Five years’ entrepreneurship with Free Software

Why would one want to be an entrepreneur?

• To be able to choose one’s own timetables
• To be one’s own boss and not have to report to anyone else 
• To earn a lot of money 
• Because of an addiction to adrenaline 
• Or for the simple pursuit of happiness
  

One of my first bosses, Don Ernesto Dominguez, believed and eventually convinced me that happiness consisted in achieving a balance between:

• That which we must accept in life
• That which we can change, which we commit ourselves to changing and which we eventually do change.
  

The Argentinian Difficulty

Now, the number of things to accept can be rather large in our country, because living here is difficult.

How difficult? Let us take a look at a specific case: setting up a business. This is the procedure by means of which a new organization is formed with legal and fiscal status. This procedure takes:

• About one day in the USA.

• One week in New Zealand.

• In Cordoba, for us at least, it took 21 months, that is to say, one year and nine months.

It may be rather an exaggeration to generalize on the basis of this specific case, but since we generally have to work with professionals and companies from abroad, we have really come to believe that living in Argentina is:

• 84 times harder than living in New Zealand, and

• 588 times harder than living in the USA.

So?

If living and setting up a business in Argentina is that complex, why on earth would we want to complicate our existence in this way? Because setting up in business is precisely not simply conforming with “what there is”. It involves taking risks to transform the reality that surrounds us, to create our own working environment. Redefining “personal happiness”.

Menttes

We founded Menttes because we wanted to work in a company whose production and business models were defined on the basis of Free Software. Because we wanted to be ‘core developers’ of a technology, working in what we are passionate about; in other words, we wanted to have fun in a sustainable manner, avoiding the task of having to restrict ourselves to solving issues that bored or frustrated us simply for the sake of earning money.

One of the pillars upon which we built the company is that each of us can choose how to work. Because choice maximizes fun – it fosters passion and excellence. Therefore, each person, regardless of their role or seniority in the company, can choose to work from home, choose his or her own working schedule, make decisions and have some bearing on the company’s future, even become its owner. All of this without sacrificing social security and job stability.

Limited Company

Today the company has clients in Argentina and exports its services to more than five countries for the government sector, for NGOs and for the private sector. It has established local, nationwide and international agreements.

Free Software

We believe we have become one of the Argentinian companies that has published the most GPL licensed code, with at least 11 products for the Plone Content Management System. Members of the company have taken part and often led the organization of more than 50 dissemination activities in South America, the United States, Europe and even at a global level, such as the World Plone Day. Company members have been accepted as members of the Plone Foundation and even named ambassadors for Spanish America.

We have been able to reach these accomplishments even while each member of the company is able to choose how to work and how much to become involved. Because Menttes is made up of a team of entrepreneurs.

And the difficulty?

The level of difficulty is a serious problem in our society. Argentina has about 40 million inhabitants. Of these, 18 million make up the economically active part of the population and of these 18 million, 2.2 million are unemployed and 4.3 million work in what is called the informal economy, that is, those without access to social security or pension funds and have no job stability. Therefore, only 11.5 million are left in the formal economy. That is to say, a mere third of the population.

Despite this discouraging scenario, we IT workers are a privileged bunch. According to estimates made by employers themselves, there are 35,000 new work places from one year to the next within this sector. However, only 3,600 people manage to graduate from the universities. This indicates the existence of a growing unsatisfied demand.

What happens in the IT RP market may not have a lineal relationship with the demand of IT services or of products. But I do think we can safely say that there is a margin or market. Compared to other sectors, I believe there is more space for entrepreneurs and it should therefore be less risky or less difficult. In other words, I believe we are facing an opportunity not easily found in our society: the chance for us to define for ourselves what our own happiness should be like and make it come true.

If we, who can do it, don’t – then who will transform our reality?