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Missing curiosity

By Bobby Voicu

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I’ve been a curious kid. As most children are, I’m sure. The thing is I managed to continue being curious throughout adulthood. And I don’t mean being curious about my job or my personal hobbies and interests. I was always genuinely curious about what other people considered interesting, how they overcame difficulties, how they built their success. I remember reading somewhere that everyone is interesting because they managed to survive this long. I’m not THAT curious to talk to everybody, but still, I think we all have something interesting to say, for the right person.

I think this is what made me start a radio show about IT entrepreneurship 10 years ago for what was the first online radio in Romania, RadioLynx. They took a chance on me and I need to thank them for it.

The radio shows, 6 years of them, about 20-30 per year, opened my eyes to a lot of things. From someone talking to us about internet related laws in Romania to a TV news anchor discovering the fun of writing on his own blog, from lifestyle business to VC-supported startups, from multi-million international companies to local ones, I’ve had a lot of guests on the show. And I learned so much from them and from our audience.

Back to the present, though :)

Right now I am on a much needed longer vacation, so I had a little bit of time to think about things while Cristi and Elvis work hard. Yeah, driving around Europe, as I am doing now, gives you a lot of time for reflection.

I understood that in the last 4-5 years I focused a lot on being curious about what I was doing, mainly building games and growing MavenHut. This meant that I wasn’t that curious about other people’s projects and ideas unless they were directly related to what I was doing. I feel that I am missing a lot because the best ideas I’ve ever had were interdisciplinary, coming from areas I wouldn’t expect. After all, one of the good ideas implemented at MavenHut, the Solitaire tournaments, came from me and Cristi’s playing poker online in Multi Table Tournaments.

I just found out that I miss talking to people that do different things than I do. If you didn’t listen to Tom Ferriss’s podcast, give it a try. He talks to guests from actors like Jamie Foxx to entrepreneurs like Matt Mullenweg or special forces people and the interviews are really insightful. These interviews are, probably, one of the reasons I realized I was missing being curious and asking questions about things I had no ideas, where I felt I could learn a lot.

There’s no conclusion to this article.

Just that, if you get an email from me to meet and you think we have nothing to talk about, you might be right. On the other hand, I have some stories to tell, as well…

Games to Play

By Bobby Voicu

Just a list of games I want to play when I’ll have the time, so I don’t forget about them:

2017

Tacoma
Torment: Tides of Numenera

2016

Life is Strange
Her Story (played)
Adr1ft
Heavy Rain Remastered
No Man’s Sky (i don’t think I’ll play it, after all)
Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter: review
Stardew Valley (playing it, not getting it yet)
Dwarf Fortress (quite difficult, I don’t have the time to play it)
Coloratura (I’m not ready to play a text adventure yet)
Planescape: Torment (I got the Enhanced Edition recently)
Offworld Trading Company: review
Stellaris: review

Search for them if you want links :)

On Quantity vs. Quality

By Bobby Voicu

“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

From Art and Fear, via Stratchery -> Why BuzzFeed is the Most Important News Organization in the World

Don’t Waste My Time!

By Bobby Voicu

Know Your Stuff

Due to MavenHut’s success, there are people that think I know stuff and they want to meet me to talk about their business. And, time permitting, since I travel a lot these days, I actually love to meet the entrepreneurs.

And why shouldn’t I? I love talking to smart people (who doesn’t?), I am interested in how they see what they do and it helps me broaden my horizons. And, of course, it sometimes helps me see solutions for my problems just because I am forced into looking at the issues from a different angle.

One thing I have a difficult time explaining, though, without sounding rude, is that before meeting with someone, that person needs to do something about their idea/project. I will never meet with someone just because they have an idea and want to pick my brain on it. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have time for MavenHut anymore from all the meetings with people “with ideas of an online project” (that usually will change the world). Investors might take these type of meetings sometimes, since they need to be in contact with entrepreneurs for the deal flow, but I am not an investor.

In order to trim the number of meetings and understand who exactly can use my help, I use 2 elements.

First one: I ask in an email for 2 paragraphs about the idea and the stage it’s in. If the person I am writing to is unable to express their idea in 2 paragraphs, I don’t really think they actually understand what they’re doing just yet. Their focus should be on understanding what they do before meeting me (if YOU don’t know what you want to do, how the hell should I know or be able to help you?)

The other thing I want to see is an MVP. If you don’t have any type of Minimum Viable Product (a site, an app, a distribution channel, some users/customers), any advice I would give would be so general that it would make no sense for a meeting.

If these two conditions come together then I am more than happy to meet people (of course, based on my schedule, as well). After all, a lot of people helped and still help us in building MavenHut. But I never went to them with “you know, I have an idea for a Solitaire game”. I went with something on the lines of “I am looking for an investment for my company that does a Solitaire multiplayer game. We already have 1000 users that spend about 35 minutes per day in the game, on Facebook, I don’t know, though, how to put these things in an investment pitch. I know you’ve gone through this process already, do you have one hour to meet and explain these to me?”

The line above explains what I’m doing, what I need and shows why I contacted this specific person.

So, how’s your MVP doing? :)

P.S.: I also don’t drink coffee, just so you know :D

Photo credit: Know Your Stuff

Book Review: The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro

By Bobby Voicu

The Remains of the Day is a well known movie based on a book. I have to say I didn’t see the movie, but I read the book during the winter holidays, after finding out it was the book Jeff Bezos from Amazon considered one of the best (and mistakenly considered the reason he started Amazon as a bookstore). Actually, you can see what Bezos had to say on The CEO Library page: The Remains of the Day.

the-remains-of-the-dayThe thing is… I don’t have too much to say about it. The subject is quite simple: a 50-60 years old butler remembers his life while driving across UK to meet a co-worker from 20 years earlier. He reminisces the history (he was the butler of a British Lord that was involved in negotiations with Ribbentrop during the years before the start of the Second World War) and looks over the decisions he took in his personal life that lead to that particular moment.

I enjoyed parts of the book, but I didn’t really enjoy the entire book. I probably don’t have the feeling of something big missing in my life – I’m not 60, you know – to be able to make a connection with the character, I really don’t know. Also, the rhythm of the book is quite slow and deliberately paced.

Another thing I found weird initially is the way the book is written. The language used is very protocol-like, which is the exact way I would think a butler like Stevens would use, but it was really difficult to read for the initial 20 pages or so.

Finally, would I recommend the book? I enjoyed the 4-5 hours it took me reading it, but it took me a conscious effort, from time to time, to continue reading it and not choose something else in my Kindle library. I actually enjoyed the understanding of the management skills necessary for a butler (it felt like a COO combined with the HR person), but I don’t think it makes the book more enjoyable if you don’t really like the style.

Some quotes:

Indeed, I can say I am in agreement with those who say that the ability to draw up a good staff plan is the cornerstone of any decent butler’s skills. – as I was saying :)

Indeed, the more one considers it, the more obvious it seems: association with a truly distinguished household is a prerequisite of ‘greatness’. – I was thinking of ways to grow as a startup (partnerships with better-known companies and similar things)

An interesting thing: the book is written by a Japanese born person (Kazuo Ishiguro), which was really confusing initially. After that, I found out that he moved early in life to the UK, so it made more sense.

The Power of Not Specialising (sort of)

By Bobby Voicu

“I suppose I can justify the variety of my readings and entertainment this way. Every week I read The Economist and New Scientist cover to cover, which I complement with Forbes, Time, Fortune, Business Week, but also Entertainment Weekly and Premiere. I love movies of all genres, be they artsy foreign movies or the latest blockbuster, books of all genres from Ron Chernow biographies to the latest Dan Brown thriller and love playing video games.”

Exactly my thoughts :)) Especially the love for video games, be it Solitaire or Max Payne

From here

When Will Your Startup Be Pronounced Dead?

By Bobby Voicu

startup-pronounced-dead

We started MavenHut in February 2012. Right from the beginning we decided to not bootstrap the company, but raise investment and grow as fast as possible.

This also meant one more thing: if we didn’t raise money by December 31st, 2012, we would close the company. What this did was to focus our efforts and energy into the most important things for the company: generate users, generate engagement, focus on delivering on our promises to the would-be investors. And it worked: SOSventures invested in us in November 2012.

The thing is, though, that I see a lot of people not setting up a “company deadline”: if we don’t reach “this” by the “then”, we will close the company.

Why you should do this?

Because then you will focus on the things that will move you ahead faster, because you just don’t have the time anymore and you need to choose what to do next in a much more efficient way, especially in relationship to the resources at your disposal (money, people, whatever).

Last time I’ve seen this, somebody has been dragging away the company’s product, putting in new and new features, without actually adding the most important one: allowing potential customers to pay for the product. And the founders were complaining of not generating revenues… It might seem obvious, but this is a mistake I see often: “we will implement monetization/whatever, but before that I will add a more pinkish color to the sidebar/a new logo/redesign the product”.

So, what is your startup’s deadline?

Photo: Grim Reaper on the Road, from ShutterStock

[Job] iOS Developer at MavenHut

By Bobby Voicu

[JOB] iOS developer at MavenHut

MavenHut is growing. Faster than we expected, actually. As a consequence, we are bringing more people on board (adding to the 16 we already are in the office). And one or more of them should be an iOS developer :)

So, if you are an iOS developer and you want to program fun games, played by millions of users around the world, you want to experience a Silicon Valley like startup life, but closer to home (our dev HQ is in Bucharest), you should give us a nudge (mail to beatrice.galatanu A T mavenhut.com).

fotografii-mavenhut-lr-49Actually, to see more of MavenHut’s offices and attitude, you could read this article in Adevarul or see this video from Antena3 (starting with 11:30 mark or so). We are a fun team to work with :D

Here are some details on what we are looking for:

– iOS development – minimum 2 years
– Objective – C and iOS API
– Socket programming on iOS
– experience in migrating web apps to mobile apps
– experience in delivering complex apps to market which interact with an online API
– Familiarity with XML/ REST Services
– Portfolio required, personal or teamwork
– Game Center integration experience is a plus (though it’s actually not that difficult anyway, even I could do it… in a much longer time :D )

If you are interested, fire an email to beatrice.galatanu A T mavenhut.com.

Photos by Dragos Asaftei

Fallout 1,2 and Tactics for Free on GOG.com

By Bobby Voicu

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For everybody that played RPGs in the late 90s, Fallout is one of the games that made us lose countless hours in the wasteland of a postapocaliptic America.

The first two games are the games I wait for the most to come to iPad (well, and Planescape: Torment). So, while I already had them bought on Steam, I also got them for free, DRM-free, from GOG.com. The promotion is up and running for one more day, so go there and get them. It is really worth replaying them when you have the time.