On her husband’s birthday seven years ago, Kristina Bairakova faced a dilemma. Her husband was a Ferrari fanatic, and she wanted a birthday cake shaped like an F1 car. But the price quoted by a bakery in the city of Plovdiv was far beyond her means. So she went home, found a recipe online and baked it herself.
The cake was such a hit that neighbors began ordering cakes for weddings, christenings and anniversaries. What began as a one-off gesture became an informal side hustle, until Bairakova joined Bulgaria’s Business Academy for Starting Entrepreneurs — known as BASE.
Within months, she had formalized her business, opened a sweet shop in her hometown of Panagyurishte, and was working late into the night filling orders.
Stories like Bairakova’s illustrate how BASE, launched in Bulgaria in 2018, is helping ordinary people transform hobbies and hustles into sustainable businesses.
Support from America for Bulgaria Foundation
BASE has roots in the United States, where similar community-based entrepreneurship programs have long flourished. Brought to Bulgaria by the America for Bulgaria Foundation (ABF), the program began under the Trust for Social Achievement, with a mission to spread entrepreneurial skills to underrepresented groups, including Roma communities.
In 2018, ABF took the program in-house, adapting American training materials to Bulgarian realities — swapping out lessons on checks, for example, for local payment systems and including Bulgarian legal and tax rules. After shaping and funding BASE for several years, the America for Bulgaria Foundation handed the program to the Association of Bulgarian Leaders and Entrepreneurs (ABLE).
BASE’s appeal lies in its accessibility. The 13-week course is free, open to people of all ages and backgrounds and requires no prior qualifications. “It gives people the basic tools to feel independent and empowered to achieve their business ideas,” said Nadia Zaharieva of ABF.
To date, more than 1,450 people across 23 Bulgarian cities have graduated from BASE, with a quarter establishing stable small businesses. Participants range in age from 15 to 80, and about 80 percent of them are women.
Today, BASE is led by Alexander Grozdanov, who has expanded its partnerships and visibility. Under his leadership, participants not only learn to build business plans but also test them in real markets — selling products at pop-up fairs in Sofia..
“The goal of this program is to take each person by the hand and move them one step forward,” he said in an interview. “Anyone can be an entrepreneur: when someone is good at something—whether it’s a job or a hobby—they can naturally become a provider of that product or service.”
A Community of Learners
BASE does more than teach balance sheets and marketing strategies. It creates communities. Participants spend weeks working together, pitching ideas and receiving mentorship from established business leaders.
Lecturers include entrepreneurs like Silvia Pavlova, co-founder of Wooden Spoon, a Bulgarian natural cosmetics brand that now supplies Britain’s royal family. Pavlova, who built her business while raising two children, shares hard-won lessons about scaling, branding and exporting. “One word can change your life,” she likes to tell students.
The Academy also maintains a mentorship program. When a young designer of hiking clothes in the Rhodope Mountains realized her business projections did not add up, a mentor from across the country identified the problem in a 10-minute phone call: she had forgotten to include her own salary in her budget. That single insight transformed her approach.
Second Chances — and New Beginnings
Some of BASE’s most unusual programs have taken place in unlikely places. In 2020, BASE partnered with a prison to offer training to inmates with short-term sentences. The goal: to provide skills that could help them start businesses upon release, reducing the likelihood of reoffending.
Participants drafted business plans, sometimes sending them to relatives on the outside to begin preparations. One professor from Sofia University, affectionately nicknamed “Uncle C” by the inmates, taught the entire course solo due to security restrictions.
The program has also reached retired police officers, who often leave the force around age 50 with lump-sum payouts but little direction. With BASE’s help, some found new purpose in launching small ventures, from coffee shops to consulting services.
And in a village school in central Bulgaria, three 15-year-old girls turned idle summer classrooms into English-language camps for children spending holidays with their grandparents. Their project netted them about $1,000 each in their first summer. “Who knows?” said Zaharieva. “They may be Bulgaria’s future unicorn founders.”
A Network for Women — and Refugees
BASE has proven especially popular among women, who make up a vast majority of participants. This reflects structural unemployment in regions dominated by heavy industry, which employs primarily men. For 50-year-old Mariella, it meant turning a glass furnace left behind by her son into a source of income. Starting with melted bottles reshaped into serving trays, she eventually began crafting jewelry from recycled glass. After winning second place in her BASE cohort, she bought a larger furnace and raw materials.
More recently, BASE has extended its reach to Ukrainian refugees who fled to Bulgaria after Russia’s invasion. Training materials were translated into Ukrainian, and courses in Plovdiv helped newcomers learn how to start businesses in their host country.
The Next Chapter
Grozdanov says the program’s power lies in its simplicity. “We’re not training future CEOs of multinational companies,” he said in a recent interview. “We’re giving people the tools to support their families, stay in their communities and believe in themselves.”
Funding remains the program’s biggest limitation. Each cohort costs about 35,000 leva ($20,000) to run, including prize money for the best business plans, which winners use to start or expand their businesses—a boost that provides not only funding but also valuable validation. Organizers say demand for courses far exceeds resources. Expansion into neighboring countries like Serbia and Romania has been discussed, but for now BASE continues steadily at about eight cohorts per year.
Building Beyond the Numbers
BASE’s success is not measured only in balance sheets. Graduates speak of dignity, confidence and independence — qualities that carry as much weight as profits. For some, like Bairakova the baker, it has meant legalizing and growing a business they had already stumbled into. For others, like Mariella the glassmaker or the teenagers running summer camps, it has meant proving that an idea, however modest, could change their lives.
In Bulgaria, where entrepreneurship was once stifled by decades of centralized control, BASE is sparking a quiet revolution. It is giving bakers, artisans, former police officers, young students, and even refugees the tools to dream — and the courage to turn those dreams into real businesses that sustain families and strengthen communities. Each new entrepreneur is not just building a venture, but rewriting what is possible for themselves and those around them.
