Lean Startup in Croatia - Does the Croatian Startup Scene Develop Effective Enterprises?

In times of general business uncertainty, when the companies face challenges upon which their further existence depends, one of the reactions of the management board is influencing the processes which lead to a relatively quick decrease of expenses and general rationalization of the company's business. The method, or what many refer to as a management philosophy, which is recommended to be used in crisis periods, is the lean method. Having in mind the extremely volatile business environment, lean startup approach has raised to surface recently since it takes the basic principles from the lean production. Although it was primarily developed for technical domain, the lean startup approach to management is flexible, and can therefore be applied in every industry. It uses the experimental way of approaching the innovation cycle, as well as a continuously evaluated process of learning about the organization with the goal of rigorous and measurable validation of the development hypotheses for the new products and services. The lean startup approach tires to systematically and very precisely lead the entrepreneur in discovering the valuable parts of a business vision, and in rejecting the parts which are not realistically founded. This paper analyses the Croatian startup companies by using a customized questionnaire. Besides an overview of the companies' founding profiles, financing sources, the development phases of startup companies, business areas and metrics used by startup companies, as well as information sources, the research showed that the Croatian startup scene is familiar with the principles of lean startup methodology and it is successfully implementing it in business.