Closing Remarks (We do not go further for e-bid and e-procurement business)

We decided not to continue our project our business and not to convert our idea into business for the following reasons:

If we check the companies that enter the e-bid business, we will see that only big companies has been successful. The examples in Turkey clear this comment. Overall 4 companies are there in the sector and Koç Company and Sabancı Company are the leading ones. They are also two of the ten biggest company in Turkey. I sense from the interview with Uğur Güntekin that even Koç Promena is struggling in the market. In Portugese, 20 construction company and 1 telecom company got together and founded an online procurement and online bid system. That tells me how much investment budget, market connections, experiences and market credibility we need to start up. These requirements exceeds capacity of start-up companies. The sector of online procurement and online bidding is not appropriate for start-ups.

We have to make a deal with procurement departments of companies. They have to demand or we should be able to create demand to sell our product. However; guys in procurement departments are not well educated. Only 10% of them, according to Uğur Güntekin, are educated from related departments of universities or has bachelors degree. Therefore they are not aware of needs of modern world and they do not believe the benefits of an web based application. They may trust more in their classical methods. The 90% obstructs our way.

As we mentioned in our early post about the interview with Ugur Guntekin, consulting service is a necessity to be able to reach the real potential of system. Unfortunately, it needs  a lot of experience and budget that we lack. Additionally, there are powerful competitors that dominate the market such as Promena and Intengo. 7 of 14 automotive firms in Turkey that we listed on blog work with Promena and 1 of them works with Intengo.

Not going behind the idea is an answer also; this result is OK for us. Process is more essential than the results for this course and we learned a lot in this process.

Thanks GOB, Thanks Michael Goldberg.