Advisor·Dealion
Founder·Satori Catalyst · Co-Founder · ABSL Western Balkans
She spent a decade building the infrastructure the Western Balkans startup ecosystem was missing - because she was inside it before anyone else had a name for what they were doing.
Bosnia · Serbia · Croatia / Austria · Belgium · UK / USA (Miami)
Startup Ecosystems · Impact Innovation · HealthTech / BPO · IT Services / Strategic Partnerships · EU Funding
Structuring cross-sector partnerships and navigating EU funding and innovation ecosystems from the Western Balkans
EU accelerators and Horizon Europe funding bodies, impact investors, startup studio networks, ABSL business services sector, deeptech and healthtech ecosystems
Sara Lerota did not start in tech or startups. She started in arts marketing and retail management, which is an unlikely path to becoming one of the more connected ecosystem builders in the Western Balkans. The pivot happened at SPARK in 2016, where she ran startup acceleration programs in Mostar and became Bosnia's representative in the Startup Europe Western Balkans Network. She earned the B&H Digital Pioneers Fellowship from the UK Embassy in 2018 while doing that work. She was not attending the ecosystem. She was building it.
From there she moved into managing investment portfolios. At MarketMakers, a Swiss Embassy-funded initiative, she sourced, evaluated, and closed investments in SMEs and IT companies. At Ministry of Programming - a startup studio ranked on the Financial Times 1000 list - she was VP Strategic Partnerships for four years, structuring deals and investing over a million euros in ten-plus startups across healthtech, musictech, and fintech. She was not managing a spreadsheet of contacts. She was doing the full cycle: sourcing, due diligence, negotiation, close.
She has since co-founded ABSL Western Balkans, a regional platform positioning the Balkans as a serious destination for business services and nearshoring. She founded Satori Catalyst, a global impact studio working with startups, accelerators, and ecosystem builders. Through her work with Women TechEU she helped evaluate over 3,000 startups, supported 160 with non-dilutive EU grants, and contributed to €53.8 million in additional private investment raised by those founders. Those are program numbers, but she was not a passive participant - she was an active advisor on strategy, partnerships, and investor readiness.
At Dealion she built the Partnerships pillar - the layer that connects the club to the broader ecosystem of accelerators, investors, and cross-sector opportunities. She now continues as an Advisor. Her specific value is knowing the difference between a partnership that looks good and one that actually delivers. She has spent her career structuring both, and she knows exactly which mistakes are preventable.
Most partnerships fail not because of bad intentions but because nobody defined what success looks like for both sides before they started. I've seen it a hundred times. The fix is always the same: get specific before you get excited.
The Western Balkans has been an afterthought in most European innovation programs for a long time. I've spent ten years proving that is a positioning problem, not a talent problem. The talent is here. The infrastructure just needed to be built.
Dealion is the kind of room where a founder who has been through a €75k EU grant process can sit next to someone closing enterprise deals in Germany and they both walk out with something useful. That's the model. Not hierarchy. Exchange.
Sara's network sits at the intersection of EU innovation funding, startup ecosystem infrastructure, and cross-sector strategic partnerships. These are specific doors, not general introductions.
A direct conversation with someone who has navigated EU Horizon Europe funding for startups - specifically Women TechEU and EIC programs - for any founder looking to access non-dilutive capital and what the application process actually involves.
An introduction to the Ministry of Programming portfolio network - startup studio founders, investors, and operators across healthtech, musictech, and fintech who came through a FT 1000-ranked ecosystem.
Access to the ABSL Western Balkans network - business services sector leaders, global corporations with nearshoring operations, and shared services decision-makers across Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia.
A working session with an ecosystem builder who has structured strategic partnerships from both sides - as a founder and as an institutional investor - specifically for companies trying to structure their first serious partnership agreement.
An introduction to deeptech and health innovation investor contacts through the cLAB and Women TechEU networks - for founders in life sciences or applied technology looking for investors who understand long development cycles.
A direct line to accelerator and mentoring program operators across Vienna, Brussels, and Sarajevo - for anyone looking to run a program, get into one, or understand how EU-backed acceleration works in practice.
The conversations inside Dealion work because they don't happen in public. If Sara's profile made you want a seat in that room - there's one way in.
You can find Dealion members on LinkedIn. You can sit next to them at a conference. You won't get what we get from each other.
The conversations that move deals happen in a different room. That's the one we built.