Watch Out For The Balkans | Hacker News Reader

Watch Out For The Balkans

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81 pointstomp22 comments

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.

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.

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).

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/

The two founding partners at Skype were Swedish and Danish, but the company also started with three engineers in Estonia, and the company still (judging by their jobs page [1]); the company still has an engineering presence there. That model (foreign entrepreneurs getting it started, but based/staffed locally) may be the most likely one for a big consumer-facing company in the former Yugoslavia, but it would still be a major achievement, and could build that startup tradition locally.

[1] http://www.microsoft-careers.com/go/skype-tallinn/332461/

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

Oh, who are they?

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.

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

Not quite skype level, but cosylab is pretty big success. It's Slovenian and seems the article considers that Balkan.

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.

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.

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.

Best hacker I ever met was Bulgarian. Just anecdotally.

You can rule out this post as having any sort of relevance or concrete information with regards to this article.

There's just so much utter waste in here from saying that VMWare is crap, to the "majority of IT" being HP to claiming that there is a "non-existent startup scene."

Java, C# and PHP? LOL Do you even know what those are? Android apps are written in Java, Europe and the rest of the world is predominantly Android driven, PHP is one of the most robust and popular server-side languages in the world. You sir, are smoking the good stuff!

Some of the smartest and most brilliant engineers have come and continue to come out of Bulgaria and that part of the world in general; the first digital computer was invented by a Bulgarian!

Good god man.

I am a Bulgarian living in Bulgaria at the moment with experience of assembling a few startup teams already. There are major problems with the talent and their attitude. And a lot of the top people just move out of the country.

Bulgaria is a not a good place for startup right now - too much regulation, too much bureaucracy insanity, very high hidden taxes and broken and chronically underfunded high education system.

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

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 :)

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.

A lot of developers/engineers leave for the western Europe leaving the local Romanian environment pretty dry. I am not sure how they manage south and south-west from here to build electric cars...

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

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.

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

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