We had a full house last night at TechHub Bucharest on the occasion of the very first event of the Tech Excellence series. Mr. Florin Talpes, Bitdefender CEO, openly talked about his experience with building a tech product in Romania, disclosing some of the challenges he’s had and how he handled them, as well as some great advice on building your startup’s culture to foster innovation and maintain growth, even in the later, more developed stages. TECH EXCELLENCE is a new event series by TechHub Bucharest, featuring the builders and shapers of the regional tech scene. During these events, you’ll have the unique chance to learn directly from the entrepreneurs and professionals who’ve created outstanding products & businesses and who’ve made an impact on the regional ecosystem and beyond. Get to meet them and find out how they built towards success, step by step.

2. About Tech Excellence
TECH EXCELLENCE is a new event series by TechHub Bucharest, featuring
the builders and shapers of the regional tech scene. During these events,
you’ll have the unique chance to learn directly from the entrepreneurs
and professionals who’ve created outstanding products & businesses
and who’ve made an impact on the regional ecosystem and beyond. Get
to meet them and find out how they built towards success, step by step.
We were delighted to have Florin Talpes, Bitdefender CEO, as the first
guest of this new event series. Mr. Talpes is one of the most respected
entrepreneurs in Romania, bearing the incredible experience of building
Bitdefender, the company that produces one of the highest performing
security solutions in the industry, on a global level, and the most well
known Romanian IT brand.

3. Key talking points
1. Background and a few numbers
2. Initial market focus and changes
3. Some of the biggest challenges
4. Growing your team
5. Leadership style
6. Company profile – the power of context & learning from others
7. Maintaining growth
8. Fostering a culture of innovation
You can also watch the entire video of the event on Adevarul LIVE, live
streaming having been provided by Hostway Romania.

5. TechHub Meetup Insights
Bitdefender by the numbers
• 0.5 billion users around the world which are using Bitdefender
technologies.
• Over 100 countries in the world – Bitdefender’s distribution network.
• the main business is to provide cyber security or digital security
• 100 million customers in China only
Market leaders confirmed by multiple certifications:
• Bitdefender Antivirus Plus – Best Antivirus of the year 2014(PC MAG)
• The New Bitdefender - AV-Test CEO Andreas Marx 2014 – more dead-
accurate and silent than ever.
• Bitdefender Antivirus Plus / Total Security - consecutive Editor's
Choice distinctions from PC MAG (2014)
• The New Bitdefender - AV-Test CEO Andreas Marx 2014 - Smallest
possible impact on your PC performance.

6. TechHub Meetup Insights
Initial market focus and changes
At first, we focused on consumers, and only a few years ago we started
to tackle corporate clients and then OEM.
Now we are very active in the corporate space (cloud infrastructure,
data centers, enterprises, etc.), a change that happened in the past
years.
The difference in selling to consumers vs to corporate clients:
• We try to sell directly to consumers
• We use indirect sales, channel building, value-added resellers and
partners, who understand the market and can support the corporate
clients
Advice for startups:
• Don’t confuse business with consumers
• Smaller businesses have similar behaviour to consumers.

8. TechHub Meetup Insights
Some of the biggest challenges
Bitdefender as a name was launched as a consequence of a challenge
we had. When going international, we were called Bitdefender AVX and
we had, mistakenly thinking that we also had the trademark on the
name as well.
Avx corporation – an electronics company, sued us, fearing we might
cause confusion over their products. We went to court.
All the budget we had planned for going to market in the US was spent
on lawyers, so we decided it was cheaper to do a rebranding that taking
it up with AVX corporation again.
Advice for startups: setting up a startup means you need budget for
R&D, for going to market, etc. Take into account all considerations and
do your homework.

9. TechHub Meetup Insights
Growing numbers
Bitdefender now has 650+ employees all over the world, which I
consider to be a manageable team.
I do worry about becoming a large corporation. I’m afraid of internal
bureaucracy, which leads to a lack of energy, and little innovation.
I want my peers to assume a lot of responsibility.
I’m afraid of becoming a culture subjected to politics and I’m very aware
that these things shouldn’t happen.
I want to keep Bitdefender very agile, dynamic, focused.
Advice for startups:
• Don’t try to become a corporation. Keep your flexibility and your
drive – they’re great assets.

11. TechHub Meetup Insights
Leadership style
I like to be transparent about the way I think.
I’m used to explaining the decisions I make according to the criteria I
used to my peers.
You want your team to be able to be back to back, to share the same
subtle values. That means explaining the way you operate, so they can
learn to do the same.
Teaching your team to make decisions and take responsibility is
essential. It’s also important to innoculate the same transparent process
of deciding, so they can pass it on.
Advice for startups:
• It’s all about creating a common DNA.

12. TechHub Meetup Insights
Company profile – the power of context & learning from others (I)
Bitdefender is tech-focused, because it was born in Romania.
Before the ‘90s, there was no need for sales and marketing in Romania,
but we had a very strong educational system. All the business and
marketing systems were created after the ‘90s, so it’s a very young one.
This created a handicap for Romanian companies, that are very good on
the tech side, but have poor positioning in terms of business skills.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, Romanian IT skills have the
highest density in Europe,
We have good tech, and we can learn the business skills.
One of our biggest challenges when going internationally was finding the
right business skills and knowledge.

14. TechHub Meetup Insights
Company profile – the power of context & learning from others (II)
Our R&D team is 100% located in Romania (Bucharest, Timisoara, Iasi,
Cluj). Our HQ is in Bucharest and most of the team is Romania, and we
also have field operations (sales, marketing, support) in international
markets.
Five years ago, it was not the same: we had half of our sales and
marketing team in the US. This was a framework for the Romanian to
learn about sales and marketing. The Americans specialists were used
like coaches, and, as a consequence, the level of expertise that we have
in those areas today is very competitive.
The US is a very mature market, very competitive. If you want to
compete with US companies, you have great chances of failure. You
might have a better chance to do marketing in a less mature market.

15. TechHub Meetup Insights
Company profile – the power of context & learning from others (III)
Five years ago we didn’t rely mainly on digital marketing. Nowadays we have
good digital marketing professionals in Romania, but the channel
development people in sales have to be native to the market we’re
targeting.
There might be areas where your people might still need to learn, so you
coach them or send them to learn in the environment they will work to
tackle.
You need top level people to compete on international markets
For succeeding only with tech, you need an impressive, outstanding
product. But that is very rare.
Advice for startups:
• Marketing does matter on markets such as the US one, so you can’t
afford not to have great marketing for your product, no matter how good
you think it is.

17. TechHub Meetup Insights
Maintaining growth
We have a high level of energy right now.
We’re at the beginning of the next stage in the development of
Bitdefender, which start mid 2012 and will end in 2017. It’s a 5 year
stage, and we’re only at the beginning.
We’re experiencing significant growth at the moment. The drivers of this
growth:
- The corporate segment, which is growing very fast (cloudification,
virtualization), because we are securing the virtualized environment.
We have great technology, and in some areas we only have one
competitor and we’re winning. We do need to get exposed on the
market, because there is huge potential for growth here.
- We’re also seeing interesting growth on the consumer side, because
of the multiplying devices trend. We’re developing special projects to
monetize these opportunities.

18. TechHub Meetup Insights
Fostering a culture of innovation
When we wanted to go outside Bucharest with our innovation, we
targeted Timisoara, but HR advised against it, because unemployment in
IT in Timisoara was negative.
In Timisoara we used to have multinational companies, where it’s
difficult to identify yourself with the culture.
Our chance was that we offered them a challenge. We use small teams
to work on our products, so it’s easy to identify yourself with the
product. You are a stakeholder of the product.
Advice for startups:
• Recruit the right people
• It’s also about the culture of the company. You don’t build innovation
with penalizing errors. You have to challenge people. We want to be
nr 1 and that’s what drives us.

19. See you at our next event!
Bucharest.TechHub.com/events
Facebook.com/TechHubBucharest
Twitter.com/TechHubBuc