Zagreb Entrepreneurship Incubator Will House 7 Startups & Be Advised by McClure, Espinal & Glaenzer

The Zagreb Entrepreneurship Incubator, ZIP (Zagrebacki inkubator poduzetništva), presented the first 7 startups to enter it’s new coworking space, one of the first in Croatia in general, today in Zagreb. They are Fieldpod, Content KOD, BackWay, Indoor Vision, Publiconn, Mash.me and Digital distribution of graphic novels. While ZIP is not an accelerator and doesn’t fund startups, the news was well received by the local startup community that has lacked true support in previous years. Now, the Zagreb-based incubator will also be advised by Stefan Glaenzer, Seedcamp’s Carlos Espinal and Dave McClure!

As we already wrote when ZIP’s start was announced, the project was founded by entrepreneurs Ivo Špigel, Mihovil Barančić, Damir Sabor and Saša Cvetojević (also Croatia’s most active angel investor). Špigel confirmed to Netocratic that their long term goal is to add a feature of funding, but they aren’t sure what it might be. Most people are betting on an accelerator-like fund that we might see in 2014. With the growth of the regional early stage investment scene with Eleven and Launchub, another fund will be welcomed by the startup community.

First a Coworking Space for Startups

For now, ZIP will be first and foremost a community and coworking space in two locations: ZIP.Events in the hauls of the University of Zagreb and ZIP.Factory for the actual startups. Startups will not be giving any equity to ZIP at this point. In no particular order, they are:

• Fieldpod, a CRM for repairmen;
• Publiconn, an interesting social network for users of EU and other public funds – ideal in a climate where cross-border cooperation is very important;
• Indoor Vision, a navigation system for the indoors for blind people;
• Mash.me, a virtual reality environment for creating and controlling unique characters;
• BackWay, a free iPhone app that lets you find your way back – even offline;
• Digital distribution of graphic novels sounds just like it is.

While the startups might have local and international mentors in the coworking space, ZIP found its own mentors in the form of a quite interesting advisory board. Besides StartupSauna’s Antti Ylimutka and DN Capital’s Nenad Marovac there are Seedcamp’s partner Carlos Eduardo Espinal, one of Europe’s most prominent angel investors Stefan Glaenzer that has been active funding Kolektiva and Limundo, as well as the founder of 500 Startups and Geeks on a Plane – Dave McClure.