Arhiva: mai 2017

The best answer you can get to any business request/proposal is, obviously, “yes!”. But what’s the second best?

For a long time, I thought that I wanted to hear at least a “maybe”. Or “let’s talk later”. Or “if you do this thing, I might be interested”. Oh, boy, how wrong I was.

If it’s not “yes”, the answer you want to hear is a fast “No!”. And don’t be afraid to ask for it, no matter who you’re talking to. Even if, in the short term, you might lose some deals, you’ll earn a lot of time in the long run.

By getting a fast no, you spend less energy on things that are unlikely to succeed. You will not fill your mind with hope even if it’s pretty clear you won’t get what you want.

If you’re raising money, look for a fast “no” if you can’t get to “yes”. If you’re looking for a deal, the same. You’ll be better for it.

I wrote my first piece of code when I was 6 or 7, I think. My best friend’s father – a Maths teacher – was approved by the Romanian Communist Party to buy a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer. I remember that between playing games, he showed us how to put our name on the screen (and keep it there indefinitely, until the Scroll? message – or something like this – would appear):

10 PRINT “Bobby”
20 GOTO 10

Having access to a computer in communist Romania was really difficult, to say the least. I was lucky that I found out they existed while I was young enough and that there was a computer club at the “Pioneers’ House” where you could go and learn to program in BASIC (using ZX Spectrum clones that looked like WW1 phones).

Years later, I learned to program in PASCAL, then C. I also dabbled in PHP. Then I started to write content and I started companies. So I stopped programming.

But I miss it. I miss being able to think of something and being able to put together the lines of code to do it. I want to be able to create the MVPs for the ideas I have.

This is why I decided to relearn programming. Following suggestions from some good friends, I chose JavaScript. It allows frontend programming, as well as server side (through node.js) and I can use a wrapper and put the result in the mobile app stores. So, the perfect tool for an early MVP.

I found an applied course of JS and I’m starting from there. It’s nice because you basically follow on-screen examples and I’m better learning through hacking rather than going through the fundamentals first and so on. Another good way to learn is this described here by Derek Sivers. It’s not really for me, though, even if I reached the 6th or 7th chapter of the book he recommends.

What do I want to build? Nothing in particular, but keep an eye here to find out as the ideas come out :)

Oh, I don’t have that much time to dedicate to this, so progress will be slow. But at least there will be some progress, I promise you!

I was reading a Reddit thread the other day. A guy was doing an AMA about his startup and had this to say about it:

As a result of this, we are now a pretty rare breed of business as we started with no finance, no VC Funding etc etc, we did it the hard way and are building it the ground up. We use our profits to grow and have no outside help.

Most of the businesses people build are not VC funded or started with huge financing. Most of the businesses are started with some savings and a lot of time put into growing it. I looked for some information on it and I found the infographic here, that gives you a better image of how people finance their own entrepreneurial endeavors.

I didn’t want to point fingers to this guy, though. He’s not the only one that thinks that most entrepreneurial initiatives are heavily funded by outside investors (especially semi-pro and professional investors, like angels and VCs). There are lots of people that think this (at least in the circles I move and read of). And I think we’re a little deluded. And I say “we’re” because I think I’m also heavily biased toward invested startups, as well. After all, MavenHut raised several rounds and this is how it got to be successful.

What’s wrong with the invested startup delusion?

It’s bad thinking that you can’t really start anything if you don’t have outside investment. That all you need is an idea and someone to put $50k-$100k-$500k-$1M in and you’re set, you’re gonna change the world. Because you should focus on doing something and improving your product. Instead, the wanna-be entrepreneur will waste time running after potential investors, “networking” the hell out of all the events in their immediate (and not so immediate) area and, in general, being annoying. Really, have you ever had a guy that never raised a dollar in his life explain to you how to raise money from VCs? Even if you’ve done this several times in the last years? It really gets on your nerves at some point.

Being annoying aside, even more important is that you deprive yourself of a lot of experiences that will generate the great ideas that will help you get a good company off the ground.

And I talk from my own experience: I started doing “business” online in 2005 with no savings or money whatsoever. I was lucky my sister allowed me to stay in a room in her apartment for a while, but that’s all I had going for me. I looked for work on what is now Upwork, this helped me understand SEO, that helped me understand Wordpress, that started me on blogging, that led to a car blog that I wanted to monetize through a racing game that went nowhere. All this took about 6 years. By the beginning of 2012, I started a new project, a platform for 1 vs 1 single player games, with 2 guys that I worked with at the second version of the racing game I told you about. The project would later become Solitaire Arena and MavenHut. Without a doubt, the final result changed my life a lot for the better.

My entire online experience came from starting “something” online without any kind of financing. Yes, MavenHut was eventually financed by a VC and I’m happy for it. I still think starting an investor supported startup should be the natural evolution of your experience with entrepreneurship, not the start of it.

The next time you hear someone saying they just need a “small” investment and they’ll change the world, slap them across the head and send them to ask for investment from their close friends and family (the talked about FFF, the third being fools). If they can’t convince someone that knows them and should trust them, why do they lose time trying to convince someone they don’t know?

Finally, I know this won’t change, people will still dream about the VC fairy instead of just doing something with the resources they have. But if I get to convince at least 1 person to start anything, my job’s done ;)

Oh, and a plug for my Curated Reading List, where I often add articles about bootstrapped businesses. Subscribe and see for yourself.

P.S.: my sister got handsomely remunerated for the “investment” she’s put in more 10 years ago when she gave me and my cat the smallest room in her apartment. The cat didn’t care about rules, he got the entire apartment as hunting ground the next day. I didn’t :)

During the last 6 months I found myself using Reddit more and more. I’ve had a Reddit account for the last 10 years or so, since the times of Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. The reason I didn’t really use it until recently, though, is that I thought the site was crowded with things I didn’t care to know, overrun by people that wanted cat pics (I love cats, I lose hours from time to time watching at photos, but still…).

Until, once, I remembered something a friend of mine wrote about: if you want to understand something, you have to actually use that thing in earnest. So I started reading about “How to use Reddit”. And here’s what I ended up with :)

What is Reddit?

A forum of forums, a community of communities. It’s a collection of information from every domain possible which gets upvoted and downvoted by the multiple millions of users there and, based on that, it gets presented to all the users/readers on their homepages. If you don’t personalize your homepage it becomes a collection of photos and politics. But if you DO personalize your homepage, it’s a great tool to know what your community’s interested in.

First thing: use Reddit Enhancement Suite. I don’t know everything it does, but I know that my experience is so much better than with the default Reddit look/options. It’s a browser plugin that works with most browsers. From now on, in this article, I assume you have RES installed.

Second: you can find a subreddit (a niche forum, if you want) on about any subject possible. So you have to decide what kind of information you want to have on your front page of Reddit. Because, yes, Reddit has highly personalized homepages for every user. You can, basically, subscribe to any subreddit to appear on your home page and, more important, you can remove any subreddit from your home page.

You go here, where you can see the subreddits you subscribed to. As of now, I’m subscribed to about 100 subreddits, mostly business and travel, but I am also subscribed to things like YouSHouldKnow, PS4Deals, PS4, which are things I’m interested in. I’ll put a list with all the subreddits I’m subscribed to at the end of this article.

For obvious reasons, if you are interested in business and startups, subscribe to /r/Startups and /r/Entrepreneur. Also, one of the best subreddits I’ve seen around is /r/JustStart. Targeted mostly to Amazon affiliates, it’s really good because it has ridealong case studies (people write what happens to their business almost every month and it is really, really interesting to read). Another similar one, for any type of entrepreneurial business, is /r/EntrepreneurRideAlong.

Also, if you want to find interesting subreddits, search in Reddit. Or, even better, you can search for “interesting subreddits in [niche]” on Google and you can find lists from people that are really interested in the same things.

This is how I find good content to read.

Participation in communities

Another thing you can get from Reddit, though, is participation in communities. If you are the person that likes to help others, but on your own time, not theirs, Reddit is the best place. I go, every 2-3 days, to /r/Entrepreneur and /r/Startups and look at the New section on each subreddit. That’s where you see the latest things people post. And I try to comment, helpfully, on those things (if I have something to say, obviously). The reason I go to New instead of Popular or Controversial is that, by the time I get to the posts in those sections, I really have nothing to add. Most of the comments are thoughtful, people are genuinely trying to help, so I’d just repeat what others said.

Of course, from time to time you might have something to add in form of a post. An interesting link, something you want to ask or share. As long as it’s interesting for the community, people will react well, thank you for it and share with others. Be careful, though, at self-promotion. And I don’t say this about things you share with the community (my post about quitting MavenHut was received well enough), but about links to your blog/website that don’t really add anything to the subreddit. Then you will be hit with a lot of downvotes that will kill your karma. And some sarcastic comments that you will not enjoy :)

What’s karma?

Well, it’s a kind of credits system. It shows how relevant what you say and publish is for the communities you are part of. I have about 200 karma at this moment (which is really low), but I’ve seen accounts with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of points. Truth is, each subreddit has a different chance of getting on the /all page (which is, basically, the page everyone sees by defaultif they didn’t personalize their homepage). Once you get there you will probably generate about 30-40,000 karma. So, if that’s your play, this is where you need to get to. Most of the things in the subreddits I follow don’t get to /all, so you don’t really get a lot of karma.

And talking about /all: until recently I didn’t look at the page at all. It was full of politics regarding US elections (both Trump and Clinton fans manipulated the algorithm to get their stories on the front page). Several months ago, though, Reddit gave users the opportunity to exclude subreddits from the /all page. And now it’s somewhere I go from time to time. I removed almost all politics, all conspiracy theories, almost all pics. It makes a much better page for me now :)

Finally, before showing you my subreddits, I have to tell you that it took me about 2 weeks to actually start to get what Reddit is about and about 3-4 months to actually start making an effort to contribute to the communities. I do this about 3-4 times a week, for about an hour (contributing, I mean). I also read Reddit almost every day, for about 30 minutes, to see if there’s something interesting to read available.

Here are the subreddits I’m subscribed to: (if you want the link, just put reddit.com in front of it, I’m not gonna add 100 links. I’ve bolded the reddits the I think are really, really interesting.

Keep in mind that these are things I find useful, but there are some aspirational things there, as well (like /r/LongTermTravel). A guy can dream, right? :)

A list of all the subreddits I’m subscribed to

/r/entrepreneur
/r/startups
/r/entrepreneurridealong
/r/JustStart
/r/travel
/r/books
/r/history
/r/longtext
/r/ireland
/r/lifehacks
/r/cruise
/r/webmarketing
/r/todayilearned
/r/smnallbusiness
/r/wanderlust
/r/TrueReddit
/r/emailmarketing
/r/lounge (I think you need to be buy gold for this – like a premium subscription)
/r/youshouldknow
/r/datasets
/r/digitalnomad
/r/analytics
/r/debtfree
/r/Cork
/r/depthhub
/r/solotravel
/r/printSF
/r/adventuregames
/r/lowcar
/r/ifyoulikelblank
/r/truegaming
/r/explainlikeimfive
/r/travelhacking
/r/buyitforlife
/r/mildlyinteresting
/r/irishtourism
/r/everymanshouldknow
/r/playstationplus
/r/travelprotips
/r/getdisciplined
/r/dotcom
/r/travelblogging
/r/OutOfTheLoop
/r/PS4Deals
/r/OffGridCabins
/r/growmybusiness
/r/longtermtravel
/r/TravelHacks
/r/CozyPlaces
/r/PPC_Analytics