Open for collaboration on programs, partnerships & community

Žarko Antanasković

I design 0→1 programs that turn early-stage ideas into partnerships, pilots, and revenue.

BelgradeSerbian · EnglishRemote-firstOpen to relocation
Get in touchSee selected work ↓
Portrait of Žarko Antanasković

Email

antanaskoviczarko@gmail.com

Phone

+381 60 526 0101

LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/antanaskoviczarko ↗
Žarko Antanasković speaking at Claude as Co-Founder in Belgrade
Claude as Co-Founder, 100+ people, Belgrade
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community members built in six months

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teams I've worked with on GTM

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countries mapped in ecosystem research

From work at HUB201, 2025–2026.

About

Between what the technology can do and what organizations are ready for.

I'm a partnerships and innovation program coordinator based in Belgrade.

Partnerships and innovation program coordinator at HUB201, Serbia's center for digital security and AI. I co-created the HUB201 accelerator and co-created the TRENDOVI conference, and I work on the Cybersecurity Alliance. Before that, the Forum of Advanced Technologies at the Science and Technology Park in Niš.

My work sits with two groups that rarely speak the same language: the people building frontier technology, and the organizations that have to adopt it. That means designing 0→1 programs, structuring go-to-market for new products, and mobilizing communities around AI, cybersecurity, and finance. I've helped stand up initiatives including the Forum of Advanced Technologies, TechNis, Inv3st, and Idemoo!, connecting founders, corporates, and public stakeholders across Serbia and the region.

I'm not an engineer and I don't ship production code. What I do is turn capability into something a CISO, a founder, or a second-year student can act on: programs, curricula, research, partnerships, and events.

Working style: ownership, direct feedback, clear goals. Shipped, measured, iterated.

Based in
Belgrade, Serbia · remote-first
Languages
Serbian (native), English (fluent), German (intermediate), Spanish (beginner)
Focus
AI · Cybersecurity · Startup ecosystems · Finance
Also
Angel investor

What I do

Programs, partnerships, and the research behind them.

Core

0→1 programs & community

Designing and running programs that bring people back: accelerators, membership tracks, alliances, ambassador programmes, talent pipelines. Structure first, then the room fills.

AcceleratorsAlliancesStudent pipelinesAmbassador programs

Partnerships & go-to-market

Securing and activating the partnerships that make a program worth joining, and structuring how new products reach their first buyers.

Strategic partnershipsICP & positioningB2B outreach

Events & research

Conference programming end to end, plus the ecosystem research and market mapping that tells you what to program in the first place.

Agenda designSpeaker sourcingMarket mapping

Selected work

Programs and formats I built or led.

Community format

Monthly Cyber Meetups

Format design and hosting

A monthly meetup series in Belgrade that keeps the security community talking between the big events. Every edition pairs a practitioner walking through something they actually shipped or broke with an open floor, so the room leaves with specifics instead of slogans.

The format runs on a repeatable playbook: speaker sourcing, venue and partner rotation, a short recap after each edition, and a growing list of people who come back. It is the steady base that feeds the alliance, the accelerator, and the conference programme.

Monthly cadencePractitioner talksOpen floorBelgrade

Format design

Specialized TRENDOVI: sector editions

Format design and programming

An invite-only series taking the conference into single sectors. The fintech edition ran with the Association of Serbian Banks and the CISOs of every bank in the country, focused on new attack vectors. The telco edition brought together all three Serbian operators, Telekom, A1, Yettel, around regulation and NIS2.

2 editions100+ participants eachInvite-only

Education

Summer Cyber Camp

Programme design and selection

A free five-day in-person camp for students, run with SajberEdu in Belgrade, August 2026. I designed the selection process, a weighted five-criteria rubric scored by a five-person panel, built the OWASP and LLM-security day, and designed a nine-flag OSINT capture-the-flag challenge around a fictional company, including one deliberate false lead.

99 applications, 30 places5 evaluators9-flag OSINT CTF

Ecosystem

Forum of Advanced Technologies & TECHNIS

Science and Technology Park Niš

Led end-to-end coordination of the Forum of Advanced Technologies, structure, partnerships, participant engagement, logistics, content, and communications. Alongside it, ran TECHNIS, a long-term local community development project, through stakeholder management, project governance, and co-creation of its feasibility study.

End-to-end event ownershipPublic, private & academic stakeholders

Research

SEE cybersecurity ecosystem mapping

Independent research

A mapping of early-stage cybersecurity startups across eleven countries in Southeast Europe and the Balkans. The headline finding was uncomfortable: roughly nineteen early-stage pure cybersecurity startups in the whole region, and only two confirmed active product startups in Serbia.

11 countries~19 startups identified
Summer Cyber Camp team in front of the HUB201 banner
Summer Cyber Camp with SajberEdu, HUB201, Belgrade
Two participants at Summer Cyber Camp
Camp mentoring, 30 selected students out of 99 applications

Building

Building

I build small products with AI tooling. I'm non-technical, that's the point. I'd rather know from the inside what these tools do than write about it from the outside.

PriceCopilot

Competitor price monitoring for e-commerce in EU markets.

In build

Private Vault

Private, encrypted storage for personal documents and notes.

In build

Ecosystem Navigator

Internal CRM mapping people, organizations, events, and relationships.

Internal

Also running: Pair-the-Plant (AI plant matchmaking), the YANG program platform, the Serbian Cyber Report site, Termin Štediša (no-show cost calculator), IntelSell (GDPR-compliant OSINT sales training) and MargO (margin tracking for restaurants and bars).

Toolkit & credentials

What I work with

Core

0→1 program designStrategic partnershipsGo-to-market strategyEvent & conference productionStakeholder & community managementStartup development

Tools

Claude & Claude SkillsLovablen8nNotionCanvaLumaExcel

Certifications & awards

DigiEduHack 2021, WinnerClaude 101 (Anthropic)AI Fluency for EducatorsVibe Coding

Writing

Writing

I write about AI adoption, cybersecurity in the region, and building things as a non-technical founder. Serbian on LinkedIn, English on X.

LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/antanaskoviczarko
Xx.com/antanaskovicz

AI adoption

The gap is not the technology, it is the readiness

What I keep seeing between what frontier tools can already do and what organizations here are set up to absorb, and what actually closes that gap.

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Regional cybersecurity

Nineteen startups in eleven countries

The mapping of early-stage cybersecurity startups across Southeast Europe, and why only two confirmed active product startups sit in Serbia.

Read →

Building without code

Non-technical, on purpose

Notes from shipping small products with AI tooling: what these tools genuinely do, where they stop, and why I would rather find out from the inside.

Read →

AI adoption

The 95 percent number, and what it actually says

MIT's NANDA researchers found that 95 percent of enterprise generative AI pilots produce no measurable return. Read closely, that is not a verdict on the technology.

Read →

Regional ecosystem

398 million euro, 109 deals, and what that means from Belgrade

Southeast Europe attracted 398.3 million euro of venture capital across 109 transactions in 2025, up nearly 40 percent. Here is what that scale actually implies for founders here.

Read →

Founders

How to build a startup from scratch

The honest sequence, written from the side of the table where I sit: what to do in the first ninety days, what to ignore, and where most people here actually lose the year.

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Serbian ecosystem

One in three Serbian startups made no revenue at all

The 2026 Startup Scanner numbers are blunt: a third of startups here earned nothing last year, another third earned up to 50,000 euro, and a quarter are planning to raise over a million.

Read →

Serbian ecosystem

43 million dollars, and who actually got it

Serbian startups raised around 43 million dollars in 2025. Fewer deals, bigger cheques, and a selection filter worth understanding before you plan your own round.

Read →
All writing →

Contact

Let's talk.

Open to collaboration on community and partnerships work, ecosystem programmes, conference programming, and AI adoption. Also happy to talk to anyone building in security or AI in this region, that part is free.

Belgrade, Serbia · CET