SlimSoft's Costa Rican Blog

Its been almost a month and a half since my last posting. In that time, we have visited Costa Rica for a 3 week stay. We visited many, many, many different companies and organisations during our stay. The first week was downright exhausting, but in the end, we now have a bank account (actually six!) (there's a story here for some later blog...), an accountant, an office space (almost anyway), a law firm, a much better idea of what we are getting ourselves into, and finally and most importantly, a hugh amount of excitement and confidence that we are doing the right thing.

For anyone thinking of doing this, if there is any advice I could give you, it is:

• Relax. Its going to take a while. Don't try to push it, just go with the flow.
• Call CINDE as soon as you even think you might think about doing something.
• Get a good lawyer as soon as possible.
• Go for it! Its worth it.

Of all the things that impressed us, the biggest one was the talent of the people there. CAMTIC, an organisation of IT companies (sort of like a Chamber of Commerce), has a campaign promoting the country entitled "Green & Smart". I love this. Costa Rica is known for its environmental beauty, and the people are very well educated. We are confident that we will find the right type of people to help our company grow.

On my first point, Relax, its really key. As someone told me a while ago about moving to Costa Rica. "Type A personalities need not apply". Things move slower than we North Americans tend to like. But trust me, they do eventually get done. Just don't expect it to happen as fast as you would like or are used to.

Finally, I can't say enough good things about CINDE (link above). They have been amazing to us. They have organized site visits, answered a ton of questions, and are generally there to help us with whatever needs we may have. And all for free! Thanks Vanessa and Ericka!

SlimSoft Solutions CR (SlimSoft's Costa Rican branch) will be hiring mainly recent graduates with a bachelor's degree or technical diploma. As part of the CINDE tour we visited two post secondary institutions TEC (Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica) and CENFOTEC and were very impressed with the quality of the IT programs offered by both.

TEC offers a bachelor in Computer Engineering that is half way between a Computer Science degree and a Technical diploma and graduates about 60 students twice a year. The program has a strong math and computer programming background combined with a good balance of analysis and design, project management and humanities. Upon completion of the program the students are expected to have developed the following skills:

• Requirement Analysis
• Solution Design
• Solution Development
• Quality Control
• Solution Development Management
• Solution Implementation
• Technical Support and Training

The last course before graduation is a 16 week internship program that is aimed to prepare the student for the real world. The internship program can be a stand alone project, several smaller projects or it can be part of a bigger project but it must have a well defined deliverable and must be completed in the required time. Companies that are interested send their project proposals to TEC two month before the term starts, a faculty member approves the project and then the students select the project of interest. The project is done on company premises and will be supervised by both a faculty member and a company staff member.

CENFOTEC has two programs: a two year full time Software Developer Technical Diploma and a continuing education Software Engineering Specialist Technical Diploma. The students graduating as Software Developers have a solid understanding of object-oriented programming, databases, data structures, analysis and design concepts and software engineering principals. Team work and real life problem solving are an essential part of their education. Like TEC, CENFOTEC also has an internship program to provide the students with some industry experience before they graduate. The continuing education program in Software Engineering is for professionals already out in the work force that needs to upgrade their IT skills. This is a part-time program held in the evenings. The skill development is similar to the technical diploma.

1. 100% income tax exemption for 8 years followed by 50% income tax exemption for 4 years.
2. 100% Repatriated Profit exoneration.
3. 100% Sales or Added Value Tax exemption.
4. Duty Free Import of goods required for business operations.

In exchange for these incentives, we must agree to investing $150,000 in fixed assets within the first 2 years. These assets must be spent after our application for Free Trade Zone status has been approved.

As we have been working through the process, it has become evident that it is unlikely that we will have our application approved before mid January. For this reason, we have concluded that it would be somewhat premature for us to hire until we have received this approval. We have therefore rearranged our plans. We will be travelling to Costa Rica as planned on October 1st. However, instead of a 3 month stay, we will be staying for 3 weeks. During this 3 week period, we will finalize the incorporation of our Costa Rican company and choose which Free Trade Zone to locate our office in. We will return for a 3 month stay for January through to the end of March to officially kick off the company.

While we are disappointed by the delay, we are actually quite excited by the new strategy. We feel that this approach will provide us with an even better foundation to build from. Momentum is building with SlimSoft. Our services are in demand and we are definitely in need of more talent. We are more confident than ever that our Costa Rican operation will be a success and we are therefore planning to hire 5 people in February rather than 3 in October and 2 in March. If you are interested in our job opportunities, please send in your application at your earliest convenience.