From MVPs to Unicorns | Faris Začina on Building Ministry of Programming from Bosnia

Most software companies from the Balkans stay in their lane, find a client, build the product, invoice and move on.
Faris Začina built something completely different from Bosnia.
As Co-founder and CEO of Ministry of Programming, recognized by the Financial Times FT1000 as one of Europe's fastest-growing tech companies, Faris took a bootstrapped venture builder from building MVPs for startups to becoming a co-founder, investor, and CTO-for-hire for the companies it worked with. 100+ products built. 20+ companies invested in.
We talk about scaling mistakes, investments that disappeared because of legal issues, and what Faris calls "learning by burning” - the most expensive lessons that actually changed how he operates.
In this episode we cover:
→ How Ministry of Programming went from building MVPs to co-founding and investing alongside startups
→ What nobody tells you about scaling from 10 to 100 people
→ Why Faris thinks most investors are bad at their own job, and what founders should look for instead
→ The "replacement theory”, or what AI actually means for software engineers and the SEE outsourcing industry
→ Whether AI destroys the cost advantage that built the Balkans tech scene, or creates a bigger opportunity