When we (my wife Alisa and I) first arrived to Australia (15 years ago), we settled in West Ryde, where the rest of my family lived. First thing I bought was (surprise, surprise) a computer. There used to be a computer shop on Ryedale Rd where I became a regular :) As used to big electronics stores as I was, I was shocked when I was told "ok, I can get this computer assembled for you, come back in 3 days and it'll be ready". Three days? I wanted it right there and then. I've learned a thing or two since then :)

Not long after we arrived, Alisa and I both decided it'd be a good thing to earn Australian IT qualifications. Alisa enrolled in Bachelor of Engineering in Software Engineering at UNSW and I enrolled in Diploma of IT (PC and Network Support) at Meadowbank TAFE. I breezed through it, having more trouble with English than with subject matter. After I graduated (and assembled and repaired lots of computers for free) I started playing with a thought of my own business.

EUROBYTE was born! No, actually before EUROBYTE was born I went into a partnership with a good friend of mine. The business was supposed to be called Cyber Net. We (actually) went to Parramatta to register it (doing it online was just a dream back then), but we were told we couldn't register the name because it sounded similar to somebody else's business name. Bugger! We stood there dumbfounded… "What do we do now?" We weren't coming back for this. At the time we were still having this German mindset that didn't let us get a car, but use public transport instead, which back in 2000 was pretty much pain in the a… (now in 2013 some would say the same thing, but we don't really know as the aforementioned mindset has long gone and we're now driving a car like everyone else does). "Cybex Net!" Aha! Similar to what we wanted and still sounding like coming straight from the Star Trek, which we thought would be so cool and so techie. Cybex Net didn't travel far into the future. It turned out that this partnership wasn't a very good idea. I realised that some people are simply not built for self-employment. He's still a very good mate though.

I actually found my perfect business partner in my wife Alisa. EUROBYTE was born!

To be continued…