system and connect it with the international startup support organizations.
He told us that there are in Zagreb many supportive associations for entrepreneurship on top of them is ZIP (Zagrebački Inkubator Poduzetništva) (Zagreb Entrepreneurship Incubator). They offer an accelerator program for startup projects.
That is not all, Augustin has the big picture of the startups possibilities in Croatia and Zagreb in particular. He even made a guide about it all, in English. Check it out here.
Augustin also represents the international accelerator of Austin, Texas in Croatia and surrounding countries, scouting for startups that has the United States as their primer market.
Being as active as Augustin is, in the field of startups and entrepreneurship, we had to ask if he has his own project, and yes he does.
It is TOURISM FOR ME, specialized in tourism of the vacation rental market. A software to help vacation rental owners and managers to synchronize all of their listings on multiple booking sites, such as booking.com, Airbnb and Others through one interface. To keep better track of the guests reservations. The project is still in the development stage hoping to launch in September 2016.
If you are thinking of having you own startup, Augustin advises you to follow those steps:
You come up with an idea
You develop a plan
You talk to people and make sure you have a target market fit
You take your plan to accelerators or Incubators and ask for a financial support to execute your plan. They will ask you for guarantees to assure that this idea works in reality and once this is done you will get the needed money to launch.
Augustin also believes that at the beginning you don’t need to have an innovative idea you can start by copying others ( Monkey see, Monkey do) principle. After a period of time and with experience you can get your own innovative ideas (Copy first, innovate later) Another principle.
As for the coming plans, Augustin is looking forward to attend the eban winter games which is an annual hotspot for business and creative startups.
We hope this meetup with Augustin is inspiring and encouraging for anyone who is thinking of having their own project.
We welcome your feedback and ideas on contact@uniqueZagreb.com
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