How Croatia’s first unicorn grew from a small village with a $16,000 loan from parents to a billion-dollar tech powerhouse working with WhatsApp and Uber

Third time was the charm for Silvio Kutić. The Croatian electrical engineer had dabbled with the idea of a tech services company from when he was a student. He took multiple swings at the project, until he was finally able to launch Infobip in 2006.

The company provides communication tools to some of the world’s biggest online firms, from WhatsApp to Uber.

When an app developer puts you through a two-factor authentication process to set up an app or offers a chatbot to communicate with it, odds are that Infobip or another “communications platform as a service” (CPaaS) company is behind it.

While he knew the services Infobip offered were in demand, Kutić also knew there were challenges with being based in Vodnjan, Croatia, a town with just about 3,000 residents.

“We started the company here, out of Croatia, but we had a big disadvantage. I would say that we are in a very unusual place,” Kutić said. “It's very good for tourism, but it's very unusual for starting a high-tech company, and it's a very small market. ”

Despite the choice of location though, Kutić never looked back.

The company remained bootstrapped from day one, with no source of external funds (Kutić’s parents lent him a modest €12,500 (roughly $15,750 in 2006) to initially get the company off the ground).

Now, 18 years since the company was born, it has established itself with clients all over the world.

In 2020, Infobip achieved billionaire valuation when it raised $200 million from New York-based private equity firm One Equity Partners, making history by becoming the first Croatian unicorn.

“I would say the disadvantage, looking backwards, is a big advantage for us,” Kutić said of being based in Croatia. “We went international almost from day one.”

As Kutić continues to navigate and grow a company he co-founded in a village, he shared some of his takeaways for success in an interview with Fortune. 

1. Failure refines the path to success

Failure is something Kutić wears proudly on his sleeve, as it’s what let him grow Infobip to its current scale.

“This is the third version of Infobip. The first two failed, this didn’t, but we have also [had] many other failures today,” the Infobip chief said, adding that the reasons for past failures ranged from scalability to misalignment with customer needs.

“We’ve been refining these failures. And today also in the company, in any innovative products… you have to fail the first three, four times that you’re doing something.”

There is also a cultural aspect to the idea of failure, Kutić argues.

When he first started Infobip in 2006, Croatia wasn’t as business-friendly as it is today, even though it had been 15 years since it formally gained independence.

“Society didn’t look positively at entrepreneurs,” Kutić said, as there were cases of companies being run poorly, which set bad examples. “In Eastern Europe, there’s a taboo of failure. In the U.S., they are celebrating [that] you’re daring to compete, daring to try something.”

Kutić noted that Croatia had come a long way since he started as a tech founder and that fighting the taboo could help incentivize more people to pursue entrepreneurship, too.

“Now, it’s a very vibrant tech community here,” he said.

For instance, Rimac Group, an EV company, became the second Croatian unicorn to join the ranks with Infobip last year.

Croatian startups have piqued the interest of big tech—Google acquired a math platform called Photomath in 2023. While there’ve been talks about Infobip possibly going public, the company declined to comment on the subject for now.

2. Attitude first, skill second

As a company with 3,400 employees across more than 70 countries, choosing the right talent has been key to Infobip’s success. There’s a simple motto that Kutić follows to line up a strong team in the billion-dollar company.

“We’ve always focused on building the right culture and onboarding the right people,” he said, adding that he looks for “attitude first, skills second.” From his experience, skills can be built but having the mindset is important.

Kutić’s mantra is to learn by doing. A proud intern-turned-CEO, as Kutić describes himself, he started Infobip when he was still a student and had to learn the rest along the way as the company went from just a handful of people to employing thousands.

“I started my internship as the CEO [of Infobip],” Kutić said, adding that he had to figure out on the fly how to scale a 100-person company differently from a 1,000-person company, and help employees develop with the company.

“You can’t do anything really innovative that you did before. This ‘learning by doing’ is just to push forward, you’ll figure it out. Just start moving,” the Infobip chief said.

3. Stay nimble

Tech is constantly evolving in the realm that Infobip operates, so staying nimble has been important for the company.

“In our DNA, we want to be very innovative. We are an engineering company and we are organized in small teams and able to innovate in the different verticals where we operate,” Kutić said.

The company worked on generative AI-related projects through much of 2023—even before the frenzy surrounding the technology picked up steam.

As the new year rolls in, Infobip is working to embed AI to make communication between users and businesses more seamless, the company told Fortune.

Infobip’s chief business officer Ivan Ostojić pointed to the company’s structure internally which helps it adapt to new changes and keeps its employees on their feet.

“As you know, technology moves fast,” Ostojić told Fortune. “Silvio goes to customer meetings at whichever level, and we stay very close to our customers and very close to our partners that are innovating this technology. Then, very quickly, we get insights [on] what they need… then we kind of mobilize the team to build it out.”

When the company began growing quickly in its early years, the changing headcount and complexity of the organization raised new challenges on how to hire people who are a fit for Infobip.

Kutić said the company built out multidisciplinary teams rather than hierarchical ones, and small teams rather than big ones, all to facilitate innovation.

“We have this zero-distance [policy], we’re all very, very close to the customer,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com