Croatian founders and finance executives recently discussed a range of issues impacting Croatian startups at a conference attended by the country’s startup and tech community.
The issues discussed include the advantages of launching a startup in a small country like Croatia, Croatia’s engineering talent, the impact of AI on finance teams, and much more.
AI
makes it “incredibly easy” for finance teams to be “lazy” and the younger
generation of finance executives will need “willpower” if they want to become
senior, according to the co-founder of Croatian AI–powered enterprise planning
and analysis platform Farseer.
Luka
Mijatović, co-founder and CFO, Farseer, made the comments at the Finance Weekend conference in Rovinj, Croatia.
The
panel discussion was entitled “Will AI shrink the finance team or just change
it?”
Mijatović
urged the current and next generation of finance professionals to show
“willpower” by learning the ins and outs of finance, instead of relying on AI, which
is only one prompt away. He said this could compromise their career
progression.
Matija
Kovačević, CFO, Hrvatski Telekom, the Croatian telecoms company, said AI will
not replace finance teams but change them.
Hrvatski
is deploying AI across finance, and it’s changing how the company works, he
said.
As
one example, he said it was leveraging AI to locate “ghost payments” (payments
registered with a mistake, such as a wrong reference number).
He
said in the past humans had been deployed to investigate such payments, but AI
was making it 90 per cent more efficient.
Bogdan
Jelić, account manager, Comtrade System Integration, the IT solutions provider,
says he does not think AI will shrink AI teams, as every department has its own
specialism, including finance, which can’t be replaced by AI.
But
he said AI can automate some finance department processes.
Kovačević
says the biggest change AI will impact on finance departments is on data
collection, saying the value is moving from “production towards interpretation”.
On
AI’s impact on Hrvatski’s P&L, Kovačević said at the moment AI was
increasing costs during its experimental stage, but it would be
revenue-generating over time, when better deployed.
Mijatović
said AI was currently a high cost but that it was increasing production
“massively” for its engineering teams.
On
how finance departments will look in 2030, Kovačević said finance teams would
be smaller and have more of an analytical role, scrutinising AI data.
But
he said the value of finance departments would not depreciate.
Meanwhile,
Léa Raiche-Marsden, VP of Finance, Leanspace, the software platform, urged
finance professionals not to be too passive.
In
a keynote called “How to build influence across your exec team without losing
your edge”, she said being passive might make a professional more likeable, but
they were holding back their judgements.
She
spoke about the importance of ensuring finance is the objective voice in the
room, particularly when it comes to making key decisions.
She
said one trap to avoid was becoming too comfortable in an organisation and
staying quiet as one progresses within an organisation.
“That
is dangerous. The quieter the objective voice gets, the louder everyone else
gets,” she said.
One
bit of advice she imparted was for members of the finance team to build allies
across different functions of a business.
Matija
Nakić, CEO and co-founder of Farseer, spoke about its recent $7.2m Series A
funding round, led by Aymo Ventures, with participation from SQ Capital and US
investor Apertu Capital.
Farseer,
which has raised over $8m in total, is using the funding for geographical
expansion across Europe and the US.
Farseer
is challenging the likes of SAP, IBM, Microsoft Excel, Anaplan and newer
players like Pigment.
It is pitching itself as the only “AI-native” enterprise
planning platform.
It
has customers across 15 different countries in Europe.
Nakić
said the fundraising was “pretty easy”, pointing to returning investors coming
back to invest in Farseer, which employs around 60 people.
On
the benefit of being Croatia-headquartered, Nakić said it was relatively easy
to get enterprise clients in a small country like Croatia.
She
said: “We are one of the rare startups that immediately went into enterprise. It
is a small market, so investors can recommend you and new customers can
recommend you to their colleagues.
“We
really managed to work with enterprise from day one. That is probably easier to
achieve in a small, well-connected market than in a very big market.”
Another
plus, she said, was the engineering talent in Croatia, but it was lacking sales
and marketing talent.
Plans
for the
rest of 2026 include a free version of Farseer for technical teams.
