Dreaming and Realizing the American Dream
Two doctors struggled with the decision on where to make their next home. Temporary transplants in a country which prohibited them to practice their profession, they’d transitioned to working at an apple orchard and farms. Accompanied by two teenage boys, they had watched friends make decisions to migrate from the temporary home but were having trouble deciding between the US and Australia. Little did they know, their 14-year-old would guide them to the place of his dreams in pursuit of entrepreneurship and technology.
The American dream had taken root in the 14yo’s mind. He dreamt of owning a technology business, unlimited access to comic books and games, a farm for dad to hunt on, and a comfortable home. He didn’t see himself defined in life as a war refugee but an entrepreneur. His current home in Friedrichshafen on the shores of Lake Constance in south-central Germany lay within reach of Austria, Switzerland, and France, the stunning Alps just beyond the lake’s shores. His mind, however, was across the Atlantic.
Origins
Vaso, the boy’s father, a Serbian orthodox son of a WWII veteran, met his future wife Mirjana, a Bosnian Catholic in Yugoslavia. Born to two different faiths, each rooted in scripture and tradition, the two trained as veterinarians. They’d met in Sarajevo and were married in Ruma, Vaso’s hometown in Serbia. Building a comfortable life with their two sons, Igor and Goran, they raised them through adolescence during rising strife in Yugoslavia. Their country began to fracture in this strife, and two states claimed independence in 1991, followed by a devastating period of ethnic violence and separation amongst those who remained.
The family became homeless in their own country as the safety evaporated around them. Serbia became unsafe for the Catholic mother and Croatia for the Serb father. Vaso and Mirjana left Igor and Goran with the grandparents to seek safety with Mirjana’s mother in Germany. Disallowed from practicing veterinary medicine in Germany, the parents did what immigrants often do - they started from zero - picking and sorting apples by size to make a living. Vaso learned construction and started working for a company that constructed refrigeration units for farms, deepening the family’s own roots in this new home.
The boys joined them a year later and quickly adopted their new school, language, and home. They began speaking German to each other, acquired skills in volleyball and competed on the school team, all the way to championships. The new home adopted them in return as well, at least temporarily. As the war came to an end and Yugoslavia’s member states had left the union, Germany no longer desired to house the refugees and the family faced the choice to seek refuge elsewhere as the now religiously separate home states were hostile to the mixed family.
Igor’s dream lifted them from Friedrichshafen and brought them to Des Moines, IA.
Welcomes from afar
Vaso and Mirjana unlicensed to practice veterinary medicine in their new country, would seek to reboot life once again. Both threw themselves into learning the language. Vaso learned his fourth new language and delivered pizza. He worked his way into the early-morning shift as a quality assurance director at the meatpacking plant in Marshalltown. In off-hours he’d acquire cars and homes ready for refurbishing, fix and resell for an extra income, never seeking welfare or a handout.
His family still proudly drives vehicles brought back to life by him.
Igor, 17, now a junior at Hoover high school was busy soaking up his new culture and making new friends. A dream opportunity presented itself during these high-school years when a home-based computer consultant, Greg Ewey, came looking for an apprentice to assist with his excess work. Igor jumped at the chance, not knowing that Greg’s guidance and education would become instrumental for decades to come, guaranteeing him shelter in ways unimagined.
High school paved the way for college and Igor matriculated to Drake University seeking a degree in Computer Science. Unaware that he would miss a critical part of the college experience by staying home while attending college classes, he continued to work for Greg as he added minors in Mathematics and Business at college. Junior year of college demanded focus which brought an end to working for a Greg. Graduation from Drake led Igor to employment at Celerity Services, the Information Services division of Wiring by Design.
The leap
A jump more impactful than the one across the Atlantic nine years prior was in the cards. As he worked for Celerity’s clients across the metro, Igor noticed a pattern of digitization developing amongst dentists. Dental practices were adopting digital X-rays and electronic medical records. Realizing he had a unique set of skills and an exposure (pun intended) to this market, he formed a new business and left to be his own boss. Grand Consulting was born in May 2008.
Sadly, one day in July 2008, just as Igor began building Grand Consulting, he learned that Greg unexpectedly passed away in a car accident but left Igor one last task. As he undertook the task of executer of his estate, he learned the intricacies of probate court and working with family estranged from their son, Igor found a new future for Greg’s home - one he acquired from the estate and made his own with a Grand Consulting operating from its basement.
A home that gave him his first meaningful job still serves as his family’s home today.
Customers, Employees and Compatriots
The hardest two jobs for an entrepreneur are finding customers and employees to serve the customer needs. Celerity’s customers were dismayed at losing the tech whom they’d grown to appreciate for his work ethic. They searched for Igor but could only locate Vaso Dobrosavljević in the phone book. Inbound calls connected them to Igor in the basement and Grand began to grow.
Arriving in the middle of high school from a foreign nation, working through high school and college, and living at home during college had robbed Igor of social connection. Hungry to find like-minded souls, he leaned on the popular connector of the day, Twitter. Tweetups, a phenomenon in early Twitter, were a mashup of Twitter and Meetups designed to help online connections create a physical connection. Tweetups delivered him to Neil Roberts, Dan Shipton, Nathan Wright amongst many others. They’d connect at Impromptu Studios.
A desire to work with others began to grow. Igor sought complementary skills in design, sales, software engineering, and product mindset. He found them in Dan and Neil. Dan, with his uncanny ability to generate new ideas and give them life, and Neil, with his serious software engineering skills connected with Igor’s deep knowledge of networks and systems.
The three of them came together in 2009 and brought Grand Consulting and BitMethod under the same umbrella, BitMethod.
The Constellation
The company established gravity through BitMethod at its new home, a story told in The Bookends Of Silicon Sixth Avenue. Gravity has a unique property of attracting others in orbit. Amanda Morrow, Scott Kubie, Josh Dreyer and others brought their energy to BitMethod, both at its original location south of Martin Luther King Parkway and with added fuel to their new location in the Liberty Building.
As BitMethod continued its startup journey through application development on the web and mobile, Igor continued to serve the dental and a growing set of clients under the Grand Consulting name. He developed a core skill set in offloading IT services from dental offices and other small businesses, delivering a service that was beginning to be called “Managed Network Services”. This form of outsourced service model not only created a cadre of dedicated customers it also created a predictable revenue stream to support growing the company.
The marriage of the two companies, however, completed its course by 2015 and Igor, Neil, and Dan began the process of unwinding the merger. BitMethod needed to focus on its software products and Grand Consulting on managed services. The three friends found a path toward an amicable separation.
Present Day
A significant long-term relationship began during the company’s time in the early 2010s. Thai Luong joined Igor to help deliver the managed services and became a perfect complement to Igor. They developed core skills in Windows networks, offloaded customer backups, network and device management, technical support, and even added telephone systems over the years. They grew strategically and slowly, managing cash flow and profitability with each customer and employee. Growth took them from the high-rise office in the Liberty Building to a street-level building, largely dedicated to them across from the Governor’s mansion. On Grand Avenue!
Igor deeply valued apprenticeship just as he had received from Greg years before. Learning of the (then) Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds’ support for apprenticeship and the Technology Association of Iowa’s support, Igor jumped at the chance and signed up. He was likely the first or second adoptee of the Lt. Governor’s program. This, a significant investment of the tiny company’s resources, paid off handsomely.
Apprenticeship is hard work for the teacher and the apprentice. Managed network service support is equally hard with hours on the phone and a large amount of time spent troubleshooting problems on far away networks. It requires a mix of skills and persistence, some of which are taught and others learned. The apprentices couldn’t have found more patient teachers than Thai and Igor.
Despite a couple of missteps, Grand Consulting continued to find successes in apprentices. The company grew further and now owns its own building in downtown Des Moines. The office extends its warm homey feel with superior coffee and snacks. A mix of assembled Ikea furniture and handmade custom furniture and light fixtures adorn the place. Natural wood and light are abundant and the workspaces an eclectic mix of cultures that come together to work and play, as evidenced by the video games and large TV across from a comfortable couch.
There is no corporate vibe at Grand Consulting. Nor is there a standard computer or monitor. As unique and different as their customers across the metro, the Grand team is as likely to be found eating and playing together as they are solving a thorny customer problem.
Future traction
Under Josh Dreyer’s mercurial guidance, the team has adopted the Traction EOS methodology for sustained growth. They see a home for their company and employees but worry about the changing landscape across the state. A state which once adopted the company owner’s family and other immigrant staff has turned away from its ethos of multiple decades and has injected uncertainty in businesses. They know their own and their customers’ growth depends upon the children growing across the metro and becoming tomorrow’s workforce. The future workforce that expresses a need to leave the state for welcoming communities elsewhere as soon as they can.
Igor has experienced being uprooted twice before. It is unnerving and disruptive. And economically tragic to those who leave and those who are left behind. Yet, and maybe because of it, he and his team continue to invest in a community that can grow by tapping into his history, ethos and entrepreneurial spirit.
Final Thoughts
Igor’s story is incomplete without the story of his better half, Suzanna. But their joint story of immigrant entrepreneurial successes is bigger together. For another day.
Sources
March 2025 Interview with Igor Dobrosavljević
Discussions with Igor over the years
Photos courtesy the Dobrosavljević family
Love the backstory! Well done!
There is a flip side to the Iowa diaspora--you really must leave Iowa to appreciate it. Such absence can be forced (military draft was once common), education-related, or just curiosity or adventure. Even those who never return learn to sing its praises, a mixture of nostalgia and perhaps disappointment in the supposed greener pastures elsewhere. And a surprising number do return, after a few or many years, often with a young family.
Some cultures command departure from the family home, including countries with universal service requirements, but closest example for us is likely the Mormon missions which now include the distaff side; even the old order Amish require their young men to go away for a year.
Roger Tracy, Associate Dean in the U of Iowa college of Medicine, claimed to have data demonstrating that out-of-staters coming to Iowa for post-graduate medical training were more likely to remain and practice in Iowa than were our own medical graduates so hired. Ya' just gotta get out for a while.
I would consider a different approach as even carrots and sticks are not likely to work: encourage our youth to spend time away--school, military, employment, a year abroad, etc., etc.
Absence truly does make the heart grow fonder.