VRIJEME JE ZA GOSPODARSTVO Petar Aračić

Guest Petar AračićHosted by Darko BukovićMay 3, 2026

Petar Aračić

About this episode

What you'll hear in this conversation

Many business owners know the frustration: happy customers rarely leave reviews, but unhappy ones never forget. This imbalance distorts online reputation, making it seem worse than reality. Petar Aračić, a seasoned hotel general manager, lived this problem firsthand across multiple properties. He saw how the silent majority of satisfied guests skewed the digital narrative, costing businesses future revenue. Instead of accepting it, Aračić built Fast Review, a system designed to capture positive feedback at the point of experience. His story isn't just about a tech solution; it's about turning a universal industry pain into a profit-making enterprise. You’ll hear how he built a self-funded startup that challenges established digital habits, and why real-time feedback is the only feedback that matters.

Insights from the conversation

What to take from this episode

Petar Aračić's initial goal was not to build a startup, but to solve his personal frustration as a hotel general manager: "happy guests didn't leave reviews, only angry ones did." The most effective business concepts often arise from a founder's own lived, recurring problem, rather than a market survey.

As a young general manager, Aračić discovered two full binders of printed guest feedback forms that had never been analyzed or acted upon. Collecting customer data without a system for immediate analysis and intervention is a wasted effort; the value of feedback lies in its timeliness.

Fast Review has been profitable "from day one" and has not accepted any external investment from funds or banks. Bootstrapping a startup to profitability can be a deliberate strategic choice, allowing founders to maintain full control and validate their model organically before considering outside capital.

Aračić jokes that the only sector Fast Review hasn't yet acquired as a client is the Church, saying, "you tell me one, I'm sure I have a client from that industry." A truly universal problem like reputation management means the market for a solution is far broader than any single industry.

Fast Review prioritizes NFC technology over QR codes for guest feedback, with Aračić stating they "want to make QR codes disappear from Croatia." Improving user experience sometimes requires actively replacing widely adopted, but inconvenient, digital habits with a smoother alternative.

Aračić emphasizes that "fixing a guest's experience is only possible while they are in-house." The commercial impact of customer feedback diminishes significantly once the customer has left; real-time intervention is crucial for service recovery and loyalty.

Advised by business colleagues like Endi Čolak and the Museum of Illusions team that he was "crazy" for not approaching investors, Aračić only began considering it after Fast Review expanded into the American market. External validation and the demands of scaling into new markets can be the true signal to seek outside capital, rather than a pre-determined startup trajectory.

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