September 2009

“I started out with nothin’ and I still got most of it left”

First iteration: 7 years ago I started my own IT company in Romania. Back then, there wasn’t a market for our services, I had no business experience and the growth was painful, but that is the part young entrepreneurs do not really come to know until they actually start-up. Time got by and the market appeared, the business expanded, my presence on the local scene got noticed. It was all small, but cozy enough so it got comfortable.

New iteration: One month and 11 days ago, having acquired enough experience, I chose to do the most difficult thing: Step out of my comfort zone and start off internationally – start from scratch on the big IT scene.

What I used to do in Romania before my leaving was advise technology startups on business matters. While I found that to be very interesting and exciting work, it soon became crystal clear that no significant opportunity would come by if I limited myself to a small, local consumer base with low purchasing power. The only way to make numbers add up, I realised, was to develop products for an international market. Sounds simple, but like all simple things, this is seldom obvious to people based in small countries, where focusing on local projects seems the most sensible approach.

Familiar surroundings, business and personal connections, the absence of cultural and language barriers are precisely the roadblocks distancing the huge international market from local startups in all those little countries no one can identify on a map. This being said, there is no excuse for entrepreneurs in any scalable business not to try to evolve and expand internationally.

Re-starting from scratch has major disadvantages. The main one is that … you are starting from scratch (i.e. you have nothing). Thus, this is not a step many would take, especially when they have acquired a top-tier position, even in a minor market. Actually, the most difficult thing to swallow since crossing the ocean was the feeling of being no one, just another face in the crowd – a feeling I had long forgotten.

There is a new start to everything, so here I am, at Step 1. I will use this blog to document the entire process of building an international business … and who knows what from there on!

PS: To my Romanian audience, I will continue to write on manac.ro with the same low frequence ;-)