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I’ve always looked for ways to improve my productivity (not to work more and more, but work less and do more :D ).

One of the best things I’ve found is to get routines in your life: things that you do the same time every time. This frees up a lot of energy that you need during the day to make important decisions. Obviously, put routine in low level decisions. I walk to the office on the same route, I do the same things in the mornings, in the same order, at the same time. And it pays off: it’s easier for me to not eat after 6pm or take a better decision in a particular situation.

Two people that are known for doing this (they dress or used to dress pretty much the same way every time so that they don’t need to make a decision about it) are Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.

You can read more about it in this book (Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength) or, shorter, read about Decision Fatique in New York Times.

So, what things do you do all the time can be put into a routine?

P.S.: it might sound that you do not allow “passion” and “spark” come into your life, that you become a boring person. Well, if you define not boring by the order you brush your teeth or take your shower…

Photo from Shutterstock

Since this is the last weekend to enter Startup Spotlight competition at How To Web, here are some great pitches I’ve found around the web:

Keen.io, a great short pitch (approx. 3 minutes)

ZocDoc, a nice way to start with a personal story.

And, finally, MavenHut’s Demo Day pitch, with yours truly:

Finally, here are some links to other pitches:
Quora: What are best start-up pitch/product intro videos available on vimeo or otherwise?

Quora: What are some great videos of startup pitches under 3 minutes?

Business Insider: The Best Startup Video Pitches of All Time

About two weeks ago I moderated a panel on indie games. Among the panelists, Dragos Inoan was telling us about his experience building a space combat simulator.

And the day has come when you can actually play the game (if you are in Romania, Canada and New Zealand, for the moment). It will be launched worldwide soon.

What can I tell you about the game? The graphics look really, really crisp. The game is easy to play (I was using the accelerometer), but you can also with it with touch and, hold on, using a new controller Apple is getting out on the market.

I played several sessions (lack of time). I am not the biggest fan of space combat games (I think I stopped playing them once I played Elite and Wing Commander, about 15 years ago), but it was really easy for me to pick up the games and shoot down the first 2-3 ships.

Oh, and the ships. I think they are some of the most beautiful designs I’ve seen in a game (admittedly, I didn’t play as many of this type). You can actually see some of the designs on the game’s site, here.

The game is a paid one ($0.99), and is available, as I said above, in the Romanian and Canadian store. I am really curious on seeing the big, US launch and how it works. Dragos is working with a distributor, trying to get as high as possible in the store (the game looks crisp and interesting, maybe he can get a Featured spot, also).

Good luck, Dragos!

As a startup founder you always look to improve yourself. You read a lot, you try to get better at everything you do.

This means that you actually go through a lot of interesting articles, see great videos or listen to great podcasts. It happens the same for me. And the thing is I can’t really publish all those articles on my Facebook account (where I also write in Romanian totally mundane things like the life of my cat).

So I created a Facebook page for this blog where I will basically drop all the interesting articles, videos or anything else I find that I can’t really write a blogpost around. The page is called I Am A Startup Founder and you can find it here.

Though it’s basically the page for this blog. I named it like this because it’s not really about this blog, but more about what I think a startup founder should read.

So, if you think it might be interesting for you, go there and hit like. I promise I read interesting things most of the time :)

Yesterday I got caught in a football (soccer) match and in Apple’s conference and I forgot to blog. Yes, almost 90 days after starting to write daily, I forgot to blog. It’s obvious, I need a 22 o’clock alarm to let me know I should not forget.

Anyway, back to the matter at question: iPad Mini.

I bought an iPad since it first launched (back problems forced me to run away from the chair and the desk, so I bought it to be able to stay in bed and read or browse the Internet). I bought the second one, also, but I got no interest in the subsequent ones. The Retina display was not something I was interested in particular, and I felt that a smaller tablet would be a lot better. And I would’ve bought the Google Nexus, though I am not an Android user.

Luckily, by the time I decided to buy the Nexus 7, I heard that Apple is gonna launch the Mini. So I waited and went and bought it the moment it came out in Romania.

The result? I am using the iPad mini more than ever, while the bigger form ones were given away to people close to me, because they were gathering dust somewhere around the house. Even though I have a MacBook Air 11′ at home, which is in no way big, I barely touch it, unless I have work to do.

The mini form factor is great: it’s light so we can use it with one hand (which, if you read a lot on it, it’s really helpful) and it is still in the Apple ecosystem, where I have the applications I already use and I am comfortable with. Talking about the weight, my two devices (the iPad Mini and MacBook) weight, together, 1.4kgs. That’s crazy, right?

Another interesting thing (especially because of what I do) is the fact that I play a lot more games. Again, the smaller form factor allows me to hold the device with one hand while using the other hand to play.

I’ve written this article because yesterday Apple launched the new iPad Mini, with Retina screen. I wouldn’t normally buy it, there’s nothing I want from it in particular, but the new processor and graphics will make the gaming experience a much better one. And I understood how important the device became for my daily browsing and reading habits. Actually, because it became so important, for the first time since I started to use Apple products I am gonna buy a 32 or 64GB one. Probably 32, I don’t want to spend too much money, though. And that is all because I find myself consuming so much content on it (especially games).

Conclusion: you should try a smaller tablet (iOS or Android, after taste). YOu will be amazed how much more than you expect you are gonna use it. And it will help you become more productive, because the back pain from staying over your desk will not be as present as it is when using the laptop.

P.S.: I know Apple launched the iPad Air, also, but I really don’t care about it, even if it’s just 500grams (as compared to the 350 for Mini).

Photo from Apple

I’ve been present to a Romanian event two days ago, in the panel on Online Entreprenurship in Romania. Along with me were people that are successful in the space (Alexis Bonte from eRepublik, Alexandru Lapusan from Zitec, Lucian Todea from Soft32). I was really honored by the invitation, since all these companies are companies that were started several years ago and they are examples that we looked up to (and still do).

One of the things that was talked in the panel started with the fact that the software companies relevant for Romania right now have hundreds of employees and if (or better when) are we gonna hire the same number of people.

The thing is that Eastern European countries (if not all) still see success in business as having lots of employees, big offices and that’s not true anymore, at least for most of the tech businesses that I know. Heck, I know at least 3 people that made more than $1 Million in the last 2-3 years all by themselves or with the help of 1-2 outsourced people.

Even more important, people that I know and talk to (especially investors) appreciate if you can grow a company by being lean, not getting into a hiring spree once you have a little bit of money, since that will make the company move a lot slower and you will lose the only competitive advantage you have: speed of execution.

MavenHut is a team of 12 people right now, and we really took our time with the hires. We are moving really, really fast and you can’t be part of the team if you can’t do that. I remember that once we interviewed someone from a big Romanian site and he couldn’t believe how fast we move(he really thought we were lying, he got into his head that we made fun of him and he left, basically thinking we were assholes).

And MavenHut is not the only case. Yes, we are small, but look at King or Supercell in gaming (King has an expected value of $5 Billion with just 400 or so employees, while Supercell just got valued at $3 Billion with a little bit over 100). And that’s not just in gaming, Instagram had 12 people when it was acquired for $1 Billion. Of course, different industries have different characteristics, but online product businesses should not have huge teams. At least in the initial stages, before having to hire hundreds for customer support. That is if you don’t outsource it.

I expect this perception will change in time. As someone in the panel said (I think Alexis Bonte), in the future you will not see one company with 1,000 employees, but 50 companies with 20 people employed. So your startup should hire slow. Really slow. :)

Photo taken by me, this is why I am not visible there :D

I was never too much of a fan of meetings, but I often found myself part of long ones. Some were my fault, I have to say, because I like a good story and we got lost in funny or interesting things

MavenHut changed all this, though. Cristi, one of my co-founder, forced on us (yeah, he really did force it :D ) the time box meetings concept.

What this means is that you set a specific period of time for that meeting and NO MATTER WHAT, when the countdown stops, the meetings stops. If people didn’t say what they had to, well, tough luck.

All of it might seem rough, but what I saw is that, in time, peer pressure started to act: people will force themselves and force the other ones to fit in time and that, in turn, will make people focus on what they want to say and what they want to find out. This will increase the productivity of the team and your own productivity.

So, if I could give you a great tip for any kind of business meeting: try to time box it. Obviously, you can’t do it all the time (good luck time boxing an investor meeting). This doesn’t mean, though, that you shouldn’t try.

Photo from ShutterStock

Last Thursday, the guys at TechHub had an interesting guest from MIT (Bill Aulet) to talk about entrepreneurship. Along with two Romanian entrepreneurs (Marius Ursache and Andrei Marinescu), they talked about the issues you could have if you do not start in a “beach head” market, how to bootstrap, where would you get cofounders (great idea: going to a Hackaton – Google is organizing one soon in Bucharest).

Here are some ideas from the talk:

In Bill’s perspective:

• entrepreneurship needs to be regarded as a profession
• the supply of quality entrepreneurship education today is very limited
• entrepreneurial education is contextual, so it’s difficult to teach
• entrepreneurship is experiential, it’s mentor-intensive
• the objective of education is to teach people how to fish, not how to catch a fish
• it’s easy to fail at doing education in entrepreneurship (Donald Trump has an entrepreneurship institute – storytelling and shark-tanking – now he’s being sued for that)
• you have to have the right spirit, to think differently, to be motivated
• you need to foster an environment of creative irreverence, like they do at MIT (hacking)
• hacking is about taking on Goliath, about swimming against the current
• we need not to make entrepreneurship sound easy
• we need the execution skills of a navy seal and incredible self discipline
• you can’t just have practitioners in an entrepreneurship education program; you also need researchers and hard date people
• if we want to make this a profession, we need the data to back it up.

Unfortunately I cannot embed it on my blog, so you can go here and look over it. It’s worth listening for 50 minutes (though they had some issues with the mic at some point and it was a little annoying, but the info is so interesting, it’s worth getting over it).

Of course, there is a short review of the talk here, on the TechHub blog (this is where the quote is coming from)

Recently the Romanian Simona Halep broke onto the tennis scene with a vengeance. She never won a WTA tournament until this year, but 2013 meant 5 finals and 5 tournaments won. This meant more interest in tennis in Romania.

Of course, this had nothing to do with the fact that, in the last 2 months or so, Grand Slam Tennis 2 is the game we at the office. The reason? 4 of us can play at the same time, a doubles game. And it’s so much fun! :))

Another fun thing is that you can play with 80s and 90s players (you have to see Bjorn Borg :D ). They look so out of place on the court, you have no idea. With their short (really short) pants or whatever they are called.

Most of the games, though, are something like Djokovici and Nadal playing against Roddick and Federer. I usually play Nadal since I play better with the player from the back of the court, but I would love to be able to play a more serve-volley kind of game.

We play the game on XBox, but it is also available on PS3 (and, I think, PC). So, if you want a game that you can play with your friends, Grand Slam Tennis 2 is great. Of course, you can do this in real life, but my back still hurts from such a try not long ago :))

A good friend of mine just got accepted to the Startup Spotlight competition for How To Web 2013. His startup is growing, he’s done all the “meet your customer, sell to your customer before writing one line of code” process and now he’s private testing the first version of his app.

I am not telling you who he is, I don’t want to put more pressure on him as it’s already difficult to present your idea in front of several hundred people :)

Anyway, Startup Spotlight is a great place to showcase your project (we’ve earned Best Pitch in 2012) since the audience is full of like-minded people and possible mentors.

Some interesting starups that will present on the stage of Startup Spotlight are (and this is my opinion based on just one line of description, all right?):

Daisy Pi, GameMatch, GloriaFood, KOLOS, Monitor Backlinks, Sportwavez.

Read more about the 32 startups involved in Startup Spotlight here, since you might find something else that interests you.

A little bit of disclaimer: while I am not interested in link building, Monitor Backlinks is backed by SOSventures, the same investors that backed our seed round and I am really interested in their evolution, since the grew quite a little bit since their early round.