The Founder Institute's four-month curriculum covers everything you would expect from an early-stage startup program, including topics like "Startup Legal and IP” towards the beginning, to “Fundraising” near the end. What makes the curriculum special is the Mentors that teach it, whose passion, feedback and support helps our companies avoid rookie mistakes and set the foundation for a meaningful and enduring company.
The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. Rather than specialists or consultants, we prefer Founders and CEOs to give our companies "the entrepreneur's perspective." The mentors share their experiences, best practices, and mistakes, while also providing specific guidance and feedback on the Founder companies.
In addition, the Founder Institute's unique Graduate Liquidity Pool allows our mentors to share in the equity of companies formed in each program - and, their share is based solely on the anonymous ratings they receive from the Founders both during, and after the program. In this way, the Founder Institute incentivizes mentors to take a special interest in our startups, and provide as much assistance as possible after the program.
We have a great lineup of Mentors confirmed for the Autumn 2013 Zagreb Founder Institute, including many from out of town. See the full list below.
Adeo Ressi
Founder/CEO, Founder Institute
Adeo Ressi is the founder and CEO of the Founder Institute, the worlds largest startup-technology company accelerator. The Institute is the eighth startup that Mr. Ressi has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating. Mr. Ressi was also a Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of 17,000 CEOs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide.
Damir Bulic
Founder & CEO, Equel
Damir Bulic is Founder and CEO of Equel, his brand new database migration tool development company with paying customers worldwide, including the U.S. Before launching Equel, Damir founded Spectral Core, an 11-year old database tools company. In past lives he also worked as an architect of huge ERP software, designed top-notch application and media protection, even made a 3D game in assembler, as well as dozen or so other software products of his own. Damirs is experienced in all not-so-modern and modern relational databases and a specialist in MC680x0 assembler, C/C++, Borland Delphi, C# .NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Codewarrior Carbon and GNU C.
David Beatty
Managing Director, Golden Seeds
David Beatty is an entrepreneur and Angel investor, currently serving as Managing Director of Golden Seeds- one of the largest angel investor groups in the country. Born in Ireland, David started his career in 1985 as a headhunter in London and was transferred to the USA in 1990. In 1999, David cofounded Gorann, Inc, to invest in and work with early stage company’s. Gorann has co-founded a number of companies, including; Healthology, LLC, a health media company sold to iVillage/NBC, Acronym Media, (a leading search engine marketing firm), the Velot Group, a medical outsourcing firm specializing in Radiology business management, and Delta DEPolymerization, Ltd, a company that DePolymerizes scrap tyres into usable material. David is also Chairman of Empire Messaging, Inc., a company he started in 1993 and ran until 2004, which provides enterprise messaging solutions in the USA. David is an active angel investor having invested personally in over 20 early stage companies and is a Managing Director of Golden Seeds, an angel investor group in New York.
Dino Ravnic
Co-Founder & CEO, GIS Cloud
Dino is a co-founder and the CEO of GIS Cloud Ltd., a UK registered, Zagreb-based start-up doing business in the USA. GIS Cloud was the first Croatian startup to win as a Seed Camp finalist, receive Seed Camp funding, move to the UK and enter the US market. The company has created a more accessible way of visualizing, analyzing and sharing geospatial data, sold as software as a service. Emphasis is on collaboration among GIS Cloud users, easy access to data regardless of user’s location and enabling quickly and easily publish maps on the web to share anywhere in the world. The GIS Cloud platform can also be used to build geo and location aware apps. Before co-founding GIS Cloud, Dino was co-founder and project developer of karteGradova.com and flashNavigator. Dinos specialty is software architecture development and software engineering in C/C++, C#, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, Flash, ActionScript, SQL, Delphi, Symbian and Tcl. Dino is a computer science graduate of Zagreb University, FER.
Dino Bendekovic
Managing Director, Interfokus Advisors
Dino is an experienced investor and investment professional with extensive background in emerging markets private equity/venture capital and corporate finance. Hes a founder and managing partner at Interfokus Advisors, a Southeast Europe based investment services firm focused on small and medium sized companies in emerging markets. Before, Dino was a Managing Director at SEAF Venture Capital fund. He founded a start-up in food and food processing sector which he exited through trade sale. He holds an MBA from Boston University, MA, USA.
Gordana Popovic
CMO, co-founder, Myrio Inc.
Gordana is the co-founder and CMO of Myrio Inc, solutions. Myrio applications help shoppers to improve their shopping experience and increase customer satisfaction. Solution helps retailers to boost cross sales and upsales through innovative and entertaining service. Myrio Interactive Window is a finalist for the Most Effective Mobile Application Award – b2b, 2013 in London. Gordana has extensive experience in sales and marketing from working in the US and Italy. She is a member of Croatian Business Angel Association (CRANE) and a consultant for Corps Diplomatique Croatia - Website and magazine for diplomats and international businessmen, with informations about investment opportunities and quality life in Croatia. Gordana graduated from University of Zagreb, School of Economy, Master in Marketing. She attended one year Owners & Entrepreneurs Management Program 2012. at IE business School, Madrid, Spain.
Hrvoje Prpic
Investor and Advisor, CRANE
Hrvoje is a co-founder of Croatian Business Angel Network (CRANE) and an active angel investor. Most recently he invested in and joined Trillenium as a full time advisor, a futuristic 3D white label platform combining a couple of newly invented technologies. Hrvoje is also a lead investor in Once and offSpace. Before becoming an angel investor, Hrvoje founded and managed HGspot until 2004 (IPO in 2007). Hrvojes specialties include retail, branding and identity and investment.
Ivan Vrdoljak
CEO, Alcina
Ivan is founder CEO of Alcina, Prenal Adriatic and Center for telemedicine headquartered in Zagreb and engaged in the financing and operation of new ventures in Croatia and abroad through VC/PE transactions, investment and merchant banking services, business development and corporate development for entries and extensions - strategic deals, positioning, and valuation of markets, offerings, and targets. At the very beginning of his career Ivan worked as a Project Manager at Lola Racunala and as SBU Director at Siemens AG Munich before transitioning to Venture Finance, starting at IRR Venture Capital fund and fund of funds (partly owned by Lazard Brothers investment bank ) in New York. Ivan also worked as a Venture Partner at SEAF VC fund in Zagreb and General Partner at Eagle Ventures B.V. (Amsterdam and Ljubljana). Ivan holds BSc/MSc/PhD in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science/Applied Mathematics from the University of Zagreb and an MBA from London Business School.
Josko Bobanovic
Partner
Josko Bobanovic is a senior investment professional with strong transactional and board experience across multiple industries. He presently focused on early stage cleantech opportunities across Europe with particular focus on bio-based chemicals. His career spans investments in materials, enterprise software, hardware and internet, as well as entrepreneurial activities. Leveraging his international background and global network of contacts, he helps build strong companies by assisting them in strategic planning, sales and marketing, strategy and communication.
Justin Wilcox
CTO, Nimbus Health
Justin Wilcox started his first company at the age of 10, and hasn’t been able to stop. Graduating from Cal Poly’s Computer Science program, Justin worked at Microsoft for five years before leaving to start Nimbus Health – an electronic medical record company. In addition to running Nimbus, he’s launched a couple mobile apps in his spare time, including a top seller in the Travel Category and Bounce on Android. When Justin’s not entrepreneuring, he’s blogging at CustomerDevLabs.com about entrepreneuring or maybe doin’ a little dancing.
Kristjan Pecanac
Director, BoundBreaker
Kristjan is a serial entrepreneur dedicated to extreme high technology with 20 years of experience in hardware & system design and startup business management. Kristjans technical background is in hardware architectures for computer systems and telecommunications (chip, board design and development), embedded software and firmware for telecommunication equipment and middleware. Kristjan is a founder and mentor at BoundBreaker, a startup incubator thats bridging the gap between Slovenia and Silicon Valley. Kristjan has to date mentored over a dozen tech startups, all of which are successfully executing and most of which raised angel or venture financing. Previously Kristjan was the founder and CEO of Daisy Technologies, Inc. (the first Slovenian startup to incorporate and raise venture capital in the US), Digital Development and sunSmission. In the last 4 years he has been working on the idea of a cognitive computer system.
Luka Abrus
CEO, Five Minutes Ltd.
Luka is CEO at Five Minutes, mobile and web development company, with a 45 people team. Five Minutes is based in Croatia with a presence in New York, and 98% of its income generates from exporting software development services. He is a member of the board and ex-president of Croatian Independent Software Exporters association. Luka is also a lecturer at VERN University, a columnist for IT magazine Mreža, and author of three books on web development.
Mladen Vukmir
Founding Partner, VUKMIR & ASSOCIATES
After completing the law education at Zagreb University Law School, Mladen Vukmir obtained Master of Intellectual Property degree at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH, USA. In 1991 he founded VUKMIR & ASSOCIATES. In 1992 he acted as an expert adviser to the Croatian State Intellectual Property Office Zagreb, at the time of its founding. Subsequently he was appointed a patent and trademark agent, admitted to practice before the CSIPO and European Patent Office. During the Croatian EU accession negotiations he participated as an expert on enforcement in the IP Chapter Working Group. He has been appointed by the Government of the Republic of Croatia to serve as a member of the Board of Appeals for Patents and Topographies. He advised on preparations for the Manual on Technology Transfer at UNIDO. Mladen is a member AIPPI, IBA, ITechLaw, GALA, INTA, LES, UIA.
Niksa Tomulic
Founder, Kompare online
Niksa is an entrepreneur who is currently working on kompare.hr, as founder and CEO. kompare.hr is a consumer finance, insurance and telecom comparison Website operating in Croatia with ambitions to grow in the whole region. Niksas background is in telecommunications engineering, network architecture, sales, marketing and international business development. Last 15 years he has helped build mobile/telco businesses in Europe, US and Emerging markets. He has done so for a leading Cisco Gold partner in Switzerland (as a network engineer) and later in Slovenia doing business globally (as a sales director). Niksa is still an active Cisco CCIE, always excited about the technology. He is also an active member of CRANE (Croatian Business Angels Network).
Ozzy Papic
Serial Entrepreneur
Ozzy Papic, was the Founder and CEO of Toronto-based Net Integration Technologies (NITIX), which was acquired by IBM. NITIX is today at the core of IBM’s Small Business initiative under the Lotus Foundations brand. Ozzy was voted one of the Top 50 Inventors by VAR Business, and he also received a US patent for NITIX IDB backup technology. Prior to NITIX, he co-founded HighwayOne in the UK where, as Technology Director, he designed and implemented what was then the UK’s first distributed wireless high-speed data network. Highway One was subsequently acquired by Telefonica. Prior to Highway One, Ozzy was an executive for Canada’s largest computer manufacturer and system integrator where he built one of the country’s first business internet service provider businesses.
Shirley Gines
Founder, Firebrand Global Communications
Shirley is Founder of Firebrand Global Communications, a PR agency; and Co-Founder of Connected Cos., a sustainability management consultancy. Her career spans over 25 years in both corporate and agency functions, in high-technology and consumer industries. Her current sectors of focus are mobile, telecommunications, entertainment and digital commerce. Shirley teaches a class at Stanford University, "New PR Strategies to Propel Startups." Her specialty is in integrated strategic communications aimed at a companys important audiences: news media and analyst relations, messaging profiles, social community engagement, crisis and reputation management, and executive visibility. She received a Silver Anvil, the highest award from Public Relations Society of America, for her crisis communications work. Shirley has a B.A. degrees in psychology and in communication from Stanford.
Srdjan Loncar
President and CEO, CareSpeak Communications
Srdjan is a repeat entrepreneur with over 15 years of domestic and international general management, marketing, new product & business development, strategy and turn around experience with Pepsi Cola International, Johnson & Johnson, Bertelsmann eCommerce, and Songbird Hearing. Srdjan is currently founder and CEO of CareSpeak Communications, a US startup with a development team in Croatia, that provides mobile communications technology solutions to health care professionals, patients, and caregivers for better medication and clinical compliance, resulting in improved outcomes. Srdjan was also a founder and partner of Tesla Labs, a first startup, seed fund in Belgrade, Serbia. Srdjan holds an MBA from New York University, Stern School of Business.
Tomislav Sekerija
CEO & Founder, Setom Ltd.
Tomislav is owner and managing director at real estate investment company Setom Ltd. He hold Master of Electrical Engineering from the University of Zagreb, and Master in Business Administration from the IE Business School in Madrid. Prior to starting his own company he worked as a project manager at Kajzer dom Ltd. where he managed all the aspects of funding and managing a real estate project and leading a cross-functional teams. With that knowledge he started his own company currently operating in real estate investment industry. Furthermore, Tomislav was investor at CRANE for 3 years where he invested in two companies operating in IT sector, and as a goal to leverage his IT knowledge he volunteered at CROZ, one of the biggest Croatian software development companies and currently he operates as companys associate. In addition, Tomislav has recently been appointed as visiting professor on IE Business School in Madrid. Tomislavs specialties are venture creation, project management, project financing, cross-functional team leadership and sales.
Tyler Crowley
Founder & CEO, Skweal
Tyler has been helping startups with their important pitches since the first TechCrunch40 events and continues today with the LAUNCH conference, where he works one-on-one with each company to create the most compelling pitch possible for press and partners. Tyler is also co-host of This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis where he regularly shares insights on the art and science of pitching investors.
Vibor Cipan
CEO, UX Passion
Vibor is founder and CEO of Croatian startup UX Passion, creator of the Wall of Tweets. Vibors background is in UX design, service design and usability, especially for mobile applications, as well as analytics and SEO. Vibors passion for all things user experience, usability, rapid and hi-fi prototyping and information architecture led him and his team to build and launch the Wall of Tweets, a simple and engaging "twitter wall" solution that enables people attending events to share their tweets on a big wall in a real-time.
Vladimir De Franceschi
Founder, De Franceschi & Boray
Vladimir is a corporate, securities and intellectual property licensing attorney in Silicon Valley, where after practicing with Venture Law Group, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Baker & McKenzie, he founded De Franceschi & Boray, a Palo Alto and New York law firm that represents cross-border startups from US, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Vladimir has counseled startups as well as their US and nonUS angel, venture capital and corporate investors in over $300mil in early and expansion stage equity and debt financings. He currently represents European startups from Finland, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Greece and Russia. Vladimir has mentored at Startup Sauna, Swissnex, BoundBreaker and Seed Camp. He helped launch and is a Director of Founder Institutes Zagreb chapter.
