What is a Blog Day?

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.
With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

My recommendations

• Fubiz – great design blog. It’s in French, but it shouldn’t be a problem in the era of Google Translate.
• Signal vs Noise – it’s my industry (startups, entrepreneurship), but I had to. They are great!
• Zen Habits – it’s about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives
• Quick Sprout – once again… the same topic, but I could not fail to mention about it, because I really like posts of Neil Patel
• The Next Web – about… lots of things (simply almost everything)

Some other links

• GetResponse – great tool for e-mail marketing and a blog about this subject
• Oldpumba – interesting and sometimes funny pictures, films, animations, photos… everything what’s worth to publish (my project)
• en.tspot.pl – art, design, web design, lifestyle (my project)
• My fan page on facebook – I could not fail to mention about it
• My Twitter account – like above.

In the last four years of building up Envato I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot about growing and building web companies. So I decided to put some of my learnings into a presentation I gave at WebDU 2010 earlier this year. The talk covered how I would approach starting up from scratch, and throughout I referenced a hypothetical new startup idea and how I might approach it.

Found on thenetsetter.com

There is an important truth about your project:

It is your project.

So… first rule: do not let others decide on how the project looks and works.

Do not implement functionalities which has been reported by a single user (or few users).

Do not work on the functionalities in which you don’t believe.

Do not work on the functionalities that are not compatible with your vision of a project.

If something is really important then it will be reported again, and again. And after a while you will realize that this functionality could be really usefull. You will believe in it. Then… you can think about implementation.

It’s your project, you need to be proud of it! You need to believe in it. You need to be happy while working on it.

If you are not – then you lose.

So… learn to say “no” to your users.

Because that will be one of the most frequently used words by you.

Btw… second important rule why you should learn how to say “no” to your customers has been described in this article: “Say No to Your Clients”.

In most cases answer is simple: because of its design.

Lots of functionalities, thousands of servers, great code, phenomenal cache solutions, millions of lines of code… people don’t care about that.

Geeks take care of that, average users don’t.

So… what’s the most important “feature” of your project? Its interface or more specifically… its design.

People take care about what they see. People pay for what they see.

Think about it… why do people buy Apple‘s products (apart from the fact that it’s trendy)?

Why do people buy Sony Vaio?

Why do people buy gadgets?

Not because of its functionalities, because it doesn’t have any special ones. Not because of its price, because in most cases it’s much more expensive then products of competitors. Not because of included software, special technical solutions or new version of OS.

Everything is because of its design.

So…

don’t be afraid of spending money for graphic designers or web designers. Users will come to you because of them. Their work will sell much more of your products than any (even the best one) sales specialist.

It doesn’t matter how good back-end you have. Without good front-end you won’t sell anything.

I was working as a man-for-everything (or if you prefer: one-man band). That means that I was a Python / Java / PHP / Ruby / CSS / HTML / JavaScript, or even ActionScript programmer. Everything in the same time. And yes… I have a large programming experience and I can build even whole web-based products. However all of that means that I KNOW these technologies, but I’m not a specialist of all of them.

Sure, I can do lots of things using these technologies. However I can say that I am a specialist of maybe two of them. That’s why… I can build great back-end apps thanks to my knowledge of Python, Ruby or Java, but I can’t create fantastic flash animations, website layouts or even great HTML/CSS code.

Why is that? Was I too stupid to learn more? No.
It was impossible to learn all of them. I prefered to focus on some of them.

In start-up you need specialists!

You need people who can do everything make a good product!

And if you want to make a good product, you need to have specialists of back-end and specialists of front-end.

You don’t need someone who has experience in programming back-ends and front-ends, but who’s not specialising in anything. People who want to be experts of everything are not specialists of anything.

I don’t have enough money to hire front-end and back-end devs

Then think twice about your company. If you don’t have enough money then probably you are some kind of small company. If so, then think about profile of your company.

Do you want to build web-based app?
Then hire back-end developer for full-time and some front-end dev for part-time. Or maybe better… outsource your design works to some freelancer, external graphic designer or (web) design company. Why? Because you need specialists of programming back-ends. You need someone who can develop your app; someone who can create new functionalities and fix bugs in these already created. And what’s the most important… back-end developers can do simply front-end works as well.

Are you an owner of digital agency, or your start-up is based on designing?
Then hire front-end developer and oursource your back-end works to some external specialist of back-end development. Why? Because you need creative people. Front-end devs are more creative than back-end devs, but they are not so focused on designing as graphic designers are. They can code as well.

Remember… everything depends on profile of your company, but never… absolutly never… hire people who would do everything!

Take care of your money. Spend it wisely.

I’d like to present whiteyboard.com.

What is it?

A whiteboard. Yeah, the same whiteboard, which you probably know from your office or school.

Developed in 2010 by recent college graduates Saachi Cywinski and Jason Wilk, WhiteyBoard has emerged as an innovative, inexpensive, and eco-friendly alternative to the more expensive traditional whiteboards on the market today.

Nothing special, isn’t it?

Sure. However…

Our team of chemists formulated an ultra-light, ultra-inexpensive whiteboard sticker that can adhere to any flat surface in just seconds and comes off clean - no installation, no heavy lifting, and no breaking the bank.

So simple, so useful, so awesome!

I would like to tell you a story…

Some time ago I was looking for a restaurant to organize dinner after a baptism of my daughter. That was a dinner for about 25 people. My in-laws recommended me really nice place (their friend is an owner of that restaurant). We went there to look at it. Really nice.

We asked for a manager to talk about our dinner.

He has come after a minute. And the first thing he told us is that we have to wait 5 minutes, because he needs to finish talk with someone else. ‘Sure’ – we said. We didn’t call earlier, so that’s natural that he could have some other plans.

We ordered coffee and he said that he will be back in 5 minutes.

We paid for a coffee and we sat on a couch near bar. After 5 minutes of waiting we were thinking that his meeting was delayed. After 15 minutes we were thinking that he is unprofessional. After more than half an hour we went out.

We have seen him couple of times in the meantime. As well as we have seen people he was talking to. However no one came to us. No one said that we have to wait a little bit longer. No one did anything.

What was next? In about half an hour he has started to call us (he was a friend of the parents of my wife, so it wasn’t a big problem to get our cell phone number). We didn’t want to talk to him, because we didn’t want to organize dinner in a restaurant with unprofessional manager.

After a couple of days we met this guy (after promptings of my in-laws) and after all we organized our dinner in this restaurant. We paid about 50% of the normal price and we received some extra cakes from the owner of this place.

Who were the people who talked to manager? One of them was a carpenter, the second one was an investor.

So…

Whether the client is the most important?

I think so.

Whether the client is more important than an investor?

Once again: I think so.

Look at that this way… investor is a businessman. He wants to earn money, that’s why he’s your investor.

Now try to imagine… you are an investor. Do you want to hire manager who can’t even spend 5 minutes to talk with the customer instead of talk to you? I think’s not.

Clients are money – investor knows that. Investor wants money.

And what’s the most important thing: You can live without an investor. You can’t live without clients.

How manager should behave in this situation?

He had lots of possibilites:

• He could come to us and tell us that we need to wait a little bit longer.
• He could come to us and tell us that he has only three minutes for talk. We didn’t call him earlier, so it would be absolutely natural that he could be busy.
• He could delegate someone else to talk with us.
• He could tell us that he can’t talk to us right now and we need to come later.
• …

So… who’s the most important in your company?

Unfortunatelly not you, but your customers.

Entrepreneurs, managers, business owners… remember: be nice for them, engage and take care of them.

Even if you won’t loose client because of your mistakes (just like in my situation) – you will loose something else, because you will have to pay for your mistakes (by giving discounts for example).

Trying not to make mistakes will be much cheaper than fixing them later.

Today I would like to present (in few words) one of these – interesting – start-ups.
It’s Square.

In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment. Even though a majority of payments has moved to plastic cards, accepting payments from cards is still difficult, requiring long applications, expensive hardware, and an overly complex experience. Square was born a few days later right next to the old San Francisco US Mint.
Today the Square team is focused on bringing immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the world of payments: an inherently social interaction each of us participates in daily.

I won’t say too much about them. I’m just curious about their future.

What do you think about it?

High expectations are the key to everything.

And that’s absolutely true. Don’t rest on laurels. Don’t choose worker, which is cheaper. Don’t be afraid of expectations.

If you want to achieve success – you need to know what you want and have high expectations.

By using half measures you gain nothing.

You need to have high expectations for yourself and for the people, whom you contributing to. Without that you do not have a chance to find a place for yourself in business.