Beyond42: The Startup at the End of the Universe
“I believe Pekić would say: People call it a strategy. But I know what this really is — obsession. “
- A note from the edge of reason, somewhere between Belgrade and the future
Who We Are
Some people find startups. I think this one found me.
When I was a kid, my parents bought me a SEGA Mega Drive 2 - not just any console, but the console. By the next day, I was renting it out to kids in the neighbourhood. Same challenges then as now: concurrent users, setup friction, payment collection. The business ran surprisingly well - until the following summer, when my grandmother, Branka, discovered the pile of cash under my bed.
Boom. Hostile takeover. She took the earnings and bought wood and coal for the winter.
Two decades later Dino and I built Beyond42.
And honestly? The only thing I knew for sure back then was that I wanted the name to come from a book.
We looked to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A book about meaning, absurdity, and technology. A book with a number - 42 - that claims to be the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.
Beyond42 is half code, half story. A startup about space — not outer space, but the space we live, work, and learn in. Reimagined. Brought online. Made immersive.
We didn’t build a tool. We built a category.
IXP stands for Immersive Experience Platform - a new class of software that turns physical buildings/institutions into scalable digital products, powered by a machine underneath.
Beyond42 is the digital infrastructure layer that helps iconic buildings - from universities to cultural sites to corporate HQs - scale human connection, unlock new revenue, and preserve their stories through immersive experiences and digital twins.
We believe universities, cultural heritage sites and corporates are entering their ‘digital land rush’ - and we’re building the infrastructure to power it.
N and N, from Generali and Viatris (formerly Mylan), were among the first to believe - they bought the platform license from us before we even had language for what we were building. But it was MB, the CMO of Cattolica University — the second-largest private university in Europe — who placed the kind of bet that turns early signals into a system.
They started with a single campus in Milan. Within months, they scaled Beyond42 across all six of their locations: Rome, Cremona, Piacenza, and both Brescia campuses.
At the moment we are discussing onboarding their Career Service division next - expanding the platform to support a new layer of value, engagement, and outcomes.
What began as a pilot became infrastructure.
Not a marketplace. Not an app.
A system that compounds with every activation.
In Twitter-pitch terms?
Beyond42 is building the digital infrastructure layer for the built world to go online.
We turn buildings into digital twins — intelligent, immersive, and programmable.
Just like software: dynamic, scalable, and built to compound.
This is the stack powering The Great Migration.
The Problem
For the past decade, we watched legacy institutions pour billions into physical buildings, sites and campuses while their digital layers remained static, disconnected, or nonexistent.
We saw opportunity where others saw walls.
Universities, institutions, and iconic buildings represent some of the most valuable physical assets on earth - yet digitally, they are nearly invisible.
Their websites are static.
Their “virtual tours” are clunky and one-off.
Their recruitment, onboarding, and event experiences are fragmented, outdated, and costly.
They make zeros revenue from digital.
In a world where students, partners, and employees expect Amazon-level digital experiences, these institutions are still stuck in the brochure and 360 images era.
They don’t just lack immersion - they lack interactivity, intelligence, and scalability.
There’s no central software layer that transforms physical presence into digital product.
That’s the gap.
The Opportunity
This is not a UX tweak. It’s a category opportunity.
We’re building the IXP – Immersive Experience Platform:
A SaaS layer that transforms physical spaces into scalable, interactive, intelligent digital products.
With IXP, institutions can:
Recruit globally, without travel.
Onboard new students or staff, instantly.
Host events, tours, and experiences inside a persistent, branded 3D environment.
Measure behavior, engagement, and ROI with platform-native analytics.
In short: they stop being websites. They become platforms.
The timing is right:
The cost of 3D and spatial tech is dropping.
User expectations for immersive, frictionless digital experiences are surging.
Institutions are under pressure to scale globally and digitally — without losing identity.
We’re not “building a better tour.”
We’re defining a new category — and we’re already building it with leading universities, cultural institutions and corporations.
The Great Migration
The built world is going online.
We don’t build buildings just to stand.
We build them to last.
To mean something.
Not just to shelter us —
But to outlive us.
The built world is the most valuable thing humanity has ever created.
€230 trillion in stone, steel, and story.
Think of your university campus.
Your favorite theatre.
Your company HQ.
These aren’t just spaces.
They’re memories made solid —
Places that shaped lives, identities, and futures.
And yet...
As the world moved online, the places that shaped us were left behind.
Four billion buildings. Sit in silence.
Barely seen online. Reduced to:
A brochure.
A clunky 360° tour.
A hallway photo.
A forgotten dropdown on a website.
In a remote-first, Gen Z-driven, post-COVID world —
If your building isn’t online, it doesn’t exist.
They deserve more.
We all do.
IXP
That’s why we built the IXP — the Immersive Experience Platform:
A full-stack SaaS product that turns buildings into programmable digital infrastructure.
It looks like this:
Cinematic 3D digital twins
Clickable, story-driven journeys
CMS for non-technical teams
Analytics, personalization, multi-user logic
Browser-native. No app. No scanning. No hardware.
It’s not a tour. Not a rendering. Not a gimmick.
It’s infrastructure.
Spaces that don’t just exist — they act.
They recruit. They onboard. They teach. They scale.
And for institutions across education, culture, and enterprise — this is how they stay present, global, and alive.
This is the biggest migration of the decade. And this is where the next 10B category begins.
And it’s already underway.
We are Beyond42.
And we’re not building a tool — we’re building a new layer of civilisation.
Why Are We Writing This?
We’ve always built quietly. But now the build is the story.
And momentum compounds when it’s seen. We’re the kind of team that starts a blog in the middle of an accelerator after 30 seconds conversation with T and to stay sane.
This blog is a timestamp. A record of the pressure cooker. A map of how we’re building the machine — the one that turns early traction into scalable growth. The one that gets us from €500K to €5M without losing our minds or our margins.
We’re in the Katapult Accelerator now — a three-month sprint backed by the Serbian Innovation Fund.
It’s capital, pressure, and public accountability.
We’re writing every step.
Not because we don’t have better things to do, but because someone else out there is on the same damn path.
What’s at Stake?
We come from product, architecture, GTM, and deep startup scars. And we came to Katapult to build the machine — and prove it works.
Repeatable sales.
Scalable storytelling.
Operational clarity.
And it is already happening.
A 500K revenue. CLTV to CAC Ratio: 5.64, CAC Payback period ≈7.5 months, NRR 372%.
Institutional partners expanding across campuses.
New divisions coming online like Cattolica’s Career Services
We’ve been bootstrapped, underestimated, told to go slower, told to go faster. This is the moment where momentum either compounds - or collapses. We are here to make it compound.
Follow Along
The Katapult Sprint - a live, build-in-public journey from founder-led to founder-free execution.
We publish as it happens: days, decisions, detours, and sparks.
📅 Follow us to Demo Day.
🎯 Watch us build the machine.
🚀 And maybe define the future of how institutions exist online.
