Radu Ticiu is the executive manager of the Timisoara Software Business Incubator in Romania – a tech incubator supporting the companies in Western Romania specialized in software development.The Incubator provides companies with advantages such as office rental, connectivity to communication networks, business networking, assistance in entrepreneurial development, consultancy, promotion and secretarial services.

You can contact Radu via Twitter, Facebook and Xing (he is an Ambassador for Xing in Western Romania). You can also meet him at the How To Web 2010 conference when he will talk to you about the advantages a start-up incubator can bring to a new founded web company.

Vlad Stan is the co-founder of Seedmoney – an angel investment fund created to support entrepreneurs from CEE – and one of the first Romanian web entrepreneurs. Vlad is also the co-founder of Bucharest Hubb - the first business accelerator for entrepreneurs from CEE, located in Bucharest, Romania

As an entrepreneur, Vlad launched more than 20 online projects. His biggest success was Vodanet Media, one of the largest online publishing companies in Romania in 2007. A few of his other projects failed, the rest were integrated in Acasa.ro and Ele.ro, portals operated by Vodanet Media.

You can keep in touch with Vlad on Twitter or Facebook and you will definitely get to ask him more about tech hubs and the benefits an entrepreneur gets from working in a tech hub.

Some say that entrepreneurshp is synonym with following your dream and passion. Entrepreneurs should therefore be risk-takers who believe in something and want to change the world and make things happen. And therefore they should quit their day job, take a risk and start bootstrapping in order to make their start-up successful. However there are other more moderate advisers who will tell you that moonlighting (keeping your day job and working part-time during your spare time for your business) is an even better idea for starters. So, which one will you take? Bootstrapping or moonlighting? This is definitely a tough question for most entrepreneurs in their early days. Here are some pros and cons for moonlighting.

7 reasons why moonlighting seems like a good idea

1. Cash is King – If you don’t have a way of supporting yourself and financing your business before quiting your job you may find yourself somewhere near failure pretty soon. Startup costs are easy to underestimate and you will need cash to keep your personal bills covered. Therefore you have to be sure before quiting your day job that you have a solid income source that will keep you going. Otherwise you may end up depressed, demotivated and… bankrupt. Keeping your day job means cash for you and your bills. And sometimes even for your start-up if you are lucky enough.

2. Peace of mind – Being an employee for 8 hours a day will definitely secure you and your family the peace of mind you need in daily life and in building a successful startup. There is no glory in being hungry and there is definitely no peace of mind about it. And when you desperately need money there is no way you  are going to make the best business decisions.

3. Disclipine comes from discipline – Getting up daily at 7 AM and dressing up to meet your co-workers keeps you on a daily track of discipline. Otherwise, if you quit your job and lose this scheduled human contact and self-control that a daily job offers you you may become very disorganized yourself and quite antisocial.

4. More free time doesn’t equal more productivity – You may just quit your job and find yourself with a whole lot of spare time and no organization or planning towards reaching your business goals. A lot of start-up owners could tell you that their early start-up days were some of the less productive days of their lives. If you clear your schedule all of a sudden the rule is that you will probably tend to fill it with a lot of unuseful things that will have nothing to do with your start-up. So instead of wasting time why not earn some money instead?

5. A job offers benefits, not only a salary - When you give up your job you also give up your medical insurance, dental insurance, your holiday days (you may find it very hard to go on holiday with a business to run and very little cash around.

6. Your job may be a source of ideas and contacts – Even if you don’t realize it now you will be confronted with this reality once you quit your job. But this job keeps you in contact with the industry you are working in, with important people in this industry and sometimes even with some business concepts that could prove valuable to your start-up.

7. Pressure kills passion – The start-up you are moonlighting on feels like a daily escape from your routine not-so-beloved day job. If you quit this job, then your start-up becomes your job. You probably heard that it’s ideal to turn your hobby into a job, but when you actually try it you will realize there’s nothing so ideal about it. Pressure is definitely a passion killer.

Against moonlighting

1. You’re busy from 9 to 5 - There are some businesses that require your presence during normal work hours in order to get off the ground. If this is the case it might be really tough to handle if you have to be at work from 9 AM to 5 or 6 PM Monday to Friday.

2. Time management gets tough - You have to be very organized in order to master time and task management and make some reasonable progress on your business idea if you keep your day job. Work hours are never the only time consumers on your schedule and you may end up spending very little or no time on your start-up. And after that you will probably not be so motivated and decide to quit it.

3. You do need a personal life, you know… – If you have a full-time job and a start-up to take care of during your spare time then when will you be spending time with your family and friends? When will you manage to free your schedule and go for jogging or go to the gym. Remember that it is a good idea to make a compromise as far as your spare time is concerned for a few months but this should be the exception and not the rule. Success takes some sacrifice but you should never sacrifice yourself and your balance.

In conclusion, it is true that a full-time startup might get off the ground faster, but working during startup founding keeps the bills paid and provides a back-up plan for the risk of going out on your own. What do you think? Would you take the leap without thinking twice or try to plan your way out as securely as possible?

Romanian 24-year-old entrepreneur, Emi Gal – the founder of the Seedcamp Week 2009 winner, Brainient – was featured in Financial Times in an article written by Bob Sherwood. Financial Times presents Brainient as a forefront of an emerging trend for young, ambitious entrepreneurs from Eastern Europe countries that choose more and more often to locate their start-up in the UK.

Promising EE start-ups are coming to London

The article’s main goal is that of proving that more and more Eastern Europe startups are turning to United Kingdom in order to help their business grow faster and to have access to London’s network of investors and advisers. Alex  van Someren, UKTI global entrepreneur programme dealmaker, stated for Financial times that “there is a notable pipeline of promising start-ups coming to London from countries such as Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and Lithuania“. The article presents UK as a financial hub having a great concentration of financial expertise and institutional investors and as a great opportunity for technology startups in Eastern Europe.

So Financial Times seems to agree that Eastern Europe’s got web talent, right?!

If you just started up your business and have no initial funding other than your and your partners’ sweat equity and some investment from your family or friends, then you’re probably trying to build a business that pays for itself every day. You’re practically bootstrapping – starting up on a shoestring. In order to help you we’ve gathered a few expert advice from other successful entrepreneurs and have come up with a list of the most important 10 that we hope will prove useful for you.

The early days of a startup – might or magic?

If you’re a startup and you are unfamiliar with the term, you are surely not unfamiliar with the reality of it. Or maybe you’re just very lucky. Bootstrapping is what you need to do when you start a business without external capital and therefore you need to fund the development of your company through internal cash flow and cautious expenses. The term “bootstrapping” comes from the story The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe, where the main character, the Baron, pulls himself out of a swamp by his bootstraps. The metaphor is, in my opinion, a very successful one as this is exactly the kind of magic startups need to perform in order to survive those early early days.

Can any business be started from scratch without any funding?

In my opinion the answer is no. And it definitely means that you should realise right from the start what kind of business you’re getting into. If your business has short sales cycles and recurring revenue bootstrapping is a valid solution. However if your startup means that for each sale you need to perform an 8-month effort to close and actually see some money or if you need to work for 2 years in order to have a valid product, then you should definitely consider finding some funding before starting up. Another idea if raising money seems a too long shot plan for you is trying to offer some services to your customers until you finish the product you’re working on.

- 10 easy tips for better bootstrapping -

1. As long as you still have money, you’re still in the game

In other words, focus on cash flow. You probably heard this a zillion times already. Guy Kawasaki has a nice article about the Art of Bootstrapping where he explains this concept very well. Although you may think that business is in fact about profits, the reality is that you pay your bills with cash. Therefore you should focus on cash flow.

2. An A Team is golden, but an understaffed team is silver

The tendency is to hire people in your team for the skills you may need when business explodes. However, until your business goes boom you still need to support yourself and your team. This is exactly why you should always hire people for your current most immediate needs and go step-by-step in expanding the team. Having people on a part time basis can also prove effective as it means less costs and sometimes more efficiency for you. Automate your tasks whenever possible and especially for your regular tasks and humanize the exceptions. Other ideas for a more cost-effective team could be forming parthnerships in order to get some of the tasks done or to give sweat equity instead of salary to your potential employees.

3. Do It Yourself!

And I don’t mean that you shouldn’t try to delegate whenever possible. I just mean that as you’re starting up on a shoestring you’ll probably have to do a lot of things on your own during the early days. And this is sometimes for the best. As you’re the founder, you’re singularly accountable for your company’s success or failure. Therefore, why blame it on a consultancy firm or service provider? Doing all the important things yourself or at least having them taken care of  is the shortest path to success for a self-funding start-up.

4. Working from home can be just as cozy

Don’t get an office space until you’re sure you have a revenue base to support yourself. Work from home in order to save rent and commuting costs and get your team to work from home as well. They may even see this as an advantage. If you think that the lack of an office space would seem like a lack of professionalism to your clients or potential employees and partners, then how about finding a fancy and creative solution for this? You can have all your business meetings and even team or partner meetings at a business glam coffee-shop and still save the rent costs.

5. Consider barter deals, renting or leasing instead of purchasing

You probably will need a lot of equipment when you first start up your business. And especially when you have to hire a few employeess as well. However you should consider leasing or renting equipments instead of buying them. And the best solution available would be to barter your products or services in exchange for some of the equipment you want.

6. Cut through unnecessary bureaucracy

Don’t get your employees or partners to go through or fill in unimportant and outdated bureaucracy. And save yourself from it as well. This is one of your main advantages as a start-up against bigger and better funded competitors: your size and lack of bureaucracy empowers you to make faster decisions and to move more rapidly than any other company on the market.

7. The customer is King

And the cash you get from your customer on the short and long haul is Queen. Allocate all your time to building customer value. Don’t forget that your greatest asset is the value you and your company adds to your clients through your sustained efforts. Therefore, you should put your best resources towards getting and keeping customers and making life measurably better for your customers.  You cannot afford to ignore your customer or to not put him first!

8. Creative buzz, viral and guerilla marketing

In order to get to your clients and to let everyone know you are out there on the market you need advertising. But, ooops! You can’t afford advertising the big way. You have to start small, of course, but this is not necessarily a disadvantage. Bootstrapping marketing is actually about using your creativity instead of cash in order to promote your business. Think buzz marketing. Think guerilla marketing. Get viral. Use your team’s creativity and come up with unexpected innovative ideas that will draw your customers’ attention.

9. Get out there in the media

Leverage media in order to get free publicity. Present yourself as an expert in a certain field and contact journalists, newspapers or websites in your field of expertise to offer them your help for future articles. It’s not a lot of effort and it’s a great way to get some free publicity and personal branding for you as an expert in your startup’s field.

10. Think big. Start small.

Last, but not least, don’t forget that bootstrapping is not only a reality or a way of cutting expenses and starting up smart, but also a state of mind. You should always stick to your vision but you should never forget your present time reality. In other words, you have to keep thinking big while starting small.

If you have read this article and think you have other useful bootstrapping tips for startups we’re looking forward to hearing them.

Kris is the founder and CEO of Erply – 2009 Seedcamp winner.

Kris is a business software (ERP) specialist with broad experience in all aspects of accounting, inventory, document and financial management and has direct experience with databases (Oracle, MySQL, MS Sql), software consulting and hosting facilities.

You will get to ask Kris more about his Erply and Seedcamp experience at How To Web 2010.

Two heads are generally better than one. And three heads seems like an even better idea. Not to mention 4 or 5. When it comes to startups, partnering with another business/technology enthusiast such as yourself might seem like a must-do. However, a wrong decision in this department could cost you your start-up.

If we look on the bright side, business partnerships mean burden sharing, mutual support, companionship and problem sharing. It is something like a mix between a shoulder to cry on when things go wrong and someone to hug when things go right. On the dark side, it also means less autonomy, not being able to do what you want all the time, slower decision making and often fights about everything.

1. Know yourself first

I am starting with a cliche. A very useful one. The “nosce te ipsum” latin aphorism is the first step in starting business partnerships. In order to choose your co-founders well, you first need to know what your skills are, what your weak and strong points are and, most importantly, who you can work with.

2. To partner or not to partner?

The next thing you should be thinking about is why you need a partner in the first place. If the answer is “so I can have someone to delegate to” then you should check whether hiring someone is not a better idea. If you think your idea can grow bigger with a little bit of help from another partner – help can mean money, expertise or other resources – then you should probably start looking for a partner. However, it all depends on your resources. If you have money then hiring contractors instead of giving up equity can be a great idea. But keep in mind that no one will act as if the business is their own unless they really own it. Your choice!

3. A partnership is like marriage… in so many ways

When you choose your partner you should definitely keep in mind that “opposites attract and so they should“. Don’t just look in the mirror. You need a partner that complements you, not a person with the same strengths and weaknessesu. However you still need to share the same basic values and be on the same wavelength. And you need to make sure you have the same objectives for the business in hand or that you can agree upon them. On the other hand, the chances that you and your partner share the exact same vision are very low. Partnerships work best when one of the partners is the visionary and the other one is in charge with making things happen. And another thing: make sure your partner-to-be doesn’t need managing.

4. Don’t mix business and… personal life

Don’t go into business with friends. Or family. And this is not just an old saying. Mixing business with loved ones and friends might trick you into being influenced by your personal relationships when making decisions. And it will also make your personal life living hell as you won’t be able to disconnect from your daily work.

5. Love is blind and that’s why we sign prenuptial founders agreements

Business partnerships are like marriage. They all start in an optimistic tone but it’s better to have a prenuptial agreement. Kidding. Nevertheless, even if you trust your partner completely, you should sign a founders agreement prior to anything else. Trust me, it’s not a useless piece of paper. Creating and signing a partnership agreement will be a good opportunity for you to think about each partner’s roles and contributions as well as their exit routes.

6. Set your goals and the rest will follow

As I was pointing out above, one of the major frustrations you will hear in a business partnership sounds something like “I’m the one doing all the work“. Familiar, huh? Whether you are the one doing all the work or the one having a lot of fun doing business, you should always keep in mind that a prerequisite for starting is agreeing upon who does what and how much of it. This will help you a lot when you’ll have issues like different work styles (one gets up early, one stays up late) or simply different rhythms.

7. Communication is key

This is already a cliche. But it is nevertheless neglected several times. I know meetings are boring and email is a total waste of time and a productivity threat. However you should be connected all the time and communicate about the smallest changes in business development, about the good and bad news and about any feedback you may find useful.

8. Decisions are made jointly… or are they?

It sounds picture perfect. We both argue until we agree upon a decision. And an even better one: each one of us makes his decisions in his expertise area. Yeah, it could happen. In fairytales. However, in real business life, someone needs to have the final say. And you should agree upon this from the very beginning.

9. In the end… it’s al(l)so about the money!

In the end each partner receives a share of the return of the business depending on how much they invested. It is very important to agree upon this from the very beginning. And it is also very important to calculate sweat equity’s value as well as risk value correctly. Think win-win and make sure the reward matches the effort for every partner. Check our articles about the value of sweat equity for a more in-depth analysis.

10. Have some fun for a change!

Even though in the end it’s about money, starting up a business is about being your own boss, having your own rules and having some fun while making things happen. And very often founders tend to forget about that.

Do you have other tips for choosing and living with co-founders that you would like to share? Any good or bad experiences you learnt from?

Conferences are what you make of them. They can be a total waste of time or they can open up a world of opportunities for business and personal development, learning and networking. In my opinion, all you actually need to do in order to make conference attending pay off is plan ahead a little bit. Here are some tips that I always try to apply and that generally help me accomplish my conference goals:




1. Find out who’s coming and why you should meet them.

Check the Facebook page of the event, the LinkedIN event information or other web tools and see who is likely to attend the conference. Google them, check their Facebook, Twitter and blog and find out how meeting these people could benefit you and your business. After that you can prioritize who you want to meet. It is also useful to have a small draft of things you want to talk about with each of them.

2. Don’t forget to set a goal for the conference.

If you’re not sure what you want, then you’re probably not going to get it. Write down questions you want answered or goals you’d like to accomplish. In order to do this you should first take a look at the conference agenda and speakers list.

3. Business cards, business cards, business cards…

You probably heard this a zillion times. You should try to have as many with you as you could possibly need. And the business cards should definitely make a statement – good quality and creative. An innovative business card design or idea will make an impression. Oh! And if you have a name tag, it’s best to wear it. I know you’re probably a very well-known entrepreneur or professional yourself, but there might always be some newbie that you would love to meet who’s never seen your photo before, right?

4. Your comfort is King.

It is very important to take care of all those small details that could ruin your comfort and your conference. Wear comfortable clothes and shoes, charge your notebook, mobile phones and take care of everything that could possibly bother you at the office. And don’t forget to silence your phone. Eat a nice and healthy breakfast and try to drink as much water as possible during the day.

5. Conversations  - more educational that sessions?

Sometimes at conferences the most educational and idea-generating moments aren’t part of the sessions themselves. Some of the best information is gathered outside the conference rooms. Hallways, parties, coffee breaks, lunch. Remember! Not all the experts present at the conference will have a microphone in front of them. Some of them could be standing right next to you.

6. Get out there and meet people. New people.

This is probably the most important conference tip I can give. At conferences people generally tend to flock in their groups of acquaintances. Or if they don’t see too many familiar faces at the conference they might just decide to hide behind their laptop and seem busy. Or they might just remember they have an important phone call they need to make right then. A very open attitude right This is obviously a way of getting into their comfort zone when they feel insecure. And definitely not the way that will get you to meeting new people, getting feedback on your latest project or finding out interesting industry facts. You’ve probably done this a couple of times yourself. And that’s exactly why you know I’m right. You can always approach groups of people and mingle in their conversation if you think you can contribute. But never bother 2 people that seem engaged in a private chat. If you don’t know anybody and feel like approaching a person you stand right next to a simple “What are you working on?” is a perfect conversation starter.

7. Have your answers with you!

Especially if you’re not the communicative/popular type you should find some answers for the basic questions you will be asked. You don’t need to reherse them. I’m just saying that you should try to have a simple and to-the-point answer for the so-annoying “What do you do?” question. Remember the elevator pitch speech we were talking about? You can apply the same rules here.

8. Get the most out of Q&A sessions.

The Q&A sessions at the end of presentations are the perfect opportunity to get some of your questions answered. Don’t ask questions that would only benefit you – e.g. a particular detail from your business plan. Always ask general interest questions during the Q&A sessions. This way you ensure you’ll get other people from the audience joining your discussion as well. You can also engage with speakers during breaks and ask more specific questions.

9. Unconferences and collaborative workshops

Some conferences – and especially technology-focused conferences – provide participants with the opportunity to share some of their knowledge or to talk about their project or area of expertise during collaborative workshop sessions or unconference sessions. Find out if such an opportunity exists and subscribe for such a presentation.

10. Remember to follow up!

OK, so you met a few people, you gathered a stack of business cards and you enjoyed your overall conference experience. Always remember to follow up with people after the event. A friendly email reminding the person that you have met, that it was nice and maybe actually coming up with a meeting proposal (if there is anything you’d like to discuss more in depth)  is always a great idea.

These are the 10 most important tips I always try to remember before attending a business conference. Are there any other conference tips you’d like to share with us?