Last post at Blogger.com, feel free to join me at my new blog Odiseev.com

The king is dead, long live the king!

Long story short, I am meeting too many interesting people and experience too many new things not to blog about it. So I am starting my own blog site. I will be happy if you keep following me at odiseev.com.

See you (hopefully) soon!!!

Google Adsense = Disastrous customer support = Robotic. Nonsense. Catch 22

Isn't it ironic? In the next few paragraphs I will lay out my horrible experience with Google Adsense on another of their web properties - their own blog site. But let's not waste time, what is this all about?

Being a long-standing technologist, mentor and evangelist of several rising stars in the internet and mobile tech space, I still have the time for some of my own projects. One of the them is arguably the biggest ex-pat Bulgarian community in Europe. It has persevered for 10 years now and sometimes even to my surprise (considering my time constraints) bolsters a growing userbase and plenty of up-to-date relevant information. The site offers latest news, growing knowledge base, blogs and huge forums.

In few words, it is a helpful site valued by its community.

One beautiful day (2 weeks ago) I received a notification from Google Adsense that my site has violated their Terms and Conditions and that I have 3 days to resolve the issue. The organised person I am, later that very same day, I looked in greater detail at google's request. Google was pointing at a link on my site where one of the users has posted a lady in lingerie. That being said we do not encourage such content so it was immediately removed. The site discusses employment, family, commute etc. but yes users do sometimes exchange about daily life and become playful.

In the mean time a second request for removal arrived which superseded the previous one. Again links related to the post with such content. Cleaned the pics, left the content which was mostly links.

Submitted an appeal and the pain began. When you send an appeal to the "policy specialists" you do not get a copy of your polite message but a standard email:

Hello,

Thanks for contacting Google AdSense. This an automated reply to let you know that we've received your appeal request.

It looks like you'd like to appeal the disabling of *********. While we're unable to respond personally to this particular message, please rest assured that your request has been submitted for appeal and one of our policy specialists will be reviewing it soon.

Please note that while we will take your comments into consideration when evaluating your website, there is no guarantee that ad serving will be re-enabled.

We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

About 2 days later I received a rejection of my appeal. With a standard email.

Hello,

Thank you for providing us with additional information about your site. However, after thoroughly reviewing ******** and taking your feedback into consideration, we're unable to re-enable ad serving to your site at this time, as your site appears to still be in violation. 

When making changes, please note that the URL mentioned in your policy notification may be just one example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your website. Appropriate changes must be made across your entire website before ad serving can be enabled on your site again. 

If you'd like to have your site reconsidered for participation in the AdSense program, please review our program policies and make any necessary changes to your webpages. 

Once you've fully resolved any issues with your site, please review this Help Center article to learn more about how to create a successful appeal.

We appreciate your cooperation. 

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Went back to that particular forum and took another cleanup, removed whole topics that could be considered by some as adult material and submitted another appeal.

A day later - rejection. Same email.

Went again removed a whole subforum that was touching on issues of our users sexual life and had links to legitimate sources with articles on the topic. Submitted an appeal.

A day later - rejection. Same email.

Removed the whole forum, put it in a hidden folder so that i have references and people's content protected just in case someone needs that information. Submitted an appeal.

A day later - rejection. Same email.

This time I was really clueless. I checked again and could not find anything wrong. Without indication of which links violate the Terms and Conditions of Google Adsense and with a content repository of 150 000 posts I cannot really do a lot even if I want to. I wrote this:

Google team, we have removed not only this link but also many other pages where we suspect there may be a violation. We need your assistance should you find more content that does not comply with your terms and conditions.  

Please PROVIDE US with a LIST, our latest appeal was rejected with a general automated message. We are your trusted customer for 5 YEARS, we deserve at least some BASIC support from a human being. 

Thank you! 

A day later - rejection. Same email.

I am now really clueless and it is a bit sad that a company that I know closely would give me this experience. My web property has real impact on people's life and some income from ads is always welcome to cover the bills.

But rest assured even without the revenues from Google we will persevere as we did for 10 years already.

Google you can do better than this!

UPDATE: I have resubmitted again.

A day later - rejection. Same email.

I have now moved all my properties to Yahoo Bing network.

A quick glimpse at BIN@Porto 2012

Those of you following technology and business events in Europe have probably heard of the 3 day event BIN@PORTO. BIN stands for Business & Innovation Network and this year hosted a bunch of very interesting presentations with key people from Portuguese but also global economy. I was lucky to be invited to participate in one the panels organized by PORTIC - Think Tank for Portuguese Internationalization - organized by our kind and engaging host Pedro Castro Henriques.

The topic of our talk was "Innovation in software products & services" and focus was on software innovation, scalability, quality and mass selling over web & mobile. Before I get carried away with some insights from the events I want to thank Filipa Caldeira from Fullsix, Jose Fonseca from BLIP, Luis Monçao from ROFF, Hugo Magalhaes from EuroCloud - it was great hearing your experience and views!



As I am working for a truly global company it was not difficult to pinpoint 3 key issues to talk about:

• Think agile, Live agile and Develop agile
• Build local awareness
• Establish and enforce quality standards

Not so sure if you, my readers, are really aware of what agile stands for but I would describe it with one word: "change". Be ready to adapt to business needs and get used to constantly changing requirements for your product. Be ready to have your client around you and showing him/her your progress and getting feedback. Because the world has changed in the way we do things, software development has become so fast that you just cannot afford to take 6 months, build a product and then pull the blanket at a gala dinner and show your work to the clients. Unless you want to face their utter disappointment and anger of not delivering what they had in mind.   

My second point was about building global products by understanding the local markets. I am not aware of any complex system (be it ecommerce or something else) being unpacked and launched without any customization. Efforts should be focused on delivering a robust foundation which you can extend and match to local demand. AFAIK developing a monstrous system in the first place to address all possible needs has never achieved its ultimate goal.

And last but not least important going into a new market is sometimes challenging because you have to set the standards and then repeatedly check that people adhere to them. This is to the contrary of established markets where the client is the one complaining about "something not working".

What do you think isn't the last point a bit surprising and Ironic?

Thanks for your time!

One fairer view on Rocket Internet and its founders

My three readers in total have surely noticed that I do reflect on startups, tech behemoths and sometimes on copycats. I do this when I have time and this is one of these moments. But Richard Oakley just stole me this pleasure with his unbiased and in-depth view represented in an article talking about execution, scale and success. No I am not talking about Berkshire Hathaway or Google, I mean Rocket Internet. And the article is "A growing respect for the Samwer brothers".

Few points here:

• I love the fact that the article is based on facts and author's reflections thus leaving the emotional factor out of it. Because TechCrunch (sorry I do really read and like your articles) just cannot get rid of the feeling that you hate these guys in the guts, for the reader's sake let us look at your last 3 publications as of writing this post:
• Rocket Internet: Is There A Method To Its Madness Or Is It Just Bad For Innovation
• the re-iterration of the Bltzkrieg email In confidential email Samwer describes online furniture strategy as a 'Blitzkrieg' in every possible following article about RI including the last one Rocket Internet’s ‘Blitzkrieg’: JP Morgan Invests In Russian Fashion Site Lamoda; $40-80M Reported 
• I also appreciate the mentioning of the fact that businesses that are so easily cloned and surpassed in weeks can actually learn from RI and have lost focus.
• And last but not least important actually adding yet another player is beneficial for the consumer. And a business that does not have its customers in the middle does not seem sustainable in mid or any longer term.

I would love if someone agrees or disagrees with my view and hopefully not Richard's because he won't be available for comment.

Humble me appeared on Portuguese national TV

Good that our great performance in the last months was appreciated by that many people. The rumour spread around and we had a visit from RPT to check our emerging office. I think they were surprized by the size of the venture and amazing working atmosphere.

If you want to enjoy my few seconds of glory take a look at RPT's recording.

Where to meet new people AKA exercise some Social Skydiving?

After a long pause, I feel like I should drop a few lines. My current hobby is meeting new people and exploring Berlin as I was more weekends out of the city than I spent in it. So lets start with what I explored this weekend:

- Went to Bode museum at the one end of the Museum island. There was an exhibition of Byzantine art and Orthodox Christian relics as well as many Italian, French, German and Spanish pictures and sculptures. It was really gooood. But I was mostly impressed by the gorgeous building which takes your breath away from both the inside and outside. If it was not so big, I could imagine living in it. :) The purposedly built exhibition building connects the floors through an amazing staircase and possess a huge amount of spacious and diverse halls.

- Took out some new colleagues for a drink - 3 cocktails each kept me sleeping till late on the next day and that is the reason for this post as I am still in bed. This was also the reason for my research on the meetup options, so please read my last point below.

- Looking for places I must visit and people I want to meet - this included also finding ways how to make some new acquaintances in a city where I have fairly few friends. So using the "Let me Google that for you" approach resulted in finding this article. The main idea is that you should check out the people and events at sites such as http://www.couchsurfing.org, http://www.toytowngermany.com and http://www.meetup.com.

So hopefully I will meet you at one of these :)

Don't wear shorts at interviews - Part II

As I posted just a few days ago, my appearance in shorts has strongly contrasted with my classmates. Now I face even more popularity by becoming the face (just for a short time) of Cambridge Conversations run by Cambridge Judge Business School. For the sake of not losing these precious moments of myself getting exposure in the press (God knows when this will happen again, and surely won't be soon), I have attached them in this blog. As I assume this blog is mostly read by my classmates from Judge, I guess I will experience some funny remarks.

Don't wear shorts at interviews

Well, I did make it in the Cambridge MBA entrepreneurship showcase and I definitely left a mark. Enjoy the start of this video ...

For and against Internet copycats

You will probably agree that that the copycat business is huge and all around us. As an entrepreneur I had at least 3 occasions when my ideas were copied. And yes, it is a nasty feeling. You get angry, the other guys are worse than the devil, you spend hours looking at their product and criticizing how bad it is compared to yours. But with time and experience I have started to appreciate newcomers, because they improved my own product. Yes, indeed! I have put together an non-exhaustive list of what got better:

1. Copycats are the result of careful analysis of your product. They usually come in a better form and build on the existing business model.
2. It makes you rethink your product - why are other equally that successful as you, or better/faster growing. Somewhere on the way you ignored something - be it speed to market, culture, creativity, sufficient financing. You become more open to partnerships.
3. Copycats bring you out of your comfort zone, because they change the game. Now you have competition. You push yourself more, you want to persevere. And there is nothing better than that in order to improve your product and add more value to your customers. You start coming up again with ideas, look for new ways to grow.
4. It changes your attitude. Many companies become arrogant and ignorant with size. Although this does not apply to all I tend to call them incumbents. And my personal believe is that incumbents should be disrupted all the time. Only this way you make them rethink their recruitment, customer support, structures. 

I love the example with the hairdresser salon. If someone opens a hairdresser and few months later another guy opens a similar one few blocks away, is he a copycat? No, just another hairdresser salon. And the one offering a better service will serve customers in the long-term and the one with inferior service will either have to change or go out of business. This si the real world and there is nothing fairer than that!

Share your opinion and feel free to support or argue with me.

To live in Prenzlauer Berg or not to live in Prenzlauer Berg

Another blog post and of course a new story. And guess what - the story is about finding an apartment in Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. There are a few well known facts about this "angesagt" district in Berlin:

1. Buildings are very nice
2. There are plenty of good dining locations
3. People look schick
4. Apartments are expensive and difficult to get

Well, now imagine you are newcomer in Berlin e.g. started work 2 weeks ago and one of the prerequisites is to show your last 3 monthly paychecks in order to be considered for renting an apartment. Besides this when you visit the place you usually discover that you are one of 20 candidates for it and have to wait on the staircase for your turn to glimpse at it. 

Question: Now what do you think are your chances to get a place like this?

Answer: Nil

Question: What you do then?

Answer: You look for a WG!!!

WG is an abbreviation for an apartment shared by few people. I thought it would be easier and cheaper to get in one of these. Berlin has plenty of places like that and they are gigantic. While I was visiting WGs I have seen 140-250 sq. m. places. These are usually old apartments with 3m decorated ceilings, few bathrooms and many rooms. Inhabitants usually share the living room and kitchen, and everyone has his own 20-45 sq.m room. 

So, I signed for www.wg-gesucht.de and www.immobilienscout24.de and started calling to all ads that were popping up. And they were popping up quite often - 3-4 per day. Then I started visiting these places. Here is what I found out:

1. These places were definitely not cheap - prices varied based on the quality of the room and the number of people living there, but in general you always end up with a price between 380-600 euro. Considering that Berlin is a lot cheaper than London or Paris, for this money you can basically rent an apartment 2-3x that size (25 sq.m) yourself. Definitely not in Prenzlauer Berg, but a few tram stations away. This leaves a somehow bitter taste even if you like your new "Mitbewohner" as it seems that you are paying a huge amount of the rent and costs of the other guy(s).
2. The selection process hugely reminded me of cat walk show. You are examined in greater detail and face some funny requirements and views. For example, a man would tell you that although he has a girlfriend, he prefers to live with a woman, which is one of the few things that I am not ready to comply with. 
3. You see a lot of different apartments, life styles and get to know the city.
4. You meet a lot of people and some of them are worth staying in contact with. Some of course not. But I definitely made friends. 

So, you probably wonder what happened? I waited long enough to find a nice apartment and grabbed it immediately. No WG, not for me, and probably not for the guys that want to have some privacy.

Feel free to share your experience in apartment hunting, be my guest.

Iuhu, we made it in the press

The MBA is over but memories pop up all the time. Our Singapore effort ended in early September, yet we were pleasantly surprised by the Graduate School Projects Team in Singapore that sent us 2 copies of their magazine which featured our project "Adapting Singapore's IDM Industry". I could not have had a better end of the 1-year MBA. I had an amazing time and met many extraordinary entrepreneurs. Big thanks to GSP@Singapore, Judge Business School and my great colleagues Ben and Chun Zhi for making this happen. 

By the way I think we did really good work and learned a lot. Reiterating this for the ones who could stay with the impression that I mostly enjoyed the "dining options" :) 

The Big G, The Big F and what went wrong (if something went wrong at all)

Well, you will probably say I am a pessimist or a negativist, or some other kind of "...ist". But I just cannot stop asking myself. Is everything running so well at Google and Facebook as I read in the news? Google is posting record earnings every quarter with numbers going up around 30% compared to the previous year. Similarly Facebook is doubling its revenues every year for the last 2-3 years. But have you actually taken a glance at the products?

Google

The "Don't be evil" company is now all around us - our searches come from G, our emails are served by G, our phones are largely powered by G and the ads we see on webpages are provided by G. Since recently our social network is also powered by G. We all see the constant updates, improvements and new features, but don't you have the feeling that something is missing? Is the company actually innovating? 

In my eyes the rising star G+ has been a fresh new breeze and I welcomed it. But after the initial enthusiasm, I must say, my engagement level with it has substantially diminished. I believe this was caused by the fact that at the end of the day I was using just another Facebook. Well, yes, indeed, it is a Facebook with hangouts. But in general I do not see any differentiation between the two. Design is important but not a huge differentiator and putting my friends in circles is an interesting concept, but an month later Facebook updated its private settings and it offered similar functionality for your friend groups. 

//By the way on a side note I really think that the high-level G+ evangelists which are also employees of the Big G should reduce their postings in the streams. It is obvious that busy people with so many responsibilities do not have the time to do this and their subordinates are completely overwhelmed with the task of playing their bosses. And by the way this is disrespectful to your readers ...

But back to the what went wrong question. G+ is actually "stuck-in-the-middle". It is neither a better Facebook, nor a substantially different product. I think Google fell in the trap of copy-cats. Not that a copy-cat is a symbol of failure. But in that business it is all a matter of execution. Seemingly the few failures in the social area forced G to look for working models (and forms) from its competitors. Unfortunately although the market can sustain a second social network, it expects the next generation of social networks which G+ in its current form is not.

But what about ...

Facebook

The company has accumulated more information about us then we can recall. And a lot of funny, exciting, intimidating etc. pictures some of which should stay hidden forever. But what really keeps us on the site is to check how our friends are doing. Everyday I read about babies, trips, exciting events, funny jokes and many more. From my friends. 

Facebook has wisely decided to introduce the Timeline concept in an attempt to broaden the user engagement from the last few hours to your whole life. Yet, contrary to 6 months earlier there are no more news about company shares acquired at the secondary market and valuing the social network to a new record mind-blowing sum. Some investors have also already sold their shares with a good few fold profit. You might argue that this is more an investor strategy decision and is normal. Yet, there is a believe that the Big F is wearing off. It seems to lose its engagement level (sounds familiar?). This was probably one of the justifications for the Big G to jump with a copy-cat in this business. Ironically, the Timeline change and the changes to the interface accompanying it have seemingly diminished even further the attractiveness of the platform. Some tests I run to measure visits to the content I post showed a strikingly lower engagement level which was sometimes reached a 3-fold reduction. Not surprisingly F has announced that it will allow users to roll back some new features in an effort to calm them down. Now combine this with the commoditisation of the product and then follows the logical question:

With a weak G+ and an F- in the social networking market who is going to take their place?

Hello World

Well, life goes on even after such a wonderful year as the one I had in the UK. Dragged by my incurable passion for entrepreneurship I find myself right into the German mecca of it - Berlin.

And that is not all - I actually survived a month in the whirlpool of E-commerce and Agile.

While my days are full of action, there is still room for improvement at night, so I start this blog in an effort to stir the hot pot in my areas of interest. Some thingies that will come first are introductions of Berlin startups, some of my biased techy apocalyptic prophecies, announcements about local WYSIWYG disruptive events as well as my thoughts about digital portfolio and geo location apps. The very latter is unavoidable and hopefully entertaining.

Happy reading!

Hristo