From Ecosystem Potential to Founder Execution: The Western Balkans Accelerator Begins
Ten startups from Kosovo and North Macedonia are entering a three-month acceleration journey built around execution, international exposure and investor readiness.
A few months ago in Prishtina, we were talking about what the startup ecosystem in Kosovo and the wider Western Balkans needed next.
On September 14, the conversation became much more concrete.
The Western Balkans Accelerator Program officially kicked off, bringing together ten startups from Kosovo and North Macedonia, the Startup Wise Guys team, EBRD, the Swiss Entrepreneurship Program and the local partners who helped build the programme.
And from the first introductions, one thing was clear: this programme is about the founders.
Over the next three months, they will be the ones testing markets, talking to customers, sharpening their sales process, challenging their assumptions and preparing for the next stage of their companies.
Meet the cohort
The ten companies enter the programme from different starting points. Some are still sharpening product-market fit and pricing. Others already have paying customers and are thinking about their next international market.
Paystorm is building an AI-powered accounts receivable platform to help companies collect overdue invoices faster and make cash flow more predictable, with a focus on sharpening ICP, pricing and go-to-market.
KickTick is building a ticketing platform for concerts, festivals, conferences and sports events, addressing a regional market where ticketing is still fragmented.
BrandPack turns scattered company knowledge, brand, customers, offers, tone and strategy, into a structured context layer that teams and AI tools can reuse.
From North Macedonia, ding.mk is working on predictive maintenance for SMEs, helping companies detect equipment problems before they become costly failures.
Autenix maps fragmented Balkan and EU compliance requirements into a single system, with ambitions to expand beyond the region.
roaadent is developing an all-in-one platform for dental practices, combining diagnostics, scheduling and billing. With paying customers already in Switzerland, the team is now focused on strengthening sales and European expansion.
PointSimplify brings payroll, invoicing, accounting and employee administration into one local-first workspace for Kosovo SMEs and accounting firms.
North Macedonia’s Factum AI applies AI to legal research and document work, with jurisdiction-specific sources and hundreds of customers across several markets.
Kaiva is building around employee growth and engagement, helping companies make feedback, recognition and learning part of the everyday employee experience.
And Hamatics turns camera feeds into operational intelligence, using computer vision across security, safety, production, traffic and logistics.
Ten companies, very different products. But during the kickoff, the same themes kept coming back: sales, product-market fit, international growth, repeatability and investment readiness.
That is where the real work begins.
A strong group around the founders
The companies will not be doing this alone.
EBRD, through its wider work with startups and the Star Venture programme, brings access to expertise, networks and investors. During the kickoff, Leonora Kusari highlighted the opportunity for founders from Kosovo and North Macedonia to build companies that can compete beyond their home markets and attract international capital.
The Swiss Entrepreneurship Program brings a longer-term ecosystem perspective.
Jakob Modéer spoke about something that goes beyond the next three months: founders who succeed today can become tomorrow’s mentors, angels and ecosystem builders.
That cycle is important for markets like Kosovo and North Macedonia. Strong ecosystems are built when experience and capital start circulating locally.
The programme also brings in Zephyr Angels, Makerspace Innovation Center Prizren and STIKK, combining international support with people who know the region, the companies and the local ecosystem.
Gogo Rafajlovski from Zephyr Angels gave the founders perhaps the most direct message of the session:
“We are here to co-invest, so prove us right.”
A pretty good way to start an accelerator.
Now comes the execution
The first step for every startup will be setting its own programme KPIs.
From there, the next weeks will move through team and culture, business models, sales, product development, finance, fundraising, international expansion and investor preparation.
The format is designed to keep things practical: workshops followed by testing, individual sessions around company-specific challenges, founder talks, peer learning and continuous pitch practice.
And the cohort will move offline quickly.
On September 30 and October 1, the startups will meet in Skopje for the first physical bootcamp and take part in Startup Revolution.
It is a good first test. Only a couple of weeks into the programme, founders will already be meeting the wider ecosystem, talking to new people and putting their companies in front of an external audience.
The programme will then continue with a second bootcamp in Prishtina in November, before returning to Prishtina on December 17–18 for the final bootcamp and Demo Day.
By then, we expect the pitches to have improved.
More importantly, we want the businesses behind those pitches to have moved too.
A clearer customer segment. A new market tested. A better sales process. First international customers. A pricing decision finally made. An investor conversation that turns into something real.
Those are the changes worth following.
The ecosystem work brought these ten teams into the room.
Now it is their turn to build.
