Software Business in the Middle East

Last week I got a phone call from on of our first customers. This guy was employed as Chief Pharmacist in a hospital where they use our program in the hospital pharmacy. He has showed great interest and support to our product from the day of purchase and he used to send us his comments and suggestions on new functionality and improvements of the existing ones.

Recently he left the hospital to join some of the pharmacy chains in Dubai. He called me to learn more about pricing, discounts for volume purchase and so on. As soon as he came to the new place, he started to convince his management to purchase our program to use it in their pharmacies and drug stores.

I actually never thought about this channel of getting new customers as people leaving for a new job. If they like your product, and they move to another place, they might brings you new sales, so that you keep their ex-employer as a customer and you get their new employer as a customer too.

This way of sales does not cost you any effort. As long as you have a product that people like, and you provide good support for your customers, one day you would start getting sales from the people, who get new job.

Finally we decided to start our company in Dubai Internet City (DIC). By end of March 2005 we finished our business plan and other papers required by DIC and then sent everything to Dubai for official review. After couple months we got an official notification that our application was approved for issuing the license and we needed to go to Dubai for signing the papers, opening company bank account and so on.

It took us another six months to go to Dubai as I was sent to Bangalore, India, by the company I was employed at that time for helping our team there to take over some of the project we had in Sweden. My partner was also not able to go to Dubai for some reasons.

I spent about six months in Bangalore and before I came back my employer had been notified that I was about to quit (in Sweden you need to inform your employer three or four months before you quit).

Those six months was very useful for us as we got a time to think again if we REALLY wanted to leave everything behind and start working on our own. We were about to make a huge change in our lives and we wanted to be sure that this is exactly what we wanted to do.

In addition to all these thoughts we spent a good time on preparing our web site, and planning our activities in Dubai. Also, we made a proposal to another two persons we both knew very well, so we became four persons, who wanted to start the company. It seemed to be right decision at that time making sure that we’re able to do the job for our potential customers and also to share our expenses.

Lessons Learned

Do not waste your time on thinking again and again if you want to make a change - more you think more reasons you find to keep everything as is. Probably, you can always return back to what you had before you made the change, but if you don’t try, you have no chance to get new experience and try something new.

If you got the ideas for your company or product - try to implement it as soon as possible and see if it works. If it does not work, you will stop and try something else.