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This blog’s Facebook page is called I Am A Startup Founder. There are about 600 people that liked the page, so you should be the next one (hint, hint). If I read some interesting article, I post it there. This way I can separate the personal account and the fact that I mostly write in Romanian there from this blog, that is a more “professional” blog on which I write, as you see, in a comprehensible English.

So, every week I will take the most popular articles there (up to 5) and post them here, on the blog. I will post the links to the Facebook post, since this might also help in making the page livelier :D So don’t be too upset with clicking twice, it’s for a good cause :D

1. “It takes a team of imperfect people and a lot of time to make even a passable product. Even finishing a unprofitable product is an massive achievement in itself.”

An interesting article on why “overnight” success is a myth, with emphasis on the team behind the success.

See it here.

2. SaaS is becoming “the thing” on internet: more and more people that I know start growing small and medium businesses around SaaS and here is a list of bloggers that write about the subject (including some people that have done SaaS or are doing SaaS as they write).

The article is available here.

3. “This post is about how to get 1,000 people to try your site so you can find out what isn’t working, iterate and keep trying to build a site that people, other than your mom, actually come back to. ”

Yeah, this article is about how to get your first 1,000 users. The initial push that you need :) Find the link here.

Bonus:

Finally, every week I will also choose some that I personally think there are really interesting, but they lost on popularity. This week I’ve found a great article on churn and lifetime of your users. You need to understand this if you want to have a great business.

The article is available here.

Of course, hit like to any article that you think it’s interesting, subscribe to the page, you know, make me happy :P

Source: Vintage Books and Pen (selective focus) on ShutterStock

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to meet a guy that’s been really successful in his line of work. Thing is, before meeting him I’ve heard about him lots of stories from different people. And they all said: “I wish I was as lucky as him”. Or “I want to do what he does”. I didn’t hear once someone telling me “man, that guy works his ass off”. No. He was always lucky.

Well, after talking to him, it was obvious to me that nothing he did was luck in any way. He is a brilliant guy with an uncanny eye for opportunity. The last thing is a combination of about 10 years of experience and the understanding that he needs to learn new tricks all the time.

I am just amazed how much people want to see just the visible side of things and ignore the hard work behind the success.

Photo: Blackboard with the text Success, It Depends On You from Shutterstock

A good friend sent me this video of Malcolm Gladwell talking at Google and presenting his new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.

The talk starts with a different way of understanding the biblical fight between David and Goliath:
– the sling that David had was capable of great accuracy and of a similar impact as a .45 caliber bullet
– Goliath was probably almost blind and slow moving.

This means that, basically, the guy with the best technology and speed won. As it should :)

Watch the one hour presentation below. Another interesting thing is that Malcolm Gladwell was the first person to participate in the now famous Google talks :)

P.S.: a similar idea to what this guy is saying I’ve seen described in Brad Gilbert’s “Winning Ugly” book about tennis. It is a good read even if you are not a tennis enthusiast.

And, not related to this, I forgot to hit Publish on this post yesterday, so I am publishing it today (even if with an earlier date, to fit into Saturday Video).

This weekend I didn’t play anything. Didn’t really want and wasn’t in the mood. But the main reason was that I got lost in a book that anybody involved in gaming should read: Masters of Doom.

It’s not, obviously, a horror book, it’s about about the two Johnes: John Romero and John Carmack, the creators of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. They invented the First Person Shooter style of gaming, they brought deathmatch to millions of players and made the world of gaming much more visceral.

The book goes over a period of about 20 years, since the two guys met, until the launch of Daikatana and Quake 3 Arena, the titles that weren’t as successful as any previous work they’ve done.

One quote I found interesting is about gamers’ behavior when it comes to paying:

Gamers, he realized, might be a different breed from those consumers who actually paid for utility shareware. They were more apt simply to take what they could get for free.

Go, have a read. It’s a good way to understand the things happening inside a small team once it grows.

Talking to a lot of my entrepreneur friends I came to a conclusion: no matter how much you want, raising money is gonna take a lot more time than you initially expect.

When we first raised money, last year, we expected to have the money in the bank in the first 3 months. It took about 9, actually and, looking back and better understanding the entire process I can say that we were quite lucky.

Can you do anything to fasten things up? Yeah, up to a point: you can have all the financial and legal documents of the company place and this makes everything go faster. Other than that, though, it really isn’t up to you. Sometimes, not even up to the investors, but to the lawyers. So breathe deep and have patience :)

I know that most of the people say the same thing and that most of the people actually looking for investment think it’s a lot of BS. Well, it’s not.

Photo source: businessman hand pointing to investment concept on Shutterstock

My co-founder, Cristi, had a great presentation today at Venture Connect on things he learned while raising money. Since the list is quite similar to what I would say (we raised together, after all), albeit with different spots for specific things, I thought it would be interesting to put it on my blog and present each point during the next 2-3 weeks :)

#10 Time – it takes longer than expected
#9 Network – use your network (or grow one if you don’t have it)
#8 Aggressive – be agressive in contacting people
#7 Numbers – investors know numbers, so be prepared to explain yours
#6 Explain – explain what you do
#5 Follow-up – always follow up
#4 Diplomacy – pointing mistakes to investors is not really smart
#3 Angels – get ex-executives in VC backed businesses as angels
#2 ABC – always be careful: do your Due Dilligence on the people you meet
#1 Love – avoid investors that fall in love with your strategy, plans aso.

10 secrets I wish I knew before I starting raising capital from Cristi Badea

While we were in Startup Bootcamp one of the things we heard was to get introduced to investors, not to cold call them or cold email or anything similar.

One of the reasons this should happen is because a lot of investors consider that a good, committed entrepreneur should find a way to get introduced to them. Even more, getting an introduction means that you already convinced someone, hopefully a good connection to your target investor, that you are worth his time.

What all of this means is that you need to grow your network: talk to people around you, get introduced, find people that have similar interests with you aso.

One thing I found to help a great deal with network is to speak in public if you have the chance. Find subjects that you are really good at and talk about them: programming, business, it doesn’t matter. Even if you think that people already know what you know, even if you think it is really basic, you would be really surprised to find out how many people don’t actually know what you do or don’t see things as you do.

Getting an investment is not easy, as I always said on this blog and as people that’ve done it also say. Take any shortcut possible.

Photo: Collage of a large group of people faces from Shutterstock

Being aggressive doesn’t really sound good. After all, who wants to deal with an aggressive person?

Well, when it comes to connections and intros, be as aggressive as you can. One thing I’ve learned in the last two years is that nobody will talk to you unless you talk to them. Nobody will come to you to make you feel better when you stay alone, in the corner. You need to do that on your own.

When you go to events make a list of people you want to meet there and go and get introduced to them. If nobody is there to introduce you then just go to that person and say: Hi, I am, I do an interesting thing with my startup. I want to tell you more about it, is it ok if I send you an email? All of this should take you one minute the most.

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT try to take all that person’s time.

Do not pitch that person then and there, since he/she will probably forget almost everything about you in the next 5 minutes. I see so many times people that just forget to leave and let that person breathe or meet other people, I am always amazed at how clueless some are. Don’t be that person.

Also, be aggressive with getting introduced via email. If you want to get to know someone, use your network (physical or on Linkedin) and find out who can introduce you to the person you want. Then ask for an introduction. And so on.

It’s better to be known as the annoying one than not being known at all.

Photo source: Beautiful sport karate kids from Shutterstock

This is just a rant. You’ve been warned!

The thing I hate most about not being in the States is the time difference.

Since MavenHut has a global target and most of the users we have are on the American continent, I need to talk to people there all the time. And that means that I have calls at 8pm, the earliest. Or, at 2am, sometimes.

This means I get home and all I want to do is get a hot bath and sleep.

Just a 11:44pm rant, on a Friday night :))

Photo: caucasian man stressed by jet lag with time zone clock background from Shutterstock

640 startups invested in. Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, AirBNB and Dropbox among the investments.

This is Ron Conway, one of the biggest investors in Silicon Valley.

The interview below is part of the Y Combinator 2012 Startup School. You can see all the interviews on their YouTube channel, including some of the 2013 ones.