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I speak Romanian and English to a comfortable level. I hope my Romanian is better than my English, seeing that it’s my native language, but I make myself understood fairly easy in both languages.

I understand French and I speak it, slowly, when I put my mind to it. I can ask for food and directions. And I can say “Je parle un peu français“.

Lately, I’ve been learning Portuguese. I still have problems understanding what people say on TV and in real life, but I can read well enough. Portuguese people speak really fast and they “eat” vowels, so it’s not that easy to make out what they say. This is why I actually understand Brazilian Portuguese better, but I speak with continental accent.

Understanding Portuguese and speaking Romanian (both Romance languages) makes Spanish a lot easier to understand, as well. I still need to talk in English, though.

Anyway, I don’t write this article to humble brag, but because I’ve had an epiphany: whenever you’re able to read a new language, you “unlock” a new part of the internet.

I remember reading this exact expression on reddit, in a Showerthoughts thread, but didn’t really think much about it.

Lo and behold, though, I just surprised my self midtext, reading this article about a trip to Norway by electric car. Nothing necessarily amazing about that. But the article is in Portuguese. And I only truly noticed it about 20% in. And it’s a long article. With lots of photos, though.

Initially, you would think that the internet content is not that different, right? But it’s not that true. I mean, the internet is largely the same, no matter the language, but the nuances of each language and people that speak it can be felt in regional areas of the web. I mean, the Romanian internet is quite different in tone and subjects of interest from the massive, English one.

Right now, I’m happy though. I’ve just unlocked the Portuguese internet. It’s true, I’m just in “story mode – really easy” difficulty level, but it’s the first step, right? I can read about the weather in Algarve or At least I won’t die of starvation if you drop me in the middle of a Portuguese village, outside of tourist routes. I mean, how difficult is it to order “Bacalhau a brás”, “um cafe pingado” and “a conta, por favor!”. Which translates to “Cod mixed with egg and Julienne fries”, “a coffee” and “the check, please!”.

Btw, if you want to learn Portuguese, try learning online with the same teacher I study. She’s amazing.

Photo credit: The photo at the top is a part of my notes during the lessons.

What’s the best way to convince someone to join you as a co-founder of your startup? Maybe the better question is: is there a best way to find a startup cofounder?

If you prefer to read, there’s an improved transcript of the video below, with better structure and a more complete answer.

“What’s the best way to find a startup cofounder to join in my business idea?“

The answer is… I don’t know how YOU should do it! There is no best way to convince someone.

Your skills and mine are completely different between us and they’re different from someone else’s skills. What you need to do is go and try to identify a startup cofounder that is compatible with you, not with a fictional idea of what they should be.

Start by trying to convince these people that you identified. If you fail, ask them for feedback: why don’t they want to join you as a cofounder? And then improve on that.

Because your skills will definitely be different than my skills or the skills of my cofounders’ at MavenHut. The three of us (I, Cristi and Elvis), we worked together on another project before founding MavenHut, so we already knew each other.

And how we found each other initially? Well they were service providers for another gaming project I tried before MavenHut. And I found them on the recommendation of my cousin. Which knew both Cristi and Elvis.

The answer to the questions is: basically look for people with compatible skills and ask them to join. And if they don’t see the the beauty of your idea and the greatness of your idea, the problem is not with them but it’s with you.

Either the idea is stupid or you can’t really sell the idea.

So learn how to sell the idea. This is a skill that you need as a founder anyway. And if you’re incapable to convince one person to join you, how will you expect to convince others to buy what you’re creating?

Conclusion

The only way to find a startup cofounder is to improve on the feedback received. This means you should actually ask for feedback and listen to it. A lot of startup founders just think they already know everything so they don’t need to listen. If you keep failing, this might be the reason: you don’t actually know everything and you lack the capacity to improve.

I used to hate the office chairs. Not for their comfort, because they can be comfortable, but for their wheels. You know, those shitty caster wheels, that always get stuck and scratch the floor, or the carpet, or whatever. The same wheels that make weird noises, scratchy and annoying.

Since I’m seated on those chairs for hours at an end – as I assume most of the people reading this are – they were the bane of my existence. Well, not really, but I hated them with all my heart.

Until last year, when I found out that you can switch the wheels with silicon type ones, like the ones you see on roller blades. And that it’s not that complicated, actually. You can see below how my chair moves now.

These are the steps to follow to replace your old caster wheels with silicone rollerblade wheels:

1. identify the type of wheels you need. I use a Markus chair from IKEA and they have a 10x22mm stem size. Most of the chairs have this or 11x22mm stem, so look at what you need.
2. order the set of wheels that’s good for you (based on reviews and so on). I’ve ordered these ones from amazon.de, but you can find similar ones on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk.
3. Remove the old wheels from the chair. It might take a little bit of effort, but they should be easy enough to remove.
4. Push in the new wheels. Again, it might take a little bit of effort, so don’t be worried (unless you bought the wrong, bigger size).
5. Enjoy a life free of scratching floors and weird, scratchy noises.

In case you are unsure how to fix them in, here’s the video I followed to replace them:

There is one con, though, for these rollerblade wheels: you might hit the floor once or twice because you’re used to a slow moving chair. You push it back from the desk to sit on it and by the time you act, it’s at the other end of the room. You’ve been warned!

I’m 41 now. This thing is relevant, so bear with me.

Since I was born I watched (and played) sports: football (european, the real one), handball, tennis. I even watched hockey, gymnastics and figure skating. Growing up in a communist country, with 2 hours of TV every day, sports were the only thing you could watch, so it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. Unless you liked nationalistic songs praising your “beloved” leader.

Anyway, I digress. I loved sports and, until recently, I was fairly sure I won’t be getting attached to a new sport any time soon. I mean, curling was interesting when I saw it the first time, baseball is an enigma for me, rugby is not something I was too much into, American football games were too long. And for ffs, I was almost 40, I kinda know what I like by now, right? Well, wrong.

One late night, in London, in February 2016, between some of our business meetings, Cristi, my cofounder at MavenHut, said: do you want to see the Superbowl 50 with me? Since we were still jet-lagged from a trip to the US, I said “sure, why not?”

I LOVED IT! Because Cristi is a huge American football fan he explained the game to me and I finally understood what the heck was happening on the field, why there were so many people doing things there. And. I. LOVED. It.

It’s true, I watched Cristi’s (and now mine) favorite team, the Carolina Panthers, lose a game they were overwhelmingly favored to win. And it was apparently a not so good game, since the Broncos defended really well and you didn’t see too many touchdowns. But for me, it was really fun. And really, I’m such a fan that I bought a t-shirt. Which I don’t normally do.

3 years later, I’m really, really happy that the new season (2019-2020) just started last Friday. Like jumping of joy happy. And I have no idea why, if I really think about it :)

Here are the reasons why I really enjoy American football, after watching at least one game almost every week of the last season:

1. The game itself is not so much about individual talent, but about strategy and tactics. While individual talent improves your chances, the influence of just one player is not that big as in other team sports (there are no Messi or Ronaldo in American football). Quarterbacks are the closest players to that, but even they can’t do anything if the team doesn’t really help.
2. Because it’s so long (3h-4h, most of the time, with 40 minutes of effective play), you get the time to understand what the hell happens. Because they show you lots of replays, analysis and the likes. During the transmission.
3. Once someone explains them to you, the rules are pretty simple.
4. The strategy changes based on the opponent, based on how good your team is on that specific day, it’s a game in constant flow. It’s like chess, but with people.
5. Because the playing team is of about 53 people, not to mention the administrative stuff, the coaching stuff aso, an American football team is the closest thing to a business in any sport.
6. They have salary caps, which limits the tens of millions salaries for superstars at the expense of other players. I mean, you can’t have a team like Real Madrid, PSG or Manchester City in Europe, where all the players are super stars payed a huge amount of money, to the detriment of other teams. This means that in NFL there’s no team at any point that can concentrate talent and power as much as they do in European football.
7. When I talk to someone about the NFL you can talk about talent (specific players), you can talk about strategy (coaching), you can talk about business, psychology. It gives you a lot to think about.
8. I can watch ALL the games in the NFL season on the Gamepass site and app. It is pretty expensive, at around €150/year, but I don’t need to hunt illegal live streams around the Internet.
9. Finally, I’m 41. By rule of law, apparently, I need something to keep me in front of the TV for 9 months in the year. It could very much be American football.

Last year I got to see my first live game in the States, one of New England Patriots’ games. And it was amazing. Good atmosphere, people enjoying themselves. Supporters of both teams staying next to each other. Really, really nice. And I got to see Tom Brady, who is probably the best overall player to ever play the game.

This season I won’t go to the States for another game. But what do you know, they’re coming to Europe. London hosts some games from the NFL regular season in October and one of the teams playing is… Carolina Panthers. So we’re going to see Cam Newton and Christian McCaffrey. And I have a tshirt to wear there, ok? :D

I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to go to live games ever. Not even when I saw Federer playing tennis or Messi and Ronaldo playing football.

OK, the most exciting live game I’ve ever seen live was the Roland Garros finals that Simona Halep, the Romanian WTA number 1 tennis player, lost in 2017. It was really exciting to go and it was heartbreaking after that. American football doesn’t give me the same type of heartbreak, but it’s still exciting to go and see it live.

Finally, I’m aware of the issues American football has: people getting life changing injuries, the NFL’s avoiding of actually taking a stance on a lot of issues (from domestic violence to racism). I know things are improving on the pressure of the fans, of the fact that less people want to play the game – and who can blame them? I still think it’s a great sport and I hope they’ll find a way to move forward with the times, while also keeping it exciting.

P.S.: I’ve finished writing this article before seeing the first game day, last weekend. Panthers lost the game with Rams in the first week, but the team didn’t look bad. Let’s hope they won’t miss the playoffs this year, as well.

A company’s narrative moves like a clock: it starts at midnight, ticking off the hours. The tone and sentiment about how a business is doing move from positive (sunrise, midday) to negative (dusk, darkness). And often the story returns to midnight, rebirth and a new day.

Aaron Zamost, What’s your hour on ‘Silicon Valley time’?

I’ve found this 2015 article on Ben Evans’s newsletter and thought the concept is interesting. Also interesting are some of the companies on the image: do you remember what Color wanted to do?

Photo credit: Image from article

More lucrative: Dines would encourage consultants to introduce UiPath to their clients by letting the consultants keep as much as 80% of the overall bot-related spend in exchange for setting up and maintaining the program. Suddenly some of the world’s biggest companies were serving as little UiPath’s sales force.

From Communism To Coding: How Daniel Dines Of $7 Billion UiPath Became The First Bot Billionaire

Brilliant.

“I work really hard at the company, but only at things I like. Being a lazy person, I had to build better pattern recognition in life.”

This, above, is one of the mistakes I’ve made. I’m pretty good at delegating what I’m not skilled at, but I’m not as good at it as I want to be.

Read the entire article: From Communism To Coding: How Daniel Dines Of $7 Billion UiPath Became The First Bot Billionaire

One of the things I wished I understand a whole lot better is the regex rules. While I can hack an already existing rule to adapt it for my own needs, I can’t start one from scratch. To be fair, I don’t think I can adapt one if my need is more complicated.

Recently I’ve discovered Regex Crossword and I’m having fun with it. I test myself from time to time, when I get bored. Who knows, maybe something will actually stick.

Here’s what they say on their About page:

Regex Crossword is a crossword puzzle game, where the crossword clues are defined using regular expressions. The site is created and maintained by Maria Hagsten Michelsenand Ole Bjørn Michelsen. Everybody can play and it is a great way for newcomers to learn regular expressions and for experts to practice their skills.

via

I loathe sun. Not the sun itself, actually, because I love warmth, but I hate the blinding light it emanates most of the time. I know, right? Stupid, shitty sun…

I started using computers when I was 6, so I was “blessed” with light sensitivity. My eye sight is really sharp, I don’t need glasses or anything, but really bright lights make me want to live in a cave for most of my life.

All of the above means that I wear sunglasses when I go out. All the time, even when it’s cloudy. That white, milky light on a cloudy day is even worse than bright light in a really sunny day, at 2pm.

Because of all this I was looking for the perfect pair of sunglasses my whole life. And, to keep going on the quality of life improvements series I started on this blog with the rollerblade wheels of the office chair, read on to see if I found the sunglasses. Spoiler: I did.

The perfect sunglasses attributes:

• be as light weight as possible
• have the “around the eyes”/”around the head” shape, to cover the extremities of my eyes as well and not fall when I move my head around (including playing sports, if possible)
• lens category 3 UV protection
• the small things that “sit” on the nose should be part of the sunglasses, not separate pieces
• as indestructible as possible
• not overly expensive. €50 would be the top price

Over the years I found different pairs that had some of the attributes I was looking for, but none were perfect. Until someday, I was accompanying my better half in her pursuit of sunglasses and I entered a shopping mall optics store. And, because I was getting bored, I asked the lady if she had anything with the above qualities. And what do you think? She recommended the perfect sunglasses: the sexy called Polaroid P7334 Rectangular Sunglasses.

The only bad thing, though: they were around €80. I bought a pair, because they were too good to pass. After several weeks of wearing them, I wanted to have another pair in the car, another pair at my parents, another pair in the toilet, one in the kitchen. Well, not really, but you get the point.

So I looked on Amazon. And I found out that the store in the shopping mall had at least a 150% profit margin on them. When I’m writing this, the price on Amazon is exactly where I want it. Less than my top limit, actually.

What makes these sunglasses so great?

• They’re really, really light.
• They stretch a lot, so you can sit on them without any issue (which is the way I’ve messed up most of my sunglasses).
• Sometimes the lens fall and you can put them back immediately.
• They wrap around the head and they don’t let the sun light reach your eyes.
• They are made out of a silicone-like rubbery material.

So, here are the links for the sunglasses on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. You know, to support my reading habit. Or my habit of buying these sunglasses, because right now I have three (one in the car, two around the house) and I’ve had around 5 or 6. I manage to forget them everywhere. With one exception.

If you don’t want to buy a pair, you can try to find one I lost while trying to learn how to standup paddle on one of the rivers of Portugal. This is one con of the sunglasses: they don’t float. Unfortunately.

I play games on PS4 and Nintendo Switch. The platforms are quite different in terms of what type of games are popular on each one, so each has its own use.

Today I was looking for some story driven games on Nintendo Switch because I want to play some in hand-held mode. I found several on reddit, but I also found this link for the “story rich” tag on the Nintendo e-shop:

Story rich games on Nintendo switch

Use it, in case you need it. I wrote this blog post just because I thought it might be interesting for others looking for the same thing. And I also wanted the link to be in a place where I can find it easily.

Oh, in the end I’ve picked up Celeste, Undertale and Bayonetta 2. Celeste is giving me nightmares with the difficulty, Undertale is a little… underwhelming. And Bayonetta is NOT something I’m used playing.

Photo by Ryan Quintal on Unsplash

Several years ago, before 2008-2009, when blogging was just starting in Romania, I remember talking to somebody and saying that, at some point, a real-estate developer might want to pay a blogger to live rent free in one of their apartments to promote the building(s). I actually tried to find someone to pay me for that, but I think it was too early. Or I wasn’t interesting enough. Well, no, that couldn’t be it, right? :)

Yesterday I was reading an article on the life of an Instagram influencer that started as a kid blogger: Who Would I Be Without Instagram? An investigation. She was actually paid to live rent free in a luxury apartment in New York.

This is where the luxury rental building comes in. I was asked to live at 300 Ashland, right by the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, as part of a campaign the real-estate company Two Trees was doing to promote three new developments. In a deal that covered my rent for a year, I agreed to do press about the building, host an event for my followers on its plaza, and post about the building and neighborhood on my account. I’d long shared my living space online and decided to see this as no different, except I would get paid. And so, for a year, I lent my face to promote a borrowed home.

Who Would I Be Without Instagram? An investigation

It only took 10 years to see it happening, but I’m happy I was mostly right. You can read the story of the apartment here as well.

The initial article is really good and puts a lot of things into perspective: from the fake image we put online, no matter how good we are with “being real” to the costs it carries.

The lady in the article – Tavi Gevinson – also expands her online influence to an online business, then she moves to acting.

In some ways I feel a kinship with that, since I started online as a blogger, before becoming an entrepreneur and, apparently, a blogger again. I also have an Instagram account I rarely use, so there’s that, as well.

Photo from Canva. Article via Ben Evans’s newsletter