Key talking points

1. On the awareness and adoption rate of cloud apps in Romania and the region.

2. The impact of cloud based apps on consumption models. 3. Benefits of cloud based apps and opportunities for startups.4. Bug fixing and feedback cycle for cloud based apps. 5. Building cloud based apps for small and medium businesses. 6. Challenges in building cloud apps and security concerns. 7. Building trust in a startup and using cloud based infrastructure for

building confidence in your product. 8. Key aspects to keep in mind for a startups when building a cloud

based product. 9. Examples to analyze and use as best practice models. 10.Cloud based apps as a cost-cutting tool?

TechHub Meetup InsightsOn the awareness and adoption rate of cloud apps

in Romania and the region.

Radu Hasan: More SMBs (small and medium businesses) are aware of the existence of cloud, but not of the amazing benefits of cloud. We are a few years behind the Western markets and we need to put our efforts together and educate them. Here’s an important statistics: 47% of Romanian SMBs do not use any software solutions.

Dragos Ilinca: It’s very difficult to get Romanian SMBs to switch to new software.

Olaf Lausen: Romania is good in growth, but unfortunately not so good in the base. There’s a huge difference in comparison with the Western countries. Maybe it’s also the idea that you have to make customers pay for something and not only once.

TechHub Meetup InsightsThe impact of cloud based apps on consumption models.

Olaf Lausen: From our perspective as company it’s a little bit too early to speak about dramatic experiences. In other countries the adoption rate is higher, people try and scale and they understand the benefits of scalability.

Dragos Ilinca: We were in a different spot, because our software does not actually replace anything existing. When we started to sell to brands, Western European brands were comfortable to pay monthly, whereas Eastern clients preferred to pay bi-anually or annually.

Radu Hasan: It’s quite a challenge to move customers from desktop solutions to cloud services and we hope that 20% of our clients will move to cloud in the coming years.

TechHub Meetup InsightsBenefits of cloud based apps and opportunities for startups.

Radu Hasan: mobility, flexibility, they have access to their data anytime anywhere where they have an internet connection. Scalability, users can be added very easy.

Dragoş Ilinca: when you sell software that you update all the time it’s ok for the customers because they don’t have to pay for new releases.

Olaf Lausen: If you can, just do it in the cloud and don’t bother with the desktop.

TechHub Meetup InsightsBug fixing and feedback cycle for cloud based apps.

Radu Hasan: SMBs in Romania do not have too much money to spend. You need to put a lot of money into customer acquisition and the customer lifetime value isn’t that great. It’s not the same as when you target enterprise or consumers, but it still pays off in the long run. On security breaches:Radu Hasan: Enterprises are more worried about security than SMBs.

TechHub Meetup InsightsBuilding trust in cloud based apps for small and medium businesses.

Radu Hasan: It’s difficult to build cloud apps for SMBs. You need a good reputation, to build the brand, brand awareness, your website, advisors. It’s not easy.

Dragos Ilinca: In our case people didn’t care that much about this aspect. We tried to look bigger than we were – we offered the product for free for 6 months for our customers to try it and understand what the benefits of our product are.

Olaf Lausen: From our perspective, I see us as a marketplace kind of player. Audit is important for us, we have the brand so our customers trust us anyhow. App developers should work with marketplaces. The fear of security about the data is not completely rational. You can loose all the locally stored data when your hardware breaks. Probably it’s the same with all of us that are partly irrational – it’s a totally different fear from market to market.

TechHub Meetup InsightsKey aspects to keep in mind for a startups

when building a cloud based product.

Radu Hasan: Start cloud, don’t do desktop first! This was a major setback for us. Also think about the connectivity – we’ve basically built an API, it’s a good tip that could be useful. We’ve done some scalability testing but this is not a problem for a new startup. Build a great product and a great UX, go lean and one step at a time. Don’t build a massive product and assume that everybody is going to buy it because they won’t.

Dragos Ilinca: It’s way easier to launch stuff and for people to try it out. When you’re in the market you think: oh, we’re better than those guys but people don’t have time to try 30 different solutions. Marketing and branding are very important. Once a user tries it out, the switching experience is going to be harder. If users find your product good enough, they’ll just keep using it.

Olaf Lausen: If I would be a developer I would consider a freemium model to get people testing your product.

TechHub Meetup InsightsExamples to analyze and use as best practice models.

Olaf Lausen: I use Microsoft, Skydrive (tablet, phone, everything is Microsoft), and when they’re integrated, they’re amazing. In the business sector, it’s a little bit more difficult for Enterprise. We [Romtelecom & COSMOTE] have some cloud based solutions as well.

Dragos Ilinca: Everything that I use is cloud. What I particularly like is the Dropbox model where you have to pay for it, and I actually pay for it. If you invited another friend and they’ve created an account they got 500MB each. At some point, before starting to pay, most of our team was using it and everybody was trying to invite the other people in order to obtain as much free space as possible.

Radu Hasan: I use Evernote a lot and for me it’s very important that they have a desktop application. I also use Dropbox, Google Drive and so on.

TechHub Meetup InsightsCloud based apps as a cost-cutting tool?

Radu Hasan: the fact that the entry barrier is much lower is a good thing for a startup because you have to pay monthly rather than pay it once in the beginning. You can see it as a cost-cutting tool also.

Dragos Ilinca: When you’re trying to raise money and you’re telling people that you have a server in your basement it’s not going to help you a lot. At first, it may be a cost-cutting solution, but later on it’s better to think about your own data centres and data services.

Olaf Lausen: Why should existing SMB customers switch to cloud? Because it’s cheaper and more flexible.

Business Wall of FameCosmin Ochisor, Business Development Manager at hub:raum Krakow [Linkedin] talked a bit about the Business Wall of Fame competition, organized by Romtelecom & COSMOTE: The SMBs segment is the most interesting one with lots of potential. When you’re talking about SMBs, they don’t have too much money, but they are numerous. We are speaking less about funding, but this competitions offers access to a huge database of customers. This is the beauty of this contest. Founding is nice, but at the end of the day you need customers.

Welcome to the very first Business Wall of Fame contest, where the entrepreneurs from 6 countries (Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Romania) are voting for the best apps that will make their business lives easier!Check the details and sign up your app at: https://www.wallofbusiness.com/ro/romania

See you at our next event! Bucharest.TechHub.com

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