CEE Is Sitting on a Goldmine of Talent That Keeps Getting Harder to Ignore.
I'm crossing 15 countries to discover and invest in the top 1% builders U25 from CEE before anyone else. What follows is what we discussed behind closed doors.
Trip Status:
7/15 and 8/15 Cities ✅
(Track live where I am: here)
Eight countries in, and the talent keeps showing up in ways that surpass all expectations.
Not because of the ideas, the ideas are rarely revolutionary at this stage.
It’s the profiles. It’s how they think.
It’s the fact that a room of 15 people can feel like 50 because every single person in it has something to prove and the track record to back it up.
Zagreb and Budapest were two of the strongest rooms on the tour so far.
High performers who are competitive enough to win, collaborative enough to make others better, and hungry enough to show up even when the conditions aren’t perfect.
Between two cities, this is what was sitting in those chairs.
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Olympic medalists in Math, Info and Physics.
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A national boxing champion.
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A girl with two research papers presented at an electronics convention. A philosophy olympiad winner.
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Hackathon organizers.
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A builder who trained a neural network to detect tumors.
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Another who built an integrated agent system from scratch.
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Four high schoolers with 2,000 users on a waitlist
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A STEM gold medalist and system architect who worked on algorithms and superclassifications.
Up close, these are the 2 GOLDMINES:
ZAGREB, Croatia: The room that caught me lying
I mixed real, validated problems with some I made up for the exercise.
With no real data behind them and no evidence anyone had actually experienced the problem.
Just well-framed questions that sounded plausible.
Zagreb caught them.
They pushed back, questioned the assumptions, asked where the data came from.
Most people accept the frame they’re given. They didn’t.
That alone put them in a different category.
Then one of them found out I’m the one who makes the selection decisions, and he tried to..BRIBE me:)
Not literally, but when he found out I’m the one who makes the selection decisions, he switched into founder mode: who is this person, what does he like, how do I build a relationship with him, what do I need to do to get into ReaktorX?
Problem identified, decision maker located, relationship strategy activated.
What impressed me most was how they worked together.
Individually, each of them had a strong competitive spirit.
But THE MOMENT they started working in groups, that competitiveness turned into pure collaboration.
Not “here’s my idea, fight me.” More like: “I think this works, and here’s what I’d change to make it even better.”
One of them was building a connection app, and we ended up talking after the event and worked out together that Zagreb is never a big enough market for what he’s building.
There are five million people. If you narrow the target, statistically, you’re looking at a business worth tens of thousands of dollars, not hundreds of millions.
He got it immediately, and that’s the kind of thinking that scales.
I stayed way longer than planned.
Missed my bus to Budapest.
But..completely worth it.
“Critical thinking isn’t just about finding the right answer. It’s about questioning whether you’re solving the right problem.”
BUDAPEST, Hungary: I needed to be in this room more than they needed me.
I showed up running on empty. No sleep, no food, missed my bus out of Zagreb.
There were 4 high schoolers in the corner building a Sidequest Platform, where you find activities to do with friends.
Great concept, great positioning, and…2,000 users on a waitlist.
Then I noticed one participant with a notebook, writing everything down.
One. Across. Eight. Countries.
He didn’t miss a single thing.
Turns out he is an olympic medalist. Very analytical, tactical, attentive to every detail.
Then there was a gold medalist (STEM Olympiad) working on algorithms and superclassifications.
Incredible profile, but what made him stand out wasn’t the CV.
He asked the right questions, stayed curious and also knew how to joke around.
It’s not enough to be technically sharp if you don’t also have social skills.
At the end of the evening, someone asked where they ranked against the other countries. Not to fish for a compliment, but to understand where they stand. That’s healthy competitiveness.
That’s the kind of question a founder asks.
“The best founders want to know where they rank so they know exactly what to work on next. That’s a fire that can’t be extinguished.”
None of it would have happened without Adam Domokos, who pushed for the event without anyone asking him to. When someone cares that much about making something happen before they even have a reason to, that tells you everything about how they’ll run a company.
Shoutout to our Zagreb and Budapest partners: Farseer, SQ Capital, KUT, Startup Hungary, Portfolion, Interactive Venture Partners and STRT Holding for making these events happen!
Eight countries down. Seven to go.
The talent was always here. Most people just weren’t looking hard enough.
The Debrief after each stop lands right here.
Subscribe so you don’t lose the momentum.
If you’re a builder ready to take the next step or an LP looking for early access to ReaktorX, DM me on LinkedIn.