Broker Inc. is a company established in June 2008 by Dean Krstevski, a 22 year-old e-business graduate student. The idea for Broker Inc. started from Dean's university thesis on the topic of online investment portals. Just before graduation in September 2008, Dean officially launched the investment portal at http://www.broker.com.mk. Today, the company employs six IT engineers, three marketing experts and two graphic desginers. Broker Inc. is a tenant company of the YES Business Incubator in FYR Macedonia, a member of infoDev's Global Network of Business Incubators.
Broker Inc won the World Summit Award national competition for e-business and commerce in the FYR Macedonia and will now compete on the global level. The World Summit Award (WSA) is a global initiative that selects and promotes the world's best e-content and innovative ICT applications. The WSA received over 20,000 applications this year. WSA was established in 2003 within the framework of the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), as a contribution of the Austrian Government to the global effort to bridge the digital divide and close the content gap. WSA activities include national contests and selections of best practice, a global contest held every 2 years and content-focused national and international conferences with exhibitions - the WSA Road Show. Stay tuned for news on winners from the WSA Gala in June 2009!
This interview as conducted in January 2009 with Mr. Dean Krstevski, Founder of Broker Inc.
Is this the first company that you have started, and what drove you towards it?
Yes, this is the first company that I founded and is a result of my graduation thesis at the Faculty of Economics in Skopje, on the topic of online investment portals. While I was working on the thesis I came up
with the idea to create an investment portal, and started with on-field research to determine what information needs to be available online. I talked with brokers, investment advisers, bankers, private investors and representatives of mutual funds and came up with the initial concept of the portal that is constantly being upgraded. Besides the financial portal, the company also offers inexpensive services for web-page development, graphic design and software development for SMEs.
How did you finance your start-up operations and how long did it take for the company to become self-sustainable?
I started with my personal savings from the previous jobs that I had. I was a student at the Faculty of Economics in Skopje, but meanwhile I had many jobs, including chairperson and team leader in a couple of NGOs, research assistant, I held private computing lessons, worked as a clerk at the library of the faculty, correspondent for an online newspaper, and so forth. These savings helped me in the first few months, but than I had small financial problems, so I accepted another job as a lecturer for advanced classes of Microsoft Word and Excel. That was the most challenging period for me. I was working until 5pm at my own company and from 5pm till 10pm I had to teach the courses.
After that, in November 2008, my company achieved break-even and in a few months from now I am planning on expanding the business into new fields and new markets.
What are your major products and services and how are they unique? What isyour competition?
Most of the activities today are oriented towards the investment portal www.broker.com.mk. BROKER is an investment portal that offers daily news, analyses, advice and trading data for current and potential investors and for all people who are interested in the latest business issues. We are often the first source in Macedonia to offer some of the most important activities on the world markets or the world economies, and very often we provide unique information that is not available in any other media in our country. In fact, we already have agreements for distribution of our news with the most visited portal in Macedonia and the only business daily newspaper in Macedonia, and now we are negotiating a deal to distribute business news on a national radio. This means that all these important and well known media in Macedonia already realized that the content that we offer is unique and relevant.
In short, the investment portal offers hourly business news from all around the world; professional charts for the investors including data for all companies listed on Macedonian Stock Exchanges and commodity markets and futures trading; macro-economic information about the Macedonian economy; investment, marketing and management advice; complete information about the mutual funds in Macedonia; an economic dictionary; economic book reviews; a financial address book; quotes from famous investors and so forth. The content of the portal is free of charge.
There are a couple of business portals in Macedonia, but none of them offer the same amount of information as Broker Inc. does. We are planning on further improvement and enrichment of the content published on the portal, such as adding an Albanian and English version, as well as current financial indicators for all companies listed on the stock exchange market in Macedonia.
In the field of web design and website development, we follow the latest global web-trends and we offer top-quality products for prices starting from 150 euros for both the design solution and a fully operational website, which make us really attractive partner for many small companies on the Macedonian market. We are now trying to find partners from foreign countries to start developing websites for foreign partners. We also offer design services for logos, promotional materials, catalogues, brochures etc.
How did you first launch the product?
The company was established in June 2008. The first products were mainly for website development and design of logos and leaflets. The grand opening of the portal was on September 26, 2008. Because of the limited budget, the promotional activities were made by inexpensive or free solutions like personalized e-mails to the contacts I made during the development phase, promotion through Facebook, word of mouth, and so forth.
How do you measure the success of the company?
I am happy that within only three months the portal was successful in becoming a trusted source of business information, which is confirmed by the latest agreements for distribution of the business news published by Broker Inc. to other national media in FYR Macedonia. Our presence on almost all media types encourages us to continue the hard work and maybe one day become the best source of financial news in the Balkans.
I am also proud of the fact that my company won the national competition for the World Summit Award on Information Society in the category e-business and commerce. I think this is the best example that confirms our success.
Who are your clients and how many do you have? How are you focusing on expanding your user community?
Broker Inc. has three types of clients. The first ones are the visitors on the Broker Inc. portal. We don't charge them, but the number of the visitors is an important factor in order to sell the advertising space on the portal. The second type of clients are those who want to buy advertising space on the portal. Here, our target market are financial institutions, such as banks, brokerage houses, mutual funds or similar. The third type of client consists of those who use our web-development and design services. We are planning to expand the first two types of clients by developing the English and Albanian version on the portal, which will significantly expand the market on which we will operate. With regarsd to this client category, we are negotiating with foreign partners in order to expand the business abroad.
Are you planning to patent your product and do you see any obstacles in doing so?
For now I haven't thought about patenting any of the products developed by Broker Inc., but we are now creating a concept for a web-based financial platform, which will gather information about the offers from the banks, insurance companies and mutual funds and will provide a completely new way for promotion of lending, borrowing and investing money. It is completely my own idea, and once we are going to develop it, I am planning to patent that product.
What was the biggest challenge in starting an innovative business in your country and how did you overcome that?
I guess the fact being 22 years old and trying to develop a complete online investment guide was the biggest challenge for me. I knew that I would have to make an outstanding effort in order to prove to all those people that I consulted at the beginning that I have the capacity to build a complicated financial portal. There were people who didn't believe in the project or in me, but also there were people who helped me lot and provided me with the necessary information and tips that I needed at the time when I was building the concept of the portal.
Who are the shareholders in your company?
Broker Inc. is a single member company founded by myself [Dean Krstevski] and I maintain complete ownership of the company. Among the stakeholders of the company there are portfolio-managers, bankers, brokers and investment advisers.
How have you benefited from business incubation?
Since I am the only owner of the company, I first of all needed affordable rent for an office space as well as legal information about the process of opening a company. I heard about the YES Incubator in Skopje and soon after I applied to become a member of it. I got the necessary office space and useful advice at the beginning of the incubation period. Today, I am still a member of the YES Incubator and I am satisfied with the training programs, networking and working atmosphere.
Do you have some specific lessons that you know now and wish you would have known when you started your business, and which you would like to share with fellow entrepreneurs?
Well, I have realized that being your own boss is more challenging than I thought. No matter how many employees you have, the owner still works the most. Anyway, for me one of the greatest lessons that I learned is that you need to be insistent. You have prove to everyone that you really want to do something, and if someone hangs up the phone the first time you call him, you shouldn't give up and should try to contact him again and again.
How do you plan to internationalize your product and if so, how?
As I already mentioned, we are working on the Albanian and English version of the portal and also negotiating a foreign partners for our graphic design and web-development products. With regards to the financial platform that I mentioned, we are going to start on the Macedonian and Serbian markets and since we will need small modifications for every country we can sell the platform on each market individually.
With hindsight, are there any particular lessons or messages that you wish you would have known when you started up your company?
From the financial perspective, I might have been better off if I would have emphasized our graphic design and web-development services at the beginning, instead of the investment portal, since the first two increase the cash-flow on the short run. Making a profitable investment portal is a long term process. I am nonetheless glad that I managed to become financially independent. There is plenty of advice for start-up companies on the Internet. Often the management and marketing advice that are published on Broker Inc. are things that I found useful for my own company.
Do you feel that you had the necessary advisory and support network when you started your company?
I must say that YES Incubator helped me a lot in building my network and getting useful advice. I already had contacts with investment professionals, but I still needed advice in the field of corporate law, employment procedures and internships.
What is your message to funders/supporters and what is your message to the users of your product?
I would like to invite all interested funders and supporters to join me in the process of developing the financial platform. It is a project which will provide significant benefits to the users - the people and companies that want to invest their money as well as people and companies that need money, to financial institutions, and to the companies that own the platform. All interested parties can contact me [info@broker.com.mk] so that we can discuss participation in this project.
Finally, I would like to express my great appreciation to all my partners and to all visitors of www.broker.com.mk. Without their support we would not be able to continue our hard work to bring you more accurate, more timely and more useful information, advice and financial tools!