Hi Sten and MIU guys,
I recently decided to try and launch a startup. I discussed about the idea
with some friends and all of them said go for it, but neither offered to
help. Well i hope you get a brief idea about launching a startup here in
Mauritius everyone says it's good but no one want to take any risk.
Well i was alone, thought a lot about everyday and finally decided to go
for it now instead of waiting and getting more responsibilities (family
stuff, marriage, children and stuff). Didn't take long to resign from my
job started doing everythign to make it possible. I already did all of the
registration stuff and now working and hoping to see light this coming
year.
I did meet a guy who shared the idea and decided to start on something very
small to see whether he was worth it, but i think he got lost in some
blackhole. Haven't heard from him again.
But personally, i can say that there are a lot of constraints to a fast and
successful startup here in mauritius. It's hard to get help, specially
financial. I am working on 2 and soon 3 projects, all incomplete, and I
still have no investor. There is probably smeda which would fund me but i
guess for this to happen i'd have to already have my application/website up
and ready for business, right?
But for the time being i'm doing everything with the little finance i have.
Well that's the risk i accepted to take.
Other constraints that i have encountered are:
- I worked with a lot of api including Paypal, Amazon, Google, Facebook
and Youtube, but what is the point if paypal and amazon would be useless
here in Mauritius? Even though paypal allows Mauritian accounts to receive
funds, who would use it in Mauritius to buy local products? Amazon does not
ship to Mauritius and to become an ebay affiliate you need a very high
traffic website which i don't have yet.
- I work on web applications using frameworks and not CMS** (not
creating website for others, but creating application that can be used by
others), and since i am alone, i need to work on backend, frontend, manage
servers and system admin. Well that takes a lot of time to deliver.
- When you are in the startup atmosphere, you ask yourself a lot of
time, "Will it work?", "Will people use my services?" and other stuff which
can sometimes make you want to give up.
Instead of waiting for startups to emerge, ask yourself if you would like
to take the risk and start a startup yourself, then you might get your
answer whether there is hope in Mauritius. I accepted the challenge, do
you?
I can accept failure but I cannot accept not trying. ;)
Well, i'm open to discuss about startups and i don't mind a meetup on
Monday, Jan 4th. Maybe i could use some ideas as i am new.
**Personally i think CMS lack so much features that at one point you will
have to break your architecture and rebuild it. CSM should be used for
small websites such as restaurants and not for large projects.
Regards
Yuv
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 4:58 PM, S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com> wrote:
> Hi Sten, Rajnish, Ish, Vincent, Suyash,
> At 02:26 28-12-2015, Sten Tamkivi wrote:
>
>> Thanks you so much for reaching back out to my twitter inquiries, S!
>>
>
> Sten, I hope that your family and you are visiting the beaches and
> enjoying the vacation. :-)
>
> I am copying this message to the Chief Technical Officer of the Ministry
> of Technology, Communication and Innovation. I'll comment below.
>
> As a quick way of introduction, I'm a co-founder and CEO of <
>> https://teleport.org>Teleport, a startup where we build software for
>> people to move to their best place to live and work.
>> In my past 15 years as a software entrepreneur, I have also served for 8
>> years as an early executive at Skype, entrepreneur in residence at
>> Andreessen Horowitz, advisor to President Ilves of Estonia on the topics of
>> innovation and entrepreneurship, etc.
>>
>
> I work as a consultant for Eland Systems. I am a subject-matter expert
> for email, web and a few other internet-related technologies. I also do
> research related to security and privacy.
>
> When I travel to new places, I always try to get somehow in touch with the
>> local startup scene. As it happens I am in Mauritius now, on holidays with
>> my family. As this trip was quite rapidly planned and I understand it is
>> the middle of the summer, I don't have too high hopes, but nevertheless —
>> if anyone knows oof any upcoming tech gatherings or would like to set up a
>> meetup with even a few of the local budding entrepreneurs/angels, let me
>> know. If lack of inspiration and network are the local issues, very happy
>> to talk about those. Estonia is the size of Mauritus by population, and we
>> had virtually no startup scene until about 10 years ago - and it is now
>> bustling with 400 companies. So cool things can happen in small, faraway
>> places.
>>
>> I'm around until Jan 5th.
>>
>
> People are enjoying the end of the year season. It is going to be
> difficult to organise something before the 5th January 2016. I like what
> you wrote about cool things can happen in small, faraway places. Would you
> be interested in sharing your experience of the startup scene in Estonia in
> a panel discussion? The Ministry of Technology, Communication and
> Innovation could send an official to represent it on the panel if the
> Ministry is interested in fostering entrepreneurship or innovation. There
> would have to be some local persons interested in startups. I can ask the
> local press whether it would be interested in hosting the event. I am not
> sure whether there will be sufficient time to reach out to local angels.
>
> Is the above worth a try?
>
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
>
>
>
Received on Mon Dec 28 2015 - 14:50:18 PST