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.
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