Eight Years in Croatia, A Century of Shared History

I just returned from Northern Croatia, where I spoke at APR - Akademija za politi?ki razvoj for the first time, moderating a panel on why European startups take 18 months longer than American counterparts to commercialize deep-tech innovation.

But this wasn’t my first engagement with Croatia. It was my latest in an eight-year pattern - boot camps in Rijeka, speaking engagements across the country on topics from Pittsburgh’s transformation to corporate-startup partnerships and innovation strategy. The U.S. embassy at Zagreb sponsors my participation.

My engagement with Croatia isn’t academic curiosity. It’s recognition of historical debt. In the early 1900s, Pittsburgh’s steel industry made our city a destination for Croatian immigrants seeking opportunity. They came to work the mills, build the bridges, forge the steel that made Pittsburgh an industrial power. Their descendants remain part of Pittsburgh’s fabric - visible in our neighborhoods, churches, cultural institutions, last names

Now, a century later, both regions face the same question those Croatian immigrants confronted: where do you find opportunity when the industry that defined you transforms beyond recognition?

What Eight Years Teaches You

The first time you visit another region’s innovation ecosystem, you notice differences. Croatian startups face EU compliance burdens American founders don’t. Their venture capital market - roughly €20 million annually - is smaller than a single Pittsburgh Series A round.

You catalog observations, deliver presentations, and return home feeling you’ve learned about global competitiveness. You haven’t. You’ve learned geography, not transformation.

Eight years of sustained engagement teaches something different: you’re watching parallel experiments with different constraints producing comparable results. Croatia has approximately 37,000 technology workers. Pittsburgh has 37,580. Same size economy, same fundamental question: how do small markets compete globally when they can’t replicate Silicon Valley’s scale advantages?

The historical symmetry is striking. A century ago, Croatians came to Pittsburgh seeking escape from economic constraint. Today, we’re both trapped by different constraints - they by EU regulatory complexity, we by rust belt legacy narratives - trying to forge new economic futures from industrial pasts.

The Evolution You Only See Over Time

In my early visits, colleagues asked how Pittsburgh attracted venture capital. This week at APR, they asked how we built trust infrastructure between startups, corporations, universities, and government that actually solves problems rather than performs collaboration.

That’s not tactics. That’s systems integration under constraint - the same challenge Croatian steelworkers confronted building Pittsburgh’s industrial machine across diverse immigrant communities, emerging technologies, and capital systems.

Eight years ago, discussions focused on emulating Silicon Valley metrics. Today, they’re building something more interesting: genuine cross-sector problem-solving where business leaders, academics, and policymakers work across divergent political views to solve concrete challenges. That’s harder to build than innovation capacity. It’s also more valuable for small markets.

Pittsburgh learned this too, just 15 years earlier. The Croatian immigrants who built our steel industry knew something we forgot during our 1990s chase for tech company headcount: transformation isn’t about replicating someone else’s success, it’s about leveraging your unique assets under your specific constraints.

The Mirror Effect

There’s something profoundly circular about standing in Croatia discussing economic transformation with people whose grandparents’ generation left for Pittsburgh seeking exactly that.

When Zagreb doesn’t rank in the top 280 global startup ecosystems despite being four times larger than Ljubljana (which does), I think about Pittsburgh dropping from top 20 to 47th despite having everything Silicon Valley says matters. That’s evidence that global ranking methodologies measure inputs favoring certain approaches over others.

When Croatian universities produce talent comparable to anywhere in Europe but startups raise one-tenth the capital of Czech counterparts, I think about Pittsburgh producing 37,580 technology workers but struggling with narratives that we’re not “tech enough.” That’s not an education problem. That’s proof ecosystem health depends more on capital recycling through exits than talent supply.

When APR convenes leaders who genuinely disagree politically but find common ground solving challenges, I think about how Croatian, Slovak, and Polish immigrants built Pittsburgh’s steel industry despite language barriers because the work demanded cooperation. Trust infrastructure is a competitive asset that scales differently than physical infrastructure.

What Global Citizenship Actually Means

For Croatia specifically, the answer should be obvious: they’re not just another innovation ecosystem to study. They’re part of Pittsburgh’s story.

Croatian immigrants who came here in the early 1900s were global citizens by necessity. They maintained homeland connections while building new futures in America. My eight years engaging Croatia’s innovation ecosystem is that relationship coming full circle. Their ancestors came seeking opportunity when Pittsburgh represented industrial future. Now we engage as equals, both figuring out how to transform beyond industrial pasts.

Every year I return - boot camps, conferences, forums - I’m reminded the Croatian community in Pittsburgh wasn’t just labor. They were part of an economic migration pattern teaching us something essential: people move toward opportunity, and regions that create opportunity attract talent needed to sustain it.

Croatia today faces outward migration as young talent leaves for larger European markets. Pittsburgh faced the same exodus in the 1980s and 1990s. The solution isn’t nostalgia - it’s building economic futures compelling enough to retain talent and attract new arrivals.

What APR’s Panel Revealed

My fellow panelists - Sonja Perkov from HAMAG-BICRO who led Rimac projects, Magda Pirši? from Monri Payments, Stevica Kuharski from Fil Rouge Capital - represent the same entrepreneurial drive that brought their predecessors to Pittsburgh’s steel mills. Different industries, different century, same fundamental question: how do you build economic futures under constraint?

I challenged APR to stop organizing conferences about commercialization and start organizing buyer consortiums where startups negotiate contracts, not pitch decks. That’s advice Pittsburgh learned the hard way over 20 years - informed by remembering how Croatian immigrants didn’t wait for perfect conditions, they created opportunity through direct action and genuine partnerships.

The difference from 2017? Nobody’s asking how to copy American approaches. They’re asking how to build Croatian approaches achieving comparable outcomes under different constraints. That’s the right question - the same one Croatian immigrants answered helping build Pittsburgh by adapting, not replicating, European industrial models.

The Full Circle

Croatian immigrants came to Pittsburgh seeking opportunity when steel defined industrial futures. Now, a century later, I travel to Croatia not bringing opportunity but seeking shared understanding about how industrial regions transform.

Beyond professional exchange, there’s something profoundly right about Pittsburgh maintaining deep engagement with Croatia. Their community helped build our industrial legacy. The least we can do is engage authentically as both regions figure out what comes next.

After eight years across Croatian cities and contexts, I don’t return thinking “that’s interesting but different.” I return thinking “we’re connected by history and solving parallel challenges - both data points matter.”

Pittsburgh’s next 20 years won’t be determined by whether we can become Silicon Valley. It will be determined by whether we can become the best version of Pittsburgh. And eight years across Croatia’s innovation ecosystem, combined with a century of Croatian contributions to Pittsburgh’s evolution, taught me what that actually means.

The Croatian immigrants who came here didn’t replicate European models. They built something new under American conditions while maintaining connection to roots. That’s exactly what both Pittsburgh and Croatia are trying to do now - build technology futures while honoring industrial pasts, transform economies while maintaining cultural identity, compete globally while remaining authentically regional.

The conversations were challenging. The friendships are real. The historical connection runs deeper than any professional engagement. And I’m more convinced than ever that Pittsburgh’s path forward requires global perspective informed by authentic relationships - especially with communities that helped build who we are.