Many ideas "under one roof" - Increasing number of local firms start intracompany startups

It is a common thing in the world that companies set up their startups and only a few cases has been formed in Serbia recently.

Intrapreneurship, i.e. interior entrepreneurship is pretty common practice in foreign companies since it is an excellent way to generate new ideas and innovations within the company Robert Gombas, IT Manager at Infostud thinks.

Slow website decreases profits

Infostud started internal startup, Gear5 – a simple tool for measuring of webpages reading speed measuring.

- At Infostud sites, more than 120 million pages is viewed a month, thus the need for monitoring and measuring of performances of our web pages became extremely important. In early 2013, a simple tool was made which enabled a simple monitoring and analysis of metrics with respect to page reading performances – Gombas explained.

Since the tool proved to be useful within Infostud group, the company decided to pack the software into a mini internal startup Gear5 and offer it to wider internet public.

(Photo: Ivana Vuksa)

A wish of a tool creator is to promote the importance of performance monitoring because a parameter such as speed of page reading directly influences quality of visits which can imply a big difference in conversions. Some analysis showed that1 second of site slowdown can lead to conversion fall of up to 7% which is the world of electronic business can be a big difference in profits.

Gear5 is available to public since May 2014. Since then, they have a bit more than 180 web sites registered as a host, both local and foreign and it is planned for those who operate in development, maintenance and managing of commercial and non-commercial web sites.

SupportYard organizes mails

Code Control company has recently initiated internal company startup, SupportYard – a web application which enables simpler and more efficient support through email. SupportYard is planned for teams which have more members and which provide support or sell via internet or emails although individuals who need better organization of user requests can use them, Milan Stosic, one of the startup founders explains.

SupportYard solves it in a way so that “entry” emails or a contact form is delivered to an email which is entitled through registration of SupportYard account and after that all team members’ activities are carried out directly from the application.

There is a free trial period of 14 days when the application can ve tested without limits and commitment to use it further on. If a user wants to continue using it, it is necessary to pick up adequate monthly subscription which depends on team members’ number.

Code Control, before SupportYard, developed MagelanApp which was their first product launched in early 2011 and planned for organization of business or tourist agencies in Serbia, to subagents first of all.

The main lesson, as Stosic, says, that development of mature startup takes time and that it is safer to go in stages – from idea validation through development of a minimal user version (MVP) to final product.

The second message, as Stosic thinks, is that “if you want to generate more significant financial results, it is better to turn to global market since it is more developed, in economic and any other sense”.

The advantage of the work within the existing system, as Gombas says, is that you do not have to deal with “housework” such as finance, accounting, team development and similar but you can save energy and time to focus on idea or product development.

Milan Stosic also agrees that main advantages of an internal entrepreneurship are certain financial support, mentoring, experience exchange and contacts which can be of great support to anybody who is at the beginning.

Since innovations are essential for future company growth, I believe that we will also see more common cases of this kind and that local companies will identify internal startups as potential innovation starters, Gombas added.

Irina Milosevic