general disclaimer

November 10th, 2014 § Comments Off on general disclaimer § permalink

i noticed that i often get ideas to write on this blog, but after thinking about them i realize that they might be misrepresented and thus decide not to write them. i’d hate it if this blog was the reason for any particular person or company to be misunderstood and damaged, but at the same time, i feel that each not published thought is lost opportunity for me and for the readers. so i’ve decided to write up a general disclaimer, that will be part of every provocative blog posts i publish in the future. i hope it will manage to frame my context well enough, to prevent readers from jumping to conclusions and judgements. here is the wording i’m thinking about, and i would very much welcome any improvements or feedback.

the articles and words on this blog do not necessarily represent the position of their author. strong sentences, especially such that describe people or companies or events are here to express an abstract point, and not to pass or enable or encourage judgement. please refrain from taking them as facts, but rather as building blocks of a story. author accepts feedback and complaints under comments and on email.

i hope this will relieve me from worrying too much, and to start writing more aggressive and controversial pieces, that will stir the conversations more. not because i would want to convince anyone of my points, but because i feel that not enough people are contributing to public debates, which gives unfair advantage to media and politicians and trolls. so bear with me, specially when you disagree.

it’s real hard

June 24th, 2014 § 2 comments § permalink

A supernova remnant about 20,000 light years f...

A supernova remnant about 20,000 light years from Earth (Photo credit: Smithsonian Institution)

building a company is incredibly hard. so hard, that it often drives some of the smartest and most capable people i know mad, because in the spur of the moment they dont understand what is wrong with them that they are still ‘unsucessful’. truth is, they are pretty sucessful comparatevily, and they are doing all the right things, but building a company is just hard.

it takes 5-9 years to build a company said eric 7 years ago. i was shocked, because i lived in a techcrunch bubble, just like 80% of young ambitious entrepreneurs i meet. i guess this bubble actually enables creation of at least half of the startups, because it fills them with optimism.

2 years later, after blind optimism wears out, all you are (hopefully) left with is groundworks for the actual future company and the burning ambition to prove everyone that you weren’t wrong. in reality, if you survived 2 years, that probably means you have a team or some market validation or some traction, or some angels, or some advisors, or any combination of them, and you are actually light years ahead of where you’ve been. but it still feels dissapointing.

dissapointments is a function of expectation often said my brother and our first ceo ales. and he was right, entrepreneur must at some point in time suspend her expectations and face the reality – your company will be something else than what you imagined on that cocktail night, but it’s going to be real, and shaped by thousands of interations of other people with it, where you are merely a sheppard. observe, react, nudge, endure.

if the only thing that’s missing is ‘success’, you’re probably on the right track. forget your ego and enjoy and learn.

This Friday: Startup Crawl – Book Your Schedule, Reserve Your Tickets

March 18th, 2014 § 1 comment § permalink

#190: Twenity – lansiranje - NOVOLETKA, 21. De...

#190: Twenity – lansiranje – NOVOLETKA, 21. Dec 2011 (Photo credit: Kiberpipa)

Slovenia has incredibly healthy startup community, with probably largest amount of global startups per capita. Most of the public is still unaware of how different (and healthy) work environments these young and fast-growing companies are.

After super successful first startup crawl amongst Ljubljana startups (last October), when literally hundreds of people came to visit some of us, the InternetWeek.si team is rallying us together again, in an even more awesome all-day startup festival.

As of today we have 24 super interesting startups opening doors for visitors, ranging from global super stars like Outfit7 and Celtra, to most ambitious newcomers like Sqwiz, Dietpoint and Oculus.

Let me rephrase this – this Friday you have an unique opportunity to see how Outfit7 and Celtra look like from within and talk to them in person!

A totally unique chance if you are looking for a better job (in various roles, not just engineering), if you are a journalist, consultant, or just a worried parent of a high-schooler that likes internet a lot.

This year we are also not only limited to Ljubljana anymore – we have startups from Ptuj, and Kranj participating as well.

So, here’s a recipe for you for this week:

  1. TODAY: go to internetweek.si and checkout the list of participating startups
  2. TODAY: BOOK A TICKET with the ones that you are interested in – the quantities are limited, with some of them very limited
  3. FRIDAY: go have a chat with some of the only creators of jobs in Slovenia
  4. FRIDAY EVENING: after party in LP in the center of Ljubljana

If you are a startup as well, and are wondering why you are not on the list, all you have to do is send an email to the internetweek team!

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If you want to understand the life of a startup entrepreneur, watch this video

January 4th, 2014 § Comments Off on If you want to understand the life of a startup entrepreneur, watch this video § permalink

New York

New York (Photo credits: www.roadtrafficsigns.com)

The author is Terrence Kawaja, an investment banker in NY, who knows everyone and in spare time creates more or less funny spoofs of popular culture.

This is his latest video, which is essentially a rewording of the famous ‘sunscreen’ song. I find it incredibly accurate, chaotic and sincere description of everyday life of a startup entrepreneur.

aspiring entrepreneurs, angel investors, employees, their families, everyone should understand the ups and downs that we go trough, and this video de-mystifies it appropriately.

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Move on! Next week! Internet Week Ljubljana!

October 15th, 2013 § Comments Off on Move on! Next week! Internet Week Ljubljana! § permalink

Proud to announce that my favorite startup community has matured to the stage, where we had to organize Internet Week – a whole week packed with events of various kinds, by several partner organizers, on multitude of topics. We are sponsored by the Digital Champion of Slovenia.

Startup CrawlOne of the highlights of Internet Week that’s going on in Ljubljana at the moment will take place on…Oct 23 2013restreaming.me

You should all take time between October 23rd-30th, and go visit at least a handful of the events, and get to know the community better. At Zemanta we will be hosting startup crawl next friday, when everyone is welcome to stop by for drinks and chats about the future of the web publishing.

I was fortunate to see how Internet Week NY developed, from it’s modest first year 2008, to an overwhelming festival of entrepreneurship it is now. I hope Ljubljana will follow a similar path, as it is the only way to the future.

Oh, and if you want to promote your event as well, give me a shout. happy to add it to the list. 😉

Join us. Move on.

we need a new profession: startup engineer

August 19th, 2013 § 2 comments § permalink

Startup screen

Startup screen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Economic crisis is still the dominant topic in Slovenia, with worrying news and indicators popping up daily. At the same time, Zemanta has never been better, and is actually growing fast. Of course, because we are active on global market, rather than dependent on local economy. Except in one aspect – hiring.

We are looking for several new exceptional colleagues in our Ljubljana office. brilliant, smart, ambitious software developers. It’s not surprising that a lot of people are applying for the position, and I’m very happy to see that many of them actually fit the profile we are looking for.

I’m starting to call it startup engineer, to differentiate it from other software development jobs, like traditional IT, systems integrations or website development. many students coming from the universities here are not aware of the difference, and I think we, the startups, have to be very loud about how differently we work. here is a short list of the type of differences, would love to compile a longer one with your help:

  1. problem-solving: we are a product company, building a product of our own. there is no external client inventing and changing the specs all the time. there is no map of where we are going. we are learning with every step what the next step will be. thus there are not many repetitive tasks. every day actually brings new challenges. some people don’t handle such uncertainties well. startup engineers thrive in the challenge.
  2. freedom and flexibility: to a large extend we don’t care when and how you work. we expect you to do what it takes to understand the challenge well enough, to tell the other how you will solve it. hours, days, languages, locations are up to your judgment. some people cant handle this freedom. startup engineers love the freedom and grow with the responsibility.
  3. curiosity: the world is changing with incredible and accelerating speed, and we need to stay a step ahead of it. we need to understand the emerging technologies before they become standards. it takes extra time and energy, that doesn’t necessarily pay off always. startup engineers experiment and learn, because they cannot not to. sometimes that’s called being brave.
  4. global view: even when working on local problems, startup engineers have to understand the world at large, keep in touch with global trends, and think how the flap of the butterfly in silicon valley will affect us here and now.

there are several practical challenges that we are facing when trying to communicate why working in a startup should be attractive option:

  • I wish in the future, people looking to work as developers, would be aware of this difference well in advance. ideally even before high school, so that they can optimize their learning for the style of work that suits them best. we see a lot of very compelling candidates, that unfortunately end up working for banks and IT companies, simply because they don’t know that being a developer can mean very different things.
  • there is a prejudice that startup jobs are not stable enough, so specially young candidates are discouraged from applying for them. I find this mentality particularly cynical and obsolete. not only have I met a lot of very stable and healthy startups over the years, also the ‘stable’ companies are laying off incredible amounts of people these days, and government jobs are less and less secure as well.
  • some candidates, if they happen to know about startups, are convinced that they are not good enough to qualify. they don’t realize that what we need is first and foremost smarts and curiosity, and not PhD quality of theoretical puzzle-solving. at Zemanta, cultural fit is much more important than skills and experience. don’t negotiate with yourself.

I wish we could make this, ‘startup engineer’ a formal post-graduate university program. there are practical skills they could learn, to accelerate their growth, but these will change from year to year. more importantly, by having it as an option within formal educational system, we would be raising the awareness and actually giving some of the students a fair chance to realize their potential. creating it in collaboration with the actual companies would make sure the students end up with a bit more practically useful knowledge built on top of computer science fundamentals, and give them direct access to a pool of employers, that have been doubling every year.

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Podjetnikov credo, 1776 (via bukla)

August 3rd, 2013 § Comments Off on Podjetnikov credo, 1776 (via bukla) § permalink

20130803-142851.jpg

Best Book about Zemanta in NYC

March 18th, 2013 § 1 comment § permalink

I gave several book interviews since starting Zemanta and moving to NYC, most of them in the last 18 months. Lots of authors are exploring the technology revolution that we were fortunate to participate in.

Books are coming this year, discussing it from various angles – comparatively with .com boom, the rise of entrepreneurship Europe, new entrepreneurship as a lifestyle, … It is no surprise to me, that the first book to actually publish is the one specifically celebrating NY tech community and agility and resilience.

Tech and the City became available on Kindle two days ago, and hardcopies are coming in April. I received the notification from the authors this morning, and already I’m half way trough it. It’s that good.

It starts with an amazingly inspiring foreword by Fred Wilson, which alone is worth the $2.99, as it perfectly outlines the mental model of the greatest city on the planet. After that, the book only gets better, weaving the story trough fragments of conversations with participants in the ecosystem, rather than lazily throwing together yet another series of interviews. This enables the book to read like a travel diary, rather than a self-hype-help business manual.

For the finish, the authors have collected a very comprehensive list of the NY tech ecosystem institutions – vc’s, events, co-working spaces and competitions. They have also published them on the official blog of the book.

It’s cheap and it’s short, and it’s awesome. Go read it and learn how you should be thinking about helping entrepreneurs in your cities / countries.

 

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Beware SXSW Networking Syndrome

March 11th, 2013 § 1 comment § permalink

I’ve been meaning to write a piece about networking events for a while now, and this article prompted me to finally do it today.

Beware SXSW Networking Syndrome | TechCrunch

“Wow! I’m wanted!” I thought to myself upon receipt. But after basking in narcissistic glory for a few seconds, my pride gave way to bemusement. For one, I’ve never met the sender. We’ve exchanged a couple of LinkedIn messages, but I don’t think that qualifies me as a close friend. And on balance the @Garyvee namedrop as a hook to entice the invitee felt more sad than enticing. But most striking, to me, was that this sender is not a PR person or event planner who trades in building social connections, but rather an entrepreneur whose startup I respect.We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: techcrunch.com

I have a problem. I totally grew tired of networking events recently. I just want to be in the office and talk to my team and occasionally help them close a challenging deal. but then i sometimes feel guilty for not spending every evening ‘networking’ and mingling on VIP events and such. how can that be?

whole industry flocking to SXSW for spring break is the greatest symptom of this mentality. forced fun i call it.

So i asked myself, why do entrepreneurs really go to these events? there must be a finite list of possible motivations, and i’d bet each of you, if being really honest with yourself can pick one that is the main driver. I could identify 5 phases in my own history:

  1. I wanted to tell everyone about this great new thing – we are makers, and we get excited about stuff we build, and want to talk about it. the more the merrier. until the novelty wears out, or you are successful and have to start working on other types of challenges related to growth.
  2. I enjoyed being part of the in-crowd – startup ecosystem does resemble entertainment industry, and today’s entrepreneurs are treated as rock stars in some respects. and attention is addictive and you do enjoy it. here, a lot of people are famous for 5 minutes, or sometimes 5 weeks or 5 months. nobody is famous for 5 years. though.
  3. I enjoyed meeting new interesting people – on every event you go, you will meet at least one very interesting person that will make the event worthwhile. and by interesting, i mean really interesting – doing something very compelling, thinking in special ways that inspire you etc.. but after a while, you realize you can only manage several hundred relationships anyway. unfortunately.
  4. I got business done there – strictly professionally speaking, you don’t have to have fun. you can just prey on prospects and partners and clients. works fine, but makes you pick the events very carefully. 
  5. ultimately, sometimes I felt it’s my job to go there. this was the worst, but actually made me notice the other four angles.

so these days, I don’t go to events if I can help it and I don’t go to SXSW, even though I know it would feel special, I would meet awesome people there and that I would do business. I still prefer working with my team on day-to-day challenges above all that.

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first three things every new startup founder/ceo should know

December 17th, 2012 § Comments Off on first three things every new startup founder/ceo should know § permalink

This post was inspired by an entrepreneur who I barely know from one of my previous lives, who sought a meeting because he was put in a position of running a startup. While thinking about what to say to him in the first 30 mins, I realized that it really can be boiled down to a handful of core truths. everything else is a footnote, or tactics. 

startup-curve

So, you’re starting a startup with a couple of your good friends? there are only two ways you could have ended up in this situation:

  • you are so smart, that you never had to really think hard about what you are doing with your life. you go where it takes you and make it work in your favor, and have fun while doing it;
  • or, you’re so dumb, you think doing startups is fun because it’s fashionable and you want to be just like mark

I sure hope you’re of the first kind, or that you are at least smart enough, to recognize yourself in the second description and give up while you still can.

Odyssey

Odyssey (Photo credit: tonynetone)

If you’re still reading, I guess you really want to know what it takes to run a startup. For explaining startup management issues, I really like the Platonic metaphor of a Sailboat. I might explain this some other time in more detail, because for today, we just need to be aware of the Guiding Star – when you are in the middle of the sea, without GPS, and with a couple dozen crew member who’s fates depend on your judgement, it clearly is important that you know which direction to sail to reach the destination.

It is no different in a Startup. you start a startup, because there is something tangible in your mind, that you need to make tangible for everyone else – a vision / an idea, that you see clearly, and can imagine how to do it. that’s your Guiding Star. thinking of that idea gives you strength to move forward, and to think creatively about shortcuts. discussing that idea makes other people join you on the journey, because of your ability to paint it so clearly for them, that they can see their role in getting to the end.

so here’s the heart of the advice for any first-time founder of a startup: never ever loose your Guiding Star. if you stop being obsessed with it, just stop.

Robin Klein taught me a version of this statement: “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” the flip side of this statement is, that it is better to kill the startup, than to keep working on it without the inspiration of the Guiding Star. Here’s why: as Fred says, a startup CEO has only three jobs to perform:

  • communicate the vision, internally and externally
  • assemble the best possible team to execute on that vision
  • secure the resources the team needs

I would argue that if you have your Guiding Star – if you can really feel your vision, if thinking of it is making you do things rather than sit still – only then will you be able to communicate the vision. and if you can do that, you will assemble the team, and convince the investors needed to succeed.

inevitably you will choose the wrong direction sometimes. and you will be running short on cash. you will have to do hard practical decisions. but if you have the Guiding Star in front of you, the decisions will make sense, so they will be infinitely easier to make. even if you run out of cash completely, and you are forced to kill your company, if you do that while knowing what you believe in, it’s not a failure, it’s just a learning experience.

and lastly, one thing that has nothing to do with you or your idea. Odyssey needed 10 years to return home, and that’s exactly what you are signing up for – assume your startup will consume you as a whole for 10 years. keep that in mind while you are deciding to start it, and while you are doing your everyday decisions. only if the idea is such, that it would still make sense for you in 10 years time, than you can consider it.

good luck.

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