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I am just off the phone with another investor interested in a targeted deal flow. This morning I received a few emails from entrepreneurs looking for funding and coverage. And then I got asked about my motives for the blog. Hence this post.

I love tech entrepreneurship. I have been running GoalEurope for almost 10 years now as a small business, enabled by technology, and focusing on helping others create technology in our Eastern European region. I have started it with a small investment into a stack of business cards and a student ticket to an entrepreneurship conference, and have been running it ever since.

While GoalEurope’s main business is focused on finding software development resources in Eastern Europe, I am certain that many startups will be funded and nurtured by outsourcing companies.  This is why I started writing, even though I do not expect that a narrowly-focused blog can become a commercially viable business. It just seems to be a natural extension of what I do, covering achievements of brilliant Eastern European software developers, those few who venture out of into the wild entrepreneurial world.

Having been writing this blog for almost a year now, I receive positive feedback. Startups want to be covered, investors are interested to learn about the startups. Conference organizers … well, you might have seen this list. Ever so slowly GoalEurope is developing into a micro-ecosystem which brings together investors and entrepreneurs from the region.

So far I have not attempted to monetize my efforts, as I know just too well that startups are short on cash. Taking equity in exchange for whatever service we can provide is too long term, whilst raising funding for a startup may be a time consuming effort. On the other hand, doing impression-based advertisement is not feasible: as ambitious as it may be, our startup ecosystem is still rather small.

I like networking, and can spend all day introducing people to each other. But I also have to write the blog and do many other activities which have been keeping GoalEurope going so far. So here are two things I would like to announce that will hopefully help make our ecosystem stronger.

Message to startups:

We are putting together a list of all startups from CEE that have crossed our radar screen one way of the other. Not only do we want to make a list, but we also want to create a Google+ circle of CEE startups. Having started this laborious task we have noticed that:

• Many startups do not list their founders on their websites
• Many still do not have Google+ accounts

I hope that founders who are reading this, will create personal Google+ accounts and company pages and let us know their G+ links and twitter handles, so that we can share this with the wider entrepreneurial community. Sending it via website contact page will ensure that your message does not get stuck in a spam filter.

This way everyone can add Google+ circle to their contacts and suddenly all known to us entrepreneurs will get connected and visible to the investors and wider tech media. For free.

Message to investors:

One quick and easy way to generate a deal-flow would be to become GoalEurope’s sponsor, so that those who seek money, can easily find you. We are not greedy. Plus, we can use extra cash to expand our coverage of Eastern European startup scene.

And finally…

Message to readers:

Thank you for reading, following and sharing my posts. Even when I don’t come out and thank each of you for spreading the word, I am sincerely grateful for all your support. We need it.

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