
Starting and self-funding a software business in Eastern Europe at the age of 23 - Kaizeras
https://hackernoon.com/starting-and-self-funding-a-software-business-in-eastern-europe-at-the-age-of-23-c13d3ea4beb5
======
norswap
> The economy is not developed, making it extremely difficult to convince
> anybody to buy anything you try to sell them. People are pessimistic and
> desperate, most of the rich make money through corruption and criminal
> activities. There is little support or financing for running a legitimate
> business. Talent is scarce. There is nothing to compete over and nobody to
> compete with on a local level.

Away with the violins already. Bulgaria may not be entrepreneur friendly or
corruption free, but it is not a misery cesspool (source: my friends there).

> Unlike the people I met in the Silicon Valley, only a handful of our tech-
> oriented students had participated in hackatons, contributed to open-source
> software, had started a personal blog or answered questions in online help
> communities such as StackOverflow.

This is classical Silicon Valley fetichising. Some wannabe entrepreneurs have
it too, here in Belgium. But if you want that mindset, you better look at the
rest of the ideology that comes with it. Personally I want no part in it.

Nevertheless, the rest of the post shows that it is in fact _easier_ to start
a business in Bulgaria. The relative immaturity of the tech scene means it's
actually much easier to make a splash and find opportunities. Better be self-
taught in the land of opportunity then well-schooled in a saturated market.

And at the end of the day, that's also what entrepreneurship is: doing your
own thing, with no one holding your hand.

~~~
Kaizeras
> Bulgaria may not be entrepreneur friendly or corruption free, but it is not
> a misery cesspool

I absolutely agree with your opinion. There are companies like Telerik
(acquired by Progress Software) and Chaos Group which have earned our country
a formidable reputation on the global tech scene and it's relatively easy to
get recognized. The overall ennvironment is good too - the country has grown a
lot since it became member of the EU. Despite all this, it doesn't have the
extremely competitive atmosphere, the "evolve or die" mindset of the more
developed markets. There is nobody who's going to push you out or take you
over. Personally I think such type of atmosphere would have let us grow much
faster and innovate quicker.

> Nevertheless, the rest of the post shows that it is in fact easier to start
> a business in Bulgaria.

I'm not implying the opposite. It's easy to start a run-of-the mill software
development outsourcing business and sustain it, but with such "immature tech
scene", it's very difficult to evolve it in something bigger, and that's a big
problem.

p.s I'm the author of this article

~~~
psvx
I'am an ex ChaosGroup employee and I can tell you that if there's one thing I
learned while working there, it's that all these constraints are in your mind.
You can find talent here. You can create a product here and sell it worldwide
and be successful. You can be competetive or better than your western
competition. In some ways, doing this is even easier than in the west. My view
is that in order to be greatly successful, you need 3 things, no matter in
what part of the world you happen to be:

1\. Great idea.

2\. Great timing.

3\. Lots of work.

(besides the companies you listed, I could also mention coherent-labs.com,
which are also global leaders in their market).

~~~
charlesdm
I don't live in EE (and maybe I'm naive about this), but shouldn't it actually
be easier to find great talent if you put in an effort?

I mean, there are great people in pretty much in every country, and if the
alternative is, say, (boring) outsourcing development work, shouldn't you be
able to convince people with above average (local) pay and offering them a
great place to work, etc?

~~~
taway_1212
> convince people with above average (local) pay and offering them a great
> place to work

With hardly any VC money around, you don't really have a way to pay for those.

~~~
charlesdm
Nonsense. You’ll make plenty of money by actually building something people
will pay for. You know, a product can actually make money without raising VC?

~~~
taway_1212
I agree, but then you have to bootstrap with your savings, which means you
definitely won't be paying above average wages and renting nice offices etc
(which is what I was replying to).

------
vldx
Eastern Europe is state of mind, not a geographical location.

It just boggles my mind why a young person (like the article author) would
choose to think in such a lazy manner and beat that narrative to death --
corruption, local economy, the struggle to run legitimate business, etc.

With all due my respect and w/ the risk of being downvoted -- that is BS; and
completely opposite of the SV mindset.

It just shows that the author haven't been exposed to the actual environment
(i.e. not the university) in Bulgaria -- there are numerous large-scale
companies w/ strong regional presence, as well various small outsourcing shops
and at least 5 co-working spaces, where you can find lots of very capable
people working in very healthy environments; anecdotally, for the last ~13
years I haven't heard even one founder/c-level exec of being asked to pay
anything under the table.

~~~
Kaizeras
> Eastern Europe is state of mind, not a geographical location.

Author here. Perhaps I put a little bit too much drama in the classic Eastern
European issues. I'm not complaining, I do acknowledge the advancement of
Bulgaria's economy (it's definitely not like the 90s as far as the narratives
go), but I'm not very satisfied with the competitiveness of our country on the
global scene. Take Singapore for example - it's more deprived than Bulgaria in
numerous aspects, yet it is one of the technological powerhouses of Asia. I'm
not focusing on the problems; I'm focusing on what could be improved and
leveraged from the current situation.

> ...there are numerous large-scale companies w/ strong regional presence, as
> well various small outsourcing shops...

True, but for how long have the co-working spaces been around? Around 5 years.
Healthy companies? Since we joined the EU (~10 years). All the companies
before that period (Sciant, Telerik, Chaos Group etc.) were made of a bunch of
extremely talented young people willing to work almost for free in order to
gain reputation and recognition from outside. Plus, the working conditions you
mentioned apply only for no more than 20,000 people employed in the tech
industry in Bulgaria. The majority of the population is in survival mode.

There is much to be improved.

------
expertentipp
> only a handful of our tech-oriented students had participated in hackatons,
> contributed to open-source software, had started a personal blog or answered
> questions in online help communities such as StackOverflow

It's Eastern Europe, so those even marginally competent who haven't left are
employed for peanuts in outsourcing centers, working on brain-numbing projects
9-5 or even 8-6. Ain't nobody got time for that.

~~~
paganel
It depends, there are quite a number of exceptions. Yeah, if you're going to
get yourself into a farm-like outsourcing company as a fresh CS graduate then
you'll have a pretty numb programming life in front of you. But there are also
lots of start-ups/small companies which do really interesting stuff (some of
them have been acquired by Western companies for quite a lot of money or have
grown into "middle" companies).

I for example have started doing Django-based projects back in 2006, me and my
other programmer co-worker were at the time I think the only Django
programmers in our Eastern European country. We had also done some quite cool
map mash-ups. But pretty soon after that people around us also started doing
Ruby stuff, Plone/Zope (maybe not so cool, but interesting nonetheless), we
had a local site that had done street photos the same as GStreetView 2 or 3
years before Google started covering our streets, some Information
Retrieval/AI projects, it was not all a technological desert. And in recent
years things have started becoming even more dynamic, but I have to admit I
stopped paying that much attention to the local IT scene.

But, yeah, Eastern Europe (and Europe in general, with the possible exceptions
of London, Berlin and maybe Dublin) will never get even close to the "feeling"
one gets as a programmer in SV. In my mid- to late 20s I was pretty well aware
of that I and was kind of let down, I was feeling that I was losing out by me
not being in SV, but now, that I've grown a little older, I feel like I didn't
lose that much by staying here.

~~~
Kaizeras
> But, yeah, Eastern Europe (and Europe in general, with the possible
> exceptions of London, Berlin and maybe Dublin) will never get even close to
> the "feeling" one gets as a programmer in SV

That's exactly the thought that hits me every morning I wake up. That
"feeling" that you're in the right place and in the right time to build some
truly revolutionary technology. I hope that I start getting this feeling here,
in Bulgaria, soon. Otherwise I'll have too many reasons to emigrate for a few
years.

~~~
mgkimsal
> That "feeling" that you're in the right place and in the right time to build
> some truly revolutionary technology.

How many of the people in SV have that 'feeling' yet are completely wrong?
Or... maybe a better question - how many actually build that 'truly
revolutionary technology'?

There's a chance you'd get such a great 'feeling' every morning you wake up in
SV, but there's more chance you can have an impact on the lives of people in
your country by working with others and expanding the pool of opportunity
right there.

You're in a position to help _create a revolution_ in your geographic area, vs
just sharecrop on someone else's revolution plantation.

------
galfarragem
Fortune cookie: a niche IT job in Eastern Europe will, with high probability,
grant you the best life standards available worldwide.

~~~
paganel
A great number of my Romanian programmer friends have already started to
realize this and have stopped emigrating to other European countries.

Yeah, moving to a place like London would most probably get you 2 or maximum 3
times the salary you are now getting, but you'd also have to pay rent which is
8 to 10 times higher in London, going out is outrageously expensive (7 pounds
for buying a beer in a pub after a day's work is pure robbery), the general
geographic area is quite nice around these parts (we have mountains, seaside,
nice rivers for fishing), all in all they're doing quite ok. They won't ever
be able to buy a $100,000+ car, a small boat or a small air-plane, like I see
many of the SV engineers doing, but that's not that huge of a sacrifice to
make. What's letting me down, personally, and what would convince me to
finally take the plunge and emigrate to a Western European country is the
health and the education system, which right now is in shambles in Romania
(and I guess in Bulgaria, too).

~~~
vminkov
Private health care is very neat and relative to your paycheck it's as
affordable as in the Western world

~~~
expertentipp
The cult of and preference for private and premium health care services in
Central/Eastern Europe are going to backslash terribly in couple of decades.
Everything works well as long as the only contributors and users of it are
young, healthy, employed people. Then those private health providers and
insurers will simply disappear or bankrupt, and people will end up with
disintegrated public healthcare if only they will be eligible for it at all.

~~~
restalis
The current state of things is not perfect, and the private healthcare
probably has indeed the inherent problem you're describing, but it is also
maybe the only thing that keeps the bulk of our medical doctors from
emigrating to richer parts of Europe.

------
charlesdm
1\. Opportunities are often global, and location doesn't matter as much if you
can sell something via the internet.

2\. One big advantage of Bulgaria which is often overlooked, if you do make
it: the corporate tax rate is 10%. Meaning you get to keep most of your
profits.

> Most of the rich make money through corruption and criminal activities

Is this the case? Could you give an example?

~~~
vminkov
Generalizing it as "most" is definitely not a sign of a realist's view. Most
of them reap profits from low wages and the open EU market. Others get
oversized government contracts funded by EU funds and a large part of them do
it with corruption. Finally there are some but not that many "no-go" markets
which are a special interest of the local and Russian oligarchs and their
lobbying kills the competition. Romania did a relatively good job in their
judicial reform, but Bulgaria lags behind a lot on that.

------
baybal2
>> The economy is not developed, making it extremely difficult to convince
anybody to buy anything you try to sell them

You easely get the same thing on the opposite end. In countries where people
are used to buy a lot of stuff, people are constantly bombarded with
advertisements and drivel.

In a poor country, it is hard to convince anybody that stuff you sell is good.
In a rich country, it is hard to make people buy your stuff, even when they
know it is good enought.

~~~
almostarockstar
Ok, find a medium rich country. Got it.

------
rebootthesystem
> Unlike the people I met in the Silicon Valley, only a handful of our tech-
> oriented students had participated in hackatons, contributed to open-source
> software, had started a personal blog or answered questions in online help
> communities such as StackOverflow.

The overwhelming majority --by a huge margin-- of entrepreneurs have never
done any of this.

Your perception is skewed by reading HN and following the Silicon Valley
"culture". That isn't at all a reflection of the majority. In Silicon Valley
and in politics there are certain things you might have to do to signal club
membership.

In the case of starting and running a business none of the items you list are
a necessary part of success at all. I know people who are doing multiple
millions of dollars a year in revenue who have never gone to hackathons,
contributed to OSS, started a blog (that one is particularly funny) or spent
time answering questions on SO.

The shadows you are looking at are not reality.

Note: Before anyone thinks that's an insult, google "Plato cave" and read it.

------
baybal2
Bulgaria has low income tax, but a monsterous social security, EI and pension
payments as is with most formerly red countries.

This gives self employed people, or people leaving their profits on a company
account an ennormous, unfair advantage

~~~
icebraining
What values are we talking about? From a few sites, it seems ~31% (employer +
employee), which doesn't seem that high relative to other European countries.

~~~
baybal2
Even today, that 31% rate + 10% income tax, + other stuff can easily halve
your income.

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, well, as a Portuguese I'm paying 35% in SS contributions, plus more than
10% in income tax if one earns more than 920€/month, so I feel your pain.

It wouldn't really bother me if so much of it wasn't wasted, though.

------
jankotek
Bulgaria has number of advantages for starting software business which sells
globally.

