Bulgaria has more developers than Estonia, world-class technical universities, and cheaper costs than Poland. So why are we the only ones without a unicorn?
Last month, I sat across from a venture capitalist who'd just returned from Tallinn. "Estonia has 30,000 IT specialists," he said. "They built Skype, Wise, and Bolt. You have 65,000. What have you built?"
I could have mentioned Telerik—our $262.5 million exit. But that was 2014. Ancient history in tech years. The real answer hurt more: We've built everything except the one thing money can't buy—each other.
The €6.3 Billion Paradox
The EU allocated €6.3 billion to Bulgaria through the Recovery and Resilience Plan alone. Bulgaria's youth sent their CVs to Berlin.
As a futurologist running a creative agency, I see this tragedy unfold daily. We're not poor. We're just alone. From my analysis of the regional ecosystem, we have more IT specialists per capita than what I observe in Germany, world-class technical universities that consistently produce exceptional talent, and operational costs that make Silicon Valley entrepreneurs weep with envy. Yet from what I've witnessed firsthand, we capture virtually none of the $1.4 trillion global creative economy.
Why? Because innovation isn't a budget line item on a government spreadsheet. It's a conversation happening between people who trust each other. It's the late-night Slack messages between founders who've worked together before. It's the casual coffee meetings where billion-dollar ideas get sketched on napkins.
MrBeast has 414 million subscribers across his empire of channels. Not one of those subscribers would take a bullet for him. Meanwhile, there's a CrossFit gym in Nebraska with 150 members, and half would donate a kidney to their coach without hesitation. That's the fundamental difference between audience and community. Between reach and roots. Between transactional engagement and transformational connection. Between Bulgaria's EU-funded present and its community-powered future.
This distinction matters more than most people realize. Communities create loyalty that transcends economic incentives. They generate trust that enables rapid iteration and risk-taking. They build social proof that attracts talent and capital from outside the ecosystem. Most importantly, they create environments where failure becomes learning, where competition becomes collaboration, and where individual success becomes collective prosperity.
The Telerik Truth Nobody Talks About
Here's what every Bulgarian entrepreneur should know about Telerik, our legendary exit that put us on the global tech map: It wasn't built with EU structural funds or government innovation grants. It wasn't conceived in a ministry boardroom or launched through a state-sponsored incubator. It was built by four developers who met after their day jobs, shared code snippets in online forums, and methodically solved each other's technical problems. Tuesday evening meetups in borrowed conference rooms, not Brussels bureaucrats in marble corridors, built Bulgaria's biggest tech success story.
The founders—Svetozar Georgiev, Vassil Terziev, Boyko Iaramov, and Hristo Kosev—started with a simple observation: Microsoft's ASP.NET needed better development tools. They didn't conduct market research or write business plans. They built what they needed, shared it with other developers, and discovered they'd created something the entire .NET community was hungry for. This organic, developer-to-developer approach became their competitive advantage and scaling strategy.
Today we have ten times more developers than when Telerik started in that Sofia office. But they're all working in isolation, in parallel universes that never intersect, building features for foreign companies instead of founding companies with each other. We've systematically dismantled the collaborative culture that created our greatest success, replacing it with a gig economy mentality where relationships are transactional and loyalty flows to the highest bidder.
The bitter irony cuts deeper than most realize: Those same Telerik founders went on to create thriving communities of developers across Silicon Valley, London, and Berlin—except in Bulgaria. We exported our community-building genius while keeping none for ourselves. We taught the world how to build developer ecosystems while forgetting how to nurture our own.
This pattern reveals something profound about how innovation actually happens. It's not about individual brilliance or technical superiority—though Bulgaria has both in abundance. It's about the social infrastructure that allows knowledge to flow freely, partnerships to form organically, and collective intelligence to emerge from individual expertise.
Political Instability: Our Secret Weapon
Six elections in three years. International media calls it chaos. I call it opportunity.
Political instability isn't Bulgaria's bug—it's our most undervalued feature. While politicians rotate through offices like a game of musical chairs, the tech community can move fast, experiment freely, and build without waiting for bureaucratic approval. Chaos forces creativity. Uncertainty demands self-reliance. Constant change makes adaptability a survival skill.
In stable Germany, entrepreneurs wait six months for government innovation programs to process applications. In predictable Denmark, startups follow predetermined pathways through established incubators. In bureaucratic France, founders navigate complex regulatory frameworks before launching. In chaotic Bulgaria, we could build three companies, fail twice, learn everything, and launch a unicorn between election cycles.
But instead of embracing this anarchic advantage, we're constantly apologizing for it. We wait for political stability that will never come, for institutional support that moves too slowly, for perfect conditions that don't exist anywhere in the real world.
The most innovative ecosystems globally—from Tel Aviv's military-industrial complex to São Paulo's controlled chaos—thrive not because of government support, but despite government unpredictability. They build antifragile networks that grow stronger under stress. They create parallel institutions that function regardless of political weather. They develop cultural antibodies that protect innovation from institutional interference.
Bulgaria has the chaos. The instability. The beautiful unpredictability that forces entrepreneurs to become resourceful, communities to become self-reliant, and ecosystems to become antifragile. We just need to stop seeing it as a weakness and start leveraging it as our competitive advantage.
The Great Miscalculation
I recently spent months analyzing startup data across Eastern Europe, comparing ecosystem metrics, founder journeys, and success patterns. The results were both illuminating and devastating: cities with half our technical talent consistently produce twice our economic value. The pattern repeats across every metric I examined.
Why? The answer became clear after visiting twelve different tech hubs. They gather. We scatter.
Sofia has Puzl CowOrKing with 1,200+ members—an impressive achievement until you realize that represents just 1.8% of our IT workforce. The other 98.2% work in isolation, building someone else's dreams in remote teams, planning their eventual exits to places where people actually talk to each other about something other than the weather and football.
This dispersion isn't accidental. It's the inevitable result of optimizing for individual gain over collective growth. We've created a culture where networking feels transactional, where sharing knowledge seems risky, where collaboration is viewed as a zero-sum game. Everyone protects their advantages instead of multiplying them through community.
"It's not even about the money anymore," a talented young developer told me recently during a consultation. "I earn more here than I would in Berlin after taxes and living costs. I just want to work somewhere that feels like it matters. Somewhere people care about more than their next sprint deadline."
She moved to Amsterdam three months later. Not for the salary—for the Friday afternoon drinks where developers debate architectural patterns until midnight. For the weekend hackathons where strangers become co-founders by Sunday evening. For the community that makes daily work feel connected to something larger than quarterly targets.
This brain drain represents our greatest market failure. We're training world-class talent and then creating environments so sterile that they seek community elsewhere. We're optimizing for efficiency while destroying the social fabric that makes efficiency meaningful.
Building Despite Brussels
After years of building both a creative agency and contributing to our broader ecosystem, I've discovered something that fundamentally changed how I think about growth: Communities succeed exactly where institutions fail.
The contrast couldn't be starker. While government agencies spend three to six months approving innovation funding applications, WhatsApp groups launch startups over weekend conversations. While EU programs demand fifty-page applications with detailed financial projections, Discord servers debug complex problems in real-time collaboration. While national innovation strategies gather dust in ministry filing cabinets, Telegram channels share opportunities that change careers overnight.
This isn't theoretical. I've watched it happen repeatedly. The most successful collaborations I've seen emerged from informal connections—a casual introduction at a coffee shop, a helpful response in a Facebook group, a shared frustration discussed over beer after a disappointing conference. These relationships become partnerships faster than any formal matchmaking program could facilitate.
Start Up!, Bulgaria! proved this hypothesis at scale. Over 800 people showed up to our first national conference—not because Brussels mandated participation, but because hunger for authentic connection had reached critical mass. No EU structural funds. No government backing. No institutional endorsement. Just Bulgarians tired of building alone, ready to experiment with building together.
The event's success revealed something profound about our ecosystem's latent potential. When we removed institutional barriers and created space for organic interaction, the community energy was overwhelming. Conversations continued for hours after official sessions ended. New partnerships formed in hallway conversations. Follow-up meetings were scheduled before people left the venue.
This is our model for everything that comes next: Build faster than bureaucracy can approve. Connect deeper than contracts can specify. Care more than institutions ever can.
The lesson extends beyond events to how we think about ecosystem development generally. Instead of waiting for perfect institutional support, we need to create parallel systems that function regardless of political weather. Instead of optimizing for official recognition, we need to optimize for community value creation. Instead of seeking permission, we need to build proof that permission becomes irrelevant.
The Vision That Changes Everything
Here's my prediction as someone who's studied global innovation patterns: Bulgaria won't win by copying Silicon Valley's playbook or mimicking Estonia's strategy. We'll win by becoming what nobody expects—a creative laboratory where failure costs less than anywhere else and community matters more than individual achievement.
Our structural advantages are hiding in plain sight, mistaken for weaknesses by people who don't understand how innovation actually works:
Lower operational costs mean longer runways for experimentation. When burn rates are manageable, founders can iterate through more ideas, pursue riskier innovations, and bootstrap longer before requiring external validation. This creates space for breakthrough thinking that high-cost environments can't afford.
EU membership provides frictionless access to 450 million customers without visa complications, regulatory barriers, or currency exchange risks. We can test products locally and scale internationally faster than companies based outside the union. This regulatory arbitrage becomes a massive competitive advantage for the right kinds of businesses.
Small population size means everyone can know everyone within two degrees of separation. In massive ecosystems like Silicon Valley, networking becomes a full-time job. In Bulgaria, the entire tech community could fit in a single conference venue. This intimacy enables trust, reduces coordination costs, and accelerates partnership formation.
Political chaos eliminates bureaucratic interference. While stable governments create predictable regulations that protect incumbents, our constant political turnover means new ideas face fewer institutional obstacles. Disruption becomes easier when institutions are too busy disrupting themselves to protect existing players.
Technical excellence provides world-class execution capabilities. Our universities produce mathematically rigorous engineers who can implement whatever we imagine. This technical depth, combined with cultural work ethic, means we can build complex systems faster and more reliably than most ecosystems.
Add authentic community to these ingredients and we get something approaching alchemy. Suddenly, international companies won't come here for cheap outsourcing—they'll come for creative solutions they can't find elsewhere. Bulgarian products won't compete on price—they'll lead on innovation that emerges from our unique combination of technical skill and collaborative culture. Our youth won't leave to find opportunity—they'll create opportunities that attract talent from other countries.
This transformation isn't fantasy. Estonia proved it's possible with half our developer count and none of our geographic advantages. The only difference? They learned to gather. We're still learning to scatter less.
The Practical Revolution
Forget waiting for perfect institutional conditions. They're not coming, and they're not necessary. Here's what I've learned actually works from building in this ecosystem:
Density Before Expansion: Create critical mass in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna before trying to scale nationally. Ten developers collaborating in one room build more breakthrough innovations than a hundred scattered across the country communicating through Slack. Physical proximity accelerates trust formation, enables spontaneous collaboration, and creates social proof that attracts additional talent.
This means investing in spaces where people want to spend time beyond their required hours. Not just coworking facilities with desks and wifi, but environments designed for serendipitous encounters. Coffee areas where conversations happen naturally. Whiteboards available for impromptu brainstorming. Event spaces where the community can gather regularly without bureaucratic overhead.
Projects Before Policies: One successful collaboration inspires five additional partnerships. Action creates culture faster than any strategy document or government initiative. People need to see collaboration working before they'll risk their own time and reputation on it. Success becomes contagious when it's visible and accessible.
This means starting small but public. Document the process, share the learnings, celebrate the outcomes—especially the failures that generate valuable insights. Make collaboration feel normal by making it visible. Create case studies that other potential collaborators can reference when considering their own partnerships.
Celebrate Like Your Future Depends on It: When two Bulgarians build something together successfully, make it national news. Normalize collaboration through obsessive celebration of partnership outcomes. Our cultural tendency toward modesty works against ecosystem development. We need to amplify every success until collaboration feels like the natural path to achievement.
This celebration needs to be systematic, not accidental. Media coverage, social proof, community recognition—all focused on partnership success rather than individual achievement. We need to rewire the cultural narrative from "successful entrepreneur" to "successful collaborative entrepreneur."
Bridge the Diaspora: Every Bulgarian developer in Berlin represents a potential mentor connection. Every Bulgarian founder succeeding in London becomes a case study for local entrepreneurs. Every success story abroad should strengthen rather than weaken our domestic ecosystem through maintained relationships and knowledge transfer.
This requires intentional relationship maintenance. Regular virtual events that connect local and international Bulgarian entrepreneurs. Mentorship programs that pair domestic founders with international Bulgarian success stories. Investment networks that channel diaspora capital back to local opportunities.
The goal isn't to convince people to return—it's to maintain relationships that benefit both communities. Diaspora members gain access to technical talent and local market knowledge. Domestic entrepreneurs gain access to international networks and scaling expertise. Both sides win when the relationship remains strong regardless of geographic location.
The Choice
Last week, I met a founder who'd returned from two years building product in Stockholm. "In Sweden, I was employee number 500 at a well-funded scale-up," she told me over coffee near Vitosha Boulevard. "The work was interesting, the salary was good, the benefits were comprehensive. But I felt invisible. Here, I can be founder number one. I can build something that matters to me, with people I actually want to work with."
That conversation captures the shift I'm witnessing throughout our ecosystem right now. A fundamental reframe from seeing Bulgaria as a place to escape, to seeing it as a place to build something impossible anywhere else. From brain drain to brain gain. From exodus to homecoming. But this transition remains fragile, dependent on our ability to create the community infrastructure that makes staying feel like choosing opportunity rather than accepting limitation.
Without authentic community, these returning entrepreneurs become departing entrepreneurs again within eighteen months. I've seen this pattern repeat too many times. Talented people return with international experience, struggle to find collaborators who share their ambition, and eventually conclude that Bulgaria lacks the ecosystem density necessary for their success.
The mathematics of community building are deceptively simple: Connect 1% of our developers in meaningful collaboration and watch them build something remarkable. Connect 10% and watch them build an ecosystem that attracts attention from international partners. Connect 50% and watch the global tech community come to Sofia to learn from our model.
We have 65,000 IT specialists according to my analysis of the ecosystem. Estonia built three unicorns with 30,000 developers and less favorable structural conditions. We have €6.3 billion in Recovery and Resilience funding alone available for the right initiatives. Successful ecosystems worldwide built transformational companies with zero institutional funding. We have lower operational costs than any competing European tech hub and higher average technical skills than most established markets.
We have everything except each other. And that's the only thing that actually matters.
The Revolution Starts Tuesday
The future belongs to the connected. Bulgaria's creative future begins the moment we stop working alone and start building together.
Don't wait for Brussels approval. Don't wait for political stability. Don't wait for perfect conditions or institutional permission. The government won't save our ecosystem. The EU won't build our community. Only we can do that, one relationship at a time, one collaboration at a time, one Tuesday at a time.
Pick a location. Same time each week. Invite three people who care about building something larger than themselves. Show up especially when nobody else comes, because communities aren't launched with grand announcements—they're grown through consistent commitment to showing up regardless of immediate results.
Those four Telerik developers who met after work in 2002 didn't know they were building a $262 million company that would put Bulgaria on the global tech map. They just knew they were tired of working alone on problems they could solve better together. They wanted to share knowledge, build better tools, and create something useful for other developers facing similar challenges.
That's all it takes. That's all it's ever taken. Small groups of committed people who decide that together is better than alone, that collaboration beats competition, that community creates possibilities that individuals never imagine.
The question isn't whether Bulgaria can build a world-class creative ecosystem. With our technical talent, cost advantages, market access, and geographic position, that outcome is inevitable if we choose to pursue it. The only question is whether you'll be part of building it or just another statistic in the brain drain.
Because here's the uncomfortable truth I've learned from years of building in this market: If you're not actively building community, you're unconsciously building your exit plan. There's no middle ground in ecosystem development. You're either connecting people and creating opportunities, or you're optimizing for individual advancement and eventual departure.
The EU allocated €6.3 billion to Bulgaria through the Recovery and Resilience Plan with the goal of transforming our economy. But Bulgaria's sustainable future won't be built with euros from Brussels. It will be built with Tuesday meetups in Sofia coworking spaces, weekend hackathons in Plovdiv tech hubs, and the radical belief that together we're stronger than alone.
The revolution won't be funded by institutions. It will be gathered by individuals who choose community over competition.
And it starts next Tuesday.