Last week, Split Tech City, in collaboration with Leonard Eldić from SaaStanak, hosted a Fireside Chat with Kristian Kamber at the Center of Excellence.
The occasion? His startup, founded together with Ante Gojsalić, recently secured the largest seed investment in the history of Croatian startups.

Neither Holy Week nor heavy rain could stop the curious crowd from gathering to hear a conversation that Leonard kicked off with the obvious question:

“Why did you decide to start a startup in Croatia?”

“I spent a long time looking for the right partner for this project. I always knew I’d come back to Croatia. On my return from Germany, I met a full-stack developer on a flight. He reached out two years later and recommended his brother-in-law for the project.

On the other side, he was developing an LLM app powered by AI, but had problems deploying it to production. He needed a sales tech person who could sell it at that moment. That’s how Ante Gojsalić and I started this journey together,” Kristian begins.

“In the cybersecurity sector, it was impossible at first. ChatGPT had just appeared. Potential clients didn’t even have a problem yet, so they didn’t understand why they would need our solution.
We decided to take an unconventional approach. So we started testing things—with white-hacking.”

With complex systems like this, experts often struggle to explain simply what they do and how they help.
Here, Kristian’s tech sales experience came through clearly—he explained branding and business in a way even non-IT people could understand.

After all, your clients often aren’t tech-savvy.

“Besides the association with Split, the name is a combination of the words ‘security platform with x factor.’

The idea behind the product is an automated pen-testing tool for AI.

Before, you’d have an audit every six months and get a report—and maybe fix what was wrong.
But AI is constantly changing—from language to context—and so is risk.
That’s why you need continuous pen-testing.”

“Our platform runs about 2,000 attacks per test across various risk areas.”

Relaxed Mindset = Innovation

Kristian also touched on the advantage of the local mindset.

“Our people are more relaxed, and that’s key for innovation,” he explains, pointing out that the cybersecurity sector started in the military and that you can only compete with certain lobbies if you’re technically flawless.

There were many more great insights—if you’re curious which ones exactly, check out the full video of the conversation on our channel.

After the official part, the now traditional socializing followed, with craft beers and some stronger spirits. Drones and banter were flying around the newly renovated Center of Excellence.

Thanks to everyone who came!

You can follow upcoming community events in our calendar, and we invite all SaaS enthusiasts to Šibenik for a top-tier event—our members get a 10% discount. See you there!