Sanja Milosavljevic: Good people of the world, you are listening and watching to Mondopreneur podcast. Mondopreneur means entrepreneur of the world and our main aim and main goal is to share as much as we can stories of successful persons that come from all over the world. This whole project is supported by the US embassy in Belgrade, Serbia and today I have a very interesting guest. Well he’s super- I’m super excited that he actually agreed to participate in this project. His name is Gorjan Jovanovski and he comes from Skopje, from Macedonia. And I think that maybe you don’t know how he looks like, or maybe you haven’t heard about him before, but you’ve definitely heard about AirCare. AirCare is an app that most of my friends use and he’s going to tell us something more about that, so this is just a small sneak-peek to what you can expect from this conversation. I hope you’re going to enjoy, I’m going to enjoy so much. So, hi Gorjan, how are you?

Gorjan Jovanovski: Hello, hello, first of all thank you so much for the invite, I’m honestly really appreciative, I would love to chat around and I’m great. It’s a Monday morning, we have sun here in Skopje which is good, we can at least get some vitamin D on our skin, which we missed during winter, so I am super happy.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Oh, fine. I was- I had a pause between two shootings and we actually went to the rooftop to just, as you said, absorb a bit of vitamin D. So, can you tell us something about yourself? I usually ask our guests to tell us something like what is their educational background, do they have any interesting hobbies or interests that are important for their today’s work and job and how your education correlates to what you are doing right now?

Gorjan Jovanovski: So, usually when I introduce myself I say that I’m a software engineer by trade and I’m an eco-activist by heart and I kind of combine those two passions to do what I do today. I love computers. Since I was a kid. I remember in 7th grade I discovered a computer magazine which had some Visual Basic programming language tutorials and I started teaching myself how to program from a magazine and fast-forward a couple of decades and we’re here now, working with these big projects. But yes, I finished software engineering bachelor’s degree here in Skopje. I did my master’s degree again in software engineering in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam. Continued to work there a little bit for booking.com as a software engineer and a team manager, but then after I think 4 years in the Netherlands I decided that I wanted to move back here, and I want to focus full-time on AirCare because as an eco-activist throughout the years I realized hey, I think I have an opportunity to make a bigger impact and I will seize it to the fullest extent that I can.

Sanja Milosavljevic: So how did you become an eco-activist? Did you have a personal issue, or did you find the problem in society or how were you driven to become an eco-activist?

Gorjan Jovanovski: Ooh, I think when I go way back when I was a kid, I think there were two things that made me see the problems that we have, especially locally here. I used to live in the States for a little bit, I moved there with my family and I got to see a cleaner, greener, let’s say environment than what I was seeing on streets of Skopje and it kind of awoke a little bit a side of me that was saying hey there might be an issue that we need to be tackling here. And why is it not as green as I see in Michigan where I used to live. And on the other hand, I usually blame my parents because when I was super young I remember it was New Year and we have this tradition of course presents for New Year, for Christmas, that whole thing. But my mom had a different idea and she took all the toys I wasn’t really using by that point, we cleaned them up, we put some gift-wrap around them, we went and bought some extra toys, and then we went to the local orphanage and we held a lottery for the children there and every time a child would pick a number, they would get a gift and we made sure everyone had gifts. But it was my job to then bring the gift to every child and then hand it over. And like not subconsciously, very directly my parents taught me that it’s not about just receiving but about giving back to your community and working on that aspect. So I think thanks to them and to the experiences that I had I started getting involved more and more in socio-ecological projects. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: That’s interesting. That’s one of the biggest lessons I learned when I was in the States. Giving back to your community is the best thing you can actually do. And it doesn’t have to be money. Most of the time it’s your time, it’s your knowledge, it’s your expertise or whatever you are good at. That is a really powerful thing, just to give back to the community. Okay, so can you tell us something about how you spent the last year? The Covid year? Although it’s still Covid year. I mean, it’s a year after but we don’t see the end of the pandemic, worldwide. 

Gorjan Jovanovski: We’re still in a limbo. We have to redo 2020. It’s not 2021, we’re still doing 2020 until we reset. I have to say it’s quite interesting because it was around that time that I decided to move back from the Netherlands. And unfortunately it coincided with the start of the pandemic and it was me rushing through the pandemic trying to move back because I’d quit my job, I left my apartment, I can’t get stuck in the Netherlands without a place to live and without income to spend. But I managed to move back, luckily and after a bit of quarantine I started focusing full-time on AirCare and all the things that I could do with the app. We went through a bunch of accelerator programs here locally. Thanks to them we were able to learn more about our users, we were able to learn more about our business model, we were able to launch in over 40-ish countries, even more in the last year. Which was a huge expansion for air care. Especially in the US market where we had I think over 200.000 users in a couple of weeks after launch. So it has been a very busy year. Our team has been very busy in not just launching new features but also being a part of a lot of pitch competitions. We were lucky to win a bunch of prizes especially from the UN. We were chosen as Europe’s young innovators for 2020.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Congratulations. Sorry- congratulations, I saw the news, it’s really- respect.

Gorjan Jovanovski: Thank you, thank you, honestly. It’s been very busy, I must say. We found a lot of things to do during the pandemic, so we used our time wisely.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I know, because at the beginning of the pandemic everyone realized that because the whole world stopped for a while that there’s a huge amount of time that we either going to use in vain or we’re actually going to use it to improve something in our lives or our businesses or whatever. So it gave us time to think, or rethink. Okay, so I’ve listened to that TED talk that lasts maybe 6-7 minutes, but where did the idea for AirCare come from? Can you just tell us something about it? I mean it’s a great app, everyone can see what is the quality of air in their area. But where did you get that idea? 

Gorjan Jovanovski: I think- so I was a student, here locally in the university. It was a winter in 2014. Outside we had what we used to call then the smell of winter, which was just smog. That’s what we used to call it with friends, it’s ridiculous. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: E- sorry! Sorry to interrupt you, but we were also told it’s the smell of winter and for me for a long time it has that romantic sound “Oh, it’s the smell of winter”, who cares that we are actually suffocating ourselves. We didn’t actually know how harmful it is. So sorry, continue.

Gorjan Jovanovski: No, it’s totally right. I mean, I even remember I’d go to winter vacation to Bulgaria and I’d be somewhere on a mountain there and there would be a bunch of chimneys burning wood and when I’d smell that I’d be like “Oh, smells like I’m on a winter vacation”. No! That’s not! That’s not…so yeah, I was a student and during one of these winters I wanted to teach myself how to make android apps. I was a web developer, but then I said hey, phones are kicking off, let’s teach ourselves how to make apps. And I wanted to make an app that wasn’t something boring and regular, but something that maybe was useful to a couple of people. And that’s when I stumbled upon the air quality data from our local Ministry of Ecology. They had it published on their website, but the website was made I think in the 1990’s and forgotten about. It’s- it’s not that it’s terrible, but it’s hard to understand. It’s not very well made from the user-end aspect. So I located this data, it was open data so you could use it for anything you want. I downloaded it, I ran some experiments on it. I honestly thought that I had a problem with my own code because it was telling me at some point that the air was polluted over 20 times over the EU limits. So I’m sitting here like okay, I have to have a bug in my code, this doesn’t seem realistic. Unfortunately yeah, it turned out to be true. So yes, I made an app for my friends and I published it on Facebook. It had 19 measuring stations throughout Macedonia and that was basically it. It was a very simple, ugly-looking app, but it was doing its job. Little did I know it would come to this. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: Well, you never know. Some great things happen when you don’t expect huge success. You just hit the problem- you just hit the problem and you solved the problem for many of us to just follow what air quality is outside of our houses. But can you tell us something about- I think that whole interview- well, the whole TED talk I think people should really listen to it, but I have one question that is very interesting to me. It’s like we don’t make any difference between data and information. We don’t know how to use data. And data is everywhere. You know? You don’t have to be a specially trained reader, it’s everywhere, you just have to know how to find it and how to filter it and how to use it. So how is it in Macedonia? When I speak to my friends I see that they don’t make a difference, they are always complaining that there are limited resources when they want to do research or whatever. So what’s the situation in Macedonia and your friends?

Gorjan Jovanovski: Ooh, well I completely agree that we are still struggling with open data. So a lot of the data that we’re supposed to have here, especially talking about data from the government sector where it’s supposed to be open, it’s still not. Or not to the extent where it could be usable. AirCare uses open data that is made in such a way that a computer can easily understand. It can access it, it can process it, it can really easily work with it, so the computer can understand the language of that open data and transform it into information that then people can use. But unfortunately not all of this data is structured in that way. Some of the data which we get is in Microsoft Word documents which is super hard for a computer program to understand. Exactly. Or it would scanned PDF files. I’m like what are we supposed to do with that? Now we have to limit ignition software to even understand what’s on there. So we’ve- I’ve actually been helping the local government in the past several months to show them how to open this data and make it available to the public. So slowly but surely we’re trying to digitalize as much as possible and go forward with that. But it’s a long, painstaking process which a lot of entities need to be part of and understand why it’s important to do so in the first place.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Is it hard to gather different stakeholders that are important to make that kind of decision? And just- like you show up, you’re like a young man and you tell them something. So how do they accept you? Do they trust you when you say that you probably have a solution? 

Gorjan Jovanovski: It depends on who I’m talking to. It’s unfortunate that some people- well, sometimes you can really find people you connect with. I worked with one of the previous Ministers for Informatics here and he really was a kind of hip person that understood technology, understood the importance of everything and a lot of cool projects came from that. But unfortunately in some government institutions we have people from let’s say the old age of typewriters that still don’t understand anything digital, like what are these ones and zeroes kind of thing. Which don’t want to understand or don’t try to understand the importance of technology, openness of data, and actually computer usability of data. So with those institutions we really have a hard time trying to convince them why this is super important. To the point where the government actually had to create a little entity to help us convince other government entities of why they should be opening up their data. So it really depends on who you are talking to. I’m hoping as time goes by and as more and more of these oldtimers go into pension and younger people come and take their place that they’ll change their views and understand why it’s important, or in the end we just make up a law that says you have to do this at the end of the year and end this whole battle about getting this open.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I know, sometimes I pray that once we enter the EU, when Serbia enters the EU, that we are going to have to do certain things. You know? The law is going to be above our local law. So can you just- my next question is in connection with your t-shirt? So can you show us your t-shirt? 

Gorjan Jovanovski: The NASA one?

Sanja Milosavljevic: So how cool is it to work with NASA? 

Gorjan Jovanovski: Well, unfortunately I don’t get to work with NASA. I’d love to. But I got a cool t-shirt from the space station from Florida. But no, we actually got to work with the European Space Agency. The European NASA. They don’t have the coolest name, but it’s like…no, these guys are awesome because throughout the year they have been launching satellites that have been tracking the air pollution on the ground. So thanks to these satellites called the Sentinel project. There’s a bunch of Sentinels out there and the latest they launched was the Sentinel 5P I think. These satellites orbit the earth and report hourly measurements down to the ground. Which then we can use to check out the air pollution on the- well, bigger resolution than let’s say personal sensors on the ground but still be able to understand air pollution in areas that are not covered at all by sensors. And thanks to these we can really track air pollution movement through let’s say countries and maybe a dust storm coming from Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan infiltrating the Balkans and things like that. It’s been really cool working with these guys and all the open data that they have, and we just plan on continuing that cooperation going further.

Sanja Milosavljevic: That would be perfect, fingers crossed – it’s a respectable institution. And it’s not just a good thing to have in your CV like we worked with European Agency, but I suppose there are great experts you can learn from or the availability of data they’re going to provide for you so I think it’s a good thing. So can you tell us something about this European Young Innovator award? Sometimes I’m confused when they say ‘young’ – do you need to be under 30, or do you need to be young as a company? Like you’re a startup, but you can have 50 years but you can have a startup. When they say young innovator, who is a young innovator? 

Gorjan Jovanovski: Young innovator in that sense was people under 30. So your age needs to be under 30, I guess less experience or something to that matter. But yes, it was the age under 30 that they had. But yeah, it was really cool because- so, this award was given to us by World Summit Awards, which is an entity under the UN or that was established by the UN. We applied there I think for the second time. The first time we applied somewhere in the 2018-ish. But we didn’t get too far then because AirCare was quite young and we didn’t get to show the impact that we were making. But luckily we applied again thanks to the local coordinators in 2020 and were able to not only fight up to the European championship where we were chosen not just as the best product, but the best pitch and the best impact and hence awarded the European Young Innovators award, but we were also able to go up to the Global level and then win a prize on the global level as well as one of the winners in the Green Energy and Ecology category. So I don’t know. For us it’s still the biggest award yet, to be recognized by a global entity like the UN for all the work that we’ve been trying to do throughout the years and it just proves that a small team from a relatively unknown Balkan country is able to do such a thing and borders did not stop us from getting out there. So, I just really hope that people understand that it’s very possible to do that.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Well, you’re a great example and probably from some other- I know very few people from this Balkan region that have international success so everything is possible. We are limiting ourselves. We as persons are limiting ourselves, not the world. So, how can we actually use modern technologies to improve our lives? Where can we use it? I mean- I’m a younger generation, you are young, but I don’t see how we can show to our older citizens how they can benefit from using technologies.

Gorjan Jovanovski: Oh, I think- there are a lot of ways that they can understand. Take my grandma for example. She has not only figured how to use AirCare on her smartphone, she’s figured out Viber and YouTube and stickers and oh my god. But so I think if the older generations are just willing to learn, they can figure it out. But yes, we live in an era where technology is very accessible. Everybody has a smartphone these days. I don’t know a person who doesn’t have a smartphone. You can have a high end, low end, whatever, but you still have access to applications and the internet. I think at this point we can’t imagine our lives without internet, especially in Covid times.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Of course.

Gorjan Jovanovski: So, showing the older generation the benefit of using each tool through something that’s super simple. For example AirCare has a child mode, which the older generation seems to love here. It’s a little thing that not a lot of people know actually, it’s in the menu if you haven’t’ seen it, just check out the menu from the side. We haven’t marketed it all, we have to work on that. But it- instead of displaying the circle with air quality information and different polluters and so on. It simplifies the interface for- for us it was intended for the younger generation, but apparently everybody likes it. And it gives you this interesting little character called Breezy. And Breezy changes his expression based on the air quality outside. He would smile and laugh if it’s good and he would cough and put on a mask if it’s bad outside. And through a simplified version of technology, I think the older generation can get a hold on what it’s about and how to start using it and then slowly advance towards the level that we find normal as the younger generation that grew up with technology. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: Of course, of course.

Gorjan Jovanovski: Start simple, and then teach them into their ways. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: Well, good for your grandma. My mom she cannot- she rejects to learn how to use a smartphone. She has a smartphone, but she doesn’t use viber and she doesn’t use any of the apps. Like if it’s some great celebration like somebody’s birthday, or Christmas or Easter, when I come to her place she just gives me the phone and tells me ‘send them messages’, send messages to tens of people. But for me last year showed us how technologies can actually help older people to book an appointment with a doctor or to do some basic stuff that okay they cannot go outside of their houses, we have that restriction during the lockdown that people older than 65 years can actually not leave their houses, they are forbidden- not allowed to go out. They could finish some work, they could order food or medicine or book an appointment with the doctor, it could be very useful. But as you said maybe we should simplify it for…

Gorjan Jovanovski: Totally! You can even twist it in the Balkan way. Remember when the lockdown first started, we had our house- how do you call ‘Slava’ in English?

Sanja Milosavljevic: The Patron celebration or something like that. I don’t know…

Gorjan Jovanovski: But the Balkan people probably understand. It’s like a holiday we celebrate every year per family. And we had these and of course without Corona a lot of family would come together. But now of course because it was risky and we didn’t want to risk anybody’s health. What we did family per family we would sit in our homes and use video calls to actually celebrate something together, which was again a very interesting 21st century twist…

Sanja Milosavljevic: On a tradition. 

Gorjan Jovanovski: Exactly. Showed the older generation hey, look what we can still do in harder times thanks to technology. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: I agree, that’s perfect. We also did that. We had that small- well, my family celebration is on the 14th of February and we also had that Zoom ‘slava’ it was funny, it was really funny. Can you tell me something about- what is your attitude towards the educational system here in the Balkans. We are similar probably in Serbia and Macedonia, but you have the experience of somebody who went outside, who went somewhere abroad and had that different experience, so how is our education system? What are we missing here? Or are we missing anything at all?

Gorjan Jovanovski: I think we are. Honestly, I had the privilege to be able to study a couple of years of elementary school in the US and then come back and continue my education here and I was able to compare the education system. And of course that was a long time ago, so I can imagine we’ve stepped it up a lot since then. But I think what really needs to happen here is first of all to have a human touch to education. To understand that a lot of these teachers that are there give a lot of their best, but also the system of accepting teachers- or the filtration system let’s say of accepting teachers needs to be there because as an educator you need to have values that conform to what you’re trying to teach children. For example, when I was in the States – and I was there for the 2nd grade and 3rd grade that time – we were taking it slow. The first couple of grades in elementary school was learning how to get along. Learning how to play. Learning how to enjoy life, and then you’d start slowly into the actual educational material. I think here it was in the 1st grade or something like that where the math teacher would yell at me because I couldn’t multiply two digit numbers with two digit numbers. I was like come on, I’m 1st grade, relax will you. I don’t know, maybe exaggerating I don’t remember. I mean, it was just the approach that teachers had. I remember the teacher here locally just loved to yell at us. So once my mom came and the teacher very proudly told my mom “You know what, I come here, I yell at the kids, and then go back home and I would not feel bad at all. I’d feel super happy. I’d just let out all my anger at kids at school.” Is that the right approach? Do you really want to-

Sanja Milosavljevic: Is that the way to develop critical thinking with kids, to yell at them?

Gorjan Jovanovski: Exactly. I mean…so I think we have stuff to fix and for me I think the most important way of doing this is to knowledge exchange. So instead of being stuck in these systems, try to learn from other systems and what they do. I’d even suggest, as we have student transfers, or student exchanges, why not have teacher exchanges? Have teachers from the US for example come and teach children here for, I don’t know, 6 months, and then have our teachers go there, change places, learn what they can and then be able to apply it and expand it to our local educational systems. So I think there’s more that we should be doing, especially on teaching children to be the best version of themselves that they can be, especially since unfortunately not always will that be the case from your own household. So the teachers have all this extra weight on their shoulders to make sure they put children on the right path. So it’s going well, but we can always use the help and knowledge from the outside. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: From outside, yes. I agree. I agree, it’s similar here and basically our school system is like you have the correct answer, and wrong answer and nothing in between. Like, no critical thinking, they don’t try to develop critical thinking with kids. So what do you think about entrepreneurship? Like are we born with that gene, or do we have a talent to be entrepreneurs or is it something that’s just developed or it’s a set of skills that you have to learn and implement.

Gorjan Jovanovski: Oof. I think a mix. I think it’s a mix. Because you have to have- or to have a little bit of understanding about entrepreneurship and business. I am not the most skilled business person out there and I very openly say that. That’s why I have a team with me and I don’t try to pretend I know everything on my own. But you have to have the will and the passion to do these things. I remember going way back in my childhood in the US I first understood the concept of a garage sale. And for me that was quite new. I was like what is this garage sale thing? Suddenly you can become a shop out of your garage? What do you mean? Make money out of old stuff? And then I remember coming back here and as a child I’d spend summers organizing garage sales in front of my home. So I’d just put up tables and take all the old stuff from the basements and try to sell it to the passers by. And I think that was kind of the first entrepreneurship experience I had. But you have to start having a will for this I think early on and then continue to work with this. That is one maybe side of it. But another side is having a great community to learn from. I am super happy to say the startup community here locally has been growing rapidly. A lot more resources have become available to people, a lot more education, a lot more connections, a lot more events and thanks to all of those, even if you’re quite unfamiliar with the concept of entrepreneurship, you can really benefit and start getting into those waters and dip your toes in the water of what it is to be an entrepreneur. So I think thanks to communities like that all around the Balkans, not just here, a lot of people have an access to understand what does it mean to become an entrepreneur.

Sanja Milosavljevic: It’s similar in Serbia. It started to develop maybe a decade ago and it speeded up somewhere in the middle of 2010. So in 2015 everything speed up and then we had last year that maybe stopped that kind of community gatherings and networking nights and something like that. But still most of them have transferred online. But I really think it takes time to develop entrepreneurial spirit in regions like ours, like in Serbia or in Macedonia. We are not that open, we are not that ready to make a mistake, to learn from our mistakes, so…I don’t know if you agree with me, but we have that negative attitude towards failure. What is failure? Have you ever failed? Like you said you done some really amazing stuff like the AirCare app, you worked for booking.com, so have you ever had failures? Problem?

Gorjan Jovanovski: No, no, I’m perfect. (laughter) I mean, I never go wrong, I am always right. No, of course. Of course.

Sanja Milosavljevic: But did you make any mistakes? Did you try to develop an app and it turned out to be a waste of time?

Gorjan Jovanovski: So, I’m not sure how the camera is picking this up, but I’ve developed 20 apps before AirCare. So 20 that had almost 0 success to the point when you actually get the one that works. So 20 apps have- let’s label them a failure because they technically were, they didn’t hit the audience where they should’ve until you get to the right thing. And those 20 failures did not discourage me saying hey you know what, you suck at making apps, stop making apps. No. That’s not what failures are. Because failures aren’t- I hate the word failure, because that’s not failure, that’s what I’m saying – it’s a learning opportunity. You learn what went wrong, and how you can improve going forward. Booking wasn’t the first company I applied to. I applied to many different companies. I tried to get into MIT, I got rejected. I tried to get into Uber, I got rejected. I tried to get into to Nova high-school which is here kind of the top private high school – I got rejected. So I tried to apply to all of these places, and of course you would get rejected for one reason or the other, but you would learn. Like aha, okay this didn’t work, this didn’t work, how can I improve next time? So over time you would find what we call success. So I- the culture towards failure should really be accepted as it’s not failure, it’s learning. You’re developing, you’re figuring things out as you go along. If you sit there and try to come up with the best idea and you don’t try anything else, chances are you’ll never come up with it. So instead of just going out trying, failing okay next, how can I change, how can I pivot, it’s when you can get to something that works. So, I think there’s a lot of failure in my past even with AirCare. There have been a lot of options that we tried and had to delete from the app because it didn’t work. So, it’s not that it was a one-shot wonder, but it just takes time and will.

Sanja Milosavljevic: And dedication. I will return again to that TED talk and from my perspective this AirCare, you’re like a patriot of the world. You’re saving the planet, you’re saving a person’s life by saying don’t go out, it is poisonous. So for me that was my impression, he’s the patriot of the world. He’s not the local patriot, he’s the patriot of the world. Perfect. So you used one word at the beginning of our conversation ‘to tackle’, so are you more of a- do you like to tackle or do you like to solve the problem? Where do you stand? I don’t know if I’m clear enough. Am I clear enough? Do you understand me?

Gorjan Jovanovski: Well, let me try and answer and then you’ll see if I-

Sanja Milosavljevic: Yeah, okay, okay.

Gorjan Jovanovski: Locally, when I come back here. I used to come back a lot from the Netherlands back home. A lot of people would say hey, why do you like this place so much, there’s so many problems? And I would say no, I don’t see problems, I see opportunities. I see opportunities to make things better. We can see everything through a negative filter, we can say everything is a problem ,everything is bad or we can say- and when we see a problem, we say this is bad. And that’s where the conversation stops. If we say this is an opportunity to make something better, is where the conversation opens up and says okay, how? What can we do to make these things better? So I think if it’s change of perspective, change of mindset, where you say I’m gonna look at this from an opportunity perspective, only then can you start really thinking about how you can solve certain issues and certain problems. So I like to say that I look at opportunities and not problems. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: Okay, you answered my question, thank you.

Gorjan Jovanovski: Good.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Thank you. No, because if you want to tackle, then you need the strong structure and you need  time and some things are- they have to be done quickly, you need to solve the problem. You don’t have time to test it too much or whatever. So, what is your attitude or opinion about blue, green and circular economy. Circular economy is something that’s becoming very popular here in Serbia. I don’t know how it is in Macedonia, but what do you think about these three? To me they’re very similar and interconnected but have their characteristics, but what do you think about these three types of economies?

Gorjan Jovanovski: To be honest, I’ve never heard of blue economy, so I’m not that sure what that is? 

Sanja Milosavljevic: Well, it’s like a ancestor of green economy, so it’s something- using natural resources and it’s not- it’s not like similar to circular. Circular needs to reuse. Blue and green are very similar. 

Gorjan Jovanovski: Well personally I love that. Of course. As an eco-activist you have to love something that- economy that figures out ways of not harming the environment, harvesting what is there and giving back, making sure that everything is recyclable. It’s I think still hard for people to understand the importance of this. Because when you tell people look, I don’t know, you bought this milk carton and now you have to recycle it. What change does it make? If I put it in the recycling bin or not, I don’t see a change outside. Tomorrow I get up it’s the same tree outside, the same building, it’s the same sky, I didn’t really make an impact. And until people start to see or to realize the impact they are making with these green and circular economies, I think we are still going to have trouble convincing people to understand hey look, this is important, we need to look at businesses that are able to recycle, reuse, redo everything. We need to look at natural resources and stuff burning coal and- to get fire and we need to do this before it’s too late. And it’s usually what I stress to people, it’s really hard for people to understand how much we are harming the planet right now and how important it is to switch now. Not tomorrow, not next week, but now – actually, yesterday.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Yesterday, yeah. 

Gorjan Jovanovski: This should be done today, because the longer we wait the bigger the impact this will be on the planet. Instead of thinking only in profit terms, only in revenue, only in how can my investors get as much money as possible, maybe we should also think of the eco and green impact that my business can have on the planet going forward. Usually when AirCare pitches to investors. We have two things. One, yes we ask for cash injections to expand teams and our processes, but we also say we’re looking for a partner with eco-connections and a passion for clean air. We only want to work with people who share our vision and passion. And usually what I tell investors when they ask well why should I invest in AirCare and I’m like look, you can invest in AirCare and I can guarantee you that you’ll get your money back, maybe not make you the richest people ever, ever, but we will make sure that you are there to live long enough to spend all of your money that you’ve made. If you don’t invest in green and eco solutions, then chances are you’re not gonna be able to spend your money by the time everything blows up. It’s a pessimistic view, not gonna lie. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: But it’s perfect. Because you just basically hit the ego spot. Everyone wants to live long enough to spend their money.

Gorjan Jovanovski: You have to look at green and health if you want to live long enough to spend your money. Otherwise what are you going to do with it?

Sanja Milosavljevic: Is it easy to find investors in Macedonia? Or do you go to some other markets to find- to look for investors?

Gorjan Jovanovski: I definitely go outside. I think locally we’re still struggling with investment. We have a couple of accelerators which are starting up now, but investments are really taking a slow time to happen. Even talks about investments are taking super slow to happen. So, I would say that locally we still have a problem on our hands with that. We have less resources about learning how to figure out investments, where to get investments. So we use a lot of these accelerators, impact hubs, to help us understand the places where we can locate investors and how to pitch to investors. Because again I can go there and as an eco activist I can pitch our story, but at the end of the day the investors are more interested about the business model, the sustainability, the growth, the market size and knowing all this information, how to correctly present to an investor outside is super important. And I think this is where we have enough material to learn, but unfortunately there’s not a lot investors locally, at least in Macedonia here. So we have to go outside and look to the region, or I don’t know Europe, or even Silicon Valley. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: Well, I think that you’re a good candidate for that.

Gorjan Jovanovski: I hope so too! I think so too. That’s why we ask for investors. But- and maybe to go back to some of the viewers or listeners who are thinking of starting their own company – I hear this a lot in the Balkans and it really annoys me. They would say hey, look, I want to start a business and I have this great idea, when can I get investment? Like, why do you rush to get investment from day 1? Usually for the majority, especially in the tech businesses, you do not need investment in day 1. There is no investment, zero money needed. If you need investment from day one, then you’ll have a really tough time starting business. When you talk about tech, you find co-founders which are your CTO for example. Someone who’s in technology. You make a minimal viable product, an MVP of whatever you’re trying to do, you put it on the market, you see if it bites, you start to make a little bit of money and then you would go to investors and say hey, look – we have something that works. AirCare right now is super sustainable. We are able to pay all of our bills and pay our team without getting investment from anywhere. Which puts us in a much better position when we start approaching investors. So having that first step in not rushing to get investors on day one is super important and I want a lot of people to understand that you don’t have to do that.  

Sanja Milosavljevic: Yes, you need a computer and a stable internet connection to start an idea. And you have to have idea. Okay, thank you. We came to the end of our conversation. Thank you for your time, I really enjoyed. I haven’t laughed this much during an interview, I don’t know for months now, so. And I learned a lot from you, thank you once again for your time. 

Gorjan Jovanovski: Thank you so much for the invitation, I honestly appreciate it and thank you for your work on this project because I think it’s much needed. Especially in our region, so I honestly appreciate what you’ve done/

Sanja Milosavljevic: Thank you. Good people of the world, you were listening and watching to Mondopreneur podcast. You can always follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and listen to us on almost all audio platforms that are there and you can always subscribe to our YouTube channel. So, stay good, stay in good health and see you in a week.