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New generation, new entrepreneurship By Mark Koghee
The new generation of entrepreneurs don’t run to the bank to finance their start-up’s, they go online. Several young creative entrepreneurs in Slovenia have successfully taken their products to market with money raised via the crowdfunding website, Kickstarter.
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Business & Investment 2014
Last year, nine Slovenian projects raised over US$1.6m via crowdfunding platforms. It is a staggering number for a country as small as Slovenia. From an electric bicycle wheel to a tiny item finder; the products receiving funding were diverse. The young entrepreneurs behind the products are all connected to Ljubljana’s creative community which two years ago started regular meetings in Kino Šiška in Ljubljana. “We had to work together”, recalls Luka Piskoric, the co-founder of the Crowdfunding Lab in Ljubljana. “The economy was dead. We had many great ideas but a lack of opportunities. We
had to look for other ways to get things done.” In 2012, the group started to explore the possibility of crowdfunding. “In October we organised the first crowdfunding workshop. Within 15 minutes the available 25 places for the workshop were taken. For the young entrepreneurs, crowdfunding was the only option.’’ The foldable wooden LL Stol, developed in the workshop of the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana was, in autumn 2012, one of the first Slovenian projects on Kickstarter. The goal was to collect