Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
While Croatian investors hoped that in January will start the first crowdinvesting campaigns on startup exchange of ZSE and Funderbeam, a surprise in the field of crowdfunding came from one of the most famous Croatian investors, Nenad Bakić.
For days now his crowdsourcing campaign “BBC micro:bit – STEM revolution in schools” on Indiegogo, whose aim is to introduce robotics in Croatian primary schools on the model of the project Croatian Makers, has been stirring a lot of interest in the investment community. Hrvoje Hafner, an expert on crowdfunding, says that it is the fastest growing crowdfunding campaign in Croatia ever. “Although nominally speaking campaigns for the device Vitastiq 2 and for Trillenium of Hrvoje Prpić had collected more money, it would not come as surprise if this campaign becomes the most successful in the next 20 days, because even after the first 48 hours it shows no signs of slowing down,” said Hafner.
In less than two days Bakić has managed to surpass the set goal twice. In the first 24 hours, from Tuesday to Wednesday at 17.00h, 453 donors supported the campaign with $71,900, while Bakić initially asked for 60 thousand. He then raised the bar to $100,000, and donors begun to donate even faster, reaching the goal by noon on Thursday. Now the expectations have been raised to $200,000, or the amount that is sufficient for every central elementary school in Croatia – all 860 of them – get enough BBC micro:bit packages so that all students of the sixth and seventh grade already from September could get the equipment for practical STEM classes. Nenad Bakić says that the response is beyond his expectations.
“I believed that we could collect $100,000, but in three weeks, not in two days,” Bakić said. He adds that now it’s all up to schools that need to register if they want to use that equipment. Office of the Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said they are following the campaign with great interest, but for now they have no official comments, including to whether the Government would support this initiative, because due to the stoppage of the education reforms schools are not obliged to use that equipment. They also didn’t offer any comment on whether the equipment would be exempt from VAT. Đorđe Požega, co-founder and director of the Rijeka software company TerminalWorks, which is the largest single donor to the campaign so far with $10,000, says that Bakić’s previous work encouraged him to donate.
The famous Croatian entrepreneur Emil Tedeschi on Friday donated $5,000 and thus jumped to third place by the amount of donations, but he’s not the only public figure who joined this campaign. The current situation with donations can be viewed at this link.
“Both in personal and professional capacity I want our children to have quality education,” said Požega. The second largest individual donor with $6,000, Gavin Susman, an investor in Zagreb coworking space HUB385, said that encouraging such initiatives should be the goal of the whole society. “Without concrete support for education and the development of entrepreneurship Croatian economy will never grow,” said Susman. Robert Slavečki, co-founder of ICERTIAS, who together with his wife donated $3,000, said that working abroad has showed him how much Croatian education lags behind.
“Our bars are same as those in Zurich, but our schools are 50 years behind anything in the developed world,” said Slavečki. Donor Alan Sumina, director of Nanobit and EY Entrepreneur of the Year, said he has already donated money for Croatian Makers with excellent results. Technical Director of CROTEM, Alen Ladavac, said he is delighted that the aim is to bring “STEM revolution” to children in Croatia. Both Sumina and Ladavac donated $1,500 each, and similar amounts were donated by another thirty individuals and companies. However, the campaign was also supported by a host of less well-known citizens, including brothers who had immigrated to Ireland, one bakery from Popovača and a Pilates studio from Zagreb.