So who writes this anyhow?

A quick self introduction that is long overdue

Today we’re going to do something a bit different. Over the last few months I’ve gotten feedback from some readers wondering a bit more about who is behind Moldova Matters? Basically who’s writing all this stuff?

So firstly, hello! My name is David Smith and this is me.

Checking out Castel Mimi the day before the EPC Summit this spring

This article will be a sort of introduction and background for me and Moldova Matters. The purpose isn’t so much that my readers should be able to pick me out of a crowd, but more of an introduction to the person behind the writing and the experience I bring to this newsletter. Hopefully it helps people understand what perspectives inform the news coverage.

Who’s Behind the Newsletter?

This newsletter is primarily written and edited by me - David Smith. I grew up in Virginia and joined the Peace Corps after graduating with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2010. Peace Corps sent me to Kazakhstan where I spent most of 2011 teaching English before the organization was forced to evacuate from the country. That’s a long story for another day but suffice to say it involved problems with the “northern neighbor” (*cough* Russia). After Kazakhstan I continued my service in Peace Corps Moldova from 2012 to 2014 where I worked in Community and Small Business development.

Following my Peace Corps service I stuck around Moldova and with business partners Matt Stahlman and Vlad Shuleansky opened Chisinau’s first BBQ and Craft Beer pub called Smokehouse. We quickly made a name for ourselves not only because of the new food and craft beer, but because my co-founders and I set out to build and run a business without paying bribes or engaging in corruption. This proved to be rather challenging. In spite of an early attempt to deport us, and numerous (often very public) fights with corrupt officials, as well as dealing with bewildering bureaucracy, we managed to open and run the business without compromising our values.

In 2016, after realizing how challenging it was to run any company in Moldova, much less one that was honest, I co-founded the Moldova Small Enterprise Alliance or AIM. AIM is Moldova’s first and largest cross-sectoral association for SMEs. As the President of AIM, I work with our awesome team to advocate for policies that push back on the systemic causes of corruption and support modernizing the Moldovan business environment.

Along the way I’ve been involved in various other business ventures and am currently a partner at Labrewtory Brewing Company - Moldova’s first American-Moldovan craft brewery.

All this summary is just to highlight the perspective I bring to Moldova Matters. Through Peace Corps I’ve worked at a center for homeless children and within a local mayor’s office. I’ve traveled all over Moldova and have come to love and respect what was, until recently, a fairly quiet little piece of the world. I’ve seen corruption and stifling bureaucracy first hand. I’ve also seen an explosion of new businesses, civil society movements and new ideas over the last 11 years. For such a small country, Moldova is a vibrant and complicated place. My goal with this newsletter is to help people understand Moldova better and how the country and people fit into an ever changing region.

Smokehouse: BBQ, Beer, Community

It’s worth taking a moment to dive a little deeper into my restaurant venture because this business more than anything else has defined my experience and perspective on life in Moldova. Anywhere in the world the hospitality business is petty challenging. Economically it’s a low margin business with a shocking amount of complexity and moving parts. Personally, it’s also a pretty exhausting endeavor. Late night phone calls about a broken toilet, unruly client or (and I’m not making this one up) an air conditioner catching fire are part of the job. All this is made quite a bit harder by the corruption and bureaucracy that exist in Moldova. When we opened the business we realized pretty quickly that we faced huge competitive disadvantages. At that time (2015) even national chain restaurants would only “fiscalize,” or legally record, around 30-40% of their sales. On top of that most restaurants paid employees in cash under the table to avoid the flat 40% payroll tax rate. So when you’re paying all your sales taxes (VAT) and all your payroll taxes that makes it pretty tough to compete.

Things have cleaned up a bit over the years, if only because clients started paying by card and that was harder to hide. But in COVID we saw these challenges pop up yet again as Smokehouse and other honest businesses had to constantly fend off inspectors keen to cash in on the hopelessly complex re-opening rules (1.2 meters spacing between customers, early closing times, mask wearing, temperature taking, vaccine requirements, etc). It was hard going through this knowing that within 3 blocks there were multiple night clubs working all night at overcapacity and in total rejection of the rules - such is the nature of a corrupt system.

With all that said we worked through problems and ran a pretty amazing business until COVID hit. Following the economic shocks of that time we closed Smokehouse in December 2021 and then our second location Taproom 27 in August of this year. Still, that meant we had an 8 year run in the hospitality business in Moldova and what a run it was. Smokehouse was the kinda restaurant where everyone knew one another and if you didn’t know someone, you probably would by the end of the night. Traveling customers would sometimes have mail and packages delivered to the bar for their pickup and we’d often have piles of bags and items stashed in the back for people to come back for. It was a place where people trusted each other and genuinely was a key little part of the Chisinau community.

Over 8 years we hosted 4 US Congressmen, countless Moldovan politicians and a few celebrities. By far the most fun and rewarding part of running a business like this is the people you meet along the way.

Having beers with Francis Fukuyama and discussing justice reform in my bar was a cool night

At Smokehouse we also had a front row seat to many of the social and political convulsions of the last few years. In the protests that followed the Theft of the Billion and rise of Plahotniuc to power, staff and patrons watched the bar TVs as protestors and police clashed inside the government building a few blocks away. Once protestors setup a tent city, our staff would bring leftover food at the end of the day to their camp commissary. When Plahotniuc lost the elections but still tried to hold onto power we could see his hired goons occupying the Ministry of Interior from our doorstep. The people paid to keep the newly elected government of Maia Sandu out of the Ministry would periodically come by to buy beers… only to discover that craft beer is a bit too expensive for hired goons.

Over the years we’ve hosted fundraisers for NGOs, meetings of political parties and many many fun events. Later, during COVID we leant space in the closed Taproom 27 to the NGO Open Gate International which did important work distributing food packages to people in need during the lockdowns. And as many of you know we hugely scaled up this type of response when the Russian invasion of Ukraine started and Moldova found itself in a refugee crisis. Smokehouse became one of the major distribution points of aid for refugees in the early days of the war. I wrote about this process quite a bit in early 2022.

The Moldova Small Enterprise Alliance AIM

As I mentioned above, my partners and I quickly discovered that running a small business in Moldova was *hard.* At the same time we learned that with the support of friends and our local business community we could figure things out. This was the germ of an idea that would eventually lead to me co-founding the Foreign Small Enterprise Alliance FSEA, later renamed to the Moldova Small Enterprise Alliance AIM. We realized that there was no cross-sectoral business association for small businesses in Moldova. There were other associations, most notably the American Chamber of Commerce AMCHAM and the European Business Association EBA, but neither was structured to represent the needs of small companies. And those needs are *very different* than large businesses.

Small businesses in Moldova are very much on the frontlines of the problems of corruption and bureaucracy. As some readers might remember, I wrote an article last year that looked at the complications and indignities of 2 simple processes - paying a tax for putting your company logo on a van and getting certified to work in the food services industry. Big companies have a small army of lawyers accountants and middle managers who do this stuff. Small companies usually just have the owner who has to manage most of this themselves. In a world where big businesses have associations and a voice in discussing reforms some things are missed - no executive from an international supermarket chain has to go through the anal-swabbing process described in the article above. If they had, I suspect the law would have been changed a lot faster. As it is, AIM supported amendments that the government accepted to begin fixing the problem this year.

By building AIM we sought to create a consolidated voice for small business as well as a community of mutual support. Since founding the association in 2016 we’ve grown to around 130 member companies representing just about every industry in Moldova - from restaurants to auto manufacturers, from cookie factories to IT companies.

To support new companies coming into Moldova I co-wrote The Moldova Small Business Handbook which can be downloaded for free on AIM’s website. As an association we aim to be the “first call” for companies who have questions or problems and we do what we can to support new small businesses entering the market.

AIM continues to be a strong voice advocating for reform and against the underlying causes of corruption. We just put out the organization’s 2024 Legislative Agenda which you can find on our website. We’ll return to this agenda in future articles over the next months to take a closer look at some major economic problems (high migration, low wages, corruption, etc) and what the underlying structural issues are.

AIM members gathering for a networking event in 2022

Moldova Matters

This newsletter started as a side project in the late days of 2020 and early 2021. At that time I was hunkered down avoiding COVID like most of the world and realized that there was a major gap in English language coverage of Moldova. Courtesy of my day job(s) I was well positioned to write about Moldova’s political and economic situation and provide context for whatever readers wanted to know about this small but important country. The name Moldova Matters was suggested by a friend who considered launching a similar project a few years back before his work took him another direction. As soon as I heard it I knew it was perfect. My wife Iulia was kind enough to design me a logo and we were off!

Once I launched Moldova Matters in 2021 the pace of news and events in the country picked up pretty quickly. In Spring we had a constitutional crisis as President Sandu tried to force a parliamentary election, in summer we had elections, in fall we had Delta and later Omicron. In parallel Moldova went into the first energy crisis as Russia prepped the ground for its invasion of Ukraine… which then started in February 2022. The newsletter that I originally thought would be a good tool to make me disciplined about practicing my writing skills each week found an audience as a lot more of the world tuned into the fact that Moldova does indeed Matter.

If you’re interested in understanding a bit more about the editorial process behind the newsletter (aka what makes the cut and what doesn’t) check out this article I wrote back in late 2021. In it I set out my thinking on audience needs and on what is relevant and what isn’t. I also indulge myself by taking a deep dive into one of the most ludicrous and funny political figures that we never talk about in the main newsletter. Someone who is at once highly interesting and totally irrelevant.

How is the Newsletter Funded?

Moldova Matters is a reader supported publication. At this time Moldova Matters does not host paid advertisements or have other sources of revenue outside of reader subscriptions. If that changes in the future, I’ll update the About page in the interest of transparency.

Over time I’ve considered trying to figure out other revenue streams for this newsletter but nothing so far has fulfilled my core criteria of maintaining editorial independence. So at the end of the day this newsletter needs subscribers to survive. For those of you who have become paid subscribers - thank you! It really means a lot.

For those who haven’t, please do consider subscribing. If you use Moldova Matters to assist in your work, or if you just really find it helpful to follow the Moldovan news, do consider contributing. It’s just $5 / month, roughly the price of a nice cup of coffee.

Also, please consider sharing Moldova Matters with other people who would be interested. Until now I really haven’t figured out how to market or promote the newsletter. Readers are scattered pretty much all over the world and traditional ad targeting for facebook, etc has a lot of trouble finding the 1 person in Singapore who might be interested in Moldova. Because of this, reader sharing and word of mouth have been the key to Moldova Matters’ success. If you have a friend or colleague who has a personal or professional interest in Moldova - please share!

…and if you have any deep insights as to how I could better inform potential readers that this newsletter exists drop me an email :)

Getting in Contact

Many of you know this, but for those who don’t just reply to any Moldova Matters email to get in contact. Or write to dave.in.moldova@gmail.com (it’s the same).

Moldova Matters has been cited by the Washington Post and I have written for the Wilson Center previously. If you’re a journalist or editor interested in better understanding something going on in Moldova, or looking for a guest contribution, feel free to reach out anytime!

Sooo…. that’s that

We’ll be back soon with more regularly scheduled programming. I’m not sure if that kind of background / personal introduction was interesting to you… then again, most people who were not interested probably never got this far in the email. In any case I wanted to write this short introduction of the person behind Moldova Matters so that people have a bit of a better idea of where these articles are coming from.

Thanks for reading and thank you for being a subscriber to Moldova Matters!