I think that with the economy going so bad spending money wisely is more important than ever. That’s why I was always attracted to affiliate marketing. Unfortunately In Romania there was never a real solution for the local e-commerce players. Until now.
2Parale was only an idea 6 months ago. Me, Lavinius and Radu were having a beer and discussing various niches in the market. And of course me and Lavinius started to talk about affiliate marketing. Beer was over… we got home etc… But in one month Radu calls us to show us his tool. “What tool?” we asked… “You know. The affiliate marketing thing”. He had built the whole thing in 4 weeks. I was blown away.
And after months of tweaking it he is officially lunching it to the public. It is an amazing step forward for the Romanian market but the tool is so great I can help thinking how it will work internationally.
Lately there a quite a few people who ask for my advice. I don’t know how good my answers are but I find that most of the time they are asking what they should do. “What should I do next to grow my business?”. “What should I do to raise money?” etc… They all seem good questions. And they are. But most important I think is to ask …. yourself: “What should I stop doing?”
We do a lot of stupid things. And we do them almost daily. But instead of tracking them and eliminating we focus on the next thing. You may say that in the end is about the same thing. Improving some aspects of your life/business by changing something. Because you change either by asking yourself what to do or what not to do. And you may be right. But this shift in the way you think of it I believe is fundamental. Here are some reasons:
1. You’ll focus more on the core problem rather that asking: “What next?”. And focus is something that a lot of us talk about but very few know what it truly means. As Steve Jobs puts it:
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.
2. It is better to perfect something that is rather than adding something new on top of a shabby foundation. The question is not what to add but what to leave out. During Seedcamp we listened to a lot of people asking us for tons of features at uberVU. We started to work on features like crazy. We were all over the place. What we discovered pretty soon is that we did a superficial/lousy job in almost all the new areas. Now we are regrouping and working on eliminating all the features that are not working great or that don’t add a lot of value.
3. You will increase or develop your analytical skills. Because you will need to measure your results before deciding what you should stop doing.
4. It will force you to re-evaluate yourself and look in the mirror form time to time. One thing that I discovered this way s that collecting business cards is not the same thing as expanding your network. More about this in another post.
Next time when you want to move to the next level try asking yourself this question.
I am not going to bitch about the lack of heating, food or wifi. One reporter with a good sense of humor from the Guardian summed it up very well already. One thing that I don’t subscribe to is the quality of the speakers. I think most of the speakers had very very good presentations, were entertaining and a pleasure to listen to. And that is not something I can say about most of the conferences I have attended. Here are the most memorable ones (be aware I missed some presentations).
Itay Talgam had an amazing presentation about management. He tried to show basic management techniques by playing videos of famous maestros. Don’t know about you but I never got what the role of the maestro was anyway. What is to conduct if all the people in the orchestra follow a plan/song sheet anyway. Well, I was wrong. They are actually doing a lot of work and managing an orchestra is not so different from managing a company. They set the rhythm, they see that everyone is doing a good job, they are rewarding the good performers etc. They don’t go to have a tequila on the beach and leave the guys to do all the work etc. I can not explain the presentations in words. It is something you should see for yourself. Here are some of his old performances:
Paulo Coelho was one of the speakers….. I know! Paulo Coelho, the author of “The alchemist“, “Veronika Decides to Die ” and other popular books. He is like 70 years old and very active in all the social media space. I was amazed to find out he has a blog, a Facebook account, a Myspace account. He is a Twitter fan, he posts a lot of YouTube videos etc. He could be my grandfather and he is so cool. He had a very interesting discussion about the future of copyright. He is against it although he makes millions out of it. To prove it he pirates his own books and has a page on his blog called PirateCoelho where he links all the torrent with his books. He admits that it is difficult to read a book on the screen and that is why people will still buy books for some time. But he thinks an author should write because he loves writing and not for making money… and the web should be your friend in distributing your work not a big wall to protect it.
Yossi Vardi was very entertaining, as always. When all the people were talking about the crisis and making money Yossi talked about the opportunities that this climate exposes. He was against portraying Facebook and Twitter as stupid toys that have no chance of making money and therefore should go bankrupt. What matter the most is that there are millions of users who love these services. It took Google 5 years to find a way of making money so we should give Twitter and all the other services a break.
Mike Butcher had a report on the European activity on the web. And uberVU logo was one of the biggest one there. Thank you Mike!
Not to forget Morten Lund. He had a very sincere presentation about failure. His failures as investor and entrepreneur. The guy lost 30 million and he was ok. He said he is taking the tube now and working on the next big thing. Money come and go so you shouldn’t be so stressed out about it. Easier said than done. Here is an old video with him:
At the investor panel all of the speakers (Jeff Clavier, Fred Wilson, Martin Varsavsky and Eric Archambeau) said they will actively invest in 2009, but that it will be a tough year to raise money. So bad news for new entrepreneurs or people who need to raise more money in the year to come. We’ll see!
John Buckman talked about becoming an entrepreneur on the cheap. His ideas were kinda old. I knew them anyway but his presentation ruled. See it bellow:
Gary Vaynerchuk was there and he did a live episode of Winelibrary TV. If you don’t know who he is watch some of his old episodes. You should understand why all the people in the audience were clapping like craz.
As you probably know we were featured on Techcrunch last week. We visited Michael Arrington’s home and office, demoed our product to Michael and he wrote a very nice review afterwards (except the fact he wrote Backtype, which is another company, instead of uberVU).
But some people were veryverypissed off that in that article Michael said that uberVU is a London based company, when the founders and all the employees are in fact Romanians. I can totally understand your frustration but here are the facts:
uberVU is a technically a London based company. We are registered in London, our HQ is in London etc. And this helps a lot from a business perspective. Not a lot of people will invest in a Romanian company. Ask Alexis!
We neverbragged or even mentioned London to Michael or any other journalist/investor etc. We always say that we are from Romania. We have nothing to be ashamed! Whoever said that is an idiot! In fact we found that mentioning Romania is one way to grab some attention: “Haaaaaa…. Romania. Cool!” But Michael wrote the article and he probably checked where are we incorporated.
So again: sorry we have disappoint you! But it is not something we did on purpose!
Should a startup have a corporate culture? Should it be invented or should it come naturally? These are some of the questions that came thru my mind as I watched Tony Hsieh’s presentation on Zappo’s culture, at Web 2.0 expo.
“Start with the right corporate culture and the rest will follow“ is amazing advice, no doubt about it. But can any company do it? I think not. Most of,if not all, corporate cultures are mirroring the founder’s core values and I don’t think 1000 of hours of brainstorming can change that. Think for a second: Apple’s culture mimics Steve Jobs’s mania for perfection, Facebook is like a mirror image of Mark Zuckerberg … The same for Microsoft, Twitter, Ford, 37signals or any other company you like.
That’s why I think reading Jack Welch’s books on corporate culture at General Motors Electric or Jason Fried’s advice on how to run a software company and trying to replicate that will fail miserably. Think hard who you are and what your core values are, put them on paper and this is how your your corporate culture will look like.
Tomorrow I am leaving for San Francisco. It is my first visit to the Mecca of web entrepreneurs: Silicon Valley. I am going of course to pitch to investors, to establish distribution deals etc. But I am also going to meet some of the biggest names in the industry.
And to prepare myself, to get into the right atmosphere I decided to read Sarah Lacy’s “Once you’re lucky, twice you are good”, a very romanced version of the Web 2.0 era. It is like the written version of “The pirates of Silicon Valley” (a movie about the birth of Apple and Microsoft that I really enjoyed). It might seem lame but trust me: for a geek (like me) that’s like reading Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”.
Unlike the books who try to tell the “real” story by portraying the main characters like ruthless mavericks who will do everything to hut the jackpot, this one is very lenient on them. You can tell that Sarah is a big fanboy of the Web scene in San Francisco, that she holds great respect for all the Valley’s entrepreneurs and she probably has a crush for Zuckerberg. She calls him “The phenomenon”. But I kinda expected that after I saw Sarah’s interview of Zuckerberg.
But it is a very entertaining book, especially if you want to understand how all the investors and entrepreneurs relate to each-other, who is behind the superstars like Mark Zuckerberg or Kevin Rose or why 99% of all the Web hits happen in the Valley. I really enjoyed it and I can hardly wait to personally meet some of the protagonists of the book.
PS: We will try to keep like a video journal. If we can make it we will post all the videos on uberVU blog.
Saptamana trecuta s-a lansat Brohouse. Un studio de creatie axat pe identitate vizuala de creat de fratii mei (pentru cei care nu stiau am doi frati gemeni). Nu au facut mare tam-tam ci au mers pe o strategie care sunt sigur ca o sa dea rezultate pe termen lung. Aceea sa lase realizarile si cunostintele lor sa vorbeasca pentru ei. Sa-i faca pe oameni sa vada valoarea unui logo de valoare si a unei identitati de poveste. Sa lase pasiunea pentru design sa se citesca in fiecare fraza pe care o scriu.
Am tot uitat sa recomand doua evnimente pe care le consider foarte interesante:
1. Primul e Iashington, o conferinta despre leadership, care o sa se tina la Iasi intre 1 si 7 Septembrie. Ma bucur ca si provincia a inceput sa organizeze evenimente tari si le tin pumnii. Imi place numele. A lot!
2. Gala premiilor E-commerce. Dupa cum ne-au obisnuit, cei de la Link2Ecommerce, au niste criterii de jurizare care m-au dat pe spate (in sens pozitiv evident). Dupa ce le-am vazut ma gandesc serios daca e cazul sa ne inscriem sau nu. De tinut sub observatie.
Colegul meu de la Metromind, Octavian, are un post foarte interesant depre bannere vs contextuale din perspectiva bani vs rezultate. Sunt de acord cu el, cred ca pe viitor advertisingul va trebui sa se reinventeze. Banerele si reclamele sunt pana la urma spam. Oricat de mult ar fi nemultumit Marius (desi are si el partea lui de dreptate, in ciuda faptului ca are Adwords Adsense pe blog ). Stiu ca o sa para reclama nesimtita dar bagati blogul la reader, mai ales daca sunteti mai noi in ale marketingului pe net.
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Saptamana trecuta s-a lansat 
Am tot uitat sa recomand doua evnimente pe care le consider foarte interesante:
). Stiu ca o sa para reclama nesimtita dar bagati 
