For a long time, the startup dream in Central and Eastern Europe followed a dangerously simple script: build a clever product with your college friends, raise some local cash, and then (by some miracle of the internet) become a global unicorn.
But as the venture capital climate cools and ‘growth at all costs’ proved nonsensical in the long run, the flaws in that script are becoming quite obvious. In a recent The Recursive Founder Files session, a panel of experts from two of the region’s most interesting tech hubs (khm, Estonia and Bulgaria, if you wondered) sat down to dismantle the GTM myths about scaling across borders.
The Recursive’s moderator Kristiana Kuneva, Chief Business Development Officer, was joined in discussion by George Groshkov (Co-founder @ Mint Ventures XYZ); Milen Ivanov (Managing Partner @ Sofia Angels Ventures); Jana Budkovskaja (Member of the Management Board @ Estonian Business Angels Network (EstBAN)); Madis Lehtmets (Managing Partner @ Estonian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (EstVCA)); and Elor Pruvli (Founder & Global Sales Advisor @ ScaleMode.io).
Global from Day One?
There is a fundamental difference in how founders in Tallinn and Sofia view the world. Estonians, inhabiting a highly digitized country of just 1.3 million people, are forced into a global mindset by lunch on day one. Bulgarians, with a slightly larger domestic playground, tend to test the waters longer locally.
George Groshkov noted that Bulgarian founders often linger in the Balkan ecosystem before venturing out. It feels safer, and it can be a good strategic anchor. However, Jana Bukovskaja, also a Venture Partner at Beamline Accelerator, views domestic success with a skeptical eye, especially in the Baltics.
Because Estonia is highly digitized, a product that works seamlessly there might crash and burn in a country still reliant on legacy setups. “For me, that almost starts to be one of the red flags; if I see that traction is built up only on Estonia or only on the Baltics,” Bukovskaja pointed out. Sometimes, the right niche simply doesn’t exist at home.
The consensus was that staying in a comfort zone of the local market for too long provides false positives; startups should seek international validation as early as possible to ensure the product has true global appeal.
That is a great code, but a terrible pitch
If there was one point of total agreement among the speakers, it was the region is full of brilliant tech builders who are not that great at selling.
Madis Lehtmets was blunt about his home turf. “Traditionally, Estonians are not really good at sales. We are more of engineers and product people.”
In Bulgaria, Milen Ivanov noticed similar scenario: “Bulgarian founders often underestimate their own capabilities. They build high-quality products but lack the confidence to promote them globally.” This disconnect also frequently manifests as a mismatch in what investors actually seek. As founders fall in love with the tool they built, they forget that investors aren’t buying tools.
“Investors want to see how you’re going to build a business that is sustainable, that makes money… Well, I noticed that most of the early-stage founders, are just trying to build a product, not a business,” Ivanov observed.
To bridge this gap, founders must pivot from describing their build to proving their value.
When a pitch focuses solely on the technical specs, it ignores the critical reality that “however a product can be perfect, it will not sell itself, unfortunately,” as Jana Bukovskaja points out. Without a narrative that addresses market demand (a.k.a. convincing note “that someone is crying at nights how this solution is still not there”) the most sophisticated code remains a hobby rather than a venture-scale company.
Elor Pruvli also argues that a common misstep is when founders “build too much product based on their first kind of customers and go kind of too much on the service than building a product kind of angle.” He suggests that the fix for a terrible pitch is a shift toward “value sales, so selling why versus what.”
For an investor, the technical brilliance of the code is secondary to the the ability to scale, “the competence absolutely needed for the startups”. As Pruvli concludes, the goal is not just to describe the code, but to “discover what their users are, and then based on that, relay how you solve them.”
Should you buy a plane ticket?
With video calls, online communities and superbly personalized outbound emails, do you actually need to move to London or New York to win? The panel’s consensus: essentially, yes. Or at least, you need to be logging serious frequent flyer miles.
Elor Pruvli, a GTM advisor who was an early sales hire at tech giants like Monday.com, urged founders to get out of the local bubble immediately. Local feedback is often too polite to be useful. “I always hear like, ‘we need to build a little bit more’ and I’m like, no, you don’t. You just need a kind of minimum viable product ready to go. You can very easily sell on the presentation,” Pruvli insisted. He advises founders to do a physical roadshow once a quarter to their target markets.
Ivanov agreed, delivering a hard truth to founders trying to conquer big markets from the comfort of their Sofia apartments: “Especially if you do a B2B business where your customers are big corporations, you need to meet them at headquarters.”
And that is only the talk about GTM strategy… what about investing? According to Lehtmets, the Estonian VC ecosystem has matured, seeing larger early-stage tickets and more Series A rounds. But reaching the unicorn tier requires something the local market can’t provide: massive growth capital. When startups need 50 to 100 million euros, they have to pivot to US or Western European investors.
But when should you start looking abroad for early-stage money? When local business angels stop answering your calls. As Pruvli put it, if you can’t get your local angels on board, “it’s like a big red flag if you’re even mature to fundraise.” Local capital is the ultimate vote of confidence before taking the show on the road.
Mature enough to collaborate
To close the session, the group fantasized about a Frankenstein’s Unicorn, a billion-euro company built by combining the strengths of both nations. The blueprint goes: merge Estonia’s mature operational playbook and third-wave founders (those who grew up in the shadow of Skype and Pipedrive) with Bulgaria’s massive scale of deep engineering and industrial talent.
The ultimate takeaway for the tech-savvy observer is clear: building a global tech company is no longer about geographical isolation. If you want to scale today, you have to stop acting like an engineer in a vacuum, start selling the why instead of the what, and (most importantly) book your flights.
