
Watch Out For The Balkans - tomp
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/10/watch-out-for-the-balkans/
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llomlup
Many development shops in Balkans provide near-shore, off-shore services to
European and US customers. Those companies have experienced significant grow
in short time, e.g. from 5 to 50 employees in just two years or so. A stretch
to higher numbers > 200 people isn't strange as well.

However, a Skype/another $1 billion business level success is yet to be seen.

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tomp
You have to be aware that Skype was a Swedish-Danish startup (according to
Wikipedia), those countries have a bit longer history of capitalism and
entrepreneurship than ex-Yugoslavia (which was socialist less than 25 years
ago) countries.

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llomlup
Agreed. Also in Balkans, due to weak economy and lack of state support, devs
won't easily risk giving up their jobs in order to run a full-time startup (no
VC's to fund projects there).

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Sandman
That's not really true, there are VCs. Crane [1], for example, is a network of
angel investors in Croatia.

[1] [http://www.crane.hr/](http://www.crane.hr/)

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lazyjones
> _There are a few real, Skype-level successes and they’re mostly in the
> services /ecommerce/B2B space_

Oh, who are they?

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mstipetic
Yeah, they are exaggerating a bit there. No "Skype-level" successes, but
things are starting to happen here. A lot of my friends (myself included) are
looking into some sort of startup option.

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lostlogin
I assume Skype is successful - it's everywhere. Do people like it? I find it
very very clunky and unreliable. Is this just me?

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venomsnake
You can rule out Bulgaria - the majority of IT there is HP(crap),
vmware(crap), SAP (crap), telerik (almost crap), moneybookers/skrill -
acceptable. The start-up scene is nonexistent and people go for cool social or
educational if they do something. Majority of developers are Java, C# or PHP
with lack of desire to extend their skill set and feeling good in
institutional environment.

~~~
robotomir
Oh yeah? In what universe are the folks that work at VMware and Telerik crap,
while Moneybookers is acceptable? Mightily smart and motivated people work in
some of the big companies, and I've seen instances where bright sparks leave
the corporate world to try and turn their own ideas into reality. This is not
a down-sloping trendline.

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venomsnake
I meant that the companies are crappy. Not the developers. Almost everyone I
know from there - are competent enough architecture astronauts. There are few
real hackers left from the glory days of SMG/NPMG/TU but are definitely not a
majority.

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adambard
Best hacker I ever met was Bulgarian. Just anecdotally.

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zachrose
Not exactly the Balkans, but can anybody tell me what web/software development
is like in Romania these days?

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CCs
There are major cities with good amount of software talent: Bucharest, Cluj,
Iasi, Brasov, Timisoara.

Most of the jobs are for other companies (Amazon, MS, Ubi, etc), a lot of
outsourcing - no sign yet of Skype or other original success, as far I know.

BTW, Romania is considered by most as part of Balkans :)

~~~
wcfields
I recently left a program manager job at an ad agency that got lots of sub-
contracting jobs for interactive work. Really couldn't deal with getting to
work at 7am to check-in with my developers.

Our entire team of developers is based in Iasi, Romania and our sales/managing
is in Beverly Hills. Everyone was an employee and we sometimes lost developers
to Amazon being right across the street.

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markoa
If you're curious about the scene and who the players are, I recommend
checking out [http://en.startit.rs](http://en.startit.rs), a blog on tech
entrepreneurship, covering mainly Serbia + nearby.

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AlexanderDhoore
Croatia just joined the European Union beginning this month... I'm sure that's
an important step, though the media didn't pay much attention to it.

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iterationx
Followed the article link to [http://www.squee.it/](http://www.squee.it/) a
Croatian startup - they have some rad stuff.

