What it's like to be a startup in a 3rd world country

Re:What it's like to be a startup in a 3rd world country by ggeorgovassilis on Monday April 25, 2011 @02:07AM (#2480596)

I'm the co-founder of a startup in Indonesia [EDIT] (http://bazarooma.com) and would like to share some of the experience. I've been to both Indonesia and the Philippines for business over the last three years and I observed that, compared to the pace in the west, development is significantly faster resulting in a quicker increase of quality of life. However my feeling is that Indonesia surpasses most of the neighbouring countries by far in both the quality and volume of its development, maybe excluding China.

On the plus side, we encountered an open market which makes placing new products and ideas easy. Internet users are reasonably experienced, our server logs show that Indonesian visitors use modern browsers and understand common UI concepts easily. It has a thriving tech and startup scene and is well-connected. Indonesia is the second biggest Facebook user and we found that you can indeed efficiently reach people over Facebook.

The cons we encountered so far are few, but they hurt. Throughout our communication with either individuals, the media or businesses we found a recurring pattern of either ignoring our communication attempts (mail, twitter, phonecalls, facebook) or deliberately misreading them regardless of them being on a business or personal level. As soon as we switched to personal contact (we visited them) the situation improved, leading me to believe that they have some catching up to do with modern media.

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Re:What it's like to be a startup in a 3rd world country by namank on Monday April 25, 2011 @02:36AM (#2480639)

Insightful, thanks.

Ok now this may come across as ignorant but is language ever the problem? Maybe your emails are in english and the subtext doesn't translate over to Indonesian via written forms easily?

Also, any comments and insights on the Indian startup scene? Bangalore has been making a lot of noise lately...

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Re:What it's like to be a startup in a 3rd world country by ggeorgovassilis on Monday April 25, 2011 @02:45AM (#2480652)

Hello namank,

We wanted to rule any language problems out from the beginning and have access to native Indonesian speakers for all of our communication.

As an anecdote I could mention that they are very mindful about where in Indonesia the addressee originates from, because social protocol advises towards custom addressing and language.

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Re:What it's like to be a startup in a 3rd world country by namank on Monday April 25, 2011 @02:58AM (#2480676)

Yes, thats exactly what I was wondering, thanks. So you must need to accommodate all the different regions.

Implementing localization within the country! Wow!

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