An entrepreneur’s HAPPINESS is a satisfied customer, says Ivaylo Ivanov in the podcast “5 Stotinki”.
As an entrepreneur so far, Ivaylo Ivanov has stepped onto the global stage four times, with four different products, in four different industries: he and his team created one of the first European platforms for second-hand industrial machinery, delivered digital news to the New York subway, reached a top 5 automotive website in the world, and today his company BGO Software is a Digital Health Software provider with global impact.
The hosts of the “5 Stotinki” podcast open the conversation with the co-founder of BGO Software with the words: “We invited Ivo because we are interested in who are the people from Bulgaria who are changing their country and the world in a way that makes it a better place to live.”
They continue with questions about success, entrepreneurship, the future of technology, and young people.
Here are some of Ivo’s conclusions and pieces of advice (link to the full conversation – see at the end of the article):
Read books:
“A person who has read 100 books is as if they have lived 100 lives. Books give you access to the abstract thinking of countless authors, many of them smarter than you. This is how you begin to see the connections between things and build your own abstract thinking. This is very important when you create IT products, because writing code is one thing, but creating the entire concept and a working system and product is something completely different.
When I enter a room – at least I do – I have the ability to immediately recognize who reads and who doesn’t.”
Persistence, patience, adaptation:
“To become an entrepreneur, the main thing is persistence – the idea is to survive long enough to be on your feet when luck arrives, and to have the ability to recognize luck amid the noise of opportunities.”
It’s OK to make mistakes, but you shouldn’t make dramatic ones:
There is no problem with making mistakes – you are always wrong to some extent, the question is to make timely corrections and adjustments to the plan. You need to test and validate your idea continuously. If you reach bankruptcy, it means you missed quite a few signs along the way.
Specialize:
When a person works in software in a general sense, they have access to all kinds of projects – today you can build a news website, tomorrow accounting software, then something else. But if you want to be successful and irreplaceable, you need to discover what is yours, what makes sense to you, and become the best at it.
This is how at BGO Software we specialized in digital health software, because it has a cause and meaning, and because over the years we accumulated specific knowledge that is rarely found.
Healthcare is one of the most complex industries. There are regulations, software specifics, barriers to entering the sector, complex relationships: patient – doctor – hospital – pharmaceutical manufacturer. There are an enormous number of roles in this industry. It takes years to meet the requirements. But we succeeded. And it is worth it.
We also believe that this could be the path to success for the Bulgarian IT sector in Bulgaria. If we want to continue being successful on the global stage, we need to specialize in something meaningful and useful for the world.
If you are young and just starting out:
Today’s young people are much more focused than we were – they know what they want and where they want to go, and they have much more access to information, but it is also harder for them because many things have already been invented.
My advice for success is to accumulate the widest possible knowledge – psychology, business, finance, management, law, and others.
Because the time of narrowly focused professions has passed.
Today, young people need to think in models, not in a specific technology or industry. They need to be able to transfer these working models from one industry to another.
The happiness of the entrepreneur:
The entrepreneur is a creator – they create something out of nothing.
The happiness and success of the entrepreneur is when they see their product or service realized, when it reaches the user and the user is satisfied.
The feeling is like a painter who paints a picture and exhibits it in a gallery for the first time and it receives good reviews.
And more interesting highlights from the conversation:
- What it was like when computers were “a typewriter with a TV”
- Which job is official and which unofficial
- How you explain to young people today what a floppy disk is
- Where in Bulgaria there are quite progressive people, but also quite hard-headed ones
- Why the new generation of entrepreneurs needs to be T-shaped
- What is the difference between AI and AGI
- What are Ivo’s “5 stotinki”
Watch the full conversation in Bulgarian 👇
BGO Software is a renowned IT company specializing in healthcare technology solutions. With over 15 years of industry experience, we offer comprehensive technology consulting, software development, and IT infrastructure services. Our focus on healthcare technology enables businesses to mitigate technological risks and accelerate growth, ultimately delivering enhanced value to patients.
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