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06.06.19 11 of Hotjar's services? Over 400,000 sites use Hotjar to col- lect and analyse data about their site. Hotjar offers a free plan as well as a pre- mium paid plan for businesses. We cur- rently have 23,000 paying customers. Do you have an international market-base, and do you count any big names amongst your clients? Hotjar has customers in over 150 countries around the world. e biggest market is the US, followed by Europe and the UK. Hotjar is used by some of the highest traffic sites and biggest brands in the world including Ryanair, AirCanada, Hubspot and Box. As the winner of this year's EY Malta Entrepreneur of the Year Award, you'll now be representing Malta at the World Entrepreneur event in Monaco. What was it like to win this award, and what are you expecting from Monaco? I'm not a big fan of awards as I prefer to keep a low profile and just focus on delivering value to our customers. However, it was wonderful for Hot- jar and myself to receive local recog- nition for what our amazing team has achieved. I look forward to participating in Mo- naco – mainly because I look forward to meeting other entrepreneurs and be inspired by their stories. Looking at the situation in Malta, would you say the country in general is keeping up with developments when it comes to IT and internet technologies, or does it lag behind? We are definitely keeping up with de- velopments. Internet and connectivity is good for an island our size. eGovern- ment services have improved – but still have some way to go to become simpler and easier to use. e biggest challenge in Malta is the choice of banking and financial partners available. Because of this we've been faced with many challenges in terms of getting ac- cess to services, platforms and tools that do not work with companies in Malta. Hotjar is based in Malta - does the island, in your view, offer a good platform for IT-related companies to establish themselves on its shores? Malta has quite good technical in- frastructure. e biggest challenge in Malta is finding the talent needed to build and scale a team. Besides the small size of our islands, local entrepreneurs also have to deal with what is an unfair playing ground. Foreign companies/shareholders are heavily subsidised with tax refunds, while we are not eligible to tax refunds. In fact, I have firsthand experience of the challenges of hiring in Malta. I had worked remotely for a UK firm before starting Hotjar and as an avid traveler I wanted to create a company which offers its team members the flexibility and freedom to work from wherever they want. For this reason, Hotjar is 100% re- mote. Today we have 75 team members spread across 18 countries. In Malta we have 15 employees. Each team member (based in Malta or oth- erwise) has budgets and allowances in place that allows them to create a home office and cover the expenses of working from home, as well as having a co-working membership, work from a cafe and travel to meet other team members. Does Malta offer enough training opportunities for young people who want to enter and progress in the IT sector? I think so. ere are loads of oppor- tunities. However, it is still a challenge to find engineers, designers etc. is is not just a local challenge. Looking forward, do you see your company expanding, and in what ways? Definitely. Our vision is to "Give businesses of all sizes the insights they need to create digital experiences their users love." In that sense we still have a very long way to go. As we continue to grow revenue we will continue to invest in improving the Hotjar platform, the service we offer and reaching more customers around the world (eventually expanding east into Asia). INTERVIEW user behaviour Besides the small size of our islands, local entrepreneurs also have to deal with what is an unfair playing ground. Foreign companies/ shareholders are heavily subsidised with tax refunds, while we are not eligible to tax refunds EY Malta Entrepreneur of the Year David Darmanin and Ron Attard, EY Malta Managing Partner

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