Blog

Reaching the other side of the world has meant many challenges for Press Start and it is no less. Taking your services to a new market in a country where everything is different including the language has not been an easy task. We would like to share our experience and the most relevant points of these first 9 months to date.

Without having planned it, we arrived at an Airbnb of an Australian entrepreneur who has been like an angel to us, since he introduced us to the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Brisbane (Australia’s third largest city and a very important center for startups). Three days after we arrived at his home, we were already attending our first networking event, meeting key people from the local creative industries.

We made a habit of attending these types of events, which allowed us to make ourselves known and reach our first client as a result of our first pitch, definitely a stroke of luck coupled with our ability to take risks.

Speaking the same language of Australians was one of the most important elements to close our first client. Contrary to what we think of showing our best developments in terms of quality and complexity, what made the difference was to understand them culturally and show we share their tastes in a certain way. All this resulted in the development of prototypes about the sports practiced here such as Cricket and AFL (Australian Football League), making our first Australian portfolio a couple of local sports games used for digital marketing purposes.

Our previous experience in the United States with the company was the basis for opening a market in Australia. On the one hand, although American English was already mastered, Australian English was a major challenge, because the accent is very complicated and the pronunciation of common words is very different to what we were used to, so you have to learn them to be able to communicate. On the other hand, the negotiation process of signing a contract for execution of the project can be as fast as in a matter of days, without so much bureaucracy, which is similar to the United States and very different in our country, Colombia.

From our first projects in Australia, we learned about the culture in terms of local software development, which has a tendency to be hired in the Asian continent, because the Australian workforce is too expensive. The disadvantage we have seen is that these types of companies do not have physical support in Australia, while in Press Start we have been able to offer this support in person while maintaining costs and quality.

Aligned with our business values, we have offered optimal solutions, in record times and maintained constant communication with the client, gradually building the trust that is required to establish a long-term relationship.

This loyalty has allowed us to participate in two important projects where Press Start has been the principal software developer. The first one took us to Melbourne (Australia’s second largest city), where we installed a video game with motion recognition hardware and software for use in a city mall. The second project was carried out in Brisbane, the city where we live, where the EKKA (Royal Queensland Show) took place and it has been going on since 1876 every year, for 10 days in the month of August, attracting approximately 400,000 spectators. In this event Press Start made two different projects using Virtual Reality for the Australian agricultural industry, which were used by more than 5,000 people.

To finalize this blog we want to make an invitation to everybody in Latin America, whether you are a person, company or government entity that want to learn more about the process of entrepreneurship in Australia for Latinos to contact us. We know that everyday of our experience counts and these lines have only been a brief summary of everything there is to learn and keep discovering.