The Recursive Launches Growth Club to Give the Tech Ecosystem in Southeast Europe the Communication Tools to Scale Globally

The Recursive is launching the beta version of Growth Club, a new platform to bring global awareness of Southeast Europe’s fast-growing tech ecosystem. Building on the international network we have developed, as well as our expertise in innovation storytelling, Growth Club would be looking to enable business leaders in the region with the communication and partner matchmaking tools to scale globally. 

As part of this ambition, we are working on the integration of all data about the regional ecosystems in a single interface, so it’s way easier and faster for investors, media, and other stakeholders to find the next big story from the tech scene in SEE. 

Join Growth Club today and put your business on the map

(Currently open to Product Companies, VCs, Corporate R&D, and Event Organizers; in the following months we’d be adding all other members of the ecosystem – tech service providers, accelerators, universities etc.)

Growth Club: Scaling our impact

Less than nine months ago, we launched as a media outlet dedicated to covering the progress of the emerging tech ecosystem in Southeast Europe (SEE). Since then, we crafted 500+ stories in text and video and in the process over 150, 000 people from 68 countries got insights into the exciting developments in the region (e.g. 15+ exits and $2B+ of capital invested in local innovators). 

Even with the increasing number of newsworthy stories,  the ecosystem is still in its early stages and facing major obstacles. It’s still relatively unknown to the world, information in English is often missing, access to the people and know-how to help you grow is difficult, there are limited synergies between the individual countries, and go-to-market is a traditionally challenging aspect of building a tech business out of the region. 

On the other side of the equation, we’ve been seeing increased interest in the ecosystem – from both local and international investors, corporates, media. 

So, our team at The Recursive thought a lot about how we can connect the dots and scale our impact, namely: 

• How can we get more people in the region and around the world to know about the developments in the SEE tech community?

• How can we present the data about the ecosystem in a way that’s easily accessible for everyone who wants to connect (VC, media, talent, etc.)?

• How can we give more companies the opportunity to reach international audiences, even the ones with limited resources and connections? Оr the ones our editorial team doesn’t have the capacity to cover.

Little by little, we came to the concept of the Growth Club,  a platform to try to answer all these questions, and to do so at scale. 

Why Club? Because the development of the ecosystem is dependent on the entire community joining forces together. Going back to the concept of recursion, we all shape our own environment. The more people join the club, the more useful it is for everyone, the bigger the chain reaction is,  the more attention and resources the region gets. To get there, we first need unity within the SEE community – one ecosystem, no borders.

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Mapping the ecosystem

We believe that proper mapping of all companies in SEE is the first step towards effective presentation of the region internationally. It shows the strengths of the ecosystem, it provides insight into who is doing what, and the structured data serves as a great foundation to grab the attention of VCs, journalists, and other market influencers.

So, we invite you to create or claim your company profile on The Recursive platform and share what you do with the world. It’s free and it takes no more than 5 minutes.  It’s an opportunity to get visibility in front of target audiences and be included in our monthly industry analyses or ecosystem overviews. 

This data is also the basis for future matchmaking with partners. Let’s assume you’re a startup founder. Once we know what your industry, stage, and goals are, we would be able to easily notify VCs or accelerators in our network who could be interested in a company like yours.

Communication tools for growth

Of course, data is only one piece of the puzzle. We believe that at the end of the day, proactive communication is just as important. Therefore, we are launching several tools for targeted distribution of various announcements.

• Press release publication and distribution service: We’re starting with a network of 50+ tech and business journalists from the region and all over the world and we’d be growing it significantly in the months to come. The goal here is to save users tens of precious hours and ideally multiply the reach of their stories, in just a few clicks. 

• Opportunity to add announcements to your company profile (hiring, fundraising, and others), with the option to also have them distributed to VCs, founders, service providers, and talent in our network once per month. We understand that sometimes you need communication that’s a bit more targeted towards a certain audience. In case, you have a specific goal beyond brand visibility – fundraising, hiring, meeting startups if you’re a VC, etc.- this is your option.

• Last but not least, we know that not everyone can create compelling content (or have the time to do so). For those of you, who’d like to focus on other critical aspects of business building, we are pushing forward our Content-as-a-service offering. Meaning that now, you can have The Recursive editors create content for your own channels – articles, press releases, blog posts.

We’d be happy to have you join the beta and share your feedback. SIgn up here for free to start growing.