women in power Archives

From one of the largest cities in the European Union, Budapest (in Hungary), a very admirable lady named Renáta Tamási-Irsai runs a technology company. She is one of the women in power that I have met during my short visit to Israel. She is the CEO of Samebug, a technology company.

Renata founded Samebug with her husband who she married 10 years ago. She is a mother of three young children. “I am raising a child who is different than other people, through this I develop an understanding of what it means not fitting in to society. Using this experience I am able to listen and help other mothers who are in the same situation,” Renata added.

Renata also mentions that her Christian faith plays an important role in her life.

She is a very organized person and she love things to be in order in every aspect of her life. She’s a member of the Budapest Toastmaster Club: http://toastmasters.hu/. She is also very passionate about cooking. She loves inviting people either to cook together or eat what they have cooked. In fact, cooking is another shared interest with her husband. “I am an introvert, but if you know me deep and long enough, you would not tell. Reading is my favorite activity when I want be alone,” Renata says. “My goal in life is to get to know the purpose of my life and become the person who I was created to be.”

My interview with Start-up Founder, Renáta Tamási-Irsai, CEO of Samebug

Ginger: Hi Reni! Can you share with my readers what your start-up is about?

Renata: Samebug is an online software startup company that builds a platform to help developers to find solutions to software problems. Simply take a stack trace from a crash, plug it into Samebug (either via a browser or plugin to IntelliJ IDEA or Android Studio) and it will search across over 800,000 (and growing) solutions to determine if the problem causing the crash has been solved by another engineer or not. If it has, Samebug will present the solution, if the problem has not been solved, Samebug will connect you with experts who can help. Founded in 2015, Samebug is headquartered in Budapest, Hungary and owned by a Delaware Corp, Samebug, Inc. The three co-founders are full-time employed, two of them are computer scientists, the CEO has a MBA degree in Finance.

Ginger: Your product is a bit technical. I was wondering who your target market is for your product/services?

Renata: 18.5 million developers all over the globe. Our software is a developer tool, the market is given. The technical founders who are developers are solving their own problem. Developers are spoiled all of over the world – they are in high demand as every company is becoming more and more digital. Good developers are expensive and rare. They are used to use development tools free, so it is hard to get them to pay for any tool.

Also in our market the user and the customer is two different person, and you have to find the ways to make both of them happy at the same time.

Ginger: Excellent! So how did you and your husband come up with this idea? What made you decide to start this kind of business?

Renata: My husband, Árpád has been a developer for 25 years and an entrepreneur for 10 years, developing tailor-made softwares to a financial company. 3 years ago, when the business was struggling and he got his Master degree, we both felt that we need to change what we are doing. Samebug was one of the option out of the three we evaluated, things pointed towards Samebug and we took plunge, jumped and has been doing it for 3 years.

Ginger: Were there any obstacles that you faced when you decided to pursue becoming an Entrepreneur? What are these?

Renata: Lack of knowledge of startup world, funding.

Ginger: Yes, I have to agree. This is what we went through as well. How about anything specific to your country? What are the greatest challenges in putting up and maintaining a business in your country?

Funding. Lack of understanding of the startup world, building a global company and lack of trust. Most of our family and friends do not understand what we are doing, what we are live on and why is it exciting.

Ginger: What are three traits that you think an Entrepreneur/Start-up founder should have when starting their own business?

Renata: Risk taking, commitment and willingness to be different and work hard.

Ginger: Do you have any unforgettable moments or lessons that you learned as an Entrepreneur/Startup Founder?

Renata: I rather let go of what I have worked for and sacrificed a lot rather than doing a bad deal or make compromises on my values.

Ginger: Oh, that’s great! I just read an article yesterday of one company that was looking to hire a CEO that would die working or would rather spend time working than spend time with his family, and I just thought it was so sad. So, what advice can you give to other Entrepreneurs?

Renata: Act as you don’t have Plan B, but have a Plan B to act on it when it is necessary. Be honest and transparent and stick to your values (if they are good) I also don’t believe tha everyone should be entrepreneurs. I believe there are many things that has to play in harmony for someone to be willing to take the risk.

Ginger: What are ways that you can do to raise capital?

Renata: Angel investors abroad and when the product gets to that stage later stage investors in abroad. There is very little chance to raise it in Hungary. The culture of building a global company is almost non-existent. We can provide services and from the money we can fund our startup.

Ginger: What is your growth strategy?

Renata: We are Software-as-a-Service company, selling online and later on targeting major enterprise corporations.

Ginger: Just to give others an ideay, what are tech tools that you use for your business?

Renata: Evernote, Slack, Jira, Skype, Google Docs, Balsamiq Mockup, Sketch

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today, Renata. Again, it was great having one of the women in power from Hungary join us today! 🙂

If you want to know more about SameBug, here are the details:
Website: https://samebug.io
Email address: renata.tamasi@samebug.io
Mobile Number: +36 70 381 9619
Twitter account: @samebug

It’s Thursday! It’s another wonderful day to share insights and tips from founders and entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Today, we will talk to the CEO of Anytimes, a platform to hire outsource work from people who are in the neighborhood.

Going to conferences and networking events is always a motivating and empowering experience for me. You get to meet women in power who manage businesses and who are influencers in the space that they are in! One of the women in power that I met during the DLD Festival in Israel and a women delegate for StartTelaviv was Chika Tsunoda (From Japan). She is the CEO of Anytimes.

Chika graduated from Keio University, Faculty of Law in 2008. After graduation, she joined Nomura securities for their sales team. She worked for Cyber Agent Inc. after. In that company, she was a PR planner. In 2013, she founded Anytimes Inc., and launched a skill share service platform in Japan where you can hire outsource service providers called “ANYTIMES”. She is currently a director of the “Sharing Economy Association Japan” and auditor of “Adventure Inc.”.

I had fun talking to Chika. Mind you! We didn’t talk about work all the time. This lovely lady also loves road bikes, dancing, yoga, climbing, diving, flower arrangement (IKEBANA) and other fun stuff! We also talked about love and relationships (but I am obviously not going to share our “girl talk” details here.. haha!).

But, let me share what I learned from Chika about her business!

Ginger: What is your Startup/brand/business? What is it about? How long have you been in business?

Chika: We provide a platform service called “ANYTIMES” which connect people who need help or those who are looking to hire outsource service providers to those who want to work in their neighborhood. Jobs and tasks include everyday household chores, pet care, assembling furniture, language lessons, and so on.

Ginger: Who is your target market? Why did you choose this market? Can you give us the insight behind this market?

Chika: In Japan, the total number of elderly/single/double income households reached 25million and government estimates continuous growth due to the aging population. This number also shows the growing demand for support services such as house cleaning, baby/dog sitting, any kinds of helps. People will look to hire outsource help more frequently. The demand for daily errands is increasing recently and this data shows the current market size is almost USD 60 Billion in Japan. Anytimes would like to grasp market share in the each field by providing a new skilled share platform We have confidence to achieve 5% market share initially.

Also, we are able to impose significant impacts on Japanese labor market by providing the platform. We estimate our platform can supply USD 9.6 Billion market value to the labor market if 5 Million users use Anytimes for 96 hours a year with USD20/hour. Given the tight labor market in Japan, the potential supply growth has meaningful impacts on Japanese economy.

Women Founders, Chika of Anytimes and Ginger of Taxumo, talking about how life, business, love, yoga, exercise, LDRs, etc!

Ginger: How did you come up with this idea? What made you decide to start this kind of business?

Chika: I believe people should have options of how to work going forward. Working from 9-6 in the office every day is an old idea. We should be able to work anytime and anywhere and important factor is to maximize individuals skills and time. I am confident that Anytimes can impose positive impacts on economy, community, and peoples happiness by providing the limitless opportunities. In the future, I would like to penetrate this idea globally and that’s my final goal as an entrepreneur.

Ginger: That’s such a noble mission, Chika. What are the greatest challenges in putting up and maintaining a business in your country?

Chika: I would say that it would really be government regulation.

Ginger: What do you think are three traits that a Startup Founder should have?

Chika: They should be flexible, humble and faithful.

Ginger: Not all of my readers are familiar with this topic. For Anytimes, how do you raise money or what are ways that you can do to raise capital?

Chika: There are Venture Capitals, Companies and Angel investors that startups can approach.

Ginger: How do you market your products? Growth strategy?

Chika: We have a three year mid-term plan until CY 2019. We are targeting 10 Million users, which is 10 times our target for CY2017, and USD 60 Million transaction values (tenfold increase from our CY2017 target). In order to achieve this plan, we will focus on online and offline growth strategies.

For online marketing, we will mainly invest in SNS and listing advertisement in order to grow our users. We will focus our offline strategy on building alliance with government, connecting with local communities, and corporations. These will all build brand recognition. We have successfully reached an alliance with local governments and some corporations, such as Airbnb.

Ginger: What are tech tools that you use for your business?

Chika: We use Github, Google Cloud platform, Slack, Waffle, Zendesk and Mailchimp.

Ginger: Thank you so much, Chika, for your time! So there you have it! These are insights for a woman in power who is the CEO of a Start-up company who let’s your hire outsource service providers within your neighborhood in Japan! Read more interesting stories every Thursday for my BE INSPIRED blog series!

More information about ANYTIMES!

Website: https://www.any-times.com/en/
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/anytimes.co.jp/
Twitter account: anytimes_info
Instagram account: anytimesjp