Being on Board at Launch48

The other day I was invited to an event called Launch48. It’s an online market event, aiming at pushing young entrepreneurs to launch a complete web application in 48 hours. I was invited to be part of the board. Little I knew about anything “launch48 related” until I made it there, I admit. Had no idea what a “board” means in this context, nor what exactly did I had to do.

I’m not going to give you any details about the technical part, but I do think there’s a lot to talk about the implications of the event at the personal development level.

The Set Up

So, just to be clear: the goal of the event was to launch a complete, functional web app in less than 48 hours. Young entrepreneurs had a 1 minute time frame in which they pitched their ideas. After an evaluation period (a few hours), a jury picked 3 ideas. Once that step completed, the initiators also picked their own teams to implement their idea. From this moment on, everything was under the time pressure.

Every few hours the project managers had board meetings, along with people from their team that they considered relevant for the actual stage of the project. In between, they met mentors who volonteered to help. Each mentor had some unique expertise: programming, marketing, business strategy.

At the end of the first day, the teams had to present an application in a so-called “alpha” stage. A workable proof of concept. At the end of the second day, they must came with a functional “beta”, which means: everything described must work, but bugs are acceptable. During these two days they also had to came up with a lot of related documents: business plans, marketing plans, competition analysis and so on.

The Board

The board members (yours truly included) had to “whip” the project managers, follow the progress, ensure the team is on the right track and even provide answers to critical questions. To be honest, I didn’t feel very comfortable playing this role, I never was the “whip” guy, but I did my best to fit in. As a member of the board I was also designated to host the final presentation. In the third day, all three teams presented their apps to a very picky audience (the event was integrated in NetCamp, one of the largest Internet related events in Romania, and not only). My role was to ensure their presentations will run smoothly and in the alloted time frame.

The Happy End

At the end of this marathon, everybody was happy (again, yours truly included). The apps were functioning, the business model was understandable and some teams even had the time to make a little buzz on Twitter or Facebook. It was a complete success.

Ok, now, what I learned from this event?

1. Working under Pressure Is Not Necessarily a Bad Thing

Looking at how those ad-hoc teams managed to communicate, to share tasks, roles and deal with impending difficulties was enlightening. Many of the team members didn’t know each other before. And yet, they managed to create a functioning unit and deliver a final product. In some way, looking at those teams was like looking at a whole year of an entire company’s life, only fast forward: new people, new ideas, coding, marketing plans, communication, failure, starting over. I will repeat myself, but this whole process was really enlightening.

2. When You Really Believe In Your Dream, Nothing Is Impossible

The project managers were also the “idea” guys. Out of several other ideas presented they have been lucky enough to be picked and to be provided with the resources they need. They were able to make their dream come true. In a kind of “sand-box” way, but still. Well, this is what we usually call “luck”. At some points in our life, we do receive all the resources we need for our goals, out of the blue. The lesson: when this is happening, push all the buttons, do whatever you can to make it happening. Don’t quit and be on top of it. In the end, it will really happen.

3. Focus On What Is Really Important

I will need a book to write down all those magnificent ideas ventured by the people involved, from the board members, to mentors, project managers, idea guys or just simple team members. But the time was too short to implement all of them. If they will implement every single strategy, monetization or technical idea, they wouldn’t have finish it in several months. The team leaders heavily exercised their choice muscles. And, again, this is what we do in real life too: we may have a gazillion ideas but if we don’t focus on something achievable and start doing it, we’ll end up with nothing but a bunch of useless, shiny ideas.

4. Discipline Pays Off

They couldn’t achieve something functional without discipline. No team was functioning at 100% and I really don’t think they could, under the circumstances. But all the people made a lot of effort to integrate and leave away distractions and interferences. Some of the team members didn’t even sleep the night before the presentation. Huge effort pays off. Always. Maybe you’re not always in such a fortunate condition to work uninterrupted for 48 hours and, admittedly, the whole event was more of an exercise, a show off, but still, the result is unchallengeable: discipline really pays off.

I want to congratulate all the people I have interacted with and express my honest admiration. It’s not by chance that I offered to each team leader a wild card to my mentorship program. Technical expertise apart, they were all winners and they proved they can stretch way beyond their limits. Also, I would very much want to thank for the invitation to Cristi Manafu, the organizer of this edition of Launch48 in Romania.

The 7 Ages Of A Business

I had a business for 10 years. I started it from the scratch, financing it by using the 3 F’s (family, friends and fools) and managed it until I decided it’s time to sell, buying my own freedom. It was one of the most interesting periods in my life and one of the most fulfilling either. In today’s post I’ll share something I learned during this 10 years: the 7 ages of your business.

Because, like every other thing which is born, raised and fulfilled, every business has its own life and its own stages. The following is more or less an entrepreneur perspective, it’s a view from somebody who decides to start his own business, but it can be also applied to any other perspective (investors, managers, employees).

1. Enthusiasm

This is the first stage of your business. It’s the first weeks or months, a period in which the deep, almost irrational exhilaration is simply unbalanced by any other feeling you have. The joy of being your own boss, the fascination of seeing your ideas coming to fruition, the faith that everything is possible are simply overwhelming. During the first weeks of my business I used to compare this stage with sex, in terms of thrill. Entrepreneurship being better than sex, of course.

In this stage you don’t know almost anything about the processes in your business, nor about your clients. You don’t have a clear understanding of the cash-flow notion, hence the cash-flow will be almost invisible. You may start it with an initial funding or you can start it out of nothing, as I did, but it’s certain that in the first weeks or months, you won’t really have a cash-flow. And you also won’t give a dime on it.

Also, in this age, you act out of gut, rather than calculus. It’s the most intuitive part of a business, and most of the time you are right. The most important and effective employees I had were hired during the first, enthusiast phase of my business. I didn’t know how to run a hiring interview and all I knew was: “Do you know to do that? Let’s work together!”. And it worked.

During this stage you don’t have visible results either. All you have is a deep desire to change the world and prove your value.

Read more about the enthusiasm age in this guest post I did at AttractionMindMap.com. (more…)

Passion Is Power

What’s your real passion? What’s that thing that you could do all day long, without even thinking of being tired, with deep focus and endless joy? Finding your true passion is one of the most important breakthroughs you can hit in your life.

Choosing A Personal Path

It surely was quite a breakthrough in my life, that I know for sure. 10 years ago I started my own business, as an independent online publisher. Took me several years to understand that my real passion was only partially congruent with my business, and several other years to solve this situation.

I didn’t know from the beginning that I was on a slightly wrong path. Having an online business is a great play. And I mean it, it’s something that you should really play with. But it wasn’t my true passion. Being an online entrepreneur was connecting with my true passion on several points, but it wasn’t a perfect match. The rest was a really consuming activity. I was confused. Some things I had to do while having an online business were nourishing me, some things were draining me out. I just wasn’t complete.

Being an independent online publisher had a lot of nice things attached. I was my own boss (I still like this, by the way), I was playing on a revolutionary field, I was facing challenges all the time. I even learned programming and that was a thing that proved useful to me for years. But it wasn’t enough. Although I enjoyed my new status a lot, something was missing from the puzzle.

Most of the people I met during that time admired me. Some of them for the courage of being an entrepreneur, some of them for the quite visible success I had in my niche. But I never felt very comfortable in that position.

Passion Is Power

Most of the time you go for the things you admire. There’s an inner mimic approach in our human nature that makes for a constant, magnetic attraction towards the things or the persons we admire. We tend to be like them. We chose role models and spend our life trying to be like them. Most of the people are living by imitation. (more…)

The Making Of An Online Business – Partnerships

This is the 5th article of the Making Of An Online Business series and it will deal with your partnerships. After talking about your projects, teams and money, it’s time do dig a little on your alliances, associations, or, in other words, partnerships.

If you came here directly I encourage you to read the rest of the articles in this series by clicking on the links below:

• Start Your Own Business
• The Making Of An Online Business – The Series
• The Making Of An Online Business – The Projects
• The Making Of An Online Business – The Team
• The Making Of An Online Business – The Money

What’s A Partnership?

A partnership is at the organizational level what your team is at your human resources level. As the words imply, it is a resource, a complementary resource that will provide more value to your business.

Generally speaking, a partnership is an alliance in which each part is providing specific values to the other parts. It is based on trust, acceptance and common goals or resources. A partnership is a temporary association of two or more organizations in order to attain a specific goal faster or with fewer resources consumption.

Why Partnerships?

I will say this again, until it will be really clear: online is the most dynamic business context ever. Things are happening lightening fast. Like really lightening fast. Keeping the old individualistic approach of “I’m the best in my field” won’t work anymore. Because you can’t be the best in your field anymore. You can only offer a slightly more interesting perspective than your competition, and even that only for a limited time.

If you want to increase your market penetration, you have to let go a little on your ego and trust on partnerships. I’m not saying to rely exclusively on partnerships, but treat them at least as necessary tools for expansion.

The real trick here is to chose your partners extremely carefully. They must operate in the same business context as you, but they don’t have to make the same things as you. They will be, of course, your competition, in this case. I can’t believe how many people ignore this simple and apparently dumb rule when they are going out for partners. And they do that by either trying to partner with the competition (not a bad thing for a desperate business, by the way) either by going for partnerships way too far from their audience. (more…)

The Making Of An Online Business – The Money

This is the 3rd article from The Making Of An Online Business series, and it will focus on the money part. If you’re looking for a way to monetize your project, I covered this topic in the second article of the series, about creating and maintaining online projects, which you can find on the link list below.

This post will deal with my way of interacting with money as an online entrepreneur. There are tons of other blogs or courses from where you can learn the basics of money management, so don’t expect to find that kind of information in this article. Instead, expect to find some fresh approach to money interaction as a whole, applied to an online business.

If you came here directly I encourage you to read the rest of the articles and the summary by following the links below:

Start Your Own Business
The Making Of An Online Business – The Series
The Making Of An Online Business – The Projects
The Making Of An Online Business – The Team

Money Is Hot

From the early beginning I will tell you that I always felt money is hot. Meaning I can’t really keep it in my hand. In fact, money was so hot for me than I rarely saw it in big piles. Every time I had a serious amount of money available I was reinvesting it like the next second. Please note the difference: spending versus reinvesting.

And it was a good decision. By reinvesting the money in my own business I accomplished at least 3 good things:

1.  I always had new projects coming

This is crucial in the online. As I wrote before, online has the highest availability degree you can imagine, higher than any other business field, but it has also the tiniest loyalty mark, so your audience can be stolen away almost instantly. You have to be able to offer new things, you have to innovate, to re-create stuff. And fueling your R & D department with generosity is the easiest way to keep you on top.

Don’t expect that any projects you launch to be a success. But do expect to learn from any of your projects, both successful or unsuccessful. Spending money on new projects is like paying for your own education.

2. I soon learned that money is a resource not a goal

Too often money is seen as a goal. Blame the modern society, consumerism, your mom and dad. You can’t deny that, everybody judge success by the amount of money you have in the bank. But if you have the courage to not pile money out of your business and reinvesting it back, treating it like a resource, you will grow your business. And in the end that’s the only thing that matters.

You can win a lot of money out of one project and then get scared not to loose it and stop reinvesting it in new projects. Big and dumb mistake. Money is not the stake, growth is the stake.

3. I always had to closely watch the money flow

Starting new projects constantly makes for a great financial discipline, because you really have to know all the time if you do have enough resources to keep you going. I learned to maintain a constant money discipline, and that thing is benefiting me now tremendously. I always know how much money I have, even if you wake me in the middle of the night.

Knowing how much money you have, how much money you can spend and how much money you will make out of something has nothing to do with scarcity. It’s a transparent mindset that keeps you connected. It’s like always knowing your resources and potential and avoid walking on thin ice. (more…)

The Making Of An Online Business – The Projects

This is the second article in the series about managing an online business. It will focus on what you actually do in an online business, how can you measure it, the various stages of each project and how you can monetize your work. If you came here directly you can go back to the summary of the whole series or you can start with the first article which deals with starting your own business.

Please keep in mind that this post is rather long, more than 3000 words, so  make sure you are away from interruptions when start reading it. If you can’t read it now, you can bookmark it and come back later.

Online Processes

More than in any other business, in the online universe, a product (i.e. a website) is more like a process and not like an object.

If you are in the furniture business, you’re selling objects. A chair, a table, a couch. Every once in a while you change a little the design, but you are largely selling objects.

In the online field, you sell things which are continuously shaping. An online service is by definition dynamic. Your websites need continuous upgrade, otherwise they will fade as importance and eventually lose their audience.

The online has a high availability, which means your potential audience is huge. But the online has also a high volatility degree, which means that the potential huge audience is very easy to be moved toward your competitors.

Online Projects Metrics

You need a way to quantify the behavior of your websites in order to measure their success. Otherwise you’ll be lost in the jungle of millions of other websites, portals, forums, blogs or online shops. I worked with only three main online project metrics:

- traffic, the total number of users that accessed that website in a given time interval
- money, the total amount of money that website produced in a given time interval
- resource consumption, how many resources (people, money, assets) that website consumed in a given interval.

Although it seems pretty straightforward, the way in which those three metrics can combine is infinite. You can have projects with minimal traffic but with good money flow in. You can have websites with little or no money in, but with huge traffic (I guess the most famous example is YouTube in this area). Or you can have websites with zero resource consumption (auto-pilot websites) with no money in and just a decent traffic. but still consider them as successes. Each combination of those factors can play a role in the bigger picture and you must not overlook any possible outcome.

Now, let’s take each metric and see how you can interpret it. (more…)

The Making Of An Online Business – The Series

For the last 10 years I was a self-sustained person, getting my income for my online business. Last year I made a successful exit from that and started a much more enjoyable activity as a personal development blogger, here at dragosroua.com. Not that having a blog as a main activity would be an easier venture, it is quite difficult if you do it correctly, but is a little bit less resource consuming than full time managing an online business.

Having a business for more than 10 years is a big challenge. Being your own boss is a transforming experience, and when you succeed at it for more than 5-7 years, the transformations are profound. And having an online business for more than 10 years is more like a lifetime in digital years. Because this field is so dynamic that financial cycles are measured in months. New technologies appears basically all the time and the market is a continuous change.

I want to share with you the experiences I had with this activity, the bad and the good ones. The fact that I made a successful exist doesn’t mean I didn’t do mistakes, on the contrary. I had to overcome a lot of ignorance, hasty decisions, bad economic contexts and so on. Hopefully you will be able to learn about those possible mistakes without actually doing them.

Please note that I don’t know the correct way of doing an online business. I only know I succeeded in creating mine. Maybe some of my thoughts are not mainstream, maybe some of them are just plain rubbish or maybe some of them are pure gold. It’s completely up to you to buy them or not.

This series of articles will contain 6 parts:

Starting Your Own Business

This is my first post on the series and it’s already published, you can read it here. It’s a little bit odd to put the introduction of a series of articles after you publish the first one, but there is a good reason for that. The first article is not so focused on the online field, but more on the general entrepreneurship qualities you need in order to start any type of business. So you can read and comment on this article even if you’re not so into the online.

Managing An Online Business – The Projects

This part will deal with various aspects of starting your actual products, which in online business are mostly named “projects”. Most of the time your products will not go over the “project” status. Most of the time you will not know in advance if something is working or not, if something will bring you money or not, if something will last for more than 2-3 years or not. This article will also deal with the ignition part of a project, how and when to choose a project, how to grow it and when to abandon it.

Managing An Online Business – The Team

You cannot really start a business, not only an online business, all by yourself. You will need a team around you. This article will outline how I picked my team, how I managed it and what are the mistakes I did. A team is extremely important in the online business, because of the fragility of this medium. The biggest challenge here is not to feed your competition with your trained employees.

Managing An Online Business - The Money

Cash-flow was the first term I learned after I started my business. Managing money was one of the most time consuming activities I had to learn. I started my business on a very hostile economic climate, when financing was an extraterrestrial term, and I had to finance my business using the three “F”: family, friends and fools.

Managing An Online Business – Promotion

You can have the best projects in the market, the best team to back them up and all the money you need, but if you don’t promote your presence it will be very difficult to be “discovered”. The online medium is overcrowded and you will need promotion. Not all advertising works and not all the proved methods for one business are effective for every other business.

Managing An Online Business – Partnerships

This is the superior level of a team. The difference is that partnerships can be extended outside your own company. You can partner with other players in the filed, with complementary players or with suppliers. Partnership is walking on a very thin ice, and sometimes it breaks.

These are the articles and please note that based on your feed-back I can alter either the order in which they are delivered, either the actual content of each article. After all, you are deciding what you want to read, isn’t it? So, feel free to ask in advance about any of the topics above, I will do my best to answer them.

Entrepreneurship As A Personal Development Tool

10 years ago I started my own business. I didn’t exactly know what I was going to do, it was something mainly related to the online thingie that was starting to rise at that time. Nothing clear in terms of business plans, financing, strategy or management but with a tremendous drive to succeed. I guess the main reason behind starting my own business was my unconscious drive to publicly show that I was good at something. For those of you into astrology this might also be related to my North Node in the 2nd house in Aquarius, but let’s not get too technical… Some of my initial motivations had faded during years, some had grown stronger and during this 10 years slice of my life some new motivations appeared. The official ending of my first business was several months ago, when I succesfuly sold it to one of the most important players in the Romanian online publishing. Quite a success, wherever you may look at it from.

That was the end of the business though, not of my entrepreneurship. Ater selling, I turned all of my energies towards this blog which I am building almost from scratch, but with different motivations and metrics. In this post I’ll share some of my thoughts regarding entrepreneurship, business and personal development.

The Definition Of An Entrepreneur

99% of the definitions of a business will have something to do with generating profit. Or with generating steady income sources. Or with creating a more indulgent lifestyle. The entrepreneur is then defined as the guy who’s going to do all of these. And entrepreneurship would subsequently be the action of starting a business. This type of business. Every decent dictionary will tell you that doing business will ultimately have something to do with profit, somehow. Put in some money and at the other end of the business take out some more.

Every guy who has the idea, the resources and the energy to create such a process stream will then be an entrepreneur. I have nothing against this definition, except the fact that it doesn’t really deal with the failure part of this activity. As an entrepreneur you can succeed, but you can also fail. There is nothing wrong with failure. This doesn’t make you less of an entrepreneur. Not to speak about the fact that it doesn’t make you less of a respectable person, one thing that is most of the times forgotten in the modern society.

An entrepreneur is a person who is pushing his own limits toward a new level of personal evolution. Being an entrepreneur is about committing to your creative drive and starting to make reality obey your wish. Being an entrepreneur is all about courage and trust, hope and discipline, inspiration and endurance. It really doesn’t have to do with a successful business, although most of the times the successful entrepreneur will end up with a successful business, too. But one can also fail in terms of business, but still succeed as an entrepreneur. (more…)