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Antonia Kurtović
Episode · #783

PAMETNA HRVATSKA Antonia Kurtović, powered by Janaf

Guest Antonia KurtovićHosted by Marijana MatkovićMay 3, 2026
About this episode
What you'll hear in this conversation

Antonia Kurtović’s path into entrepreneurship began not with a market-ready concept, but with a deeply personal one. At 19, she co-founded Michi Community, an app designed to support teenagers’ mental health. What started as an earnest attempt to help her peers quickly revealed a crucial distinction: "It turned out to be more of a social impact idea than one attractive to investors," she reflects. That early lesson — understanding the difference between social good and market viability — shaped her approach to building her next venture. Now, as a student at Rochester Institute of Technology, she leads Project One, a digital workspace guiding new founders through every stage of startup development. You'll hear how that initial pivot, combined with a global education, prepared her to build tools for the very ecosystem she once navigated as a first-time founder.

Insights from the conversation
What to take from this episode
01
The Michi Community, an app for teen mental health, began as Antonia Kurtović’s first startup at 19. It showed her that not every impactful idea has immediate investor appeal, distinguishing between social good and market viability early on.
02
Antonia chose Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) specifically for its international focus and the ability to learn across diverse business areas like finance, sales, and marketing. This flexibility allowed her to explore different industries without early specialization, proving that a broad, global education can build a versatile founder.
03
Her experience as a founder with Michi, followed by an internship in a startup incubator, provided Antonia with two distinct perspectives on the startup ecosystem. This dual view — from building her own idea to supporting others — naturally led to Project One, an application designed to guide founders through every development stage.
04
Project One functions as a gamified digital workspace that leads founders through startup phases like ideation, market research, and prototype development. It turns the complex startup journey into structured, trackable tasks, showing that a clear, step-by-step digital roadmap can demystify the process for new entrepreneurs.
05
The platform connects founders with investors and incubators, allowing them to track progress and automate reporting. This reduces administrative burden for founders and provides stakeholders with real-time insights, proving that streamlining communication channels can accelerate startup development and funding.
06
Antonia, as CEO, leads the Project One team and product direction, with Nora Miškulin as CTO handling technical development and Vitomir Pavičić overseeing sales. This clear division of roles among co-founders — particularly for an early-stage venture — highlights the importance of defined responsibilities from day one, even in a partnership.
07
Antonia sees Project One as complementary to existing startup incubators, not a replacement. The platform helps founders immediately apply workshop learnings, demonstrating that the most effective tools support and extend existing ecosystems rather than trying to disrupt them entirely.
08
While Project One currently supports incubators, Antonia envisions future growth to include organizing hackathons and continuing to support students. This commitment to fostering the next generation of founders, even as the company scales, shows that building community can be a core part of a startup's long-term mission.
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