SparkLabs Saudi Arabia

Partner

Taj Holding Group | مجموعة تاج القابضة

On August 31st 2019, I moved from Milan to Riyadh.

A decade ago on August 31st 2009 I moved from Podgorica, my home town, to Milan. Quite symbolic don’t you think?

Taj Holding Group doubled in size over a short period of time and we had a lot of things to do.

Where other people saw chaos I saw beauty.

I felt like an artist in front of a big boulder thinking how we can shape it together.

My first project was establishment of Shared Service center for the Group - baby NuCorp.

I set up the dream team and started.

My humble projection about project completion was 12 months.

Little did I know what resistance mean and how to execute the change.

Here I learned what it means to be the first time leader and how to cope with the feeling of being lost.

We were just warming up and few months into the project the pandemic started.

From transformation and innovation we went into the crisis management mode.

Our restaurant business was hit pretty bad hence I had to leave baby NuCorp.

Here starts one of the most stressful periods of my life.

Managing the uncertainty from a distance - our business was located in Jeddah - city on the seaside of Saudi Arabia.

As soon as flights within the country opened I flew there to be with our team - the pandemic was still not over.

We managed to navigate through this period and get the company up and running.

Being the leader of the company’s SWOT team we had our next task.

Invest and build a chain of mental healthcare clinics.

This was one of the most meaningfull projects I ever worked on.

It got me thinking about the importance of wellbeing and changed entirely my perspective on different mental conditions people are struggling with.

Today we are building a portfolio of 20+ companies for the decades to come.

Executive Director - Investments and Entrepreneurship

Executive Manager - CEO office

Dare Associates

At the beginning of 2015 I was at the crossroad - deciding whether I should go back to my home country or keep pursuing my international experience abroad.

In February I met Stefano and Marcello - founders of Dare Associates (Private Equity and VC boutique) who will happen to become my entrepreneurship mentors and brothers.

As one of the first members of the founding team my first month at work were 30 straight,15 hours working days. And I loved it.

It those 30 days we worked like crazy, played basketball in the office (destroyed half of it) and had countless FIFA matches on playstation.

This is the place where I learned the power of corporate culture.

What it means to install trust among team members where we all act as one. 

Kid who just got out of his university got assigned a project to lead a Turnaround of sheet metal fabrication company and manage the transfer of its production from Italy to Croatia.

This was the crash course on learning how to deal with banks, investors, consultants - where I started learning how the real world works - something they do not teach you at school.

In 2019 we launched AMAKA - a unique online tour operator where you can customize your trip across the world from A to Z.

A team of amazing young people was gathered which worked relentlessly on building the product.

This discovered my love for the game of start-ups and entrepreneurship.

We raised EUR 16 million in capital and I decided it was a time to say goodbye.

Private Equity Associate

While I was thinking I was learning how to build pretty slides and badass Excel files I was actually learning the art of storytelling.

Analyst

UniCredit Bank Austria AG

One of the most important experience in my life. It helped me understand what I do NOT want to do when I grow up.

Internship

Galeb

Spending my time with the company's backbone - the Sales team.

Intern in Sales Department

Lifelong student.

Born and raised in Montenegro.

Molded in Italy, USA and Saudi Arabia.

Learning to think in decades.

Figuring out how the world works.

Taplio

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