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.