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

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/04/24/building-a-startup-in-a-developing-country-the-pitfalls-and-opportunities/1/

by twidlit • 15 years ago

47 21 15 years ago

thenextweb.com

zengr• 15 years ago

Is it only me or calling it a 3rd world country really sounds humiliating?

rlander• 15 years ago

It makes me cringe to see the original title changed from "developing" to "third world" country.

The term was originally used to either distinguish countries non-aligned with either capitalism or communism during the cold war but has since gained an economic connotation and become synonymous with "poor".

The Philippines is a capitalist country and consequently doesn't fit the first definition; it most definitely is not poor, so it also doesn't fit the last.

twidlit2• 15 years ago

Wasn't aware of the connotation and have used both interchangeably.

mbenjaminsmith3• 15 years ago

I think it shows a profound ignorance of how the world works. I hear it all the time living in Thailand.

To put that in perspective, Thailand ranks 23rd by GDP, has a literacy rate in the high 90s and has an unemployment rate of around 1%.

The average professional does make around half of what they would in the US, but their taxes are lower and their cost of living is also half or less. The health care cost/quality ratio makes many countries look barbaric.

I think "third world" could be safely replaced with "economy I know nothing about" in the majority of cases.

twidlit2• 15 years ago

So 'developing country' would be the correct one for Thailand then?

jbellis• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... puts Thailand in the 80s in GDP per capita. The Philippines is 125, 113, or 132 depending on the list. All three lists agree that Thailand has less than 1/4 of US GDP, and the Philippines has less half of Thailand's, putting it on the edge of the bottom quartile.

So jumping down someone's throat for calling the RP a poor country looks a little premature to me. (I lived there for two years and my gut feeling doesn't disagree with that, although if you've only been to Makati I can see how you might not realize that.)

That said, to me "3rd-world" has pejorative connotations regardless of income levels, and I also wish the submitter had left the title alone.

kloncks• 15 years ago

Relevant TED Talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_shows_the_bes...

ggeorgovassilis2• 15 years ago

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.

namank2• 15 years ago

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...

ggeorgovassilis2• 15 years ago

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.

wyclif• 15 years ago

I was a bit disappointed that infrastructure issues were only touched on in the briefest way, and then not by the writer but by the interviewed Filipino entrepreneur.

That's a shame, because after investment capital the biggest problem in the Philippines is lack of infrastructure. Government corruption is extreme. Even in the better-off cities there it can be tough to get any work done because of the constant brownouts, and high-speed fiber buildout is lacking.

jhuckestein• 15 years ago

"We’ve heard of tons of successful startups from countries like US and Europe" ... :(

grigy• 15 years ago

Almost the same story here in Armenia.

pilib• 15 years ago

Did anyone read cost-effective manpower as cheap? :(

I'm from Serbia, and still living here. The local market is small and extremely undeveloped. Telecommunication infrastructure is sub-standard, no non-ISP/corporate data centers and no multiple backbone links. While the cloud/grid hosting solves that particular problem, there are others.

Running a company here costs you around 300€/month, whether you have profit or not. That doesn't include office space or bills, taxes only. Note that it is the average net monthly salary, but you can't live of it really.

Corruption. Shitty infrastructure. No Paypal and no widely available (and inexpensive) card-processing options. I'm not sure about getting a proper, signed SSL certificate either.

All of the above can be circumvented, yes. The problem is that when you are so far behind everyone else society wise, ideas and visions that are popping in your head are being sold as a commodity in the rest of the world, and even if you have a nice, modern, innovative idea, unless you are wealthy, you wont be able to implement it because of so many bureaucratic obstacles.

So, what do we have here? A bunch of IT service and programming sweatshops, outsourced of course. Because of relatively cheap labor.

It is my opinion that having an inspiring and motivating, if not competing environment helps innovation.

thebigj• 15 years ago

a little bit of a side track, does anyone have opinions on the emphasis of pretty/slick/minimalistic UI/UX on apps in developing nations. It maybe due to my ignorance, but there doesn't seem to be much emphasis/value placed by stakeholders on that front, the focus particularly in asia seems to be on content rich rather than UX rich.

known• 15 years ago

http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/

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

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