HomeKnow-HowGeeks, wanted (alive, please)!

Geeks, wanted (alive, please)!

So Summer has suddenly arrived, and some of us are enjoying a well-deserved couple of weeks of holiday time. Relaxing by the pool, the chances are you’ll be using some kind of gadget, like your new iPad or Lumia, either for fun or keep in touch. While you’re at that, remember the geeks that made it possible.

I was at a conference last week and there was this discussion about the Porto tech scene. So I took this comparison out of the hat once more: Porto University is the biggest in Portugal, the size of Harvard in terms of its number of students. About 50km north west, there’s Braga with its University of Minho, the size of Stanford. About 75km south there’s Aveiro, with its university the size of the Imperial College of London. And about 100km south there’s Coimbra, the size of the MIT. This usually comes as a surprise, but did I mention each one is even bigger that its counterpart?

I guess this is the same scenario as in many European cities. American culture abounds and we tend to forget our own backyard. Over the Atlantic there’s a shortage of ‘geeks’ (read: programmers), we already knew that, but now we hear the same is happening in some places in Europe. Have you ever considered that your startup’s amazing product and it 100 million funding could be held back because of a manpower shortage? There’s a real chance that will happen.

I had some thoughts about this and come up with three pieces of advice. We’re often born or have grown up somewhere that we love to be. So why not start your company in your home garage, your school dorm or your day job’s office?

There will be a point in time where your need to grow will make you move to the next level. Either in your country’s capital, or a city like London or San Francisco, you might think of opening a new office, even your main office, but I guess all of the people back where you started are not eager to join. So why not keep your hometown office?

And there will be a moment your product is global and location doesn’t matter anymore. By then you might look for the perfect place to have just another basecamp and fill it with all the ‘geeks’ you need. So why not start with that from the beginning?

If you are still reading, you might have noticed I’m writing in English. The language variety is said to be a limitation in Europe. This is true for doing business, but not relevant for the organizations themselves. There’s plenty of English speaking and international flights around here, and on top of that, most of us even speak a couple more languages, for the fun of it!

By the way, since another school year is ending, there will be a few hundred new hires available in the next couple of months in Porto, where I’m writing. They speak Portuguese (mostly everyone) and English (almost everyone) and earn less than €20,000 per year as a base salary. You can come and meet some of them here and here. Let me know about your hometown in the comments.

By the way: If you’d like to stay up-to-date regarding startup news and interesting opportunities, make sure to subscribe to our free weekly EU-Startups Newsletter.

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Reinaldo Ferreira
Reinaldo Ferreira
Reinaldo Ferreira is a serial entrepreneur and investor in technology companies. He lives in Porto and writes mostly about Portuguese startups and technology topics.
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1 COMMENT

  1. Great points, Reinaldo. There are so many talented geeks here in Europe. Startups should go where the geeks are. Be it Porto or eastern European cities like Warsaw (where I come from). Don’t follow the money. Follow the geeks! 🙂

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