Last November, due to new circumstances, Webiz started organizing an online conference and showed that an event of this type can be successfully adapted to the new format.
This year, Webiz continued in the direction of innovation and on April 8 and 9 held a more production-enhanced conference via live video stream, which brought together more than 40 speakers from the domestic and international scene.
At a time when the challenge is to organize a conference of any format, Webiz is making an event revolution and providing all viewers with a unique 3D studio experience of world caliber, Webiz announced.
Technological startups are the key to the future economic development of Serbia, our chance to catch up with the most developed countries in the world and therefore their development must be approached strategically, are some of the main conclusions of the panels, which marked the two-day Webiz virtual conference.
The conference was opened by Nebojsa Djurdjevic, General Director of the Digital Serbia Initiative, and Stefan Kuester, a representative of the Silicon Valley-based research organization Startup Genome, as well as representatives of the Working Group recently preparing the first National Startup Ecosystem Development Strategy – Zoran Vasiljev, CEO Centili groups, Tanja Kuzman Senior Manager for Startups and Corporate Innovation of PwC Serbia and Jan Kobler, Managing Partner, South Central Ventures.
Stefan Kuester emphasized that there is a lot of room for further progress, especially when it comes to funding sources for startups in the early stages of development and local connections of founders with founders, investors and experts, and exchange of information between them – where we are below the world average.
“The success of any startup ecosystem will depend on the number of startups, entrepreneurs and companies, but also on the trust that the ecosystem has to attract investments and retain quality staff,” said Vasiljev, while Kuzman pointed out that the key thing that our ecosystem lacks is connectivity and communication between founders, experts and all other participants.
In addition to innovations and startups, there was a lot of talk at the Webiz conference about women’s entrepreneurship, greater involvement of women in the hi-tech industry and educational platforms that can contribute to this goal.
“In 2020, only 2.3 percent of the money invested was invested in startups run by women, although the return on investment from such startups is twice as high as that run by men,” said Biljana Zdrale, CEO of startup Boostowski.
Gaja Montelatici, co-founder and CEO of Studio X Ventures, believes that this situation will change when more women are in decision-making positions, but also when women are empowered enough and realize that success does not have to come from the first time.
Jelena Bratic, Microsoft’s Lead Multy-Country Services, sees new digital skills and IT technology as a great opportunity for retraining middle-aged women, which can also be mastered through courses.
Ljubisa Egelja, Marketing Director of OTP Bank Serbia, Maja Perovic, CMO startup of IPification, Aleksandar Gligorijevic, Marketing Director of TeleGroup and Olja Milanovic, Account Manager at Webiz, spoke on the topic of innovations within companies.
“Decisively turning to innovation will simplify products and services the fastest and provide a better user experience. Companies should establish a system and stimulate employees to actively present ideas for improvements, and additionally to use the potential of the startup ecosystem,” said Egelja.
The conference also discussed how small businesses can use influencer marketing in the right way, in order to build a successful brand.
Practical advice was given by marketing experts, leading influencers and creators of authentic content on digital platforms: Branislava Antovic, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Brana’s Divine World, Aleksandra Bezmarevic, Social Media Expert by Dream Maker, Nikola Stanisic, Founder & CEO of the Sumska brand secret and Nenad Milic, Executive Director, IAB Serbia.
The Webiz team is already planning the next event, which will be organized live in the form of a Festival, and which will follow all the most current topics from the world of business, IT and innovation. We are sure that this event will also be worthy of attention and that networking will once again become a trademark of Webiz, Danas reports.
