- It was awful! Slow, demanding and uncertain, recalls Hrvoje Ćosić of the disaster of that long-ago trip to the match in Poland. 

That experience matters because Hrvoje is the founder of Aircash, the company that currently moves money from one account to another. He did not manage to buy the ticket as originally planned; he bought it from another seller. But, having collided with the problem, he thought he could solve it by creating a service that would digitally transfer payments from one account to another. 

From zero to the Financial Times ranking 

It took him three years of gruelling work, serious preparation, compliance with payment services laws and regulations, and the engagement of legal and economic teams and IT experts to set everything up from scratch and, in 2017, with a licence from the Croatian National Bank (HNB), go to market. And that meant visiting companies that sell something to convince them that his system could make buying their products easier. 

A year later they obtained an HNB licence for electronic money as well, in 2019 they had the first Croatian digital wallet, and they have been growing constantly ever since. Three years ago the Financial Times ranked them 14th on its list of the 1,000 fastest-growing companies in Europe. Over the period from 2018 to 2021, they measured growth of 6,068.1 per cent! 

A few years ago they passed one billion euros in transactions; today it is several times more, they measure turnover in double-digit millions of euros, they employ more than 200 people, including about fifteen foreign managers, and they have more than one and a half million users. 

First in everything: the Croatian fintech marketplace 

Yes, they are the best Croatian fintech company: they released the first Croatian mobile wallet to the market, built the first Croatian fintech marketplace, and are the first Croatian fintech to obtain an EU licence for electronic money. Aircash is the first non-bank institution in Croatia to have issued, in cooperation with Mastercard, the Aircash Mastercard prepaid card. 

So it is not unusual that on Sundays Hrvoje slips off to Sljeme or a similar area and gives himself over to solitude and a reset. Sometimes he is delighted by a simple trip to the market. That is, realistically, a great place. 

After all, even Bourdain was always hanging around markets as he travelled the world; markets are life. On other days, Ćosić is in constant motion, from one airport to another, from one business meeting to another, from one panel on modern technologies to another, while being plugged into every form of communication at the same time. 

Lessons from the ‘Del Boy‘ phase: from a status car to his mum's old man's car 

And in the several careers he has tried his hand at, because he clearly has an entrepreneurial spirit, Hrvoje has also come to know quite different days. 

- Oh dear, at one point, because business was going well, I bought a status car, everything looked good. And then the crisis hit, the market crashed, and I ended up in a twenty-year-old car that I had borrowed from my mum, he says, laughing, recalling his attempt to get into real estate, a time when he joked that he reminded himself of Del Boy, hoping to get his hands on big money. 

Moreover, Hrvoje is an alumnus of FER (the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing), and it turned out that his whole family is from FER, starting with his father, the woman he met at university, and both his daughter and son are at the same faculty today. Before his adventure in the real estate business, Hrvoje was a manager at a bank and decided to go into business for himself, but because that ended ingloriously, it led him to return to what he knows best: engineering and finance. 

Engineering nerve and a sporting mentality 

The idea appeared during the aforementioned purchase of match tickets, but almost five years passed from idea to realisation. The best thing is that he has nerve and an indestructible smile. He does not utter a single sentence without smiling. That is just how he is. He could just as well be endlessly worried, because the plans are big, there are many markets he wants to conquer with his team, and that also means many pitfalls and temptations. Many markets means planning operations in all 27 EU member states, and they are now in about fifteen, including Czechia, Germany, Romania, Austria, Slovenia, Greece and some others, including countries in the region. 

He is ambitious. Both bold and creative in business. When they were entering the Italian market, they decided not to present themselves with classic marketing approaches. They chose a football club to introduce them to Italians. So now Verona's players wear the Aircash name on their shirts. After all, even the company name was created to be global. He knew that the brand was important for success, that the thing had to look powerful and successful. 

‘Aircash‘ like Jordan: money that travels through the air 

When he was far from his current business, a friend was trying to bring a beer to market, but did not have a brand that would win people over at the first step. And he took his cue from Jordan, the basketball player. He wanted to signal at first glance that he could move money through the air, at the speed of air travel, in an instant. That is how ‘aircash‘ came about, because English works in every EU country. His idea is that ‘if something can be achieved, then set yourself a goal three times as big. ‘Why not? If you play, you have to be all in‘, he says. 

He does not seem likely to rush into conquering new markets, because he did not get to where he is overnight either, but only after intensive preparation and analysis. 

- Business has to be fun. There has to be a segment of play, because if it is an obligation, if it lacks that fun component, there is no creation, and if there are none of those nice and good things, as in sport, you lose, he explains about fun, the unexpected element that matters to him and that he wants to have in his business. 

- Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. The idea is to win more often than you lose and in the end win the championship. Even the best lose. No problem. But the championship is long. And if at the end of the season you have scored more goals than you have conceded, you will win, he reflects like a sportsman, as do all successful managers. Because, the truth is, in sport you have to prepare as well as you can and be ready that, despite that, you will lose. 

- Everybody says the mantra must be persistence, reflects Hrvoje Ćosić. 

- Of course you have to be persistent, but it is easy to be persistent when things are going well. Be persistent when you lose five games in a row, he says, listing the seasons when he and his closest associates were only preparing to go out onto the pitch. ‘In 2015 we started the company, in 2016 we had the licence, and in 2017 the first transaction. Until 2019, even 2020, nobody knew what would happen with everything, but we said: ‘OK, we are all in. We are totally in. If we fail, if we do not succeed, then we did not succeed‘. 

The difference between persistence and stubbornness 

It was a phase when he had to learn accounting, controlling, SAP, a million things that kept coming up in business conversations. ‘I once came to a meeting and they said: ‘Here comes the director, designer, programmer, accountant, financier and marketer in one person‘. That is it. But once it gets going, once you have your first client, the second and third come more easily‘. 

- There is a look when people watch you and you do not know whether they are marvelling at you or pitying you. That period is perhaps the hardest to endure and to get to some big step. And then it just takes off, he describes what it was like when he needed a great deal of faith in what he was doing. That is why he adds: ‘It is important not to confuse persistence with stubbornness. Some people just stubbornly push something and insist on it, the same thing. If it does not work, it does not work. You have to adapt, change a little, get around the obstacle‘. 

The power of the team 

All along he has been honing ideas with his partner, Jakov Pinjuh. ‘You need a partner‘, says Hrvoje, stressing that a partner is someone who wants the same thing you do, even when you have different views. 

- Jakov has experience from another field, from software, and brings his own life experience. On key decisions you want to have a partner, because if you disagree, then you realise it is time to talk about an idea. 

One of the important people is also Branimir Petrušić, Chief Technology Officer, who leads the development of the app and has been at Aircash since the company's beginning, and knows best why successful teams matter. Hrvoje stresses that it is key to be a team player and once again cites the example of basketball. He talks about the time when Phil Jackson coached the Chicago Bulls. 

- A leader must know how to engage everyone, because the team wins, not a single player, he says, and tries to bring this into the spirit of the company. He knows it is important that every new employee be a team player, and stresses that it is key that everyone has the chance to advance and develop on a personal level. ‘That is what motivates people, he concludes. 

Source: Jutarnji.hr 

Photo: Vedran Peteh/Cropix