IPN interview with the director of the company IT Ritlabs Maxim Masiutin

The idea of having an interview with Maxim Masiutin came to my mind when I listened to his story about the company Ritlabs at the international conference “Moldova ICT Summit", which took place recently in Chisinau. But initially I had this thought several years ago, when I heard a very specific definition for Moldova from a foreigner: “When I have to explain what Moldova is like, I say that it is the country that created The Bats!”. And something more: “It The Bats! are created in this country, what do you complain about? You must not complain, but work and you know how to do this”. Thus, I hope very much that today’s discussion will not only reveal secrets about how the main program for the computer or for IT companies was created, but will also help us to ‘define’ some of the rulers by which the own country and society should be built so that we not longer have reasons to complain…
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- Dear Mister Director, how did the idea of designing such a powerful program appear?

- The fact that united us all, the people of the firm Ritlabs, in 1998 was the fact that we all liked to communicate by email and to take part in electronic conferences long before the Internet became widely accessible in Moldova. We were members of the noncommercial organization Fidonet. It brought together persons who, before the appearance of the Internet, using special technology on ordinary computers with the help of modems and telephone lines, paying minutes for telephone connection, sent text messages to each other all over the world.

Our programs started to exist for a very banal reason. None of the programs that existed then were convenient for us. This is how our programs Dos Navigator, Argus, The Bat!, Batpost, and The Bat! Voyager materialized.   

The first separate Internet connection lines appeared then in Moldova. There was no program allowing using the Internet outside the existing telephone modems for transmitting correspondence between the members of the Fidonet network. There was not program that would transmit files at long distances automatically, using simultaneously Internet connections and several telephone modems. We could not put up with such a state of affairs and thus created the program Argus. From the very beginning it suited the banks, which started to use it for automatic exchange of files with their branches. It was enough to put the files in the maps matching the branches and the program did everything else by itself. The bank employee could slip silently, knowing that the files will reach the branches safe and sound. Thus, the banks using our program Argus appreciated highly the technology of safely and securing tram sitting files, which we borrowed from practices of the Fidonet network.

- Didn’t the mail programs existing then suit you?

- Until 1998, before we designed The Bat!, there was no possibility of efficiently working with the email over the Internet. The then Internet mailing programs didn’t have models, auto preview, text highlighting and a series of other small, but convenient options that the Fidonet mail editors had. We had the impression that if the programmers created the Fidonet letter editors for themselves, the existing Internet mail programs were created ‘for someone’ or ‘for show’ as if the authors of the mail programs didn’t use their own creations, didn’t communicate by email, but contacted other persons only by ordinary mail or by phone.

Thus, for example Outlook Express, even if it enabled to take the mail from several accounts concomitantly, for several persons to be able to work, one needed several users in Windows and had to overload the operational system every time somebody wanted to read their mail. In Netscape Messenger, one could make several profiles, but, in order to include a new person, one had to overload the program, closing all its windows. Furthermore, Messenger could not correctly show the letters where the codification of the Russian text was indicated incorrectly. In this case, it considered that the letter was written in KOI-8 and not even the change of codification could re-convince it. Neither Pegasus Mail was competent as regards the Russian language. Moreover, it perceived the Russian letter “я” as a special character and interrupted the printing of letters when it reached this letter. The safety of these programs also leaved much to be desired.

- Judging by today’s realities, the role of safe communication over the Internet was topical at that time already?

- The secret sending of information is topical in any period of time. Namely for this reason, creating all our programs, we paid greater attention to the problem of data transfer safety. Our programs fulfilled the requirements of banks, state institutions, and large companies. As many managers of information sections of these institutions were also members of the Fidonet network and knew that we attack great importance to safe data transmission, they immediately chose our programs for their organizations. Our programs were not only the most convenient, but also the safest.  

- How did you look for financing?

- In 1998, we didn’t have financing from outside, but were convinced that if we create the best program on our segment, this program will find the users immediately. This meant that the incomes will come shortly afterward. Assiduousness and insistence are the most important things.

In the first years, sales rose slowly. The largest part of the earned money was used to pay rent and for Internet connection. What saved us was the fact that the users of the Fidonet network knew us and were convinced that our programs are the best of the kind. Namely these users were the first who bought our products. They chose us in order not to take trouble over the existing programs. We communicated directly with out first users. We knew them all by name. It is very important to maintain contact with the users directly, without intermediaries, and to get feedback, their option about your rapid and efficient program.

- But money was needed for maintaining the main project, or you made it from small orders?

- We didn’t try to create accounting systems, databanks or special programs by order, which were popular then and better paid. We knew that the road we chose was long. It was important to go on. We knew it to a certain extent, even if many of our friends considered then that the creation of programs wasn’t a business. Practically nobody understood and accepted our ideas. What we dealt with seemed an exotic area. For most of the people, the notion of email in 1998 was rather vague.

We also tested by ourselves program innovations that allowed us to better organize the production process. For example, we were among the first holders of bank cards in Moldova. We like technologies based on which the bank cards work and we became the pioneers of e-commerce in Moldova. In September 2000, we started to accept payments based on credit cards directly from our buyers through the agency of a Moldovan bank. Until then we received such payments only through the agency of dealers from abroad. We received about 10,000 payments for our programs directly. Afterward, we decided to concentrate exclusively on program creation and entrusted the task of accepting payments through cards to our dealers.

- It means that bookkeeping is fully transparent, doesn’t it?

- Yes, it does. There is also another argument in favor of the cash-free monetary circulation – the salary is calculated directly in the employees’ account and there are no cash registers and accounting books. We offer a high salary to our people. It’s senseless for us to work underground. All the money goes through the bank. We do not deal with cash and it’s not interesting for us to organize sophisticated schemes. The business must be simple and explicit. In our country, paying taxes one can get a high salary and can sleep peacefully when knowing that the law and all the state power are on your side. As a result, in 2013, according to the results of an organized selection by the State Main Tax Inspectorate, our form was conferred the title “Conscious Taxpayer”. Almost 700,000 economic entities registered in Moldova took part in the tough selection. Ritlabs S.R.L. was among the best 30 not only in the IT sector, but among all the 700 firms. Only thirty companies that ensure a high degree of transparency in accounting and economic activity received awards. They account for a considerable part of the taxes paid into the state budget and hold interest for the state because they are conscious taxpayers.

- Do you have rivals in Moldova?

- There are not many firms in Moldova that create programs entirely for computers, from the start to the end, and sell them in their name all over the world. There are many companies that organize the people’s work to fulfill the orders. Only we have an IT brand famous abroad. Our company is a leader in Moldova by the number of buyers from aboard. We annually sell products in 100 countries on average. Owing to this fact, in 2003 our company won the title “Exporter of the Year” that is conferred by the Moldova Investment and Export Promotion Organization (MEPO).

- Any good program is pirated. How seriously does piracy affect your products?

- Regretfully, piracy is the main problem we have faced since the foundation of the firm. Piracy flourishes all over the world. In the states were piracy is fought, the sales of our programs go up. Piracy must be combated, especially in the area of program creation. The computer program is a product that grows old quickly. Such a program lives for two years at most and then needs improvement. The money we attracted in this short period is not lost for us, and not only for us. The state, the pension fund, etc. are all the rings of a chain. A large number of people all over the world use our program The Bat! illegally and this means a lot of money that fail to be collected into the country’s budget. I want to return to information safety that I mentioned earlier. From the very beginning, creating the programs Argus and The Bat!, e ascertained that the users in Germany and Russia were those who paid special attention to the safety problems. The users in these countries most frequently have come with security problems to us not only in 1998, but also now. This surely affected our sales statistics. A large part of the buyers of our programs are from these countries.

- How do you find legal users of your programs if they are mainly abroad?

- We usually do not find them as they find us and our approach to creaming products helps us here. When the author designs a program by order, it’s not easy to satisfy the needs of the client. It often happens that the client or the contractor (or both), is dissatisfied with the results of the cooperation. Thus, I think it is more correct to create programs for oneself, for the own pleasure so that the people like your creation and pay for it. In that case, both the user and the author will be satisfied.

It is important to delimit the main particularities of the products from the secondary one. For example, in Argus (which means ‘all-seeing vigilant guard’), the main goal of the program was to safely transfer files without the user’s intervention. The main objective of The Bat! was to safely and efficiently work with large volumes of mail. For this reason, we implemented the writing of letters in html format only in the second version of The Bat!. We considered that in case of large volumes of mail, the wring of letters in html will only slow down the work of the user. It should be noted that though the users of the postal client receive letters in a difficult format, most of them need only such key options as highlight or insert an image or editing. Therefore, we didn’t make a webpage editor from The Bat!.

In fact, both the creation of a HTML viewer and of an editor implies heavy workload. As our creed is safety above all, we used the system components HTML from Microsoft that form part of the ОС Windows delivered set, which were then the main target of the harmful programs. We worked out our own components for using HTML so that the program does not become the victim of viruses aimed against the components of Windows, and the users highly appreciated this advantage of the The Bat!

- Why actually The Bat!?

- Our users often ask us why we chose namely the bat as the symbol and name of our product from the rich diversity of the animal world. Our answer is simple – the bats are the only mammals who know to fly and most of the species of bats possess echolocation and a complicated acoustic orientation system that enables them to move with exactness full of virtuosity and to find food, but also to communicate with other bats in the darkness, without seeing each other. The email is a type of communication where the partner cannot see you. Our mail program, offers the users not only the sensation of hovering, but also of real flight. We wish your business to also fly up easily and truly, avoiding the obstacles with exactness full of virtuosity and overcoming the difficulties met on the path to success.

Valeriu Vasilică, IPN