Edo Sadikovic and Tarik Zaimovic were guests of last night’s Fuckup Night Niksic vol. 3.
Two friends from the school, which life has separated in different directions, told us about their beginnings, the struggle for a place under the sun, and the business challenges they faced.
As they said, they still remember the moment when they got the first computer that changed the lives of both of them. Edo was allowed to explore his creative side, to find opportunities for travel and education, and Tarik fell in love with programming and all the opportunities provided by the IT industry, which he foresaw even then.
Their birthplace, Prijepolje, did not provide great opportunities for growth and development when they were growing up. In his early youth, Edo devoted himself to learning English, which he says is the most important foundation he has created.
Thanks to the scouts, he traveled to Yugoslavia, and later applied for various programs and volunteer jobs to travel and get to know the world as much as possible. He found himself in nature, in the people he met, in the values he acquired on his travels. He tried to transfer to Prijepolje the experience he gained abroad through various activities – he organized the first educational workshops in the villages around Prijepolje, he is one of the founders and the first Hub for high school students in the Balkans, which was a great opportunity for young people creative space or equipment for the development of their ideas.
He launched several other initiatives, which did not come to life and which were later shut down, but Edo says that in that way he learned important life lessons – how to negotiate with decision-makers, how to present his idea, how to overcome administrative obstacles. In the years that followed, he had a string of successes – he founded Sende in Spain – one of the first rural coworking and coliving spaces in the world, started several small, successful businesses, became a co-owner of Impact Hub Vigo.
“Those first years were crucial for me, because if I hadn’t failed so many times, I would never have learned everything I know today and what allows me to be successful in the things I love.“
Tarik believes that leaders and entrepreneurs are built-in childhood and states that he started to show his entrepreneurial spirit in elementary school and earned his first pocket money. In high school, he got the first IT project he worked on and that laid the foundation for his life vocation. Today, after 15 years of work experience, he states that he has encountered numerous obstacles and challenges in his life, but that he would still not deal with anything else. As he says, success requires three things – a team, resources, and a good knowledge of the direction you are taking.
He calls Bild studio ‘his first child’, with whom he made all the beginner’s mistakes. “The first 5 years of work were very difficult, we worked 15 hours every day, without a break, to fight for years just to pay salaries.” As he says, there are not many people who can endure such uncertainty for years: “You are not responsible only for yourself, you have workers you have to pay and it is difficult when you think every month whether you will be able to pay them.” However, he did not give up, with the help of his partners, the Business Incubator that existed in Podgorica at the time and in which they found the necessary support, as well as UNDP, which helped them implement certain projects, slowly but surely got back on their feet, which continues to this day. ICT Cortex, which he heads, is a continuation of his desire to bring the Montenegrin IT community together and help its development.
He says that all the business problems he still faces today are a great lesson: “Whoever wants to succeed finds a way. Everyone falls, but the difference between successful and unsuccessful is that the former always rise after defeat.”
Our guests believe that the wrong value system is to blame for the fact that young people are not active enough and that the best of them go to other countries to build professional careers. They also state that they try to return something to the community every day through free dissemination of knowledge and experience they have gained, through various educations and programs that they want to contribute to living in a better and healthier society.
Tarik and Edo pointed out that on their entrepreneurial path, they are guided exclusively by love for what they do and that only if you love your job you can give your best and find a motivation to overcome all the obstacles that life puts in front of you.
The event was organized within the 2CODE project, which is co-financed by the ERDF and IPA II funds of the European Union.
