As a community-born media, The Recursive’s mission is to spread the innovative ideas that are set to transform the future of our region. For our first birthday, we asked the tech ecosystem community builders in SEE, about the importance of independent journalism that covers the growth of the regional ecosystems. They also shared a few of their favorite articles from the past year.
It has been 12 months of growth for us all and as parents know, the first year is all about sleepless nights, constant care, and attention. Yesterday, we embarked on our second-year adventure. Today, we have a toddler to raise who is tearing everything. In this case, we hope it will be records.
Below are the ecosystem builders’ opinions in alphabetical order. Feel free to share yours in a comment below. Your support means everything to us.
“The Recursive is the best way to get up to speed with all the latest tech updates from Southeast Europe. Here’s to a great year ahead.”
Alex Alexakis, Investor at Marathon VC and Founder of Greek Startup Pirate.
“Strong media powers entrepreneurship, investment, innovation. Thus, business and the media form a powerful partnership that is indeed shaping an elevated future. Every investment partner needs a storytelling partner. Thank you for the quality of your work, we trust your input, and we appreciate our collaboration. One year of powerful media, and a strong one at that, is such a joyous occasion! We wish you many recurring more! ”
Cristian Dascalu, Partner at GapMinder BV and Co-Founder of Techcelerator.
“You guys are definitely making some noise about the startup ecosystem in CEE and that is great. I love it! I’m sure that you will continue doing great work in the future, more anniversaries to come, that’s for sure. Keep up the good work!”
Matej Grgacevic, Brand Manager at Online Real Assets.
“The Recursive articles show that we are not alone in the Balkans and that the development of our ecosystem is directly connected to the development of the neighboring countries. No other media takes such a perspective on this, and in my view, this is the only way in which we should talk about regional ecosystem development.”
Max Gurvits, Managing Partner at Vitosha Venture Partners and Chief Host at Summit Summit.
“Having a high-quality media platform is an essential part of every modern ecosystem. I’m beyond grateful to The Recursive for their professionalism, objective, and aiming to offer a complete as possible look at the tech and innovation ecosystem in SEE. It’s a privilege to know the founders personally and I’m proud that this massive project started in Bulgaria and has spread rapidly across the whole region. It’s not easy to top your already super high standards and achievements, but I’m sure the second year is aiming even higher!”
Georgi Kadrev, Co-founder and CEO of Kelvin Health and Imagga.
“Keep up the amazing work spreading the great news about the tech & entrepreneurship ecosystem in the SEE. This is just the beginning of a wonderful fairytale about a lot of unicorns and Cinderellas originating from the Balkans. Happy Birthday!”
Georgi Nenov, The Recursive podcast co-host and Business Development Manager at NOVATOR Bulgaria.
“Driven by a mission to highlight the vibrant and thriving tech ecosystem of Southeast Europe, The Recursive has become one of the most important media outlets when it comes to quality journalism and emerging startups. Only with an agile and passionate team that has a desire to be useful, create value, and contribute to the group we belong to, can something remarkable happen. Your energy is inspiring – take a moment to look back at all the thoughts that have become reality, and keep dreaming big. Here is to many unicorns and shared success stories that will go down in history!”
Carmen Sebe, CEO of SeedBlink and Advisory Board Member at SymphoPay and Typing DNA.
“Wishing you a lot more decades of sharing everything good happening in our region, with no exit condition.”
Mihail Stoychev, founder and CEO of SMSBump.
“If a startup achieves a critical milestone on their journey – expansion to a new market, funding round, an exit – it serves as an inspiration and encouragement for everyone in the community. Starting my day with a great story from the region that The Recursive is sharing motivates me to keep doing what I’m doing because now I can see the results of all the ecosystem heavy-lifting we, as ecosystem builders, are doing. Happy Birthday to The Recursive Team, keep shaping the future of our ecosystem!”
Janet Todorova, Eastern Europe Director at Founder Institute and Co-founder of SofiaStartup.
“Really excited about the prospects of our Southeastern Europe innovation ecosystem. It is growing impressively and now it has a strong international voice of very high quality in The Recursive.”
Filippos Zakopoulos, Managing Partner at Found.ation and part of the Management Board at Pixelocracy and Socialinnov.
Which articles highlighted the growth of the ecosystem best?
“A favorite article? That’s as hard to choose as it is choosing a favorite start-up, a favorite book, or a favorite destination. All angles are important: analysis articles give us a critical and clarifying overview; interviews and podcasts show us the inner workings of innovative minds, good character, and skillful collaboration; storytelling articles show us how our world works, they teach and inspire. There is great power in this diversity,” says Cristian Dascalu.
We present the links in alphabetical order.
>>> Alex Alexakis & Filippos Zakopoulos recommend an overview about Startups from Southeast Europe that have raised over $1.2B in the first half of 2021.
>>> Cristian Dascalu likes the article about eMAG Ventures investing €1.5M in Flip.ro, showcasing how a fresh startup mindset can disrupt an established market in a very short amount of time.
>>> Matej Grgacevic’s favorite article is about how startup-friendly are SEE countries, where we compare digital initiatives in Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia.
>>> Max Gurvitz recommends the piece Inside the startup ecosystem of Albania: trends, main actors, and next steps.
>>> Georgi Kadrev shared with us that one of his favorite “articles” so far, given the newsworthy nature of our content, is actually the announcement of the podcast, it was really a teaser.
>>> Zornitsa Mitkova, Managing Director at Teenovator in Bulgaria, says the piece she remembered first was what vision of the future inspires Gen Z entrepreneurs, showcasing what motivates young scientists, engineers, business developers, and social entrepreneurs.
>>> Georgi Nenov said he instantly clicked on the breaking news of everything about the upcoming €3M IPO of Dronamics.
>>> Vilislav Slavev, Digital Campaign Specialist at Offerista Group in Bulgaria, was captivated by the insights in Bulgarian Payhawk raises a historic $112M Series B round led by an investor in Stripe.
>>> Mihail Stoychev remembers what he found out on Gtmhub raises $120M in the largest funding round in the OKR software space.
>>> Janet Todorova enjoyed the analysis of the first unicorn effect: What has been the impact of UiPath on the Romanian innovation ecosystem?
