Arhiva: 2019, în engleză

In February 2018 I landed in Lisbon. It was my first time in continental Portugal and I wanted to see what everyone was so enthusiastic about. My experience wasn’t the best – though it improved a lot by the end of the year, but I want to talk about something else: Pastel de Nata.

I don’t know how or where I heard the first time about pastel de nata (which means cream pastry, basically, in Portuguese). I tried it pretty soon after landing, because it’s everywhere, and I really enjoyed it.

Right after eating a pastel de nata the first time, I remember talking to Cristi, my co-founder at MavenHut, and telling him “You know, they have this great thing called pastel de nata here”. To which he replied: “Yes, it’s awesome. Just be careful, you’ll be really sick if you eat more than 5 at a time!”. 5? FIVE? I could barely eat 2 at a time, since they were so sweet. But five???

Anyway, after this moment I learned that pastel de nata was a “secret” just for me, that a lot of my friends ate it before and, even more surprising, they didn’t need to come to Portugal for that. I found it afterwards in London at Nando’s, in Bucharest somewhere as well. And today I found out why:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the nata’s rise is fueled in part by promotion from the government, which sponsors events like the 2018 Nata Festival in London and funds local businesses.

Here is the entire article, called “The Unlikely Rise of the Pastel de Nata, and Why It’s Suddenly Everywhere“. And, if you, all of a sudden, feel like you want a pastel de nata, don’t tell me. Please, don’t. I have a really good Portuguese “pastelaria” really close. And their pastel de nata is really, really good.

Oh, and if you go to Lisbon, the best pastel de nata I’ve had was at Manteigaria, at TimeOut Market. They also have another place where you can find them, which might be less busy, on the corner of Largo de Camões, in Chiado. A lot of people say that the original pastel de nata, at Pastéis de Belém, is better, but it wasn’t my experience. To each’s own, though :)

Photo source: The illustration on top is Miruna’s.

Around 13-14 years ago while discovering the benefits of p2p communication, I found out a show about cars that wasn’t really about cars. It was called Top Gear, it was in its 4th-5th year or so, and I fell in love with it.

After all, who wouldn’t? It was about fast cars and crazy antics and I was a guy in my early twenties, dreaming about Aston Martins.

Actually, because of watching Top Gear, in 2007 I started, along with my cousin, a blog about cars called AutoUnleashed. It didn’t bring us the money we hoped for, but it gave us a jump start into test driving cars, which we loved. And, its followup, called rpmgo, made enough money when I sold it so I could support the first few months of MavenHut.

Anyway, today I saw – on Amazon, because we don’t need p2p anymore to watch our favorite shows – the last “live audience” episode of The Grand Tour, the followup of Top Gear for the 3 presenters (Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond) . And it impacted me more than I thought it would. And, while I didn’t cry, I wasn’t surprised to see Jeremy Clarkson tearing up.

Well, they will still continue to do crazy antics in special, longer shows, but for the moment, thanks for the memories!

Of course, Top Gear still continues – maybe – on BBC, with a different team, and the show is not bad at all. But, for the moment, I’m actually surprised how much I feel I’ll miss the crazy “original” trio.

Photo source

Besides reading as much as I can, I listen to lots of podcasts on a weekly basis. I listen mostly to technology and “tech lifestyle” if you want, but I also listen business podcasts, on an episode by episode basis. I listen to them when I walk my dog, when I go around the town doing chores, whenever I have some “dead” time on my hands.

Today I found a really comprehensive list of 80 podcasts for the online business owners, from Businessese. They’re categorized, with categories like Marketing and Sales, Blogging, Finance and Legal, Mindset, Branding, Writing and Content Creation, Organization and Productivity, Creatives and Creativity, General Business. What’s more interesting, for me, at least, is that they avoided the most well known podcast, like Tim Ferriss’s one, and they tried to find less known, but really targeted ones.

In our own searches for new blogging and business podcasts to devour, we’ve found that most “best podcast” lists tend to feature the same major players we’ve heard before. That’s no good for the podcast obsessed! So we rolled our sleeves up and scoured the internet to curate a huge list of podcasts that has something for everyone, at every stage of business. Enjoy!

I got the list from an interesting newsletter I subscribed a long time ago to, Useletter by Amy Lynn Andrews. Look over it and, while you to this, don’t forget Cristina sends a really good newsletter every Monday, as well, here, at The CEO Library. She often recommends good podcasts she listen to, so you have that, as well, as a good reason to subscribe.

Finally, here are some podcasts I listen to, mostly Tech: Accidental Tech Podcast, Connected, Cortex, Analog(ue), The BirchTree Podcast, Real Money, Real Business. If you’re Romanian, I also listen to Andrei Rosca’s Zero Plus, Podcastu’ lui Katai and Radu Dumitru’s Radu and Matilda.

Oh, and one tip: if you want to listen to more podcasts or you don’t have enough time, use Overcast as your podcast client of choice, if you’re on iOS. It has a smart thing called Smart Speed that actually cuts pauses and it can cut 10-15% of the time you need. Also, I listen on 1.1x or 1.2x speed, which doesn’t distort the voices too bad and I get some more time from this as well.

Happy listening! :)

Well, this is unxpected:

https://twitter.com/offthepill/status/1089287578992357376

If you’re ever in the position to raise money, the first thing you’ll probably do will be to look for examples of pitch decks to use with your potential investors. In 2012, when I was raising money in earnest for MavenHut, finding this kind of examples was difficult. I needed to access my own network (which was not that big) because there were almost no decks available online.

Actually, I think the one that helped me the most was Reid Hoffman’s Linkedin deck, which he published on his own website, along with explanation and context for each deck. It was gold for me, because it helped me understand a little bit more about investor perception and targets. You can still find the article here and I hope it will still be there a long time, because I learned more from it than most of other resources combined.

I wouldn’t have mentioned pitch decks and presentations if I didn’t find today, in Ben Evans’s newsletter (one of the best tech related newsletters online) a mention to an article with 30 pitch decks from some of the most successful startups in the world or, how they put it, legen…wait for it… dary startups. You have the likes of Airbnb, Square, Buffer, Mint, Mixpanel, Moz (of Lost and Founder fame). You can even find Buzzfeed or YouTube. A really good collection that you shouldn’t miss if you’re raising money or think of raising money.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention MavenHut’s public presentation at the end of Startup Bootcamp in June 2012. While the deck is not available online, you can see me barely breathing with stress on stage. It might actually be funny, but I think it’s also educational.

Since we’re on The CEO Library and we’re all about books, here are the books that helped me when pitching and when learning how to pitch, maybe they will help you as well:

• Pitch Anything – by Oren Klaff
• Made to Stick – by Chip & Dan Heath

From here:

If your screen is black or frozen
If your screen is black or frozen, you might need to force restart your device. A force restart won’t erase the content on your device. You can force restart your device even if the screen is black or the buttons aren’t responding. Follow these steps:
– On an iPad Pro 11-inch or iPad Pro 12.9-inch: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then press and hold the Power button until the device restarts.
– On an iPhone 8 or later: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then press and hold the Side button until you see the Apple logo.
– On an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold both the Side and Volume Down buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo.
– On an iPhone 6s and earlier, iPad, or iPod touch: Press and hold both the Home and the Top (or Side) buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo.

This is on top of my Mac’s microphone not working in Skype (on MacOS, of course).

Photo credit