CTO Day 2020

Knowledge sharing is key in our strategy. To facilitate this across our portfolio we organize several annual recurring events such as the Main CTO Event. On Thursday October 29th, the seventh edition of this event took place through an online session. The main topic was nearshoring of software development.

We had great speakers who shared their views, expert opinions and experiences:

• Dirk-Willem van Gulik (Owner WebWeaving): technical aspects of nearshoring
• Mircea Negrila (CTO NetRom): innovation, trends and best practices in nearshoring
• Dré Lameir (CTO Enovation): lessons learned: how (not) to start nearshoring
• Christiaan Crouwers (Performance Improvement Manager Main): practical nearshoring experience from our portfolio

The event was opened by Ivo van Deudekom (Senior Investment Manager Main) and the discussion was moderated by Dirk-Willem.

The key takeaways of the event: Nearshoring part of your development/devops can be a great competitive advantage if managed well

• It provides access to capacity and capabilities, usually at a lower cost level than Western Europe
• It pays off exploring low cost countries as a lower cost level does not necessarily translate into a lower quality level (could be the opposite even)
• Cultural differences need to be acknowledged and managed to ensure success
• Check whether your documentation, testing procedures, communication technology, etc. is in place to engage a nearshoring team or take the opportunity to enhance it while setting up nearshoring
• While setting up your own nearshoring hub may be cheaper and sustainable on the longer term, starting up through an agency will considerably lower lead times, provide flexibility and reduce start-up costs

Main Capital collected best practices and lessons learning into a practical handbook, which is available for our portfolio companies.

With over 60 participants the Main CTO Event 2020 was a great success. We thank our speakers and Chairman of the day and we look forward to the next edition in 2021.