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I started to play games when I was 6, in 1984. Of course, the games were played on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum of one of my best friends. It was his father’s computer, brought with difficulty from UK into communist Romania. We’ve broken it from playing Match Day and Fist, so I don’t think his father ever really liked me :D

Anyway, during those times I got addicted to story driven games and this addiction continued through the 90s and PCs and it is still in place today.

Recently (as in 2-3 years ago) I’ve discovered GOG.com or Good Old Games on its full name: the site where classic games go to have a second life.

Among the games I have bought and wait to play are: Planescape: Torment, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Vampire: Masquerade Redemption, Alpha Centauri, Syndicate Plus, some great games that still have a lot of potential to replay over and over.

Since I have a Mac I thought that I couldn’t play the games, but there are some compatible Mac games. It doesn’t matter, though, since I play all the games in Parallels, on a Windows 7 install :D Because most of them are not graphics heavy, playing them in a virtual environment is actually possible without losing performance.

So, when you have a time and you feel melancholic towards the times you played games with your friends in the school’s lab, go to GOG.com. There are games for 2-3$ and most of them are up to $10.

P.S.: yes, it’s the second Sunday in a row when I don’t recommend a game. That’s because I am playing HOMM3 and I thought that it doesn’t need any presentation.

During the weekend I’ve found a really interesting case study on SaaS. The source: the guys at GrooveHQ. I’ve already put two of the articles on the Facebook page for this blog (I Am A Startup Founder, go and hit like to get links to great articles I find online), but I thought they deserve to be on the blog, also.

The list of articles is here (about 9 of them).

You should read all the articles, they are really well written and have a lot of learnings to extract. My favorites are:

– How We Got 1,000+ Subscribers from a Single Blog Post in 24 Hours
– 5 Early Wins That Got Our SaaS Startup 1,000 Beta Users
– 7 Lessons We Learned Going from Zero to $30k/Month in Under a Year

Today I’ve been invited to talk to “Zilele Biz”, an event about business and innovation. I talked about the importance of being present offline, as well as online.

Here is the presentation, below, with some advice, at the end, on how to prepare for events you go to outside of your country. Since I rarely use a lot of words in my public presentation, I’ve modified it a little bit, but it might still not make too much sense without the story :) Sorry for that :D

I would advise you, though, to look at least at the last 4-5 slides, on how to prepare an event. It might make all the difference.

Going Offline while doing Business Online from Bobby Voicu

Oh, and an image with me talking on the stage, taken from Roxana, below:

Inventures.eu is starting an interesting series about startups in Romania, a series that shows promise, especially since at least 2 articles already mentioned MavenHut :D

Mircea Goia, from Romanian Startups, talks a little bit about, obviously, startups in Romania here.

As of today, RomanianStartups.com amasses 139 startups, 286 founders, 24 events and 2 accelerators/incubators. It’s a far cry from about 15-20 startups, which I managed to find in 2007 and not all of the actual startups in Romania are in this newly built database.

Bogdan Iordache, the founder of How To Web, talks about “riding a speeding bullet” when it comes to the changes in the startups ecosystem in Romania in the last 4-5 years.

As the number of stakeholders of the new innovation economy grows, more communities emerge. TechHub Bucharest, Startup Hub Timisoara, Cluj Hub and many others provide not only resident and hot desks, but also a reason for the local communities to meet, interact and exchange knowledge, and putting entrepreneurs, investors, R&D centers, product companies, developers and product experts together.

And while this ecosystem matures, growth is happening exponentially. This is just the begining of a great ride, fast as a speeding bullet.

Follow inventures.eu for the rest of the articles :)

Photo from RevistaBiz

One of the Romanian entrepreneurs that we look up to here, at MavenHut is our adviser, Radu Georgescu (Romanian blog). Serial entrepreneur (sold several companies to Microsoft, Naspers and, recently, to Francisco Partners), he’s been close to our company for the last year and a half, since we launched. He helped with advice and, most of all, with his experience of going through all the trials and tribulations of building a startup.

He’s been recently interviewed by inventures.eu (here is the full interview). Some things I found interesting:

On failure:

I have had my share of failures. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula for success. Being at the right place at the right time with the right product and the right team is an entrepreneur’s dream. I have always tried to learn from my failures and my mistakes and have had no hesitation in getting back on my feet to try yet again.

On people to work with:

I usually look for individuals who are very committed to the vision and have the ability to build, lead and work with high quality teams. I rarely get involved with the day to day of any business and self-starters are my favourite people.

On how to get him onboard:

Tell me the problem that you are trying to solve and how your product or service is going to do this. Talk about the people behind the startup and the skills that they bring to the table. Convince me that what you are going to do is going to make a difference. And: please do this in no more than 10 PowerPoint slides.

Again, read the full interview on inventures.

Photo from Facebook, via TVR Info

I am a gamer, so I think this blog is perfect for my girlfriend :D

We’ve met Steve Collins from Swrve in Ireland, while starting MavenHut. He has a really interesting entrepreneurial background (co-founder of Havoc, the physics engine), but he is talking in this video about how to make more money from the games you are building for mobile and social networks.

This is one of the best videos I’ve seen on gaming in a long time.

Just to let you know: these days, the guys at GOG.com sell lots of things at insanely reduced prices. The games weren’t expensive to begin with, but now they are even cheaper. I bought Neverwinter Nights 2, Planescape: Torment (again, since I already had it) at $1.99 and so on.

Go ahead, they are going through the same cycle and you can still buy (or even get for free) some great games of the past :)

Me and one of my co-founders are speaking at How To Web on Wednesday :) We are gonna talk about the lessons we learned taking MavenHut from 0 to 5 million users in one year.

If you are around, let me know :)

Ah, we speak from 3pm on Wednesday, ok? >:)

One of the things you really need to do when you start up your company is to grow constantly. Do not stop the growth no matter what: pull all the resources into growth. Investors love this kind of proof.

If you don’t want investors, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t grow continuously. After all, it doesn’t hurt you.

Photo: close up of finance business graph from Shutterstock