Meet the 20 disruptors of The Founder Games Season 2

In the startup world, we often pretend that the pitch deck tells us everything.

The market size, the business model, the traction slide, the financial projections, the roadmap, the perfect closing line. But anyone who has spent enough time around early-stage companies knows that the deck is only the clean version of the story. It does not show what happens when the market turns, when the product breaks, when the investor says no, when the team loses confidence, or when the founder has to keep moving with very little proof that the next step will work.

And that is where The Founder Games Season 2 begins.

Not with founders standing safely behind a presentation, but with real people building real companies while the pressure is on.

This season is not only about who has the best idea or the most polished pitch. It is about who can think clearly under stress, who can adapt when the plan collapses, who can lead when the room is uncertain, and who still has the energy to build after the easy version of the story is gone. In that sense, The Founder Games is not just testing product-market fit. It is testing founder intensity, resilience, adaptability and the human engine behind the company.

The Founder Games is built to reveal what a pitch deck never can.

Not just the idea, but the person behind it. Not just the market, but the mindset. Not just the traction, but the ability to keep building when pressure, uncertainty and rejection become part of the game.

Season 2 takes entrepreneurship out of the safe, polished environment of the stage and places founders inside real business challenges, real decisions and real consequences. It shows what happens before the perfect pitch, before the success story, before the company becomes obvious to everyone else.

That is the real power of The Founder Games.

It turns startup building into something audiences can feel, investors can understand and future founders can learn from. This is not a show about logos, valuations or buzzwords. It is a show about ambition, resilience, leadership and the human intensity required to build something from nothing.

Season 2 is where the pressure becomes visible.

And where the founder behind the company finally becomes the story.

The green & circular builders

Sustainability in this season is not a side topic. It is a business strategy.

These founders are building companies around energy access, circular economy, reuse and smarter consumption, not because it sounds good in a pitch, but because the market is moving there.

Energy Shift by Filip Koprčina, Croatia
Energy Shift is making solar farm co-ownership more accessible through blockchain, allowing citizens to participate in renewable energy without dealing with the usual administrative complexity. With €25 million in commitments from more than 2,000 EU investors, this is not just an idea. It is already a market signal.

MIJA by Mirjana Josifoska, North Macedonia
MIJA is a designer hat brand built around upcycling premium surplus materials in one of the world’s most polluting industries. By using discarded high-quality materials, MIJA lowers material costs dramatically while keeping strong margins of 65-85%.

MerrySwap by Mina Valčić, Serbia
MerrySwap is a swap-first circular marketplace built for people who want to consume differently. With a 700-person waitlist and no marketing spend, the platform is tapping into a real shift: people have too many things, less money, and a growing need for smarter ways to exchange value.

The AI, DeepTech & infrastructure players

In the new season, AI is not used as decoration.

The strongest technical founders are applying AI, biometrics and data to real-world problems: payments, delivery, drones, healthcare, hospitality and customer behavior.

PayByFace by Mihai Dragichi, Romania
PayByFace is a biometric payment system accepted into the Mastercard Global Biometric Checkout Program, with nine global payment gateway integrations. The idea is simple and bold: your face becomes your payment method. But the story behind it is even stronger - eight years of building, fighting, surviving and protecting the technology.

Foton by Drin Marevci, Kosovo
Foton is using UAV and multispectral sensor technology in high-stakes environments. After starting in agriculture, the company pivoted toward firefighting, where drone hardware and sensor intelligence can become critical infrastructure.

Tezbor by Umid Akhmedov, Uzbekistan
Tezbor is an AI-driven delivery platform operating across Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Denmark. With 500+ clients and around $150,000 in monthly recurring revenue, Tesbot is one of the clearest examples this season that serious startup traction is no longer limited to the usual ecosystems.

Waiter Call by Elyar Akhi, Georgia
Waiter Call uses AI and geofencing to help restaurants understand customer behavior, optimize pricing and improve operations in real time. With $64.9k MRR, it is already proving that hospitality tech can go far beyond ordering systems.

écentic by Xhurian Shaba, Albania

écentic is building an autonomous optimization engine that helps e-commerce brands get chosen by AI shopping agents like GPT, Claude and Gemini before a transaction even happens.

QluPod by Nikola Trajanov and Jan Leitz, Switzerland
QluPod is building clinical-grade wearable technology as a Class II Medical Device with TÜV/CE approval. While most wearables focus on lifestyle, QluPod focuses on health monitoring and telemedicine, tracking six vital signs and connecting patients to a wider care ecosystem.

The social discovery and community builders

Some founders are using technology to optimize logistics.

Others are using it to fix something more human: loneliness, fragmented communities, missed connections and the difficulty of finding the right people, places or experiences.

Findzzer by Mario Bojarovski, North Macedonia
Findzzer is a social discovery platform for events and venue reservations, built for a generation that wants to know where to go, who is there and what is happening now. With 2,000+ active users and 246k monthly views, the platform is already becoming part of the urban nightlife layer.

Minglr by Calin Spiridon, Romania
Minglr is a non-dating proximity app built around spontaneous real-life connection. With 1,550 active users, it helps people discover others nearby without turning every interaction into a swipe. It is not trying to replace human connection - it is trying to make the first step easier.

Tourifique by Charles Shima, Canada/Rwanda
Tourifique is a video-first travel platform turning discovery into booking. With partnerships connected to the New York Tourism Board, BSE Global and the Brooklyn Nets, plus 6.1 million organic TikTok views, the startup is building where content, tourism and commerce meet.

GM360 by Gentjan Muço, Albania
GM360 creates immersive 360° virtual tours for real estate, hospitality and local businesses. But the bigger vision is not only production. Gentjan is building a city-partner network, aiming for 300 partners in year one, so local businesses can get a professional digital footprint at scale.

The hyper-vertical disruptors

Not every startup needs to become the next general platform.

Some of the strongest ideas this season are deeply focused on specific communities: readers, pet owners, parents, small businesses, travelers, home-service users and people looking for more practical solutions in everyday life.

LitArchive by Ani Hovhannisyan, Armenia
LitArchive is a gamified webnovel platform built to make literature more profitable for authors. With a 50%+ revenue split and the founder’s 200k TikTok following, the company is combining creator economy, publishing and community-driven storytelling.

Pet Travel Advisor by Andrea Mladin, Serbia
Pet Travel Advisor is an AI concierge and digital passport system for pet-friendly travel. With 1,000+ businesses onboarded and a community of 20,000 followers, Andrea is building around a problem millions of pet owners already understand: traveling with animals is still too complicated.

WellPet by Nikola Milanović, Serbia
WellPet uses AI to better understand dogs’ health, behavior and emotional patterns. Built with Infineon Edge AI, the platform is tackling a fast-growing pet-tech market where owners want better tools to understand the pets they love.

The Software Society by Jon Jones, USA
The Software Society is an all-in-one SMB engine combining CRM and automated SEO. Jon brings serious execution experience, including SEO campaigns for New Balance and Purina that achieved 27x traffic growth. His platform is built for small businesses that need growth tools without enterprise complexity.

Virtual Story by Miranda Namicheishvili, Georgia
Virtual Story turns screen time into interactive learning. Built by a filmmaker, the platform combines storytelling, education and cognitive development, with projected B2B revenue of more than $70,000 for 2026.

Get Work by Mario Marević, Croatia
Mario is building Get Work, the Uber for home services, after almost a decade of persistence. With 200 providers and 8,000 users already in the system, his story is one of the clearest examples of founder resilience this season - the kind that keeps going even when the ecosystem says the idea is impossible.

Cloud 9 TV by Dimitar Amski, North Macedonia

Cloud 9 TV is building a premium short-form vertical media format that reveals how wealth, influence and access really work inside the world’s most elite travel destinations, starting with Mykonos.

This autumn, The Founder Games Season 2 brings viewers inside the part of entrepreneurship they almost never get to see.

Not the success headline, not the polished pitch, not the founder after everything worked out, but the messy, emotional and high-pressure journey of people trying to build something while the outcome is still uncertain.

For the viewer, this is what makes the season different. You are not just watching companies compete. You are watching real people make difficult decisions, deal with pressure, fight for their ideas, clash with feedback, recover from mistakes and try to prove that they have what it takes to keep going. Every challenge brings the audience closer to the tension behind building a business: the confidence, the doubt, the ambition, the fear and the moments when one decision can change everything.

Season 2 is bigger, more international and more cinematic, but at its core it remains deeply human. It gives the audience a reason to care, not only about who wins, but about who grows, who breaks through, who surprises everyone and who shows the kind of courage it really takes to build something from nothing.

This autumn, don’t just watch the winners after the story is over - follow the pressure, the decisions and the journey while it is happening.

P.S. A lot is happening behind the scenes at The Founder Games, and we’ll be sharing more soon. Follow us on social media to stay close to the journey toward Season 2 this autumn.