beta bytes

Bosnian immigrants Belma and Zermina are no longer chasing the America dream. In May they caught it. Beta Bytes, the foreign language and cultural based computer repair service they started through a NFTE class, took 1st place in NFTE New England’s regional competition. In October they won 2nd place in the National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge.

Belma was a few months old when Serbs began attacking her small village. Her father threw some clothes in a suitcase and her mother grabbed Belma. When the suitcase became too heavy, her father dropped it, and when Belma became too heavy and her mother started sobbing, Belma’s dad suggested they leave the infant by the side of the road. Nina, whose family fled Bosnia under similar circumstances, is one person who’s glad they didn’t. Soon 15,000 others in Hartford’s Bosnian community will be too. Beta Bytes, their business, is the lifeline between them and American technology.

The NFTE class showed them how to come up with a business idea that would profit. Through research assignments, they discovered that 90% of Bosnian households in Hartford have one or more computers, and that on average they need four significant repairs annually.
    
Belma has been interested in technology since the age of 11, when her dad purchased the family’s first desktop computer. Belma took it apart “just to see if I could put it together again.” She did, and loved it. Soon she was fixing the computers of relatives.

“They all face the same issues,” says Nina of her Bosnian community, “the Internet breaking down, needing to shop for a new computer, and they can’t find help because of the language barrier.” Together, the girls have six years of combined experience in computer repair services, and both were formally trained at a certified computer repair shop.

Currently serving family and friends, they hope to grow their business to serve their entire community. While word of mouth promotion has been successful so far, they also plan to advertise on Bosnian radio and community television channels, and make their business cards available at European retailers’ points of purchase.

Next up are the Albanian and Latino markets. Both girls are currently learning Spanish, which will make them trilingual. After graduating high school with top honors, Nina and Belma both hope to attend the University of Connecticut.

If the win the national competition, they’ll put part of the prize money back into their business, and use the rest to help kids in Bosnia, who, says Nina, “can’t afford pens, paper, let alone laptops.”

Both make a strong case for the necessity of teaching entrepreneurship in high school. “We are the next generation,” says Nina. “We are the lawyers, the doctors, the teachers. We need to realize that we have to start opening up our imaginations.”

This point was brought home to her when she visited Bosnia over the summer and took a two hour bus ride to the village where Belma was visiting her family. She looked out the window and saw “the only businesses they’re opening are gas markets and mini marts.”

 “We never really had much in Bosnia,” explains Belma, “and then we had a chance to come here. So many of the other students ask us, ‘Why do you get straight A’s?’ We look at them and think, ‘They don’t know what opportunity they have — to have a career, to make something of themselves.’ So when they ask, ‘Why do you try so hard?’ I’m like, ‘because I’ve been given the opportunity, and I’m going to make it work.’”

You can read Belma and Zermina's business plan presentation here.