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Entrepreneurship

Which entrepreneur made tractors before entering the sports car business?

By Bobby Voicu

Well, if I tell you the first name of the entrepreneur, it might not ring a bell: Ferruccio.

If I tell you it’s a car company, you might think: “Hmmm, italian name… Ferrari! Ah, no, that’s Enzo! Alfa Romeo! Maserati!”.

Or you might say the right name: Lamborghini.

Which entrepreneur made tractors before entering the sports car business?

Yes, Lamborghini, the supercar company owned now by Volkswagen, initially made tractors. And they still do, they’re called Lamborghini Trattori.

But what made a tractor manufacturer start a supercar company? Well, spite. Maybe that’s where Larry David got his “spite store” idea for “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.

Fast Cars Passion

As an entrepreneur, Lamborghini was a successful one, owing it to his tractors. But he was also passionate about cars, especially really fast ones.

He owned Maseratis, but he didn’t like them because he felt they were too heavy. Then he owned some Ferraris, but he was constantly annoyed by the low quality of the pieces they used (especially, apparently, the clutch).

Spite and Personal Need

This is where spite comes up. He went to Ferrari’s owner, Enzo Ferrari, and complained. The proud Enzo, though, dismissed his issues. So Lamborghini started to think he could create a really good Grand Tourer car.

Gap in the Market

While he was passionate about his cars and he probably didn’t love Enzo Ferrari too much, he also saw a gap in the market: a really good super car, with no technical issues. Or at least less visits to the service after you buy it.

Competitive advantage

He also saw his own competitive advantage: because he already produced the tractors, he could adapt pieces from there and create a cheaper car. Companies like Ferrari would buy them more expensive because Lamborghini could buy in bulk. He was probably making a whole lot more tractors than Ferrari and Maserati were making cars so he had this particular advantage.

There’s a lot more to Lamborghini’s history and you can read more on Wikipedia or in this book. We also have Lamborghini Urraco and the V8’s: Urraco, Bravo, Silhouette, Athon, Jalpa in our database of book recommendations, if you prefer reading books.

Stupid ideas: the good, the… good?

By Bobby Voicu

“I just started a gaming company and we make Solitaire games!”
“Well, that’s stupid!”

That was me in 2012, telling a friend about the new project I just started. He still is my friend (I know!) and he is a smart guy. And he genuinely thought it was a stupid idea. And I still remind him of that discussion.

Of course, that’s what started MavenHut. We built that initial Solitaire game (Solitaire Arena) to a company with 35 people and more than 40 millions players.

Do you know there’s a guy that wanted to start a marketplace for people to rent inflatable beds in their apartments? Or a guy that thought internet was good for selling books? Or some guys that thought they could build a site helping you leave it the moment you visited it? Yeap, they’re Airbnb, Amazon, Google. They all seemed really stupid at the moment.

I love stupid ideas. I like talking about them. I know most of them will never become a business, a company or even a side project. But come on, don’t you want to let your mind wander and wonder?

I prefer, as Tynan says here, to see the good in the ideas. That’s why I almost never say “don’t do this“. I just say “what stops you from trying?”

That being said, no matter how much I love talking about stupid ideas, I would not invest in them. I mean, I can’t afford a 1 in 1,000 chance of something working.

I will never put down a stupid sounding idea, though. After all, I’ve founded a company making Solitaire games. “How stupid is that, when you can play it for free on Windows?”

The image above is of the MavenHut offices in 2014. I took it from Radu.

Blogging as a Lean Startup

By Bobby Voicu

I have a good friend that wants to start up a blog. And he has so many interesting things to say, I would read his blog. Well, this brilliant guy started his blog about a year ago. In his head. He knows what kind of articles he’ll write, how long they will be, how great they will be.

The issue? The articles are still there, in his head.

I’ve heard about Lean Startup (and its predecessor, 4 Steps to the Epiphany) about 3-4 years ago.

The basic explanation of the concept is that you create a Minimum Viable Product, you go to market, you learn from the feedback and reiterate. Basically “Build, Test, Learn, Reiterate”. And do this cycle as often as possible.

The shorter the cycle it is, the better you chance of succeeding in your startup (because it creates more chances of getting the things right). A lean startup sees its runaway (the time until it runs out of money) not in months or years, but in the number of cycles it has. MavenHut was a lean startup.

Now, blogging is by no means a startup, most of the time. It can be see as one, though. If we keep comparing, my friend is actually in the startup stage where you want to create the next big thing, the thing that you know will change humanity. You want to create the iPhone. You have everything in place, you just don’t have the time to create… well, perfection.

All he needs to do to reach perfection is to start the Minimum Viable Product for his blog: the first, simple, small, 200 words article. Then the second. Then the third. He will get feedback for all of them (from me, from his other friends, from people on Facebook or Twitter). And the 10th article will be a 2000 words article about something great. But the form will not be the best. Still, he will understand how to space paragraphs, ideas, use headlines and so on. And his 30th article will be a lot better. And so on and so forth.

By the time his blog is 9 months old he will write his first great article. The one that hits Hacker News and Reddit and that gets 1000 likes on Facebook and 150 RTs on Twitter. And then he will start again. Until, 2 years from the start, he will be a household name in his chosen field.

This is a good story, right? On the other hand, you might not be the household name you wanted, but writing helps a lot in other ways, ways you didn’t really think about:

I recommend daily writing for anyone, not just writers. Here’s what I’ve found from my daily habit:

  • Writing helps you reflect on your life and changes you’re making. This is incredibly valuable, as often we do things without realizing why, or what effects these things are having on us.
  • Writing clarifies your thinking. Thoughts and feelings are nebulous happenings in our mind holes, but writing forces us to crystalize those thoughts and put them in a logical order.
  • Writing regularly makes you better at writing. And writing is a powerful skill to be good at in our digital age.
  • Writing for an audience (even if the audience is just one person) helps you to think from the perspective of the audience. That’s when the magic starts, because once you get into the reader’s mindset, you begin to understand readers and customers and colleagues and friends better. You have empathy and a wider understanding of the world.
  • Writing persuasively — to convince others of your point of view — helps you to get better at persuading people to change their minds. Many people don’t want to change their minds when they feel someone is attacking their position, so they get defensive and dig into their position.
  • Writing daily forces you to come up with new ideas regularly, and so that forces you to solve the very important problem of where to get ideas. What’s the answer to that problem? Ideas are everywhere! In the people you talk to, in your life experiments, in things you read online, in new ventures and magazines and films and music and novels. But when you write regularly, your eyes are open to these ideas.
  • Writing regularly online helps you to build an audience who is interested in what you have to share, and how you can help them. This is good for any business, anyone who is building a career, anyone who loves to socialize with others who are interested in similar things as them.

The quote above is from Zen Habits, an article called Why You Should Write Daily.

Most underrated skill you never ask about

By Bobby Voicu

Asking questions is probably one of the most underrated skills in the world. I mean, everybody can ask questions, right? A toddler asks questions. And, oh, my God, they do ask a lot.

As you know, though, it’s not that simple.

I grew up in communist Romania. School was a serious matter and you didn’t ask stupid questions. Or, even better, don’t ask anything. Take everything the teachers give you, learn it by heart and become the perfect little communist. Of course, I’m generalizing, because I was fortunate to have some great teachers, but they weren’t the rule. This continued through college, even if it wasn’t as obvious as it was in the first years of school.

I was also lucky to have parents that encouraged my curiosity, but that almost bit them in the a$$ when I told people at school that my parents were listening to Voice of America radio, which was banned in Romania. My family was lucky that my third grade teacher heard me and sent me home to talk to my parents. Otherwise, the results could’ve been dire.

Anyway, as I got older, asking questions seemed a sign of weakness. I mean, my first “real” job was in a Government institution, that had its ways. And I was working with a lot older people, that had THEIR ways. And it was “obvious” how I should do things. What, I was hard in the head, couldn’t I see on my own? Where the hell did I grow up?

After about 1 year of working there I continued on my entrepreneurial track. And finally, asking questions seemed a lot easier and more accepted. Especially since I was so interested in new technology. This meant that all the people I knew had bits of information they could share so I started asking LOTS of questions. And, for the first time in my life, they didn’t seem like an annoyance to anyone. OK, OK, I had a good friend that ALWAYS made fun of me for asking “stupid and obvious questions”, but I learned a lot from him during those early years.

Now, I ask questions all the time (really, I do). Even if I seem slow or stupid. I want to know things, so I’m ok with that.

Here are the tips to ask good questions:

  1. Don’t worry about being annoying

It’s worse being annoying because you don’t know something and execute badly, rather than being annoying by getting right what you need to do.

  1. Ask specific questions

Don’t ask general questions: how can I make money is a general question. It’s better if you ask “How can I monetize my mobile app?”. But the even better question is the one that asks “What is the biggest issue you had with monetizing your app with subscriptions?”. Of course, based on your relation to the person you ask, you can start with the general ones and get to the more specific questions as time goes by.

  1. Understand time limitations/specific situations

You are at a conference and you want to ask a speaker something. There’s no Q&A session at the end, so you wait for the presentation to finish and you go and talk to the speaker. And you ask one question, then another, then another. You can see the speaker looking around, trying to escape, but you don’t stop. There’s a queue of 10 people behind you waiting to speak to that person, but you ignore them. At this point, you are annoying. VERY annoying. Ask one question, get the answer and, if you have follow-up questions, ask for an email address to ask a little bit more.

  1. Try to find the answers on your own first

You have a phone in your pocket that has most information than most people had access to during our history. Use it. Google things before asking, read Wikipedia articles. If you can’t find your answers, by all means, find someone to ask. The advantage, though: you will ask really specific questions.

There’s more to asking good questions than these 4 tips. Practice will make you better. Ask questions, challenge people. If someone doesn’t like you because of this, maybe you shouldn’t care.

What I’m reading now

I got really interested in American Football lately. I’m a fan of Carolina Panthers, just so you know.

I actually went to Atlanta for Superbowl 53, to see what I thought would be Tom Brady’s last champion ring. I’m fascinated by the business/sports machine that is New England Patriots.

Right now I’m reading two books about New England’s coach, Bill Belichick:

The Education of a Coach – David Halberstam
Belichick – Ian O’Connor

Both are about Bill Belichick’s life and career. The first one is gentler with the coach, because the author had access to him personally. It also has only the first two Superbowls, because it stops in 2003. This means the writer didn’t know about the 2 biggest scandals that involved Belichick: Spygate and Deflategate.

I’m still reading the second book. It’s more agressive and it doesn’t pamper Belichick’s image. It talks about his mistakes more and in a less understanding light. This makes the book a little bit more balanced, but with less insight from the man himself. The writer talks about the scandals involving Belichick at length, as well.

Additional Reading

Here are some things to read from around the web and The CEO Library:

  1. Book talk with Brian Burkhart

Things to take from the interview:

  • the books that dramatically changed his career path
  • how he really improved his presentation skills
  • how you should use “reverse engineering” and do what you love
  • why is gratitude important
  • find out about how to build a brand people authentically love

  1. Why are rich people so mean?

Is meanness necessary to become rich or is it a learned trait, that you gain as you make more money?

  1. Is Amazon unstoppable?

Great write-up on how powerful Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, are. Really eye opening.

  1. List of Basic Advice

Following my email last week, somebody asked for more examples of Basic Advice. And I made a list.

  1. The Best and Worst Thing About Financial Independence

I have a soft spot for the Financial Independence movement. Maybe because, without knowing it, I looked for this all my life. What I didn’t realize until several years ago when I finally achieved financial independence is that it can make you miserable. This article is better at explaining my feelings.

Business Basic Advice and Personal Basic Advice: Mega List

By Bobby Voicu

Last week I sent an email to the email list (you should subscribe, by the way). I was talking about Basic advice and how important it is that, from time to time, someone reminds you how important it is to focus on the basics. My definition of basic advice is this: advice that’s really easy to understand, without too much explanation.

Chris, one of the people on our list, asked for more examples of basic advice.

What a great idea, I thought. Why don’t I make a list, while I’m at it and update it whenever I have more advice?

By the way, you can help. If you have more suggestions, make a comment below and I’ll add it to the list, along with your name. I’ll also add your link, if it’s not what I consider to be a spammy site :D

So, without further ado and in no specific order, here is the

MEGA LIST OF BASIC ADVICE (BUSINESS AND PERSONAL)

Initially, I was gonna do just a business advice list, but I was thinking of more and more personal advice, so I added that to the list as well. This means that the list is split in two: Business and Personal. Scroll down for the “Personal” section.

Business Basic Advice

1. Watch your costs

Most of the business go down because they spend too much.

2. Don’t hire too fast

Hiring creates lots of complexity in the business and it tries to sort a problem by throwing more resources at it. Most of the times it doesn’t work

3. Fire fast

Once you decided to fire someone, do it fast. Don’t postpone it, because it impacts your entire company/team.

4. Get a lawyer as fast as possible

Someone needs to read all those contracts and make sure they’re ok.

5. Get an accountant as fast as possible

The easiest way to break the law is by not paying taxes. Don’t fall into that.

6. Don’t send an email when angry

Write the email as draft. Wait 24 hours. If you feel the same, send it. If not, rephrase it. Anger rarely solves anything.

7. Raise more money than you need

There are lots of potential pitfalls on the way. If you raise money, try to raise at least 20-30% more than you think you need.

8. Raise money before you need to

Raising money takes a long time. Start raising money at least 9-12 months before you estimate you will run out of money. I would start 18 months before, frankly.

9. Read books about your industry

I’m biased here, since The CEO Library is about reading books. Still, I think that long form puts some things into perspective a lot better than articles online. No matter how many articles you read, nothing will make you feel the pain of firing people as much as The Hard Thing about Hard Things will make you feel. If you want to know how to read more, here’s a really good article on our site about it (Cristina, my cofounder at The CEO Library, wrote it).

10. Grind every day

Most businesses just need to survive to be successful. Do your work everyday, even if it’s boring during some days.

11. Don’t break the law

You really can’t run a legitimate business from jail.

12. Follow-up on email after every call or meeting

It took me a little bit of time to get into this habit, but following up on email after every call or meeting you have is the essential. This gives you a “paper trail” of the discussion and lets all people involved remember what you talked about. Also, if someone forgets something, there’s always someone to point that out.

If you have more suggestions for business basic advice, please add it in the comment section below.

 

Personal Basic Advice

13. Wash your hands

Really. You know how many people I see leaving toilets without washing their hands? Now, that I told you, you will never NOT see it.

14. Breathe

Sometimes, that’s all you need to go through the day. One breath at a time.

15. Don’t send a message when angry

Really, don’t. If you are angry with someone and want to clear the air, talk face to face. Or at least on the phone. It will give you some time and it’s a lot more difficult to say stupid things face to face or on the phone.

16. Clean your living place

Really, clean your place. I’m not saying you should be Monica from Friends, a cleaning freak, but don’t keep weeks old food on the sofa.

17. Read books

I feel that long form reading activates parts of your brain you don’t normally use. Especially fiction. I imagine so many things when I read Science Fiction, I dream entire worlds after that.

18. Exercise/Go out and walk

I’m not the best in keeping up with this, but I still walk as much as I can. The best life I’ve lived was when I was working out constantly.

19. Get some sunlight

Really. Go out and take a walk. Get some distance from your life for a bit.

20. Sleep

I’ve been sleeping 7-8 hours a night in the last few months and I’m seeing such a big change in energy and productivity. Cristina wrote a while back about sleep in our newsletter, so give it a read here.

21. Eat well

I need to remind myself this every day. I’ve been eating really bad food lately and I can feel it in the level of energy I have in the 1-2 hours after eating. Eating well improves your well being and productivity.

22. Don’t stop learning

Read new things, find interesting courses, watch videos, go to physical courses. Never stop learning.

23. Do things in moderation

Even the good things can be too much and they can lead to burnout if you overdo them.

If you have more suggestions for personal basic advice, please add it in the comment section below.

Looking to buy websites! Have one?

By Bobby Voicu

Buy website

TL;DR: I want to buy some websites. See below for more info.

Years ago, before I started MavenHut, I was building content websites. Mostly blogs about different things. One about cars, another one about motorcycles. I sold all of them to support MavenHut in the early stages.

At the beginning of this year, though, I started to look into investing money in websites. I took a course about it that was an eye opener. I might write about what I learned at some point, who knows.

Any way, the idea is that I’m looking to buy websites. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t updated them in a while or you write daily, it doesn’t matter if it’s making no money, a little bit or a lot, just let me know. Even if I don’t buy them, I know people that might be interested.

Some guidelines of what I’m looking for:

  • English content
  • Need to be at least 2-3 years old

If you have these type of websites, fire an email to websites @ bobbyvoicu.com. If you can put the URLs in the first email, the better. If you want more information, just ask in the email.

Where is your company on the Silicon Valley clock? [To Read]

By Bobby Voicu

What's your company hour on Sillicon valley clock

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

Indie Hackers grew to $5,000/month and was acquired in 10 months

By Bobby Voicu

Timeline of indiehackers acquisition, revenue of $5,000

I was thinking of ways to generate revenues for content sites the other day. My focus is on interview based sites (for obvious reasons) and I remembered Indie Hackers doing a really good job about it. I thought I read a sort of income report on their site, but I couldn’t find them anymore, since the /blog section redirects now to the home page. I initially thought that since their acquisition by Stripe, they removed it. A “site:indiehackers.com/blog” search later, though, the articles were still available.

What is interesting for me in these blog posts is the fact that Indie Hackers started in August 2016, it was acquired by Stripe in April 2017 for un undisclosed amount, but by that time they were making around $5,000/month with not so much traffic on the website to speak of. They had a combination of revenue sources, from ads on the site to site sponsors and podcast/newsletter sponsors as well.

In case you want to read them, here they are, in chronological order:

Here’s also 2 answers from the founder on Hacker News and on the Indie Hacker Forum:

I hope they don’t remove the articles (they can still be found on archive.org, in case the links aren’t working anymore).

Reward Behaviour, Not Milestones

By Bobby Voicu

I was reading recently some article or book about getting off your ass and doing shit. And I remember thinking this: Reward each action you take. Or, better said, reward behaviour.

It basically means that whenever you choose a target or a goal, you define the actions you need to take to get you there and, instead of celebrating hitting specific milestones, you celebrate the consistency of doing those actions over and over again, until you achieve what you set your mind to achieve.

Let’s say you want to lose weight. Don’t celebrate losing 1kg, 5kgs or even 10kgs. Celebrate, instead, the fact that you got to the gym 3 times a week, as planned. Celebrate you had 1 day, 3 days, a week, a month, a year of eating well. As Cristina does, when she celebrates being consistent with logging the meals she eats in MyFitnessPal for 800 days. Not an easy feat, I tell you, as I only kept at it about 40 days, the most, without a break in habit.

When you celebrate milestones and targets you risk being demotivated when it takes longer than you planned initially. When you celebrate and reward your own behaviour you allow yourself to fail from time to time. You just need to get back in the saddle.

It worked for me for the last 6-7 years, since I first started to pay more attention to my actions and I kept my focus on a goal at a minimum. It actually made it easier for me to achieve what I wanted. But it took me several years to get there and I’m still a work in progress.

One final thought: you still need targets, because they help you establish the actions you want to take and they can also be tracked more easily. But focus on the consistency of actions initially and, once you get those working, go back to your goals.

The photo is just some really tasty ice cream I chose to reward my behaviour. You should try it, too

The Price of Success

By Bobby Voicu

Scott Adams once wrote: “One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard goes something like this: If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power.”

Good quote. From The Psychology of Money.