Short version: the Nemački kutak x Serbian Entrepreneurs Meetup is a free, open evening meetup about tech and entrepreneurship, held entirely in English. The programme is mostly two 20-minute talks, each followed by Q&A, and a long networking part around them. We bring the speakers, the programme, the promotion and the registration. The host provides the space, and usually the food and drinks.
Why the organiser's name is in Serbian but the event is in English
This is the first question almost every company asks, so let's get it out of the way.
Nemački kutak ("the German corner") is a media platform and community for people from the former Yugoslavia who live in Germany. It publishes guides about work, study and daily life in Germany, and it runs a directory of professionals and businesses. A good part of it comes from guest authors from the community, who write first-hand about their own experience of living, studying and working in Germany. That part of what we do is in our native language, because that is the language our readers prefer to read in.
The meetup is a separate thing, with its own audience:
- The event language is English - talks, slides, Q&A and the official programme. Every edition so far has been in English.
- The audience is ex-Yu-rooted but the event is open to everyone. The community grew out of the ex-Yugoslav tech diaspora in Germany, and that is still the core of the room, but attendance is not restricted by origin and we regularly have attendees with no connection to the region.
- The content is not about the region. Talks are about startups and entrepreneurship, engineering, building products, go-to-market, fundraising, scaling and hiring. What the region does give us is the speaker lineup: we curate it from founders, operators and investors with ex-Yu roots who have actually built something, which is a deep bench and not an obvious one to reach otherwise.
- The announcements are bilingual in practice. The event write-ups on this site are in our native language, the Meetup listing and LinkedIn posts reach a wider audience, and nothing about the evening itself requires knowing the language.
So: an ex-Yu community organises an English-language event that anyone can attend. If you need to state the event language anywhere, the answer is English.
What the event is - two 20-minute talks, Q&A and a networking part
We have been running these gatherings since June 2019. They are organised by Nemački kutak together with Serbian Entrepreneurs (otvara se u novom tabu) - hence the name, the Nemački kutak x Serbian Entrepreneurs Meetup.
The format has barely changed, because it works:
Treat that schedule as the plan, not a contract. We are not strict about following the timetable - we go with the flow of the evening, and we do not cut a good conversation short just to land on the next slot.
Who comes - 40 to 100 founders, engineering and product leaders, senior experts and investors
Attendance has ranged from about 35 to about 90 people, depending on the venue capacity. Registration is free but mandatory, through our Meetup group (otvara se u novom tabu), which is how we know the headcount in advance and how we cap it to whatever the room holds.
The room is made up predominantly of:
- Founders and entrepreneurs
- CTOs, engineering leaders and product leaders
- Investors - VCs and angels
- Other senior specialists and executives from the local tech and startup ecosystem
- A smaller group of people earlier in their careers, and occasionally people from outside tech
It is a senior room, which is the point: these are people who decide on, or carry real weight in, budgets for team events, offsites, customer events, recruiting and community work.
Attendees at past editions have included employees and leaders from companies such as SAP, Microsoft, Google, AWS, SumUp, Wayfair, Zalando, Delivery Hero, N26 and Uber, alongside people from a long list of startups.
People travel for it, which is worth knowing when you picture the room. A Berlin edition does not only draw Berliners: we have had guests come in from Hamburg, Munich, Bonn and Frankfurt for the evening. The same happens in Munich, with people arriving from Augsburg and Nuremberg, to name just a couple.
What the host gets out of it - employer branding, hiring conversations and coverage afterwards
Honest version: an evening in front of 40–90 senior tech people in Germany who are not currently talking to your recruiters, plus a permanent record of it. Hosts are named in the event announcement, in the retrospective article on this site, on the Meetup listing and in the LinkedIn posts, with photos from the evening. Teams who have hosted mostly do it for employer branding and local visibility in the tech and entrepreneurship community.
It is not a career fair - there are no booths, no recruiting stands and no CV collection. But hiring is not off-limits either. Some hosts bring people from their HR or talent team along for the evening, and some use their stage slot to say plainly that they are hiring and that anyone interested should come find them during the networking part. It also works the other way round: hiring managers are among the guests at these evenings, so the conversations happen in both directions. That is the part that works - it happens in conversation rather than from a stage.
What we need from the host
The practical list, which is usually what the approval actually comes down to:
- A space for 40–100 people, in an evening slot from roughly 17:30 (setup) to 21:30. An all-hands space, a large kitchen area or a cafeteria all work.
- A screen or projector, and a microphone if the room is large enough to need one.
- Food and drinks, which the host usually covers - see the note below.
- One contact person on the host side for the logistics, plus whoever needs to approve it internally.
On catering. Food and drinks are part of the evening and the host usually takes care of them. If that is not possible on your side, just tell us - we will find an arrangement rather than let it stand in the way.
What we bring - speakers, programme, promotion and registration
- The speakers and the programme - we source and brief them, and we handle the content end to end.
- Promotion - the Meetup listing, an event page on nemackikutak.com, LinkedIn posts, our newsletter and the Serbian Entrepreneurs network.
- Registration - we run it through Meetup and cap it to your room, so we know the headcount in advance and can tell you what to expect.
- Hosting on the night - opening words, moderation, timekeeping, Q&A, closing.
- Photo and video coverage, and a written retrospective published afterwards with the host named and linked. Some editions are recorded and the talks published on YouTube, linked from the write-up.
- A slot on the stage for the host, if you want one - during the opening or the closing words, where someone from your team introduces the company and says a few words to the room. Several hosts have used it, and several have not. It is not a condition.
See what an evening actually looks like - one example, video and write-up
Every past and upcoming edition is on our Meetup group (otvara se u novom tabu) - that is where registration happens, and the event descriptions there are in English, so it is the quickest way for a colleague to see what these evenings are. Some editions are also recorded, and the talks are published on YouTube and linked from the write-up for that event.
Just to name one example, our Berlin edition hosted by LVL World of Gaming:
- The topic: how venture capital really works, from both sides of a fund.
- The speakers: Dr. Luka Nićin, investor at Pace Ventures, and Miloš Matić, founding partner at Omorika Ventures, who flew in from Belgrade for the evening.
- The host: LVL World of Gaming, which gave us the space and the technical setup.
- The short version: a video and write-up on LinkedIn (otvara se u novom tabu), in English. The fastest way to get a feel for the evening.
- The long version: the full write-up on this site, with the photo gallery and both slide decks available to download. The text is in our native language, the photos and the decks are not.
Who we organise it with - Serbian Entrepreneurs, a global network, not Serbians only
The meetup is a joint effort between Nemački kutak and Serbian Entrepreneurs (otvara se u novom tabu), so it is worth a short word on the second half of that name.
Serbian Entrepreneurs is an apolitical, non-governmental, non-profit network of founders, operators and investors, built on a pay-it-forward model and started in 2016. Despite the name, it is not exclusive to Serbians - it is a global organisation with chapters around the world, in cities including New York, San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Toronto, London, Berlin, Belgrade, Novi Sad and Banja Luka. The Berlin chapter is the one we co-organise with.
It was started by Tihomir Bajić (otvara se u novom tabu), today a venture capital investor as general partner at an early-stage fund. Before that he was a founding engineer at several startups that reached nine-figure exits, and he co-founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange together with Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup.
Next editions and how to start
We run a few editions a year, and whatever is coming up next is always listed on our Meetup group (otvara se u novom tabu). If someone at your company asked you about hosting one of the next editions, the only thing we need from you at this point is a confirmation that you are open to it. The dates come from us: we will get back to you with a few options and take it from there.
If you have questions before that, reach out to us.
Companies that have hosted us - from startups to enterprises
SAP
SAP (otvara se u novom tabu) is the largest software company in Europe and the global standard for enterprise resource planning, headquartered in Walldorf. It hosted our very first gathering, at its Berlin office on Rosenthaler Straße.
Wayfair
Wayfair (otvara se u novom tabu) is one of the largest online retailers of furniture and home goods in the world, listed in the US and at the time running an engineering hub in Berlin. It hosted us at its offices on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße.
SumUp
SumUp (otvara se u novom tabu) is a fintech company whose card readers and payment tools are used by millions of small merchants across Europe and beyond. It is one of the larger product and engineering employers in the Berlin tech scene, with a workforce spread across several European countries.
Antler
Antler (otvara se u novom tabu) is a global day-zero venture capital firm founded in 2017, which backs founders before there is a company, through a pre-seed residency programme. It operates in more than 30 cities across six continents, Berlin among them, and has invested in over 1,300 startups.
cognee
cognee (otvara se u novom tabu) is a Berlin AI startup building a memory layer for AI agents, turning unstructured data into knowledge graphs that agents can store, recall and reason over. It started as an open-source project and is now used in production by a large number of teams, backed by a seed round from investors in the AI infrastructure space.
JUCR
JUCR (otvara se u novom tabu) is a Berlin e-mobility company founded in 2020, building easy-to-install EV chargers with over-the-air updates alongside an app that aggregates hundreds of thousands of charging points across Europe. It hosted us at the Lichtfabrik in Kreuzberg.
Kiez Büro
Kiez Büro (otvara se u novom tabu) is a Berlin coworking company running small, neighbourhood-style office communities in Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Mitte. Its members are mostly freelancers, founders, artists and small business owners, and it puts an informal, comfortable atmosphere ahead of polished design. Community events are a regular part of life there, which is how we ended up being hosted at its Kreuzberg location.
AutoScout24
AutoScout24 (otvara se u novom tabu) is the largest online marketplace in Europe for buying and selling cars, headquartered in Munich with millions of listings across the continent. It hosted the first Munich edition of our meetup.
LVL World of Gaming
LVL World of Gaming (otvara se u novom tabu) is a Berlin venue for arcade games, PC gaming, esports and events, right next to Checkpoint Charlie, with its own bar and restaurant on site. Its team moved the entire technical setup from the cinema room into the main arena mid-event so that everyone could follow the talks.
Details your office or facilities team usually asks for
- Event type: evening meetup on tech and entrepreneurship - two 20-minute talks plus networking.
- Language: English.
- Attendance: 40–100, capped to the room, registration mandatory via Meetup, headcount known in advance.
- Timing: setup from ~17:30, doors 18:00, official end 21:00–21:30. The informal part often runs longer, and we move it off-site if the building needs to close.
- Cost to the host: the venue. Catering optional and can be covered by one of our partners instead.
- Ticketing: free entry, no commercial activity on site, no sales.
- Alcohol: beer and wine are normally served alongside soft drinks. We can run it alcohol-free if company policy requires it.
- Photography: yes - photos and short video, announced at the start of the evening. We respect opt-outs and do not publish anything the host asks us not to.
- Organisers: Nemački kutak and Serbian Entrepreneurs, running it together since 2019. We are on site throughout, handling the door, the programme and the clean-up.
- Lead time: four to six weeks between a confirmed date and the event, to promote it and fill the room.
Open questions
If something you need to know is not covered here, just ask. Write to kontakt@nemackikutak.com, or message Filip S. Perišić on LinkedIn (otvara se u novom tabu) directly.
If it is more convenient, you do not have to contact us at all. Pass your questions to the colleague who brought this up in the first place, the person who offered to host the next edition. They are in touch with us and will come back to you with the answers.
And if it is easier to talk it through than to read it, we are happy to join a short call with whoever needs to approve it on your side.