1) Can you give a brief description of what your company does?

Crowdpolicy was established in 2012 aiming to develop methodologies and information systems that utilize crowd in order to improve and co design processes, products and services. In recent years, we can observe a remarkable potentiality of web users’ active participation in shaping products, ideas and techniques. Crowdpolicy, literally, means that we contribute in shaping policy, in its wider sense, using crowd participation. The company develops services and solutions which utilize participation. Spotting problems at streets or illegal advertising signs, indicating corruption in the public sector or a door jamb’s imperfection, monitoring the government policy’s realization or a bank’s customer service are typical examples of the problems that we are called to deal with. We face all these problems creating the method, the platform for users participation since users are the final judges of the products and services produced. Crowdpolicy’s products address to both the public and private sector. They address to each organization aiming a sustainable manner to co-operate with customers, employees, sales network and suppliers. Advertisement is not a target of our products, their main target is an organization’s processes’ and products’ optimization and the creation of new ones which aim to fulfill the needs of the market. Therefore, the implementation of such methods is the organization’s improvement and of course its upgrade in the market. Users’ direct participation increases the company’s reputation and consequently the company’s advertising.

2) How did you come up with the idea behind your company?

Crowdpolicy was founded by highly experienced managers who also share the technical knowledge in computer science, communications and business organization in both the public and the private sector. Our company is staffed with persons which have worked on e-government, participatory democracy, monitoring the work of the government, electronic consultations (e-consultations), institutional re-organization etc. The company was established in 2012 by three associates. Their initial motivation included monitoring target realization, in a governmental level, using citizens’ participation. In other words, the ability of a citizen to evaluate himself different policies and their implementation, in order to measure the attainment degree of these goals. A government (or the administration) should be objectively judged and a principal criterion, in this direction, is punctuality in its commitments’ realization. We soon realized that all organizations face the same problem. Each organization needs improvement and, during the economic crisis that we live in, this improvement seems to be an indispensable element for building stable economies. Fortunately, we dispose new methods and tools in order to improve things. This can be confirmed from our products’ final users, they know better and we trust them for the most objective result. Our role is to bring together administrations, decisions and users. In the meanwhile, we have to notice that, in a global level, concepts as crowdsourcing, crowdworking, crowdfunding etc. are more and more in common, which means that the crowd has power and wisdom and that we can take advantage of it. That is exactly what we do.

3) What difficulties did you face getting your business started?

The bureaucracy and the processes demanded for founding and making a company sustainable is the bigger obstacle imposed by the State itself. Bureaucracy produces additional expenses (e.g. for accountants, lawyers etc.) that, generally speaking, cannot correspond to investments and development, expenses that only burden the company’s budget. Despite the economic situation in our country, if one offers something new, challenging and innovative, something that offers promises, he can also see development premises, that is funding, investors, co-operations.

4) What advice would you give to a recent ICT graduate who is thinking of starting their own company?

Focus!
Do one thing perfectly, not 100 things poorly
Do what you love.
Demonstrate your worth before seeking investment

– See more at: http://younginnovator.eu/crowdpolicy/#sthash.gyAnRgKD.dpuf