Creative industries have been promoted in post-conflict societies as a means of economic diversification, identity reconstruction and youth employment, and governments have adopted policy instruments modelled on established creative economies, most prominently grant programmes. Whether these instruments produce sustainable cultural enterprises in post-conflict conditions is uncertain. This study compares creative industries policy and cultural entrepreneurship outcomes in Serbia and Sri Lanka, two countries that emerged from prolonged conflict at different times. Drawing on policy document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 40 cultural entrepreneurs in design, film and audiovisual media, music, crafts and digital content, conducted in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Colombo and Jaffna between June and November 2025, the paper examines how entrepreneurs experience policy instruments and which factors they regard as decisive for the survival and growth of their enterprises. Interviews with 40 cultural entrepreneurs reveal that grant programmes have limited effect without export-oriented market access and IP support. Grants were widely accessed but described as sustaining activity rather than building enterprises, whereas the entrepreneurs who had achieved stable revenue attributed this to access to international markets and to the ability to protect and license their intellectual property. Serbian entrepreneurs benefited from proximity to European markets and from EU-linked programmes, while Sri Lankan entrepreneurs faced greater barriers of distance, payment infrastructure and weak IP enforcement. The paper argues that post-conflict creative industries policy should reorient from grant provision towards market access and IP capacity, and discusses implications for policy design in comparable contexts.