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06/05/13 | Uncategorized

My Co-founder Lives 800 Km Away

Don’t believe the doubters — it is feasible to start up remotely, says generandoIT co-founder Belen Alegre, who tells the story of how she successfully started a company with a co-founder 800 km away. 

By Belen Alegre (Co-founder, generandoIT)

GenerandoIT is the startup into which I poured all the experience I gained from previous attempts. From a young age, I wanted to start a venture related to technology. At first I turned to software development and, while my company managed to grow, it was not quite what I wanted for the long term.

In 2010, I started teaching in-person training lessons at an IT institute and was immediately fascinated by it. After some time I began to handle the lessons easily and to fantasize about making training a personal project in the future. I always found the idea of sharing knowledge and strengthening technical profiles very encouraging; in fact teaching expands and perfects your own knowledge.

The following year I met my co-founder in an online class I gave, and we never lost contact. As a result of many conversations, and analysis of the market and the weaknesses of the companies in the industry, we shaped generandoIT. The proposal is not only to provide 100% online IT training,but also to constantly monitor students during the training and assessments to verify that they have achieved their objectives.

At the beginning, the most difficult task was to arrange the content of the courses and establish what courses we would offer. In mid-2012, the project was live in its final version and then we began the second stage: getting partners and customers.

A Remote Co-founder for a Remote Training Startup

My co-founder Eleonel lives 800 km away, so our company is 100% online. In a way this strengthens our view that it’s feasible to carry out a project remotely and get the same or even better results than working in the same office.

There’s no doubt that a startup requires a lot of time and dedication and, above all, patience. In our case, many times we have seen that although our proposal is innovative, certain barriers of habit have to be crossed, and we need to build the confidence of our clients. This takes time, persistence and a sustained presence in the market.

In my experience, doing a startup is wonderful. It can be stressful, but every small step or win has great value. If you really want something, you have to try again and again until you achieve it.

Women 2.0 readers: Have you collaborated with a distant co-founder? How did you make it work?


Belen-AlegreAbout the guest blogger: Belen Alegre is an electronics engineer. Since she was little, she has been curious about technology. While studying she oriented to software development. She has been working on software development for different companies for the last seven years. Since 2007 she has moved to training, first in an academic field, and later in the private sector, She loves to teach. She defines herself as “just a geek girl searching.”

Photo credit: Adriana Lukas via Flickr

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