Natalia Dimitrova speaking with TechNews.bg: “Only change is permanent”

On the occasion of the company’s 10th anniversary, Natalia Dimitrova – founder and CEO of Acta Verba, met with the TechNews.bg team to share her experience and talk about the lessons she learned over the past decade. Here is what she shared:

1. Focus is important. From the very beginning, we decided to focus entirely on the technology sector, and so far, at least as far as I know, we are the only such communication company in Bulgaria. 10 years later, I am convinced that this was the right decision – we can offer expertise and a high level of services. We strive to implement projects that bring value to companies and that what we promise and plan happens in practice. This is what Acta Verba means – words and deeds.
2. Professionalism and friendship go hand in hand. Professional and friendly relationships are key both early on and afterward. When I founded Acta Verba in 2012, I already had 12 years of experience in various companies, among them Intracom, BNP Paribas, Microsoft and Telerik (now Progress). Our first customers were people with whom we had worked as colleagues and partners over the years. It is the same now – our new clients mainly come after recommendations from people with whom we have already worked together and were satisfied with our cooperation.
3. Building trust in the team takes time, but it’s worth every minute. In our team, everyone has the freedom to make decisions and is responsible for them. There is no way for a person to gain experience if he or she does not walk his or her own path, which will inevitably include mistakes – that is natural.

4. We help tech companies tell human stories. Technology has changed a lot over the years, and this is reflected in both our personal and professional lives. We work with tech companies and sometimes it is a challenge to explain something abstract and complex in understandable language and in a way that is interesting. Users don’t care what complex technology lays behind a solution, they want to have service continuity and everything to be done quickly and with one click. People are excited by compelling stories, not dry facts. This is also our mission – to help tech companies tell their human stories.
5. Results come after a lot of work. It is of key importance for the success of a given project that we have the same expectations with the client as to what we are aiming for and what the process will be. It is necessary that the people who make decisions in the respective company are convinced that this is the right approach and understand that achieving results takes time and a lot of effort. At the very beginning, I often received the following question: “If we start working with you now, in a month, where can we see publications about us and our activities, and what guarantees can you give us?”. Well, there are no guarantees, it takes a lot of work and most often the results come. Working together is a learning and adjustment process on both sides.
6. Only change is permanent. It is necessary to be flexible and offer new solutions when it comes to market demand, while managing to maintain the same high quality of services. During some of the years, a major part of our activity was event organization – from targeted business breakfasts on the topic of cyber security, for example, to large international conferences with over 1,200 participants. In other years, our main work was, and still is, related to PR and Employer branding – mainly because of the high demand and shortage of IT specialists. In the first days after the first Covid lockdown, 5 events were canceled – 2 international conferences and 3 corporate events for IT companies. We quickly moved into online content creation and online event hosting. And now we’re glad that the present events are back. Being able to share ideas and experiences with others face-to-face remains invaluable.
7. We keep learning! I recently read something that I really liked – most people think of life as a pastry shop – they go in and pick their favorite pastry from the window, but it’s more like a school – every day we learn a new lesson.

You can read the entire article here.