UPDATED 13:23 EDT / MAY 31 2013

NEWS

In Europe: If Your IT Startup Fails, You’re Done | #fluentconf

Ozana Giusca, Founder and Director of Romanian startup Tooliers.com, discussed her company’s offering and the differences between the European and the US IT&C market with theCube co-hosts John Furrier and Jeff Frick at the O’Reilly Fluent Conference 2013.

Giusca stated that there are many skilled developers in Europe, especially in Romania, as there are many great technical schools, but they lack management skills, and this is the issue Tooliers.com addresses. Tooliers products are actually self-diagnosis tests that evaluate the personality of the business, not the individual. Their product looks at 16 different dimensions of the analyzed businesses, starting at strategy and going towards innovation and the assessment of different leaders, to determine the parts that are lacking and could be further developped.

“Each business is developed in some areas more than in ohters,” she explained, based on each entrepreneur’s personal experience and skill set. Once the problematic areas are discovered, a company can either develop them on its own or address Tooliers to develop a plan for the area in question. Ideally, Tooliers.com diagnosis tools would be used every six months to determine which aspects of the business need further improvement.

“There is a lot of entrepreneurship in Europe,” Giusca stated, and Governments are offering grants to support startups, but there’s a difference in scale in terms of how success is measured.

Supporting European innovation

 

John Furrier said that when he considered Europe, London and Amsterdam are the hot spots for IT development. Giusca agreed that East London is currently quickly developing, as the government has invested into developing a big part of the area into a business park for IT startups, along with offering grants. “I would add Luxembourg,” she added, as local authorities are offering grants to innovative projects and R&D initiatives.  

Asked which is Europe’s version of Google or Apple, Giusca said there really wasn’t one, apart from Skype, which “is something everyone uses because it’s free and [has] good service,” as the same companies are present on the European market.

Talking about what’s lacking in the entrepreneurs’ mindset, she stated that “if you fail in Europe, you’re done.” European entrepreneurs don take failure as a lesson and try again. Where the venture capital market of the Old Continent is concerned, Giusca said that it “started to emerge and develop into organized platforms and associations with angels that funnel investments”, but the amounts invested are lower. It’s more difficult to raise funds in Europe than in the US. 

As far as her goal in visiting US and attending the Fluent conference, Giusca said: “I am here to understand how this environment works, to compare and see the similarities and differences” between the US and Europe. “My goal is to go back to Europe with a different vision.”


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