One of the things i dislike the most about the Romanian Tech Scene is the lack of real talk and real results.
We have a dysfunctional domain management system, to begin with, and nobody talks about it because nobody wants to upset the powers that be. We also have a lot of programmers who don’t really know if they are juniors or seniors, but all of them confuse working years with working experience.
This is just the foundation. What’s on top is The Mutual Appreciation Society, formed by a network of people and startups that pat each other on the back and do nothing. A new restaurant? Best restaurant ever! A new app? Best app ever! A new metal band? Best band ever! This group has no results, they just move from job to job and hope this mutual pat on the back will pay off in the end.
Let’s take Intersect, for example. An app copied after Happn, with a said valuation of 4 million dollars. Two months after the launch and a lot of praise, the app has 50.000 installs. Two years ago, when they first launched, they were called Wabbit and the results were the same: a lot of press from The Mutual Appreciation Society, no results. And nobody speaks the truth. Nobody says: “dude, let it go, you tried, an app/game/idea with same features has already X million app downloads”.
Thing is, the people who could and are in a position to help don’t do it because they are disgusted by this ass-kissery and circle jerk and cannot help nor condone a group where every little thing is the greatest. They have better things to do. Plus, the guys entering this circlejerk don’t feel like leaving it for the real world, where compliments are few and critics are harsh.
So, yeah.
Some updates for some readers:
- you dont’t have to be an entrepreneur to judge a business, you just have to be a user. if you are a little tech-savy and have read some books and articles about trends, even better. so “he’s not a creator/entrepreneur, he does not know stuff” does not qualify as opinions.
- “intersect” is a good example of what i am talking about because, despite a lot of friendly press and tv appearances, i could not find anybody using it in Bucharest in 3 days in a lot of crowded places. so why the praise? why the love? who is using this app? why nobody talks about the poor design and integration?
- this post is not about being pessimistic about the tech scene or tech startups. it’s about the fakers, The Mutual Appreciation Society embodied in the hubs and meets and conferences where everybody is happy about everything and little gets done. mentoring with dragoș roua? really? what is he gonna teach you? how to…nothing. he ran some businesses and sold them before they went bankrupt, cause he lacked vision to make them great and common sense to hire somebody to make them great.
- we have a lot of businesses making money by creating cheaper versions of popular software. the software is legit, has lots of clients, but its still a ripoff of established and popular ones.
- if you asked me for press on my romanian blog and now u badmouth me, u are a great person with moral standards 🙂
What i ask my friends is to tell me the truth. Tell me the bugs. Tell me about the bad design, the bad haircut, the bad pants. Don’t tell me the good parts. OK, tell me those, but at the end, let me write down what you don’t like. The Mutual Appreciation Society does not do this, they live in a parallel world, where all these great ideas and apps are held back by aliens.
Petcu,
I understand what you are trying say, however, you say it without fact or substance. Can you please outline your experience as an entrepreneur? How do you want a Tech Scene to flourish if without people trying? If people give up easily at the first sign of what you call “failure”, there will be no “Tech Scene”. You are making the mistake of thinking that success happens in one day and further erroneously believe that a team failing at developing and executing a start-up into a business is failure all around. But this is because you have no experience as an entrepreneur. You have no idea what it means to build a business or run a company. Otherwise you wouldn’t write such a infantile article. In conclusion, your opinion is worthless and you’re just a lonely fool looking for attention by writing cretin opinionated articles without basis or substance. Do us all a favor and fuck-off.
All the best to you,
Nicolas.
“One of the things i dislike the most about the Romanian Tech Scene is the lack of real talk and real results.”
You are talking about real talk and real results but you are describing an entire scene by one example? Also, note that 1 405 are the reviews for the app, the installs are between 50k and 100k.
I am not trying to defend this app or say it is better, I am just saying that you described your opinion with very few data and a little wrong too.
my bad, i wrote the article early this morning.
the example is good for how this circlejerk works: a lot of patting on the back and little results.
i am a blogger/journalist, not an antrepreneur. i was one in 2000, i had ~10 employees and the company ran fine. does this make me an expert in entrepreneurship? no. but i can think for myself and call out a bad product when i see one.
of course.
Might want to learn proper spelling and grammar before cursing first. Blogger or not, spelling and grammar prevail.
I could name quite a few IT (product, not outsourcing) companies who, I know for a fact, are doing just fine. They’re not usually (or at all) in the press because they’re doing their job, serving their customers, improving the product/marketing and don’t have the time or need to enter the circle of mutual jerkoff.
None of them really care about the dysfunctional domain management system or the law or taxes or corruption. Yes, they bite the bullet, but caring for that shit doesn’t take you from 0 to 1000 customers. That’s their real pain.
Have you ever heard of a company who’s success was related in any way to the annual recurring fee for a domain? That shit don’t matter! That’s the reason! It’s not the “powers that be”.
we all know those kind of companies. but those are not the only ones.
No offense, but you don’t have really anything to do with the “tech” scene, so just back off. I suggest returning to your old brand, zoso, and keep it that way. You’re better at those things, seriously. You’ll even get more affiliate sales. Don’t go nay-saying (tech) startups when you’ve never had any contact with that world. You’ll get more clicks if you write a new article about Ponta or other pamphlets.
Best of luck (to Laur and the team behind Intersect, of course)
P.S.: Before Facebook there was mySpace. There was also friendster, and hi5 more popular among romanians. Go say that to Zuckerberg.
P.P.S.: Have you ever heard of the words “Fake it till you make it” ? – it’s the basis of (tech) entrepreneurs, be they good at it or just wannabe, they’ll succeed eventually – and you’ll keep writing about them (sîc).
how about realising that advice needs a name and a valid email? otherwise its stupid.
Stop blogging in English, it’s pretty bad. Maybe if you wrote in your native language, it would’ve been easier for you to actually build an argument and say something meaningful. (between us, I’m skeptical, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.)
i need practice. i am better at speaking than writing in english 🙁
Have the worms come out of the woodwork to defend that jerk off application called intersect? Funny
If you look really carefully, you’ll start to see that the whole tech scene with all of its hubs, pre-accelerators, meet-ups and such is basically mirroring the “personal improvement” scene: some dudes are trying to live off of people crazy or stupid enough to believe that going to a meet-up about product design with some no-names will actually benefit whatever product idea they might have in some tangible way.
The biggest winners here are the guys collecting rent and ticket fees for these circle jerks. Tech hub comes to mind.
words of wisdom
Keep writing in English you will improve it. I’ll suggest using Ginger or Grammarly.
Let’s take a look at Samwer brother and their model of the business of cloning business but at least, they have money to start it and grow it very fast.