Day by day I experience the struggles of running a business myself, so it's good to see how other businesses come into being out of nothing, and what can lead to failure.
Judging by the crowd and the many young participants, I can also see that despite the crises, enthusiasm is not fading — there are always people who believe in success and are willing to sacrifice for it.
Jared Schrieber, a startup mentor and investor living in Hungary, compared, in his opening talk, the situation of Silicon Valley and our small country from the perspective of startup businesses.
Both regions have a population of around 10 million, but that is roughly where the similarities end.
While in Silicon Valley starting a business costs just $500, employees generally receive a stake or options right from the start, companies can access capital in many different ways, and the legal environment provides significant guarantees to investors, in our small country we hope for state assistance instead, and we don't give our colleagues a stake in achieving the shared goal.
There is good news too, however. In Eastern Europe, companies and people in general are much more used to crisis situations. They are much more willing to fight, so in a better environment their chances would be (are) better.
One panel discussion also touched on the media's role in the startup world, or rather on the mistaken image that has formed around startups. Many people hold the belief that young programmers, nibbling on free food between two table-football matches, suddenly sell the company for millions of dollars. Yet in reality, it is through blood, sweat and tears that the lucky few who manage to build a working company reach a successful exit.
Agnes Golya, a journalist at Forbes, said that for the sake of nuance and lessons learned, they would happily report on the road to failure as well, but they can't really find an entrepreneur willing to put their name and face to telling the story of what went wrong.
Well yes, I wouldn't exactly air my own failures either.
