Seventy-two percent want to raise, and hiring plans keep missing

The Digital Serbia Initiative's Startup Scanner 2026 surveyed 170 startups across Serbia. Two findings sit uncomfortably next to each other. More than 72 percent plan to raise external investment in 2026, and one in four is targeting a round above 1.1 million dollars, roughly three times the ambition of earlier editions. At the same time, hiring outcomes have fallen short of stated hiring plans in each of the last three years, and the share of startups older than three years still below one million euro in annual revenue rose sharply.

Read together, that is an ecosystem that has reoriented toward capital faster than it has reoriented toward customers. Raising is a plan you can make alone. Revenue is a plan that requires someone else to agree with you.

I am not against raising. I have watched rounds unlock things that no amount of discipline would have. But a fundraising target is a consequence of a business, not a substitute for one, and the gap between planned hiring and actual hiring tells you where the pressure really is. Teams plan to hire because a plan needs headcount. They do not hire because the revenue that would pay for it did not show up.

The pattern I see in program applications matches the survey. A founder arrives with a deck built for investors and no written answer to three questions: who paid you last month, what did they do before you existed, and what is the smallest thing you could sell next week. Fixing that order is most of what a good accelerator does, and it is not a fundraising workshop.

There is a second uncomfortable finding in these reports: a large number of founders still treat their startup as a secondary professional commitment. That is rational in a market where a senior engineering salary is stable and good, and it also explains a lot of the revenue plateau. A company run in evenings does not lose to a better company, it loses to the calendar.

So what would I do with these numbers if I were building here in 2026. First, set a revenue target before a funding target and write both on the same page. Second, treat hiring as the last resort rather than the first milestone, because tooling now covers a surprising amount of what used to require a second and third hire. Third, if you are part time, pick a date to stop being part time or pick a smaller ambition, because the middle position costs the most and returns the least.

The good news in the same data is real. Pre-seed activity has doubled, more first-year companies are getting funded than before, and second-time founders are starting from a much higher floor. That is what an ecosystem looks like when it starts to compound. It just compounds around companies with customers.

If you are somewhere in that 72 percent and want an honest read on whether you are ready to raise, send me what you have.