Loic is pointing to the case of a flight attendant from Delta Airlines who got fired because she posted some pics on her blog. I think it's a management exageration (I suspect it's the HR). The very first case I know of somebody getting fired because of what she blogged is Troutgirl. (coverage here) She was working for Friendster.
October 2004
Jeremy opens up a good debate in his comment section about what one would say to her CEO about blogging. I'd probably just mention that it's a great communication channel with instant feedback from stakeholders. With marginal expenses, actually the ROIs can be tremendous if it's done right. What does right mean? Oh well, "my right" is described by a mix of principles: candor, honesty, objectivity and respect. And yes, little things always make the difference.
UPDATE: Just saw Fred's post on why CEOs should blog as response to Seth claiming the opposite.
Alex Bradut Ulmanu, aka the Ulmablogger, was appointed the managing director of Romania Libera, one of the reputable Romanian newspapers. Too bad he hasn't been updating his blog since May.
Russell is having a comment on why he turned down a Google interview. While what he says makes sense, it sounds more like the story with the fox and the sour grapes. I think I'd have given it a shot even though I hate puzzles and 4-hour interviews as well.
As Locacorten found the article I pointed to quite useless I thought I should add more perspective on what business angels are.
Business angels are private investors, more often former or active entrepreneurs, who are investing their own money and experience into small start-ups. They are doing it for four reasons: money, playing a role in the entrepreneurial venture, some sense of social responsibility and last but not least for the fun and excitement of being involved in interesting projects.
Now, in which business stage should an entrepreneur consider this type of investment? Usually the process for setting up a business begins with the startup idea and the administrative expenses, then the money seeds for supporting the operations for a 6-12 month period. The source of this money can be the very own funds of the founders or the so-called love money (money from 3Fs - friends, family or fouls). Usually the love money is the largest money source next to the personal ones. There are of course disadvantages to using it - ideally the 3Fs would be silent partners. Some things to keep in mind - if you use the 3Fs be prepared to lose them (with the corollary that if you do business with friends be prepared to lose them as well), don't get them involved in the biz unless their experience is relevant and also have the divorce papers prepared. :) Other sources for money in the startup process can be grants, sponsorships or non refundable loans (a good example for Romania is Sapard)
Many would argue that banks would be the next logical one after all these sources have dried up. However, at least in Romania, banks ask for collaterals worth more than 100-150% of the total project value, and that would probably mean to mortgage your house or car. Quite risky I'd say. As such, in this context the next step are the business angels.
A typical profile of an angel is a middle aged male, reasonably wealthy, with hands-on entrepreneurial experience. They usually invest close to their homes (so search for locals - networking is key here), also early and small (<$100k) with a typical deal of a 1-1.5 years. If they're part of a group of angels interested in investing, the better. When asking them for money, you will have to keep in mind that they're not doing charity, they'll always look at profitability, exit options, and excitement coming from the nature of the project. It would be great if they could leverage their experience and contacts in the venture and that is the reason for their usually asking for an active role in the venture.
Now - how to find those guys? Networking like hell - usually referrals come from people they have invested in before, associates or friends. (remember the six degree rule - anybody is 6 degrees of anybody else in this world). Other ways to get them - industry associations, other entrepreneurs who benefited from this kind of investment (hence the role of the Romanian success stories mentioned in the previous post) or their associations. As far as I know there are also matching services (angels with entrepreneurs), I never used or saw one, but I am sure that a google search would reveal plenty of such services.
A final point I would like to make is about the difference between the angels and the VCs. The VCs invest other people's money, they somewhat don't get as involved in the venture's operations, they will always look for a thorough due dilligence and solid contract slowing down the investment process. Their main preocupation will be the return for the buck (aka ROI). The business angel invests his/her money, hence a rapid reaction and unsophisticated investment contract. Also they will get involved in the day-to-day operations and will care for the return as well for the excitement coming from the project.
I hope this gives more consistency to the Romanian article. Also, I suggest using the European Business Angels Network, there are at least two docs worth having a read: introduction to EBAN and thir activities (word doc) and the directory of networks across Europe (word doc)
Good overview (in Romanian) about business angels stories from Romania. These angels are individuals who provide equity capital for start-up firms and growing enterprises. Usually they provide either the seed or the second capital round (if the entrepreneurs don't have the seeds from the 3Fs - family, friends or fouls). They are also called pre-VC investors.
The story presents perspectives from two local angels and two entrepreneurial cases having dealt with them. The angels are Gecad's Radu Georgescu who sold the antivirus technology to Microsoft and now is involved in the e-payment solutions and Marius Ghenea who set up Flamingo, sold it, did an MBA abroad, got back to Romania and set up Flanco. On the other side there is Bogdan Mitu who founded a webdesign company with a French angel (who exited early though) and Brandient's Aneta Bogdan.
The business angels usually have a local network (never heard of a Romanian one though) and are also organized at the European level.
am peste 18 ani. :) (found over at George's)
Great tips by Steve. (of course it is about finding people to model, not fashion models :))
I was pleasantly surprised to discover Doza de responsabilitate - a weblog in Romanian by OSF with advice and resources on CSR about and for Romanian companies. Very good stuff from one of the first Romanian corporate blogs! Do you want to learn more on what CSR is all about? Read this pdf.
I just read Brad's story from the time when he was an entrepreneur and was running Brad Technologies together with his partner. Great story, however it just stroke me that, besides the entrepreneurial lessons (vision and mission, team bonding, respect your customers, etc), ithere is more than that. The way they behave comes not from being entrepreneurs per se but from having a certain type of character that probably is also a result of education, family values and such. And of course those people are above-average individuals emerged from a certain environment or ecosystem (good school, great values, etc.) But, if I am to compare it to the Romanian peers - is it just me, or it is hard to find something like this around?
The Romanian ecosystem certainly has its unique labels and influences, but ever since I came back here 15 months ago, finding people thinking on a similar tune with me was the most difficult part. Now I consider myself just an ordinary guy, but whenever I am trying to play/preach the professionalism lesson ("be corporate" - I use to call it) with industry peers I get blank faces or people starring at me. In the best case scenarios they'd say: "yeah, it makes sense, but we just cannot do this here". Is it because of the people I meet or it comes from the ecosystem? Or perhaps I am just unlucky.
If you're interested in this space, Mary Meeker's report on the "next generation content" is a must read. [pdf]
Historically speaking the Indian success in the software development industry is tied to the business relations with the US companies, you may be familiar with how Infosys (one of the largest Indian companies now) had started up back in the 80s with a 10 people team working mainly on the American companies site. Well, I haven't heard too many stories about Indians working in Europe, though I am familiar with many companies from Scandinavia, UK or Germany working offshore with Indians.
My take is that Europeans working with Indians (or the other way around) means a very good understanding of the cultural differences. Also, the big time differences and lack of proximity don't seem to be an advantage for Indians. That is the difference between off-shoring and near-shoring. Apparently the Indians started to realize that and opened offices across Western and Eastern Europe. And not only marketing/business development ones, but also development centers so that they would exploit the near-shoring advantages. Will they be successful? I think they have a good shot since they compete on price and the Eastern European companies will become expensive as compared to some of the Indians playing at the very low end. The value proposition of Eastern Europeans (Krogos included) is a combination of a qualitative services at lower prices. But not the lowest, as that would compromise the quality. Watch out for the Russians and the former Soviet states though.
It just happened in Bucharest. It lasted for about 20 seconds and it was quite strong, my guess is that it was about more than 5 degrees. Everything seems to be safe in Bucharest, hopefully it's the same all over the country.
...are launching the paparazzi line with watches offering news, sports, weather and stock quotes. The cost is $150 for the device plus $40 per year and I guess I would only pay for the coolness factor. Hmm, why would I use the MSN news service delivered to the watch when I have my mobile phone? Anyways, read the engadget review.
While Romanian fans resumed to sending 14.000 angered emails and to doing some voodoo stuff after a controversial game, it seems that the English ones went the extra mile and hacked Urs Meier's website after the referee (again) controversially disallowed an England goal at Euro 2004.
"23 per cent of adult internet users in the US have searched online for their clients or customers, workers or potential employees, and supervisors or prospective managers." (link)
I usually google people I am doing business with, it helps me find out more info about their background and on the way they think. Not too much help in the case of Romanian ones, though things have started to change. Scoble says he wouldn't hire anybody who can't be found via search engines. Actually a friend of mine who's living in US kinda fricked out because he couldn't find anything about his date while googling her. It turned out to be allright in the end though. :)
Product launching strategy (leaving from Crossing the Chasm) - things to consider when building a strategy and what to do if the product is not good enough.
AMD is targeting the wealth from the bottom: a $249 PC (without the display) for the emerging markets.
Being a public company means a lot of pressure from and transparency in front of the investors. Apparently Google's Eric Schmidt is handling it in a cool way simply because the company's got a strong position -- its share price is nowadays more than $170 after two months from IPO when the price was $85 and their first quarterly results look pretty good. See what I mean.
ConQwest's case study. See more if you missed this.
Joel is interviewed by Microsoft's Mary Jo Foley (if you haven't already, read first Joel's "How MSFT lost the API war" as a context).
If you read between the lines of the interview, he is saying that Microsoft is just performing incremental changes (trapped in the Office/Windows paradigm and in spite of the for-so-long-delayed Longhorn stretch). Also, a very good point made with the technologies addresed to the b2b spaces: they're at competitive disadvantages in terms of mind share than something that gets sold to the whole world.
Finally, about Google vs. Microsoft - "I think Google is orthogonal to Microsoft. Microsoft will be chasing their tail lights. I wouldn't say Google is really a challenge to Microsoft. Or maybe they are. Maybe Google is to Microsoft what Microsoft is to IBM. In the 1990s, Microsoft's nemesis was IBM. IBM was a boring, established company. (But then the PC revolution happened, and Microsoft sailed past IBM in that space.) Google is saying the Internet is the computer - it's the Internet computer in the sky. And Microsoft's not getting it."
Espen's got the same theory.
Another follow up to my argument for Romanians to get involved at least by simply exercising their right to vote: mergi la vot! - an online campaign of the Romanian diaspora from all over the world. (via Romania Economics)
The Anglo-Romanian Bank (which is the UK operating subsidiary of Banca Comerciala Romana) recently acquired Banca Franco Romana and absorbed Frankfurt Bukarest Bank (the BCR subsidiary from Germany) reaching an asset value of 350 mil euro, and hence increasing the overall value of the mother company. BCR is the last of the two state-owned banks that are open for sale and which in June had 5 bn. euros in assets and net profit of about 89 mil.
The other one owned by the state is CEC, valued at about 300-400 mil. euros and scheduled to be sold by the end of 2005. At the end of September CEC had assets of 1.2 bn, a gross profit of about 18 mill and a market share of about 6%. The main attraction is of course its largest branch network countrywide. (1424 outlets). Three Austrian banks are among the ones manifesting interest in CEC: Erste, Raiffeisen and BA/CA.
BCR is the bank with the biggest market share (30%), followed by BRD (13%), Raiffeisen (8%) and CEC (6%). The followers which are fighting at around the 4% level are BancPost, ABN Amro, ING, HVB, AlphaBank or Tiriac Bank. There are 39 banks in total - 7 Romanian-owned, 8 which are branches of foreign banks and 22 with majority foreign capital. (source)
The banks are mainly located in the major cities (13 cities concentrate about 40% of the branches) and this year the estimated industry growth rate is higher than 10%. Organic growth both on scale and on scope sounds as the most likely strategy - lending being the main engine and agresively looking for opening new branches countrywide. Perhaps they will also consider alternative distribution channels (i.e. internet) but this is subject to the investments in the technology infrastructure. I think Romania is one of the most attractive markets from Central Eastern Europe and foreign players interested in making an entrance are likely to acquire a local bank.
Looking over Micah Sifry's 10 questions on the US elections from the latest ChangeThis round of manifestos (#6) got me thinking more about the Romanian election context. While I think that the overall life in Romania has improved over the last 4 years still I believe that we need a structural change even though I am not convinced that a new elected body will be able to make a dramatic improvement. And now I just found this poll (pdf in Romanian) stating conclusions along the same lines:
- 72% of the people claimed that Romania needs a change
- 50% believe that the actual government is not able to solve the national problems
- 48% believe that a power change is possible this November
- 60% will vote for sure.
Normally I am quite skeptical when it comes to read poll results but I think this one is somewhat reliable as it was conducted by Gallup, ordered by the Romanian Academic Society and paid by the US Embassy and German Marshall Fund of the US.
Back-to-back marketing: U2 latest album release tied to the launch of a new iPod edition (the photo iPod according to some rumours). In US on November 21.
A great follow up to a previous post of mine about digital television - courtesy to Mark Cuban all ideas are for free.
This guy is very inspirational, besides a great deal of experience I think he has a lot of ambition and determination. Highly recommended for people interested in personal development (motivation, time management, planning and stuff like that). Trick here is also applying what he's preaching. :) blog link & articles link
Gabriel-Paul decided that non-vote is meaningless and a non-choice for the upcoming November Romanian elections. He adds that he will not compromise on that until he will see a politician being upfront on his agenda.
He is onto something, but I guess he is a bit idealistic. It is true that history shows us that leaders taking risks and making bluntly what-you-see-is-what-you-get statements and actually making them happen made disruptive changes in societies. It is not happening that often though, actually history also shows us that most politicians/leaders say what the electorate would like to hear not what they will actually do. And that is a fact.
There are two things here. Extremistst are always upfront with their agenda. They will say simply and outloud what they stand for even though for some people it may sound absurd. But this is not the change we would aspire to, is it? The other thing is: are we (Romanians) ready for a disruptive change towards "normality"? Do we have what it takes? Are we in the state of mind of adjusting or facing the shock of doing things right (i.e. the way they're done in "functional marketing economies", or "civilised countries")? Do we ultimately need it? I certainly doubt that. Remember that normality for me may not be similar for the average John and it is exactly this mentality that cannot be changed overnight.
The Romanian context is a bit special whereas people either get discouraged to get involved and step aside (hence validating the system indirectly since they live through it) or decide to quit and leave the country. Unless of course they are not enrolled already in the system, and make a certain degree of compromises. It is true that there's not too much choice nowadays on the Romanian political arena but IMO a lesser evil is a better choice than the same one, and that is why I think I will give my vote in November. Involvement is necessary for making the change happen, even though it will only be incremental and not disruptive as some of us would like. And voting is the least one can do. Even though marginally the change pace will (may) be somewhat similar considering the three dominating tendencies Gabriel is mentioning.
...in Hungary with local Antenna starting broadcasting digitally. This permits better quality (sound and image) as well as more interactivity with the viewer. The consequences are big as they represent a milestone for the convergence of a multitude of services (i.e. media, phone) enabled by the internet.
So what does it mean? Take me as an example. Do I want to watch a movie? I take it from the internet and watch it on my computer (unless I want the social experience of going to the theater). Do I want to make a phone call? I use Skype or Net Meeting. (ok, this is internationally, and sooner rather than later it will happen locally). Do I want to be in the loop with the news? I just need to read my RSS feeds and probably some online newspapers. (in the Romanian case). The same goes with my music, everything is stored on and used from my hard drives. As such, just like me I bet there are more and more people favoring internet to the TV for getting news or entertainment.
Digital broadcast means a good chance for TV stations in giving more choice with an opportunity of new business models emergence. And in this case the internet could play the role of the disrupting driver. For a peek to what some advanced players are doing in this area take a look at the Tivo - Netflix partnership. (some background here) For an explanation of what digital broadcasting means (as opposed to analog) read this.
Mihai says that in France and Europe digital TV became reality. As far as I know the EU legislation has a deadline for digital broacasting for the new-member states' tv stations. It remains to be seen the implementation pace and its effectiveness.
UPDATE: Bill Gates: Traditional broadcasting model is rendered irrelevant - the fundamental difference, he said, will be the demise of today's concepts regarding channels and schedules. [link]
A typical example for Christensen's Innovator's Dillemma.
Apologies for the lack of activity, besides having very little time I am also having some personal problems that don't really give me any inspiration for posting. Anyways, I try to keep track of things, here are some of them that I noticed these days:
- Google launched a desktop search application. I find it great - download it, wait for indexing the hard drive files, emails, web history and chat logs and then ... use it. The results are presented in a browser and are sorted by relevance or date. Also very interestingly if you search the web you get a list with the files from your hard drive as well. Finally, it should be noted that the app. is only 400k, eats up 8 megs of RAM and is working only with Windows as far as I understood. Read more coverage on the strategic implications as well as critics from here, here, here or here.
- a story for something that I rarely happen to see in Romania and that will always be part of the success of any company - great customer service.
- Elite designers anti IKEA. I think most IKEA products have a a pretty decent design, this guy positions himself as the tasteful choice for wealthy people. I think you can be that even without bashing the competition, but I guess using IKEA name in your slogan can raise some awareness.
- I found a new blog kept by Mihai, Tudor and Cristi whom I guess they're are also Business Romania Blog contributors: Professional Business Tools. Keep an eye on it, it has interesting stuff, the latest one is a pointer to Dragos Rosca - the CEO of the newest VC firm in Bucharest, Gemisa that is.
...Brin, Khosla or Wang had stayed home instead of immigrating to USA. Of course there wouldn't have been Google, Sun or Wang Laboratories. It is more difficult to get in an US school from outside nowadays. (via Lulu)
I was reading about Plaza Romania opening and there's one detail that sounds a bit weird to me: Bucharest Mall (50k sqm and 120 shops) costs were about $45 mln in 1999. Plaza Romania (100k sqm and 160 shops) costs were 45 mln euros. That would be about $56k for a twice the size facility. Even if I am not considering the differences between the 1999 and 2004 value for the $, still I kind of doubt that the difference is just an economies of scale result. Could anybody clear this up a bit?
Why do most of Romanians don't care to get involved in politics? Because it takes a tough skin to deal with this kind of crap.
The competition is heating up in this space with a new low cost carrier operating to Prague and to Budapest - Jet2. It is a British company launched in 2003 initially operating from Leeds and starting from December from Manchester as well. Romania is still off the map of most of the budget airlines - there's only one carrier operating from Bucharest or Timisoara to Venice.
Apparently Microsoft launched a development center in Budapest with Steve Ballmer himself meeting the Hungarian prime minister on this occasion. Word in town is that Ballmer also attended the Local Loop Technologies conference from Bucharest which I wasn't able to make it unfortunately.
UPDATE: Apparently Ballmer not only attended it but also was a guest speaker.
During this week I had some things to take care of at the (National Office of) Register of Commerce. Basically I just needed a copy of the docs I submitted when I first registered Krogos. Just like myself, you may imagine that it wouldn't be so much hassle just to have the copies of two pieces of paper issued. Oh well, apparently I was soo wrong - guess how much time I needed for solving the whole issue? 2 days with 1.5 hours each. So 3 hours in total, not to mention the time to get there and back.
First day I had to stand in line 7 times at 5 offices and the second day 5 times at 3 offices (it was more crowded so it took about the same as it did on the other day). And besides wasting precious time I felt as if I were a ping pong ball. I tend to be very patient when dealing with people working for the State as I know that the system they're enrolled in simply sucks. And so I was this time as well - some of the clerks were young and seemed open minded and when I asked why I have to waste so much time for having two pieces of papers issued they simply shrugged and said: "that is the procedure".
Well, the procedure is simply wrong as it burdens both the clerks (lots of papers to process - hence ineffectiveness/innefficiency) and the citizens this institution has to serve. My guess is that this system wasnot developed overnight and it just may have been inherited from older generations - but it is the role of the leaders to get into it and make it efficient. And that is why the system needs young and fresh blood with the courage to change and challenge legacies. Unfortunately this obviously is not happening at the Register of Commerce.
Now, this got me thinking: what does an entrepreneur do when he/she has to face these kind of situations? My guess is that some, especially foreigners, would simply get frustrated and give up dealing with it. And leave. And this sounds understandable. Doing business in Romania is not easy, and instead of focusing on the daily operations and strategy you just waste your time dealing with a stupid system and (if extremely unlucky) with idiots serving this system. My solution is simple: outsource it. And even though as an entrepreneur you (may) run a very tight budget this money seems to be well spent.
I was wondering if you could share your experience in this respect - hence the new poll on the right.
Google print, Google SMS -- soon they'll make a big announcement about personalized search. (am too lazy to look for the link, I read it from one of the WEB 2.0 coverages) They are certainly a great organization and it surely is a direct result of the great people they have working for them. It just crossed my mind what would a combination between Google and Apple result to. Would it crash because of strong personalities? Would it be something even cooler?
Btw, before calling the day - more than a month ago I decided to experiment with the Sauce Reader. I found that it ate more resources but it was kind of neat, I got used to it in a short time. It just that it crashed the other day, and to my surprise I wasn't able to recover the opml file after reinstalling it. Then I just unistalled it and tried the FeedDemon thanks to Lulu, a good friend of mine who's been given me good credentials about it. Negative impression so far, perhaps I am not patient enough for learning about all the features and how they work out. Anyways I decided to get back to Sharpreader now as time is really an issue and I feel useless if I cannot do my morning coffee/end-of-the-day blog readings, I guess I am part of the club. :)
I don't have too much time in my hand these days unfortunately, I did however quickly scan Jeff's blogging about Vortex, (p1 and p2) and and looked over the PDF of Geoffrey Moore (you familiar with Crossing the Chasm - great book). All I can say is that it purely looks like industry analysis 101, a must read example on how to look at the drivers and dynamics of an industry (software in this case). Note: it can get quite technical so you may find it difficult if you are not familiar with the software industry's mechanisms and dynamics.
And on top of that, just before ending my day, I followed Marc's link towards Geoff's live similar presentation from Software 2004 back in March 2004 - it looks like there are several more presentations and debates given by seasoned execs all available for free. I look forward to seeing all of them, perhaps I will save a big chunk of Saturday just for that. It's just like being there except for the schmooze. :)
A very good interview with Christensen on disrupting innovation, different ways of thinking market segmentation and more other excellent stuff.
"Oracle must play the consolidator now or risk being the one consolidated out of the markets it helped create. They have no choice but to make the PeopleSoft acquisition work to survive long-term against IBM and Microsoft, as both of these much larger competitors start making significant inroads into the core database business." [link]
In a larger context see also Ed's perspective on the industry trends - software and hardware as a service, autonomic data sources (i.e.RFID), ocassionally connected services (due to the mobile connection which makes always on become almost always on) and increased need of security. Actually those appear to be some of the hot topics most of industry people talk about these days.
If you like threadless you may find the LittleMissMatch idea interesting as well.
If you have extra invites or would like to get one go to isnoop. I had 2 more and I just donated them there. Nice initiative.
One of the reasons for which I don't like Bush, I call this bad attitude. Quite frequent in Romania as well unfortunately.
Some of the links pointing to the RFID and ABN stories were not working, they're fixed now, thanks for letting me know.
Pilot projects on RFID implementing within large retailers from Romania - short term-calculation versus long-term strategy - a good side-example on what Mihai was commenting the other day.
ABN Amro is also entering the league of banks finally getting that you can also make money from volume (aka retail) in Romania. NOTE: banks were greedy enough in the 90s to only stick to the corporate side and huge fees they would charge from MNCs operating in Romania. Oh well, and maybe some privatization consulting gigs.
Now, they claim to take a strategy not focused on price but on "how to satisfy customers' needs". Heh, sounds disruptive. :) I look forward to FREE internet banking services and I will believe it only when I see it. Anyways more competition should be good news for the consumers ultimately. Why? Lower switching costs, better services, lower fees, etc.
Porsche Bank Romania is ready to kick off - they offer the complementing financial package necesarry to Porsche Group clients. It was about time.
I didn't watch it, I just read the script.
