Will Bitdefender Be Romania's First Tech IPO?
forbes.com
forbes.com
Almost the entire first page is spent on telling the reader some ancient facts about Romania as if it's a newly discovered continent. It kinda tries to force some history into context but it's generally really bad.
Second, you have much more transparency in Romania for companies, even if they are privately held. So this quote is rather pointless and shows no homework was done:
> Although it’s privately-held, Talpes told me that it employs 670 people — 10% more than in 2011. Publicly-traded competitor, AVG (AVG), has $295 million in revenues and 870 employees — $339,000 in revenues per employee — and a net profit margin of 32%.
You can totally look online[1,2,3] for informations on the Bitdefender company and see that, for example, in 2010 it has about 30 million euro in revenue (so that's about 45,000 euro per employee) and a net profit of only 250,000 euro which means a margin of 0.7%. (PS: I would love to learn how they managed to pay so little taxes!)
I think an IPO is a good idea, but I would love if Romania would start to be known for something other than antivirus solutions. The other big thing we had was the sale or RAV (Romania Anti Virus) to Microsoft in the early 2000s.
BTW, an IPO is a big thing here because generally we don't use the stock market to finance companies. We use banks, which also explains why our companies aren't that innovative.
1. http://www.firme.info/bitdefender-srl-cui18189442/ 2. http://www.doingbusiness.ro/financial/report/541390/bitdefen... 3. http://www.listafirme.ro/bitdefender-srl-18189442/
Ubervu and Epayment, off the top of my head.
Ubisoft Romania. Lots of outsourced development for big IT companies. The big problem with startups is presumably a lack of VC, but expat Romanians making money elsewhere and either returning home or just investing at home should address that.
Also note the ridiculous mention of Bulgarian youth as if it is relevant in some way. To this guy Sarah Palin was probably very convincing because you know, Russia is right across Alaska. Also, he "ditched corporate America and started a management consulting and venture capital firm".
Of course communism is supposed to be relevant in some way, even thought its been 20 years.
The article has a great subject and a worthy one to mention as its and achivement but instead spends most of its time explaining all the bad things somebody grepped from a wiki article. "Most people don’t know that Romania is more than just the murderous Communist dictator who was beheaded in 1989. It was also featured in a November 4, 1994 Seinfeld episode, " being a case of well we don't know nor care as has nothing to do with this IPO.
Would they explain a facebook IPO as something done by a load of people who turned up on indian shores without greencards back many years ago.... No as it has no relevance whatsoever.
Kudos to Bitdefender for doing there IPO - which stock market is it to be listed upon?
But your summary is more astute than the article.