Rahim Md. Earteza is a co-founder of a tech company based in Dhaka. His company ‘The Messenger’ works in the area of making apps, mobile games and web applications. Once I asked Earteza about his journey he credited all of it to serendipity. Earteza, personally, is not a technical person. He does not know how apps work but he knows how to get things done. And he has a childlike faith. Earteza says- once you do things for a good reason and do your best, return often comes.
His involvement with Founded in Bangladesh is yet another intriguing story. For people who want to make a difference the world is a big canvas to draw and they seldom miss any chance to contribute when it comes. Earteza was not involved with the startup community in Bangladesh until he started working with Founded X few months back.
Founded X is a global startup listing platform that aims to recognize local startups in a global scale. In a blog post the platform says: “Most people know about the startup scenes in Silicon Valley, New York, London, even Berlin. No offence to these giants but there are many more places where real innovation is done the startup way.” The platform offers free curated listing medium for underexposed countries around the world.
For people who want to make a difference the world is a big canvas to draw and they seldom miss any chance to contribute when it comes.
Once Earteza came to know about Founded X movement, he thought there is something we can do as well. As a country Bangladesh is often cited globally for bad news and wrong stories. Floods, political instability, and sweatshop like garments are the headline makers when it comes to Bangladesh. But we have many great stories to tell. As a nation we are one of the most resilient nations. We fought war, floods, famine successfully and we have made tremendous economic growth in the midst of political instability and all. Today, our youth are building exciting companies and taking brilliant initiatives. We need to tell these stories to the world. Bangladesh is no more a country of floods and instability. Today we are a country of great stories, ideas and potential.
Through Founded In Bangladesh platform Earteza aims to tell stories of great Bangladeshi startups. Earteza started Founded In Bangladesh out of passion. He thinks there are lots of great startups out there but we don’t know about many of them let alone people from abroad. Founded In Bangladesh will work as a platform where you can find Bangladeshi startups.
Today, our youth are building exciting companies and taking brilliant initiatives. We need to tell these stories to the world. Bangladesh is no more a country of floods and instability. Today we are a country of great stories, ideas and potential.
His story of starting Founded In Bangladesh is quiet interesting. Like his main business The Messenger, Founded In Bangladesh also started our of serendipity. Once I found the Founded X community and few other communities under the platform I thought why we don’t have one in Bangladesh. I asked my engineers to build a site by using Founded X module and started to ask people to list their startups in Bangladesh. The community responded well and we are now a community of nearly 100 startups.
With a comparatively large youth demography and increasing access to mobile and internet Bangladesh is one of the most lucrative investment destinations in south Asia. Founded In Bangladesh as a community driven, open and collaborative platform may become a starting point to understand Bangladesh startup eco-system in the future.
Earteza has a lot of ideas with the initiative. He aims to add more information about startups to the listing so that it can work as an information hub as well. But at this moment Earteza wants to add more startup to the list. When Earteza started out he did not think about making money out of it. He never thought out a revenue model. He just started out of passion. He saw a gap and tried to fill it up. With community response Founded In Bangladesh is a big community now. Earteza thinks in future they might be able to make money out of it.
The idea that we need no extrinsic award to start making things other than our own satisfaction is a huge liberation. That’s the lesson we can take from Earteza’s story. There is more to life than making calculative move always and great thing happen when you can get out of that boundary.
They say-"if you would not do your job for free, then quit". There is an advantage to it-you will never feel tired and demoralized. Earteza’s story also tells us one more thing other than this: find a problem that you can solve and solve it for no reason other than that you love to solve it, rest will follow.
There is a chance that Founded In Bangladesh will go nowhere. It will not make any money but that does not make it any less worthy an initiative. It changes certain thing about startup community in Bangladesh.
The idea that we need no extrinsic award to start making things other than our own satisfaction is a huge liberation. That’s the lesson we can take from Earteza’s story. There is more to life than making calculative move always and great thing happen when you can get out of that boundary.
