In one decade, from the “dovecot”, as they called the attic of the Belgrade Business Incubator of Technical Faculties, they arrived in Silicon Valley in California, where the headquarters of the HTEC Group is currently located. It took them five years to go from zero employees to 100, and then just as long (or just so long) to go from 100 to 2.000 employees.
Electrical engineer Aleksandar Cabrilo and biologist Dusan Kosic, the founders and owners of this technology company, apart from sharing a business, also share a similar childhood.They came to Serbia from war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), spent part of their education abroad, and then moved to Serbia and started a joint business, because they did not see themselves in a foreign country. Today, however, both of them live in the United States (U.S.), because they say that it is necessary to be where your clients are.
Difficult childhood
Aleksandar is from Mostar, and Dusan is from Mrkonjic Grad, and the war in these areas during the 90s deprived them of their carefree childhood. This, they say, in some way embodied them and created in them a certain resistance to both crisis and risk.
“This certainly influenced character development. It taught me not to give up and to fight to the end. It is certain that we have a higher risk tolerance threshold. When people make a critical decision, they always start from how close they are to their personal red line and what is the worst that can happen if they make a decision,” says Aleksandar.
“Although growing up in the war brought many challenges, the loss of my father was certainly the biggest. However, my mother did everything to at least minimize all the negative consequences of such a situation, so my sister and I often had more than others. In that difficult time, she found a true entrepreneurial spirit in herself and started in an almost unimaginable way a small private business selling crockery, clothing, and toys, which later evolved into a jewelry store. From this perspective, it seems that this entrepreneurial spirit was inherited,” Dusan emphasized.
Life abroad
Immediately after graduating from college in Belgrade, Aleksandar went to the Netherlands for an internship at Silicon Hive, a startup there, where he also worked on his master’s thesis, while Dusan was in Minnesota, at Saint. John’s University. He remembers that it seemed exotic and unfamiliar to him, so despite the fact that he had no firm desire to leave the country, he still decided to do it. However, they both returned to Serbia after some time.
The origin of HTEC
HTEC is actually an abbreviation of High Tech Engineering Center, that is, a center for the development of high technologies, explains Aleksandar, who founded the company in 2009, the same year when the two met while working together on projects promoting Serbia’s investment opportunities abroad. Dusan was then employed at the Serbia Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SIEPA), and Aleksandar worked on the establishment of the INTEL development center in Belgrade.
“Working together on these activities, I decided to leave INTEL, and Dusan, who at that time was a manager at the Fund for Innovation Activities, decided to leave the Fund and build HTEC together. At the beginning, there was one employee, and after a few months another intern, then two engineers…,” Aleksandar explained.
“It took a year to get to one team. We tirelessly used every possible, even the smallest, opportunity from Asia to the U.S. to meet someone, to present what we do, and to try to get them interested in cooperation. We were extremely lucky to get phenomenal people and professionals as collaborators from the very beginning, who even today, after more than a decade, make up the leadership team of HTEC and who, with their personal commitment, represent the best example for all members of the company,” he adds.
The most important thing is people
A consulting firm is only worth as much as the people who make it up, says Aleksandar, adding that their wish is for their people from HTEC to go to their own companies, to found new “unicorns” that will make global success and change the environment in which they work.
Dusan adds that when accepting new people, they are guided not only by the fact that they are exceptional talents but also that, above all, they are exceptional personalities. He says that the most important thing is “that they are good people who will fit into a team of good people. Everything that an individual does not know can be learned or perfected, but character cannot be changed”.
“With accelerated growth, we also made certain mistakes when selecting talents, and we needed some time to look in the mirror and admit our own mistakes. However, the focus remains exclusively on surrounding ourselves with people with the best character, as the only correct path for the further development of a phenomenal work environment,” Dusan pointed out, Forbes reports.
E.Dz.
