
The Silicon Valley of Transylvania - mirceagoia
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/06/the-silicon-valley-of-transylvania/
======
ddalex
This is a nice summary of what's going on - to get to the gist of it, Romania
has great technical talent, coming out of decent technical schools.

What severely lacks in Romania, in my view:

a). the business environment; the internal demand isn't enough to support
starting and growing business on the local market; building products for
external markets from get-go is difficult. This leads to:

b). the business talent; the number of big companies (in the sense of growing
into an international market) founded in Romania and managed by Romanian
business people can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Leading to:

c). the product talent; since there is no big demand for products in the local
market, there is no way to grow local product designers - the people that can
and want to design and build a product just find it easier to emigrate,
depleting the already small pool of available talent.

All of this leads to companies coming into the country just for technical
talent, which is easily employed as outsourcing contractors, and keep the
self-perpetuating circle of the tech scene being driven by outsourcing. And
this effect is also visible at startup level, where the Romanian-funded
startups often have the headquarters, and product designers in US or Canada,
and the technical talent in Bucharest or Cluj.

I have no idea how to fix this problem, of even if it is a problem in the
first place - I feel that as the local economy matures, niches for specific
targeted products will appear, facilitating the development of locally-
designed products built by local companies. But starting startups based in
Romania targeting foreign markets is still an uphill battle versus companies
local to those foreign markets.

~~~
cristianpascu
Very good points! c) goes hand in hand with two other things: many managers
are former programmers with little or no appreciation for good product and
good UX. And second, romanian designers are still pretty much artists, drawing
candy stuff. I know some very good designers with good UX skills, but they are
a minority.

Only where you have good managers, good devs, and good designers thinking
solely about the people using the product, you'll have a community that gives
birth to real software professionals. We're still in the age of Angular v
React, Dawn of Outsourcing.

------
tlogan
Since I'm from that part of the world and traveling a lot there, here is my
take on this:

\- All eastern European countries have a great talent but that talent is
created during socialist area (free education, focus on math, etc.). However,
quality of new talent is not so great. If somebody is good, they go to work in
Germany / Austria / Switzerland.

\- Work and business habits are terrible. It seems like they always try to
scam you.

\- Society really looks down on entrepreneurship. To be honest, societies in
Montenegro, Hercegovina, Romania and Albania are a little more open to
entrepreneurship than others but..

\- Laws are very unfriendly for small business / entrepreneurship. Basically,
one needs to break the law in order to run the business.

In short, I'm not so optimistic :(

~~~
disposeofnick9
For multinational companies, Belarus has been a solid country for sourcing
technical talent. (Some work remote while others get visas... being flexible
as an employer retains the best people longer.)

------
rusanu
I worked +10 years in Redmond, WA as a microsoftie and came back to Romania in
2012. Since March 2016 I quit Microsoft and focused 100% on my startup,
DBHistory.com. I now rent space and work at a local tech incubator
www.techhub.com. I wanted to start with this to to put my opinion in
perspective. While the article is bubble-gum and is clear PR, the point it
makes is a valid one. Compared even to US, today Romania has a very active
entrepreneurship mindset. Small businesses are created all the time, some
thrive, some go under. Despite the locals skepticism, I see the economy here
as effervescent, with a growth rate still north of 3% (for Europe, this is not
bad). The overwhelming majority of this entrepreneurship is _not_ in IT.

But this article is specific to IT, and I do not see the Romanian IT anywhere
near its potential. This is because the local IT is almost entirely focused on
outsourcing, not on original development. Big companies have significant
presence here (Electronic Arts, Adobe, Intel, Microsoft each have ~200,300 dev
offices here, although not everything is core R&D ). Original Romania IT has a
very strong presence in anti-virus (for some reason it seems a lot of local IT
youth are experts on exploits...). Many young IT Romanians choose to go abroad
(in Microsoft Romanians are the 4th largest foreign community, after
Indians/Chinese/Russians).

Since I've returned I've been approached several times by US/Western Europe
based entrepreneurs who desired to move development to Romania and open office
here, solely for cost reasons. Purely for outsourcing, this is my 2c:

\- Romania has significant talent pool

\- EU membership (with all tax/export/legislation alignment that entails)

\- Good spoken English is pretty much universal, German/French are common

\- Political stability (governing parties rotated power several times in past
20 years, peacefully)

\- Cost is higher than one would expect. Bucharest/Cluj/Timisoara all have
high cost (office) and salaries are higher than some neighbors. If the
outsourcing decision is purely cost driven then Ukraine has a better deal for
you, with a similar talent pool.

But I would like to see a lot more IT original development coming out from
Romania. The article gives some examples, like LiveRail, but overall I see a
_lot_ more outsourcing done here than original development. I'm glad projects
like cloudhero.io originate here.

~~~
mirceagoia
Hey, you can register your startup with RomanianStartups.com :). It's free.

~~~
rusanu
Thanks, I will

------
dataker
Like other eastern european countries, Romanians suffer greatly with poor
branding and "western-centrism".

While in Germany, I watched clear demonstrations of discrimination towards
Romanians in a tech startup. They really had to prove themselves. Although
extremelly talented, "jokes" would always fly around the "gypsy stereotype".

That being said, as a startup founder, I'd assume it'd be much harder to raise
money from an UK VC firm.

~~~
disposeofnick9
Yup. One person's stupidity is another wise, entrepreneur's money-making
opportunity... hire LGBTQ, disabled, ex-cons, neurodiversity, anyone whom
typical businesses "reject," not just for PR reasons but to win bigger with
untapped capabilities others cannot see or manage.

------
userulluipeste
"the local higher education system is plagued by corruption" "Education is
underfunded and affected by a profound brain drain." (notalaser)

This is so true, sadly! I can imagine the reason Tech Crunch is trying to
light the stage in rose colors but it's good to keep your expectations
realistic. Don't get me wrong, the Romanian higher education was very self-
exigent and managed to spit out high quality specialists for quite a while
even after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The good teachers however, were being
hunted like crazy. Only in those several years of my Computer Engineering
study I've had to witness the departure of half of the professor assistants
that were teaching me at one point or another. The good half. On graduation
only a small minority of my fellow student colleagues enjoyed meaningful
support from their mentors. For most of us the mentorship was only a
protocolar procedure, and the quality of our licence projects were being
dictated only by our auto-didactic abilities - very far from what I heard
University to be once upon a time!

------
crocozaurus
I am from Cluj, Romania and I am a developer for some years now. I really know
how things are in the IT sector in Cluj and I really know how my country
stacks up against others. The article is not accurate and highlights mostly
positive aspects.

The programmers are decent and hard working, but nothing spectacular going on.
They might not be your first pick when you want innovation. We are mostly
self-taught ( thanks DoD for the Internet), and contrast the poor courses that
are held at the Romanian universities. There are programmers that range from
mediocre to good. Comparing to colleagues from London, or the US, we are not
as good. They know more things and are more specialized. They work at a faster
pace and work on hard problems. We make decent work though, but nothing mind
blowing. If you want guys that can innovate, better look elsewhere like: the
US, UK, Finland, Holland and other Nordic countries.

Here is the factual truth about Romania. It is a country of huge contrast. It
has really good results in math and compute science Olympiads, but it is at
the very bottom at math performance for the population at large. See PISA test
results. 40 % of Romanians do not know basic and simple concepts from math. 40
% also are functional illiterates. This is much worse than the US. At the peak
level We seem to be very good at IT, yet there is virtually not an algorithm
or an innovation that bears a Romanian's name. You learn about Dijkstra,
Turing, Fermat and Leibniz, but not Popescu or Iliescu. You hear about how
good we are, but no Romanian University is within the top 500 at the computer
science section. There is a lot of impostors in our universities and
plagiarism is high. The dean of the Technical University of Cluj plagiarized
courses from Berkeley and presents them as his own.

Romania has one of the largest internet speed, but only half of the country is
connected. And within those that do use it, the vast majority are on Facebook
and Youtube. Telekom just published that Romania has the poorest internet
usage when it comes to business related activity.

Half of the population still lives in the rural areas, and the conditions are
horrible. Over half of Romanian schools do not have running tap water or a
decent toilet with flushing water. Mostly are again in the rural areas. But
also in the surrounding regions of Cluj, and other major cities, there are
entire neighborhoods that do not have access to the sewage network. And they
are part of the city of Cluj, not other entities.

Romania is featured as a poor country by World Vision, which needs western
support. It is listed among Albania, Georgia and a host of African countries.
The orphanage footage of Romania in the 90' comes to mind.

And the list shocking contrast goes on and on.

~~~
hvm
> You learn about Dijkstra, Turing, Fermat and Leibniz, but not Popescu or
> Iliescu

Andrei Alexandrescu pops into my head and I'm sure I could find a few more if
I thought about it.

> And within those that do use it, the vast majority are on Facebook and
> Youtube

As opposed to the west where everyone is using the Internet for maximizing
their productivity.

> There is a lot of impostors in our universities and plagiarism is high. The
> dean of the Technical University of Cluj plagiarized courses from Berkeley
> and presents them as his own.

That is true, I've also been at UT, hehe.

Overall I kinda agree with you though. We are poor and the government won't or
can't help us increase innovation rate. The talent is here though, anyone
looking to create products does have a good opportunity if they choose to
start a business here. In the process the native folk might learn a thing or
two about what it takes to create a product and sell it.

~~~
crocozaurus
Yes, there are a few, like Alexandrescu or Mihai Pătrașcu. Don't get me wrong.
They are exceptionally smart and hard working. I admire them. But their
success, like that of most who participate in Olympiads, is the result of
their exceptional hard work and that of a handful of dedicated teachers. It is
not the merit of the education system. But you should also know that there are
hundreds other like Pătrașcu, from all over the globe. We don't stand out from
the crowd. And another thing. I know a single example of a person in Romania
who grew up in Romania and became recognized for his work in Romania. Almost
all of them had to flew to other universities in the West and there they
managed to make great contributions. That is a great contrast as well. The
educational environment is so corrupt and unfair that people of genuine value
just don't want to work there. Most of them that stay are opportunists. Not
all of them, but well over 80%.

:)), yes about the internet usage. The vast majority of people in the west
also use it for Facebook or Youtube. Don't get me wrong; I doubt people in
Holland skip Facebook and study Dijkstra work :) But a disproportionately
higher number of people from those countries use the Internet for more noble
purposes. Not just entertainment. As for companies there are a number of
statistics that show how they use it for increased productivity. And Romania,
as in most statistics, sits at the bottom.

But fair points, nonetheless.

------
andrei512
I'm from Cluj! :) I'm working on We Heart Swift - a site dedicated to Swift -
over 50.000 people visit it every month. Our main product teaches you how to
code in one month. Its similar to codecademy but in the form of mac app
[https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-programming-
scratch-100-e...](https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-programming-
scratch-100-exercises/)

------
janlukacs
I'm from Romania and i run a product business in the western part of the
country (Oradea). The article is a pr piece, but one that the .ro tech
industry deserves. There's definitely good momentum and we need to use it. The
biggest long term risk imho is the outsourcing industry and it's effects.

We started out in outsourcing too but shifted to product in 2008 and managed
to build a profitable business selling globally. I'm seeing more and more
people interested in making the shift or jumping right into product, however
we lack good product managers, marketing and funding. Overall i'm optimistic
and i think we have lots to show if we focus our energies in the right
direction.

------
ryanmarsh
> The labor market research firm Brainspotting reports that Romania, with just
> 20 million people, ranks in the top 10 globally in number of certified IT
> specialists

What exactly is a "certified IT specialist"?

~~~
scribu
Presumably someone who has a BS in Computer Science or related field.

~~~
johansch
No, in this context it means Microsoft/Cisco etc certifications. Unfortunately
people with these tend to be worse than the people without them so I'm not
sure why this is even brought up.

------
jkraker
I wish people would stop using that phrasing: "The Silicon Valley of"
whatever.

------
voodootrucker
In light of the actions of the US over the last decade regarding interception
of communication, undermining of encryption, intellectual property laws, and
promiscuous prosecutions, I don't see any way for it to be the next hotbed of
technological innovation.

------
novaleaf
anecdote: my SaaS has about 50 customers, 2 of which are from Romania. That's
quite a high representation!

------
spriggan3
Looks like Techcrunch needs new opportunities to empty founders pockets with
its "conferences", Romania here they come ...

------
madaxe_again
This is so bubble-written it's not funny.

Romania is a country where a large chunk of the populace get around by cart
and donkey, where post-communist corruption is rife, where decades on they
still can't decide what to do with the half built palace that occupies half of
Bucharest, where gangsters run most of the hospitality industry and god knows
what else.

It's a chicken and egg problem, of course, as enterprise will bring wealth (in
theory) which in turn will solve some of Romania's more immediate woes, but
it's still a tiny tiny niche in a very poor country.

Their only saving psychological grace is that Moldova are next door, and they
make anyone look rich.

Edit: on a Re-read, this comes across as horribly negative. I'm a big fan of
Romania and its prospects - what I failed to mention is that I met a lot of
intelligent, interesting and passionate younger people - and they will be the
ones that drag Romania solidly into a functioning state - but the reality is
that there's a lot of work to do.

~~~
marinabercea
I live in Romania.

For potential readers: this comment's content is a gross overstatement and
does not reflect reality.

For example, over 50% of the population lives in an urban environment (see the
CIA Romania Factbook which is very up to date). Even so, it would be wrong to
assume that just because some of the country's citizens live in the
countryside, they 'get around by cart and donkey'. Also, for the sake of
accuracy, where such transportation is used, horses would be much more common
as opposed to donkeys.

As for the 'half built palace that occupies half of Bucharest', I presume
you're referring to the Palace of the Parliament, with an area of 365000 m2.
The urban area of Bucharest occupies 228 km2, or 228000000 m2, significantly
more than the area of the building you mentioned.

Edit: I double checked some data in regards to the Palace of the Parliament,
the FLOOR AREA is indeed 365000 m2, but since the building has multiple
floors, the actual occupied area is smaller. Check the Technical Details on
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament)

~~~
madaxe_again
To be fair, I was last there six years ago, spent most of my time travelling
through the the countryside, a few weeks in Cluj, visited friends in Sibiu,
and got robbed when I went through Bucharest on my way to Moldova.

So yes, my view is far less accurate than yours, as it's from about six weeks
six years ago - but the only place I saw comparable levels of overt corruption
was Kyrgyzstan, and I've visited most of the ex-ussr and associated states.
This is no judgment on the Romanian or Kyrgyz peoples - this is a sad fact of
life after economic oppression - corruption becomes a way of life.

~~~
oblio
I'm sorry for your personal experience, but you should be able to realize that
traumatic personal experiences can cloud your opinion about a very complex
topic such as a __whole __country.

I visited the US and I wasn't really impressed, for example. But I wouldn't
judge the US based on just what I saw in a couple of weeks, considering what
I've read and seen about it.

Oh, and regarding corruption:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anticorruption_Dire...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anticorruption_Directorate)

~~~
madaxe_again
Oh, I don't have a dim view of Romania though, I loved my time there, I fell
in love with Sibiu - actually, a big chunk of what I said/think comes from a
buddy from Cluj who I've known 25 years or so - and I hadn't heard about the
anticorruption initiative, that's good news.

I had a knife stuck in my back at a cafe and had my camera stolen, and the
police officer I found then took my passport and wanted (and got) a bribe to
return it. Not a unique experience, I've been held up and hijacked variously
around the planet, but it did go to reinforce the Cluj guy's "don't bother
with Bucharest, you'll get mugged" anecdotes!

Oh, and driving around rural Romania on single track roads, I guess the donkey
carts kinda stick out, as you get a nice long view of the back of them!
Selection bias...

Anyway, cheers for the education.

~~~
oblio
Sorry for that :(

Romania actually has a lower crime rate than the US, so you were unlucky.

The cop part is what they're working on with the whole anti corruption
initiative.

~~~
adventured
That would heavily depend on what type of crime you're talking about.

For example, corruption is a very serious form of crime. Romania ranks #58
(below Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Croatia, and Greece) on Transparency
International's corruption index, compared to the US at #16.

With Romania having such extreme corruption, how can you be certain its crime
stats are worth taking seriously? How under-reported is crime - rape, theft,
violent crime etc - likely to be in a nation with corruption problems that are
that bad? From other countries with even worse corruption (eg Venezuela or
Brazil), what we do know is that there tends to be a direct correlation - for
extremely obvious reasons - between high levels of corruption and poor crime
reporting.

~~~
oblio
I'm not sure that the police reward system is based on crime stats over here.
I.e. the police chief gets more money if he reports fewer crimes. Considering
the way people in our public sector think, it's more likely that the police
chief would want to report more crimes, since he can hire more people, get
more resources and likely more bribes.

And my anecdotal evidence says that Romania is truly a safe country. I
probably know 1000+ Romanians and I know 1 that has been robbed while being
threatened with a knife and several that have had things stolen from them.
This feeling of safety is one of the few things that's reported constantly by
people I know, either in rural areas or in urban areas: violence is not wide
spread. We even have a proverb that says: "mamaliga explodeaza greu" ("it
takes a long tine for mamaliga to explode": mamaliga is a local dish, a sort
of corn porridge; the meaning of the expression is that we don't get
aggravated quickly; we do talk a lot, curse and threaten and whatever but we
tend to not actually fight that much... maybe we're cowards :) ). Most people
over here would find the US gung-ho mentality quite threatening ("don't take
my guns", "stand your ground").

What does happen constantly, and what the agency I posted above tries to
fight, is wide spread practice of asking for bribes for any kind of service
performed by a public servant. Which has a huge negative impact on small
businesses, especially.

~~~
madaxe_again
Interesting point you make re: small businesses - my friend runs a web
development shop, and he was telling me about how they keep accounts, and
"accounts", because declaring a profit is a good way to ensure a tax inspector
will arrive and won't leave until you bribe him to go away.

Interestingly, this phenomenon isn't limited to Romania - a Latvian friend
running a furniture company does the same thing for the same reason - for the
first two years of his business he filed genuine books - the first year, they
came asking for a bribe, he refused - the second year, they raided him and
took all the machine tools - so now he just "makes a loss" every year and they
don't bother him.

Similarly, a Lithuanian friend who used to run a telco found himself stuck in
the middle of a lover's quarrel between the state telecoms regulator and
another telco who had paid a bribe to win a tender, which he then bid for and
made things awkward.

Corruption is no joke - I think many underestimate the chilling effect it has
on everything from civil liberties to tourism to business to tax revenue
collection - if your tax collectors are corrupt, you are well and truly on the
road to hell.

Re: Romania feeling safe, you're right - which is in no small part why my
experience in Bucharest was such a shock - it was at total odds with the
Romania I'd experienced up to that point.

~~~
oblio
They've started sending doctors, cops, clerks, etc. to jail for taking bribes.
They're encouraging people to organize stings when asked for money. It is a
struggle but things are actually changing.

You have to remember that Romania wasn't all that "clean" even before
Communists came and Communism is basically "the state as a criminal
organization". Old habits die hard.

