Why start a business and what is the motivation of the entrepreneur? What is the best idea and how to know if it has a potential? For and against a partnership and how to choose a partner?
These questions were discussed this Saturday with students from Master’s program of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Finance on the open-door lecture, led by Lubomir Lekov collaboratively with The Business Institute and HSIF.
The conference was organized as a continuation of the competition “Lekov’s Scholarship Students”, in which five students were given scholarships for tuition in magistracy, as well as engagement from Lekov for mentor support during the whole program.
The most discussed question was how to start a business and what motivates the entrepreneur.
“Nowadays people, who hate their jobs, become more and more”, this is the opinion of Mr. Lekov , which is also one of the main causes for starting an own business, as well as the existence of a problem, for which the future entrepreneur cannot find a solution and he needs to figure it out all by himself.
“The two most important rules for a successful start and development of a business are the love for your idea and the vision which brings a solution to a specific common problem”, he declares.
Of course, being an entrepreneurship is much harder than being an employee, but the satisfaction is bigger. He shared his own experiences by starting the internet media company INVESTOR.BG during times, when there was not a Bulgarian website, offering current and exact financial information.
According to Mr. Lekov, some of the hardest days in his life are during the weekends and holidays – many problems with the web sites may occur and cyber-attacks are possible, and although the employees and teams might be on a holiday, their involvement is needed to solve the problem quickly.
“The attitude and the feedback from the clients was what kept me going at the beginning of my business”, Lekov shared and did not forget to mark how important the support from our closest friends and relatives was.” My friends said they would help me, because they also see the existing problem and they believe my idea will find the solution for it.”
Another topic, which students were interested in, was at what stage is the start up culture in Bulgaria. According to Lubomir Lekov, we are far behind comparing to the USA, where the entrepreneurship is more different than the one in Europe.
“Many Bulgarian entrepreneurs think, that the most important is to have a good looking ideas and to strive for a better pitch. This way they transform themselves into professional presentations. The idea of the startup business in Bulgaria was a little late, barely beginning in 2009, not mentioning the fact that we are geographically very isolated. The Slovenians, the Czech and the Polish for example travel more than we do and in an easier way and there is no problem for them to hop to a neighboring country.
“In general the idea for a start up business in Europe is very crooked – more money are spent knowing that they will be lost”, states Mr. Lekov and says that maybe only in Scandinavian countries there are positive start up examples, the bankruptcy of the former giant Nokia let to the incredible development of Finland.
“After the appearance of IPhone thousands of talented people suddenly lost their jobs, and the company was destroyed by Apple within 2 years due to of the lack of adequacy in the corporate management of Nokia”, explains Lekov.
According to him, in comparison with the European angle investors, the American ones are some kind of producers in the start-up businesses, and the people, who came up with the idea, are the performers.
“The investors are those, who help you find the way to execute the idea and work along with you”, he says and advises the future entrepreneurs to start looking for contacts outside Bulgaria immediately after they decide to do their own business.
But what should be done if our idea requires really big resources, some of the students asked, and the answer of the founder of one of the biggest online media companies in Bulgaria was – The way an elephant is being eaten – Piece by piece:
“If the idea is good, money can always be found. The problem is not the lack of money, if you really want to do what you are speaking of. Because if your only goal is to receive more and more funds, that automatically puts you in a trap.”
According to his words, no matter how big is the idea, it can be divided in stages and steps, so we can always find time and place for the development. It should be done so when it comes to looking for money for the execution of the total idea – things are done step by step, and if partners and investors are pleased and their stake going up, they will be willing to give more and more”, thinks Lekov.
Among the problems of the Bulgarian entrepreneurs he sees their uncertainty to think about slaes in the neighboring countries, as well as the fact the brand of “Bulgaria” is not well accrepted everywhere.
“Of course, being on foreign markets is much more difficult and besides believing in yourself, expanding to abroad demands more investments. The only extremely successful Bulgarian entrepreneurs are the people, who created the company Telerik, sold for 262 mln USD some months ago. The surprising fact is that such big news got almost no attention of the Bulgarians“, says Lubomir Lekov.
His recommendations to the future entrepreneurs are to believe their ideas and to try to execute them, trying to distinguish themselves from the Bulgarian habits and environment.
“For example, join the AngelList”, he advices and added that nowadays the crowd funding initiations are very successful. “If people like your idea, that means you have reached your goal at some point, and your idea is international”, he explains.
The meetings of Mr. Lekov with the Master’s program of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Finance students will continue till the end of the program, so many interesting discussion are about to come.