Comments on: The Paradox of Portuguese Entrepreneurship

By: mvalente

mvalente — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:19:27 +0000

>”I just want to be happy”
>

Perfectly OK and legitimate. You dont want to have a chance at hitting it big, you want to have a small business and/or a lifestyle business. Great.

>”I dont have the other skills”
>

Been there. Went back to school and got a degree in Business Administration. Dont want to do that? Get a friend. Get
advice. Get a co-founder. Get an investor. Solved.

Or is it maybe that the problem might be of you having control issues? Of not wanting to provide schedules, plans, etc
and to have to share decisions, control and compensation? Think about it. Maybe you have been badly burned by some
corporate machine and now think that all businesses have to be like that.

— MV

By: Pedro Santos

Pedro Santos — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:55:09 +0000

There may be a few like me, that just don’t want to grow big. When I look at the future, I want to be happy doing what I like, and to have enough money to pay all the bills and have a good life. I don’t aspire to be rich, that’s not an objective. Of course I won’t run from it.

Last year I quit my job as a corporate whore, earning very good money, just to start doing what I love. As a software engineer, I have lots of ideas and I know I can implement them. But my past experience taught me that I don’t have the other skills required. Reading about creating a business is painful. Business plan? Making estimates of earnings and expenses on the next years? Yuck, not for me.

By: Tiago Matos

Tiago Matos — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:10:40 +0000

Olá,

Concordo com a maior parte do dito no post e nos comentários, no entanto acho que também devias explicar as condições oferecidas pela SeedCapital durante o KickStart.

Mencionas apenas o YCombinator, com uma rede de contactos e exposição enorme…
http://ycombinator.com/faq.html

By: Sérgio

Sérgio — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:28:53 +0000

I just want to add 2 factors that I think are important to understand why things happen like this in Portugal:

1 – Everyone buys a house (myself included) – When you’re paying the loan of a house, you are more chained to the status quo compared to if you were renting a house. It is a big commitment.

2 – our catholic heritage – this has a big influence on how we see the riches. Catholicism teaches you that you should keep modest. you should not think big.

By: John Doe

John Doe — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:41:31 +0000

You know Mario, I have some know how in the tech part, I also have some know how in the management part.
I don’t a concrete problem to solve.
What I do in my day-to-day is to solve problems that my customers give me to solve. The thing is: I work in consultancy for a big German company (you can guess the name, for sure)

I wanted to get clients with problems that would help finance the solution. Is so easy to sell my time to big customers but not software solutions, that was what I wanted.

Even for SME :)

I have a small team already ready including management team, dev team, but we just need the customers.

Problems is that we don’t know when to risk. The only thing we know is that we have to risk it before we turn 35. :-)

Good blog you have here. Hopefully I’ll have the chance to meet you in the future.

Kind regards from Switzerland,
John Doe

By: mvalente

mvalente — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 02:04:34 +0000

I’ll assume that John Doe is not your name and neither is your email :-) and so I’ll answer it here.

You dont have ideas: everyone can have ideas. Take a problem you have and solve it; take one of your hobbies a level higher; and other stuff like that….

But: the funny thing is that I mostly hear the other side: we have ideas and know tech but we dont know how to manage. I’m pretty sure that if you look around and make yourself visible, there will be small teams that would apreciate you giving a hand.

— MV

By: John

John — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:30:07 +0000

You know Mário, my problem is this: I came to work abroad, I worked and lived in several countries and I’m more or less well paid (if you compare it to Portugal, I’m rich, if you compare it to Switzerland, I’m poor).

I’ve put some money aside, in a couple of years.
Now I’ve got the money, quite a lot and I’m getting even more nowadays.

I want to have my own startup. I just don’t have the idea.
I’m now a Project Manager btw.

Kr
John Doe

By: Da Geração Rasca (e como sair dela) « O Centro Social

Da Geração Rasca (e como sair dela) « O Centro Social — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:28:00 +0000

[...] Claro que é preciso mais dinheiro para isso, até para investimento inicial. E olhem, até há quem vos queira dar dinheiro, mas aparentemente ninguém concorre. Preferem ir aos sábados chorar para a [...]

By: mvalente

mvalente — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:42:44 +0000

>I really don’t blame people for not being to ambitious with
>their business ideas. Here is a different view on the subject.
> The way I see it, its easier and safer to set up a small shop
>where you depend only on yourself than investing and betting
> the farm on a larger project.
>

Perfectly legitimate, and I agree with the rest of your comment.

But:

1) you dont bet big you dont win big

2) giving up on you or your country because of regulation, politics, legislation, etc is pretty lame. And it actually makes the game more fun :-)

— MV

By: mvalente

mvalente — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:40:19 +0000

>I just have to disagree on calling people who open small
>business like hairdressers, coffeehouses, clothing shops and
> so on entrepreneurs.
>

I totally agree. But we’d be discussing semantics :-)

— MV