Dynamic Mockups Named a Serbian Startup to Watch by VCs [Sifted]

Sifted Named Dynamic Mockups a Serbian Startup to Watch

Sifted, the premium European startup publication, named Dynamic Mockups a Serbian startup to watch, and we were listed first. The pick came from Jan Kobler, managing partner at South Central Ventures, one of the most active investors in the region.

Sifted asked investors which young Serbian companies they were following most closely. Kobler opened his answer with Dynamic Mockups.

The full article sits behind a Sifted subscription, so you’ll need an account to read every profile.

Why Serbia Is Suddenly on Global Investors’ Radar

Serbia has quietly produced strong founders and world-class engineers for years. It just rarely showed up next to the headline startup ecosystems in London, Berlin, or Stockholm.

That’s changing pretty fast.

For a long time the country was known more for engineering talent than for its own products, with a deep bench of developers doing excellent work for companies abroad. The last few years flipped that story, as more of that talent stayed home to start things and more of the diaspora came back to help.

The wider southeast Europe scene has been drawing more coverage each year, and Serbia kept edging up the list.

Then came the milestone that gets investors on a plane.

In 2026, AI insurtech Ominimo raised a Series B at a $1.6bn valuation, becoming Serbia’s first unicorn.

One unicorn changes the math for everyone behind it. It mints angel investors, builds a talent pool that has seen scale up close, and gives foreign funds a reason to book the trip.

It also hands the next founder proof that a global company can be built from Belgrade, not just a regional one. In a young ecosystem, that belief is often the missing piece.

Ominimo CEO Dusan Komar put the effect simply: “A country’s first unicorn changes how global investors view that market.”

He’s right. Capital follows proof, and Ominimo is proof.

It also puts a spotlight on southeast Europe, and Serbia specifically, as a place the next one might come from.

That’s the backdrop for the Sifted piece. With fresh attention on the Serbian startup ecosystem in 2026, Sifted asked local and regional investors a pointed question: which startups are you watching, not counting your own portfolio companies?

Why South Central Ventures Flagged Dynamic Mockups First

Kobler’s reasoning is the part worth reading twice.

In his framing, we’re building the visual infrastructure for e-commerce. Most AI image tools guess at a product and distort the details that matter most, warping logos, garbling text, smoothing away real fabric texture. Dynamic Mockups goes the other way and generates product visuals as accurate as the manufacturer’s own.

The visual comes from the real product, its shape and the way light actually falls on it. A mug looks like that mug. A tee wrinkles like that fabric.

That is the bar for anything a brand puts its name on, and it’s a bar most generative image tools quietly miss.

The difference comes down to determinism. Give our engine the same input and it returns the same output, every single time.

That sounds abstract until you’re the one shipping branded work.

Picture a print-on-demand seller pushing hundreds of designs across dozens of products. When every mockup renders the artwork exactly as uploaded, the catalog looks clean and buyers trust it. When the render drifts between orders, returns climb and reviews sour.

Now picture an agency sending a client a promotional proof. That image often has to match what actually gets printed, sometimes as a legally binding promise. A tool that quietly redraws a logo or warps a knit can’t be handed that job.

It’s also why we call this infrastructure rather than a tool. A tool makes one good image when you sit down and fiddle with it.

Infrastructure runs confidently at scale, turning a single design set into thousands of accurate visuals with no one babysitting each render.

It also plugs into other products through an embeddable editor and an API. A platform can drop the editor into its own dashboard so users never leave. A distributor can pipe an entire catalog through and get consistent visuals for every SKU.

For products we don’t already model, our Mock Anything AI turns a single real photo or prompt into a reusable mockup, so the accuracy holds even for a catalog full of one-off items.

There’s a timing angle here too. As shopping shifts toward AI agents and automated product feeds, approximate images become a liability, which is a big part of why generic product images are in danger.

Kobler flagged one more thing: how we go to market.

In 2026 we moved our focus from direct sales toward partnerships with platforms and distributors. Instead of signing up sellers one at a time, we started putting our engine inside the tools those sellers already use.

It’s a slower motion to set up and a far stronger one once it runs, because a single integration can bring thousands of end users at once. That shift sped up our traction and opened the door to larger, longer-term contracts than any self-serve funnel would.

Investors tend to pay attention when growth changes shape like that.

If you are interested in becoming a Dynamic Mockups partner and you work in POD, Promo or E-commerce, apply on our partnership page.

What This Recognition Says About Our Rebrand and Direction

Being listed first is more than a nice pull quote. It backs the bet we made when we stopped describing ourselves as a mockup tool.

We rebranded around a bigger idea: visual infrastructure. The name and the look changed, but the real shift was in scope. We went from helping one seller make a nicer image to running the visual layer other companies depend on.

If you want the full story behind that decision, here’s the direction we set with our rebrand.

A positioning like that only means something if other companies actually build on top of you.

They are. One partner rebuilt its product speed directly on our engine, and the results make the case better than any slide we could put together. See how a partner rebuilt its speed on our engine.

That’s what infrastructure looks like in practice. Someone else’s product gets faster because ours is running underneath it.

The Other Serbian Startups VCs Are Watching on Sifted

There are more strong companies mentioned that we would like to shout. The list came from two investors, Jan Kobler of South Central Ventures and Tihomir Bajic of X&, and it spans AI agents, gaming, data infrastructure, and identity.

Here’s who else they named:

• Metastack: an esports workspace that unifies a team’s strategy knowledge in one place, starting with Counter-Strike. CS co-creator Minh Le sits on its advisory board.
• Nulla: a legal-identity and mandate layer for AI agents, built around incoming EU regulation like the EUDI Wallet and eIDAS 2.0.
• Dataware: a Belgrade data-infrastructure startup backed by 20VC, whose first product, TonicDB, speeds up database performance.
• YVO3D: AI-powered 3D tools voted the world’s top 3D AI tool in 2025, bootstrapped, and already counting Tencent among its customers.
• IPification: an identity-verification company founded by Stefan Kostic that counts Meta as a customer.

The common thread is hard to miss. These are Serbian teams building for global markets from day one, with real customers and, in several cases, real revenue already.

They also sit at different stages, from early product to established players, which is part of why the list reads as a real ecosystem rather than one hot sector.

It’s good company to keep. It also hints at where the Serbian startup ecosystem is heading, toward deep-tech and infrastructure plays with the ambition to sell worldwide.

What We’re Building Next, and Why We’re Raising

We’re building frontier AI for the supply-chain manufacturing of consumer products.

In practice, that means taking a design and carrying it all the way to an accurate, production-ready visual for anything a factory can make, at high speed and without friction.

Accurate product visuals are the entry point. They’re what makes the harder problems downstream solvable.

We’ve gotten here bootstrapped, with more than 50,000 businesses using Dynamic Mockups to create their product imagery. No outside capital so far, and no burn-it-all growth plan.

That base grew on product quality and word of mouth more than on ad budgets. It’s the kind of foundation we want under the next stage.

Now we’re raising, and we’re open to meeting the right people.

The capital goes toward the harder end of the problem: modeling far more product categories, and the partnerships that put our engine in front of many more sellers. We’re raising to move faster on something that is already working, while the window is open.

If you’re an investor or a potential partner who sees what we see, we’d genuinely like to talk. You can reach us through dynamicmockups.com

Our newest products, Stitch AI and Lookbooks are getting a lot of attention in the POD, Promo and print industry. The roadmap is there and we are moving fast to improve the products and remove bottlenecks across multiple areas: like digitizing for embroidery and creating promotional offers in the promo industry. And a lot more is about to come in 2027.

Stay tuned and follow us – Dynamic Mockups is moving fast to become the only visual engine you will ever need in your POD business.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Sifted list of Serbian startups to watch?

Sifted, a premium European startup publication, asked active regional VCs which young Serbian companies they were following most closely, excluding their own portfolios. The result is a 2026 watch list spanning AI agents, gaming, data infrastructure, and identity. Dynamic Mockups was named first. The full article sits behind a Sifted subscription, so you need an account to read every profile.

Why did VCs name Dynamic Mockups a Serbian startup to watch?

Jan Kobler of South Central Ventures put us first because we build visual infrastructure for e-commerce. Our engine generates product visuals as accurate as the manufacturer’s own, deterministically, so the same input returns the same output every time. He also flagged our 2026 shift toward platform and distributor partnerships, which brings thousands of sellers through a single integration.

What was Serbia’s first unicorn?

Serbia’s first unicorn is Ominimo, an AI insurtech. In 2026 it raised a Series B at a $1.6bn valuation, backed by the EBRD. That milestone changed the math for the whole ecosystem, minting angel investors, building a talent pool that has seen scale, and giving foreign funds a reason to book the trip to Belgrade.

Is Dynamic Mockups raising funding?

Yes. After growing bootstrapped to more than 50,000 businesses with no outside capital, we’re now raising and open to meeting the right investors and partners. The money goes toward the harder work: modeling far more product categories and the partnerships that put our engine in front of many more sellers. You can reach us through dynamicmockups.com.

Which other Serbian startups are VCs watching in 2026?

Alongside Dynamic Mockups, the Sifted list named Metastack, an esports workspace; Nulla, a legal-identity layer for AI agents; Dataware, a Belgrade data-infrastructure startup behind TonicDB; YVO3D, an AI 3D tools maker counting Tencent as a customer; and IPification, an identity-verification company that counts Meta as a customer. All are Serbian teams building for global markets.