Katapult Akcelerator

📣 The fourth application cycle of #Katapult is now CLOSED 📣 🚀 We are happy to announce that 140 applications have been submitted, 26 more than last year! Check out some interesting stats about applicants in the carousel 👇 💼 What are the next steps of the process? ✔️ Application review. ✔️ Evaluation of startups by an international group of experts. ✔️ Selected startups pitch live in front of an independent commission. 🏆 When can applicants expect the final decisions on #Katapult25 program participants? ✔️ By the end of November '24, a shortlist of startups will be announced. ✔️ By the end of December '24, the final list of selected startups for #Katapult25 will be available to the public. Read more details in the official announcement here 👉 https://lnkd.in/ej-QCKiu - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank

Q: Why are people in e-commerce losing their hair? 🧑🦲 A: The rising CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). In the last 5 years, the CAC has risen 60%. Want to know why? 👇 👎 Organic reach on social media is down. 🆙 Advertising prices went up. As a result, 80% of online stores have increased their investment in SEO in 2023. TAU Commerce is on a mission to prevent hair loss in e-commerce. How? They offer a full-featured e-commerce platform with industry-leading SEO. (For those who don't know what that is, it's like Shopify, but better.) The market potential seems unreal. 😱 Over 30K shopping sites are built daily, and the market for e-commerce software will reach $25BN in 2028! 🚀 Generally, everything related to e-commerce is growing - .shop and .store domains are the fastest-growing domain names in the world. According to Nenad Orlić, CEO of TAU Commerce, one of their customers was so happy they said this: "Of course, I am happy. I have no marketing, but I have sales!" The team is moving fast. Since they started the #Katapult24 program, they onboarded 20 new customers! So far, they have been fully bootstrapped, with 180K EUR in revenue in 2023, and are asking for 300K investment to scale their business globally in the next 18 months. With the investment, they estimate they will reach 40M EUR in revenue or 100k customers by 2027. DM Nenad Orlić to hear how they plan to do that. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank

💡 #KatapultInvestorTip 👉” I love how you integrated the payment processing. That's where the money is going to be. Do you have any projections on how big it will get based on your customer market size?” #Katapult24 startup, MotionOps, is playing it smart. Besides charging a subscription fee, they developed their payment processor, obtaining a solid competitive advantage. How come? They have an additional revenue stream from processing all payments through their SAAS. That's around 1% of the payment value. Most of their competitors obtain about 0.2% from a channel partnership with Stripe. Not taking the easy route for this startup means they have more features to unlock revenue streams in their roadmap, making the most out of their customer base and helping the platform become more sticky. Mentor and angel investor Kalpesh P. wanted to know how much they could make if all of those features were implemented. “So, on the highest end, if we look at the most extensive plan, with all the revenue streams integrated, the lifetime value of those customers can reach a quarter million. We're maximizing our revenue channels,” replied the co-founders Trevor Maddux and Nikola Cvetkovic. MotionOps delivered a great lesson on staying focused on obtaining more customers and retaining and monetizing your existing ones. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank #serbianstartupecosystem #innovation #economicgrowth #EUzatebe

“This market is a $60-100BN opportunity; 52% of contractors aren't even using software, and 80% aren't even happy with what's out there. I’m customer #1 for this. We had roughly 50 guys quit our Remodeling company over the last 3 years because of the Frankenstein solution we were using to cover all aspects of our operations. Five to seven different applications, none of them communicate data loss everywhere,” said Trevor. Trevor Maddux and Nikola Cvetkovic are the Co-Founders of MotionOps, a #Katapult24 startup targeting over 6.2M home service businesses in North America. Home service businesses generate almost $600BN yearly, and the market is projected to reach $1000BN in 2026, so the market itself is also growing, fueling the startup's growth. Their sweet spot for MotionOps is companies between 8 and 40 workers, which the billion-dollar competitors in this industry do not even service, as their solutions are more trouble than they are worth for SMEs of this size. There are over 600k SMEs that fit their ICP in the “home remodeling” category alone, and the team considers success getting 2% of the market. However, they do not plan on stopping there. They already raised $1.2M in a pre-seed round from a VC in the Salt Lake area and two angels. The leading partner of the mentioned VC owns about 35% of the solar engineering market, and they are a strategic partner for MotionOps when they pursue that vertical, too, as planned in their GTM strategy. DM them to find out more about their business. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank #serbianstartupecosystem #innovation #economicgrowth #EUzatebe

We talked with Djordje Jevtic, CEO and co-founder of #Katapult23 startup OTA Sync, about how they avoided cold-calling 1000s of investors by sustaining relationships with a handful of serious ones. Djordje also shared, drawing from his own experience, how Katapult can help startups 💡 by introducing them to investors? 💡 in having a better position during negotiations? 💡 enter distant markers? As you will see, this detailed interview intends to give back to the #Katapult community. We are very grateful to Djordje Jevtic for taking the time to share their knowledge. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank

💡 #KatapultInvestorTip 👉 “Why are you going after the companies with ERP? Why not go after all companies?” asked Kalpesh P., #Katapult24 mentor. It seems logical that one would avoid competition, but the co-founders' domain expertise indicates otherwise: Vladimir Arnautovic (CEO) and Vladislav Ujic (CTO), Co-Founders of #Katapul24 startup Valuator®, met as consultants at Centar za digitalnu transformaciju and worked on the digitalization of SMEs in Serbia. The team knows that SAP or other big ERPs are not their competition but a signal that the company is ready for Valuator, too. Their ICPs are companies with 50 to 500 employees already using some ERP. First-time digitalizing of SMEs and micro companies is an uphill battle for several reasons: 1️⃣  They do not understand its need, so it seems like a vitamin.  2️⃣  Being the first software they use will not guarantee you being the last.  3️⃣  Contracting takes too long because this is the first time they have done this.  4️⃣  There is no dedicated budget for this, so it feels like a cost, not an investment.  5️⃣  Digital literacy is low, so the adoption rate is low, meaning they may stop using it.  6️⃣  Chances are, someone in the company benefits from being in the dark, one way or another. Knowing this, the team answered: “Because we spent one and a half years speaking with companies without technologies, SMEs, and micro companies. We lose a lot of energy and time explaining to them why this is important. If we have bigger companies that already use some kind of software, they know what we are talking about and are prepared to use us.” The Valuator® team replied concisely to the mentor’s question, showing how to leverage domain expertise to help your investor better understand your business. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank #serbianstartupecosystem #innovation #economicgrowth #EUzatebe

🎉 NEWS 🎉  If you ever decide to combine all your glasses into one pair, Fuller Vision can make that happen. Blic Biznis recently featured Nebojsa Sabovic, the #Katapult22 startup's co-founder, to raise awareness about this "made-in-Serbia" 🇷🇸 innovation and announce their plans for the future. Read the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/eDjucvQZ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank

FACT: “Procurement is the next big thing on the roadmap for the digitalization of companies.” #Katapult24 startup Valuator® is ready to service the market! Vladimir Arnautovic (CEO) and Vladislav Ujic (CTO), Co-Founders of Valuator® made a bold statement during their pitch: “Procurement is the next big thing on the roadmap for the digitalization of companies. Almost every company we aim for now has already implemented financing software, CRM, HR software, or ERP-like software. Still, almost no one or a minimal number of the companies have already digitalized procurement.” Here are some stats they used to support their claim further: 💡  40% of managers don't know what's happening in procurement, what they bought, why they bought, how much they paid, or how suppliers behave. 💡 60% of them believe that improving procurement can save money. 💡 35% of procurement employees have problems working with robust and expensive software systems. Valuator is a SaaS, centralized online procurement platform that enables simple sending of RFP easy tracking with one click—receiving and saving all offers in one place. Every purchase decision is marked and noted. The history of all purchases, analytics, and reporting enables companies to plan their business better. They are open for business in Serbia, with 100K EUR ARR in 2023, 600K EUR ARR as a goal for 2024, and a plan to expand to the DACH region. They are aiming for the so-called Mittelstand in Germany 🇩🇪 and Austria. 🇦🇹 It's a substantial portion of the market for companies that are not such big names but work like suppliers behind big names in the automotive, manufacturing, distribution, and other similar industries. Their ICP started as SME a couple of decades ago, and now they are large and need to be more digitalized, especially in Germany. Their vision is to build a marketplace and become a one-stop shop for business digitalization with a clearly defined mission and a collection of companies. They ask for 500K EUR to finish building it and in marketing and sales activities. DM Vladislav or Vladimir to hear more or get their pitch deck.  - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank #serbianstartupecosystem #innovation #economicgrowth #EUzatebe

After our 3rd year, the Katapult program has PEF (Program-ecosystem fit) 🥳 Every year, we interview startups, mentors, investors, and stakeholders to understand their perceptions and expectations of the program, and now it is clear that we have our own USP (Unique Selling Proposition). For fun, we decided to call it PEF instead of the PMF (Product Market Fit). We curated some of the statements from this year into this 👇 short video. Check it out. ----------------------------------------- Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank

💡 #KatapultInvestorTip 👉 "What would you say about your competitors entering the EU market? And how would you utilize AI in your strategy?” Competing with AI can drag some businesses into a rat race that will eventually end them. That is why it’s important to be aware of the hype, but still do your research to understand what are the drivers of perceived value of your product to your customer. Co-founders of Curious Sparrow, Ana [Čejović] Đurić and Stefan Milić, as experienced “big four” consultants, aced this question because they prepared for it. Here is what they said: “That's a great question. We met last Friday with a competitor and their CEO. They have existed since 2012 and raised 23 million euros in investment. They have a slightly different business model. Our business model has two crucial differences. First, all our books for children are written by psychologists. They don't do that. Secondly, we don't do print-on-demand, which allows us to have gross margins of 80-plus percent. So we love what they do, but we can compete quite well.” Running after the latest technology advancement as well as ignoring it completely can be dangerous. Take cues from Curious Sparrow - stay informed, but stick to your vision. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Fond za inovacionu delatnost EU u Srbiji The World Bank #serbianstartupecosystem #innovation #economicgrowth #EUzatebe