Strong words of criticism by the founder of Bellabeat.
Founder of Bellabeat Sandro Mur have an interview in which he explained how his company operated and why it was not registered in Croatia. Bellabeat products are offered at the global retail chains such as Target and BestBuy, and are being promoted by top athletes, reports N1 on April 22, 2016.
He said that Bellabeat was looking for new people who would design the hardware part of their product, and that they were trying to expand that part of the team, although it was hard to find skilled persons. “In Croatia, it is prestigious to become an architect or a lawyer, but the world is not going in that direction. Our society is creating such professionals, but for technological companies it is difficult to find people who are keeping in step with what the world is asking for”, Mur said.
Asked whether Bellabeat ever got any incentives from the state, he said “no”. “I believe that taking money from the state is bad, because the state is poor, stupid and it does not know what it is doing. There is so much money on Wall Street, so why would someone take the money from the taxpayers and from the state for a risky project? We do not want incentives, never wanted them and never will”, he added.
Mur also explained why Bellabeat has not been registered in Croatia under that same name. “The administration did not let us call ourselves Bellabeat, while the tax office has called us, for example, to ask why are we were buying so much toilet paper. We hope that all the entrepreneurs will manage to withstand all the hits from the state. Our company is called Bellasoft in Croatia, because they said that our name had nothing to do with the IT business, and the entire process lasted too long”, he said.
According to him, every company that wants to have an IPO has to be incorporated in the US, if it is active in the US market. “The environment is unstable in Croatia. We do not know what will happen tomorrow here. We are more stable because we know the company is somewhere else. It is important to feel safe. The US company is the majority owner of all our companies, in London, in Hong Kong and in Croatia”, Mur said.
As for the future plans, he said that the company had to structure itself first. “Investors are always offering the money, so it is not really about the money but about whether we are ready. Our plan is to structure the team after the summer in a way that will allow us to have the evaluation of about a billion dollars by the end of 2017 and 2018”, concluded Mur.
