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BBC News meets a Bulgarian IT entrepreneur [video]
- azinman2 12y agoIs it just me or could this article title be straight out of a parody of HN?
- etuil 12y agoTitle and video being silly.. yes, but putting that aside.... IT sector in Bulgaria has increased dramatically over the years. And apart of the large companies having their offices (hp, vmware, vray, microsoft, google opening soon.. and few others) and potentially thousand of little studios that outsource on a global scale, there are good amount of engineers abroad. With 2 startup incubators, 2 shared coworking spaces and the amount of people involved in IT is it good to think about expanding your team in Bulgaria probably yes (providing small pre-education will ensure your engineers fit your needs) Is it comparable with SV dont think so. But the percentage of young people working in the IT for such a small capital (Sofia) (estimating 2-2.5 million people) is rather high.
- tfl0pz 12y agobtw vray (or Chaos Group) is actually a bulgarian company
- llcoolv 12y agoThere are actually more coworking spaces, even state-supported (socialist style) ones. And the two that you mean (Soho/betahaus) are actually overpriced trendy wastes of money. Also I think that incubators/cw-spaces/angel investors and the other trends that appeared with the boom are vastly overrated.
- Numberwang 12y agoIt's great to hear of success and progress in Bulgaria. Re. the title Europe's Silicon Valley I would go for Sweden with an amazing amount of successful start-ups and game studios for such a small country. Generally though the sensible comparison would be London or Stockholm.
- albertzeyer 12y agoWhat about Berlin?
- nixy 12y agoSince 2005, 9 % of global billion dollar exits have come from the Nordics[1], a region less populated than Germany. In comparison, the rest of Europe only accounted for 8 % of global billion dollar exits. So the Nordics win, hands down, here. Also, between 2000 and 2014 Sweden saw 263 exits valued at $23.7 billion. That's more exits than the rest of the Nordics put together. I would say Stockholm is a safer bet than Berlin :) [1] http://arcticstartup.com/2015/03/16/creandum-9-of-global-billion-dollar-exits-come-from-the-nordics http://arcticstartup.com/2015/03/16/creandum-9-of-global-bil...
- playing_colours 12y agoBerlin is getting its momentum now. A lot of engineers moving here, salaries are growing. Sure that's my anectodal experience, but I would not compare the data from 2000 to 2014. Even couple years ago it was different - no BlueCard schema, lower salaries, few English-speaking companies.
- nixy 12y agoI'm sure Berlin is getting traction and I've no doubt it will be a big tech hub. But I would probably place it more as an "Austin" than as a "SV". Another issue is red tape... Germany banning disruptive ideas like Uber and Berlin banning AirBNB doesn't make me super excited about the prospects of launching a disruptive startup there.
- raverbashing 12y agoFunny, a lot of companies founded by "the Nordics" chose Berlin to establish themselves See: Deliver Hero, SoundCloud, etc
- nbevans 12y agoI'm pretty sure London or Shoreditch, London is. They call it Tech City.
- mattlutze 12y agoIsn't that the neighborhood currently undergoing a huge corporate gentrification? If it's what I'm thinking, there was a great article on it I read last year that I'm sure I'll not be able to find, talking about how the startups are being pushed out by skyrocketting rent from all the posh folks filling it up to make themselves, their companies, law offices etc. seem hip.
- nbevans 12y agoYup. And that description pretty much backs it up too. SV has the same problem. Exposed air conditioning ducts above one's head used to be the sign of an unfinished office undergoing renovation. Now in London it is the sign of hip and cool startups, or more established firms going through a mid-life crisis ;)
- flurdy 12y agoAgree, though I like the Silicon Roundabout name more. The Tech City name to me seems like a government idea, sort of Information Superhighway.... With finding money it is good that Shoreditch is right next to the City (of London, not London the City https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc), and there is a good amount of Angels and VCs in Shoreditch itself.
- sz4kerto 12y agoAsk Betteridge, he'll know the answer.
- guard-of-terra 12y agoOf course any underdeveloped regions tend to pick up IT first (and sometimes that's it). Because barrier to entry is much lower and paycheck is much better than in established industries hauling physical goods. By the way, in a cult book "Deadline" story takes place in some invented country "near Bulgaria". But, you know, Silicon Valley takes more than just some IT.
- gii 12y agoBulgaria in brief: - EU and NATO member - 10% corporate tax rate - 10% personal income tax, flat rate - Among lowest operational cost in a European market economy - Duty free trade covering markets with over 550 m customers - English language studied by 70% of students - 7% of workforce has engineering degrees - Macroeconomic and financial stability - one of the lowest government debts among EU countries - less than 20%. You can register Ltd for about 100 EUR, office prices - about 8 EUR/sq.m.
- malkia 12y agoI was very happy, and a bit proud (being bulgarian, but living in US since 1999) when Telerik was bought some time ago by Progress for $263M (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8492634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8492634) - I don't know the details, but it's glad to hear about tech succeeding in my little country. There are some awesome game developers there aswell, like Haemimont (of the Tropico fame), and plenty of others.
- draugadrotten 12y agoTech nerds often seem to believe Silicon Valley is about tech and ideas. Well, partly it is. But a larger part seems to be the financial climate: There is an abundance of angels willing to gamble a couple of million on startups. Angels don't do that in Bulgaria or anywhere else in Europe for that matter. And there are far fewer angels. This is mostly because of different tax systems especially when it comes to write offs after losses vs profits.
- gii 12y agoSilicon Valley is built on the demand by NASA and the military industry in the regions. Now angels are chasing successful deals there just because of historical reasons it all started there. In small Bulgaria there are already 3 start-up accelerators.
- sz4kerto 12y agoSV is all about investors. Ideas pop up everywhere, it'd be crazy to think that there aren't as many ideas popping up in Bulgaria, India or London. The problem is mostly with the environment -- investment culture and ease of running a business (how hard is it to deal with the state). *Edit: gii, you're hellbanned.
- IndianAstronaut 12y agoI highly recommend people read the book "The Ascent of Finance" by Niall Ferguson. It was a change in finance and economics that helped propel the industrial revolution. The book really highlights how crucial finance was, above other factors such as new phhsics and engineering discoveries, which made the early days of capitalism possible.
- calpaterson 12y agoDo you mean "The Ascent of Money"?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Money
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
- fiblye 12y agoI became interested in Bulgaria last year after being granted a scholarship to study the language for a summer. After learning a bit about its history and thinking about its growing potential, I started working on (and am approaching completion of) a scifi game set in Bulgaria. It'd be interesting if Bulgaria went on become a major tech hub in the future, if just to make my project somewhat prophetic. :) More related, but after making my project public, I got quite a few small companies from around the region contacting me about wanting to do cross promotions with their games. I was rather surprised with the number of games coming out of the region, as well as the overall quality of them. The Balkans as a whole seem to have decent potential for tech growth, likely due to the low cost of living and fairly high percentage of english speakers.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- zilly 12y agoBulgaria has great potential for that, well-educated people, low income. Young people really want to start building something. Yet, most of them move away. Politicians need to create a climate in which start-ups get support and funding. Most importantly: Bulgarians need to tackle corruption if they want their country to be successful in the future.
- bluetomcat 12y agoThe trouble in Bulgaria is, almost any profession outside of IT is paid laughably low. This creates an atmosphere where a lot of young people see this industry as the only viable career choice. A commonly held belief is that IT can somehow propel the rest of the country out of poverty and corruption, but this is not realistic - the amount of people employed in that sector is still negligible compared to the rest (and it barely exists out of Sofia).
- solve 12y agoOr to be more specific, the people see being a MANAGER in an IT company as only viable long term career choice. A million middle managers, and a small portion of younger people doing most of the work. Business culture of slowness, rudeness, laziness and a ton of office politics to try to become the next manager. The best young people move out at an astonishingly rapid rate. Result is tons of middle managers, and left over mediocre workers.
- llcoolv 12y agonope. that's prague :D though it's just in that there's more companies organised like the spoiled big babies in sofia (HP, SAP, etc)... Otherwise the culture of ambitious e-illiterate youth on both places is identical - UNSS and VŠE should merge in a single uni.
- randomname2 12y agohttp://venturebeat.com/2015/04/05/data-best-programming-talent-in-the-world-is-not-in-california/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/05/data-best-programming-tale... "Another way to look at the country numbers is to determine the average country ranking of Stack Overflow users above the 5,000 rating threshold. On this basis, Bulgaria has the highest average reputation among top users in the world. Here’s how: If we sum up the reputation of Stack Overflow’s top users by country, and divide it by the number of top users, we get each county’s “average reputation”. Bulgaria has “only” 40 users with a 5,000+ reputation, but their total score makes it the country with the highest average reputation in the world. In other words, if you are top user in Bulgaria, chances are you a total Stack Overflow rockstar."
- bontoJR 12y agoIn Europe we have this hope to find/create a Silicon Valley to compete against US. The problem is, we simply can't. We don't have, as well said before, the "Siliconvallish" investor. We can keep trying, but it's a culture problem, we need to change that, then maybe we can try to compete. Silicon Valley is not about ideas or just tech-companies, is about investors and culture. In Europe experimenting is very very difficult, I worked on a project involving big data, predictions and very advanced live stuff that at the moment are hot in SV, but in Europe investors look not interested or ready to support this field. Another huge problem is the poor ability of European investors in following the tech-trend. 6 months ago I did a presentation about a product I was working on, looking for fundings, it was for one of the biggest VC/Incubator (focusing on medtech, green energy and hi-tech) in Switzerland and at the of the presentation I have been asked by the president what "a phone notification is" and "what is bluetooth LE", so I spent my QA time answering basic questions about the current technology instead about the product I was working on. I know not all European VCs have a similar mindset, but the general importance order for an European VC is: intellectual property protection, amount of money required to release, high market barriers looking for no short-term competition and, lastly, shipping time. An American investor doesn't care too much about competition, as long as the company provides a far better service (with a clear real advantage) this is not an issue, IP is important, but only if the product gains traction and goes mainstream (so it means $ that mean patents), the amount of money as well is not an issue, with so many VCs you can manage to get all necessary fundings if the product is valid, so what really matter is entering in the market as soon as possible with something that is good enough. These are just few examples I faced, but there are many other differences...
- RyJones 12y agoEvery area in the US that isn't the Valley tries to claim it has, or is working on, an equivalent. They are mostly where you are in terms of replicating the valley.
- bontoJR 12y agoI always say, if you want to replicate the Valley you need to steal Valley's investors, but I don't see any valid reason for them to leave... :)
- bayesianhorse 12y agoNo, it's not. For one thing, even at this pace Bulgaria's IT industry will take years or decades to come to close to even certain other cities in Europe. Secondly, Bulgaria has a well deserved reputation in Europe of being plagued by corruption.
- bluetomcat 12y agoIn recent years, Sofia is booming with large multinational companies, exploiting the relatively cheap labour there. There is a disproportionate amount of young people attracted to these jobs, because they are still paid a lot better than anything else.
- liviu 12y agoSame thing in Romania. Everywhere in Bucharest or large cities are multinational companies attracted by relatively low wages and qualified workforce.
- bayesianhorse 12y agoWhich doesn't disprove my point that the size of Bulgaria's industry will take a long time to reach that of other places. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to belittle the country's achievements. It's just that labels like "next silicon valley" should not be judged by "growth" alone. And same thing for wealth and living standards: Growth is essential to get to the top, but it's not equivalent to being on the top.
- EastSmith 12y agoAbout your second point, yes, there is corruption, and yes, corruption is bad. But the problems are generally in public sectors and EU funds (big corruption generator!). I doubt if you invest in IT or hire in IT you will have any problems.
- lispm 12y agoDon't forget the large amount of state aid flowing into Silicon Valley due to the massive US defense budget. Bulgaria does not have trillion dollar jet fighter projects, surveillance satellites, large-scale graph databases for NSA/CIA/Homeland Security, various nuclear weapons systems, ... - all which demand many many billions for innovations in software and systems every year.. History lesson: http://steveblank.com/secret-history/ http://steveblank.com/secret-history/
- otar 12y agoI just wonder when people will stop searching, creating, copying Silicon Valley.
- itamarwe 12y ago#questionsthattheanswertothemisno
- tdsamardzhiev 12y agoI'm happy somebody sees my country in a good light, but in all honesty, many things are lacking for Bulgaria to become a "silicon valley"
- venomsnake 12y agoIt is not. Salaries for programmers are pathetically low here - you can barely make more than 3K euro/month. The talent pool is small. And there is barely anything interesting going on in the way of startups tackling interesting problems.
- bluetomcat 12y agoSuch figures are probably made by the top 5% programmers there, probably with some managerial responsibilities. The average programmer salary is around 1400 euro/month and this is what drives foreign multinational companies in flocks. Yet, the "cheap" talent pool has dried and the only way to hire decent employees is to steal them from other companies by luring them with more money.
- SSLy 12y agoWell, things looks the same in Poland, maybe salary being closer to ~2k±20%.
- EastSmith 12y agoIf you are considering Bulgaria, you should know it has flat corporate income tax of 10% (lowest in EU).
- draugadrotten 12y agoOn the other hand, Bulgarian corruption is at a 15-year high. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bulgaria/11290458/Bulgarian-corruption-at-15-year-high.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bulgaria/11...
- toadi 12y agoI'm a Belgian guy who moved to Bulgaria for this ;)
- solve 12y agoBut VAT makes it worse than the US for tech startups in practice.
- EastSmith 12y agoAs I said in another thread - yes, there is corruption. But it is mainly in government spending, EU funds, big corporations. If you hire someone in IT, or work in IT I doubt you will face corruption yourself. Also, there are currently very real Parliament efforts for constitutional changes aiming at fixing this.
- redsymbol 12y agoWhat fascinating timing. I'm a software engineer who has lived in San Francisco for 15 years, most of that time working at different tech-heavy startups, and starting my own twice. I've been in Europe for the past week, flying tomorrow to Sofia, BG for five days. If anyone in Sofia is reading this and would like to meet for coffee, etc., contact me at amax at redsymbol dot net. I am not an investor and don't fully understand how startup financing works even in SV, and certainly not anywhere in Europe. However, it seems to me that if you're an angel or VC, there is a remarkable opportunity in places like Bulgaria. Potentially a great deal of investment demand (i.e. entrepreneurial tech talent), compared to investment supply. Lots of new challenges, I'm sure, but competing with other investors apparently isn't one of them. (Hmmm... if you're an SV [EDIT: American] angel/VC and are thinking the same, email me as well. In the event I meet some promising BG entrepreneurs in the next week, it's possible I might be able to make some meaningful introductions.)
- atmosx 12y agoI might manage to go at WebIT Bulgaria[1] the 22nd for a couple of hours. Send me an email, we might catch up. [1] http://www.webit.bg http://www.webit.bg
- solve 12y agoNice snapshot of the conventional Bulgarian mindset - that the government is at the root of, and the solution to all problems. The top real problems are obvious: 1) No angel investors. Particularly, no angel investors who got rich doing startups. 2) Immense business cultural differences from what startups need: http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html There are other cities around the world that are full of tech talent. That's not special. In fact, it makes it worse for finding cofounders or employees -- because the vast majority of tech workers you'll meet got into it for the money as a basic PHP coder. This makes it harder to find the tiny fraction of the population that has the right mindset to work extremely hard and lower your quality of life to endure the extreme hardships of startups.
- andrey-p 12y agoThat's not something I expected to see on the HN front page today. I'm a Bulgarian ex-pat living in the UK (moved away not because of the corruption - though that's a problem too - but because of poor culture fit). From personal experience, pretty much everyone I know who's got a good job in Bulgaria is working for a foreign IT company. I was also surprised to see Sofia at the top of the best European cities to be a digital nomad in. True enough. It's got a few pretty good coworking spaces and, coming from the West, everything is pretty damn cheap.