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I delivered this overview of the Baltic and CEE startup climate at the TechCrunch Nordic meeting in Stockholm on May 27. Thanks to Vlastimil and Steve, who contributed their insights to my presentation.

Two key findings from the event:

Even Scandinavian startups struggle with breaking out to the world, having much better technical and production than sales and marketing talent there. The few that do, often have US people or previous experience from US as part of the team.
The Scandinavians still view CEE countries as something strange and distant, even when we do a lot of cross-border business together. What’s more, even Finland and Sweden are very distant from each other and there is almost no cooperation.

If someone would like to hear more about Baltic startup web and product development opportunities, feel free to get back to me. Besides our company there are tens of great software development companies, small and large, and hundreds of great private developers available.

Continue reading ‘The secrets of successful Baltic ICT startups’

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I was in Prague earlier this month conducting a partner search for a social networking company. While I cannot comment on the specifics of that business, I can pass on a few observations about the Central European Internet market.

The online populations of Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Austria are relatively small. They are linguistically and culturally isolated. Even the Austrians, who share a common language with Germany and part of Switzerland, prefer to use Austrian websites. This limits the scale of any online business that addresses a single Central European market.

However, it would be a mistake to conclude that there aren’t any decent opportunities in these markets.

Continue reading ‘Online opportunities in Central Europe’