The 4th day had the final lecture of Dennis Ray and a quite interesting talk of Robert Maxim about Ensight, Management Consulting and his captivating success story (which reminds me: they have an internship program that you can apply for over here).

The 5th and last day:  competition of business ideas and plans. The jury: Steven Borncam from Sopolec. Pretty nice, my team got 2nd prize and very cute prizes. Not bad for a couple of hours on the net… :D

That’s it… from now on I have no excuse but working hard for my venture. You’ll hear from it asap !

The event goes on, socializing is much easier now after the team-building exercises from Cristian(I often overreact regarding these things - most people around liked him A LOT, so I guess I’m probably not the best judge of character).

Dennis Ray amazes me every day, the savy aged-guy, brilliant and enthusiastic, with a HUGE experience in everything entrepreneurship-related(an entrepreneur, an entrepreneurship scholar, an angel investor and incubatory supervisor).

I’m a bit sorry for not being able to hang around the Good2Go guys too much, but my personal life comes first, so after every class I’m quite pressed to come back home.
There is a team assignment - building a business plan/presenting a business opportunity that we are dealing with for the moment(teams of 3), and writing mock-up presentations is a pretty nice  feeling. I’ll let you know if our team is gonna win something(my guess is “No”, but it is still fun).

E3 - Electronic Entertainment Expo - closed on Friday. E3 is the biggest annual event in the game industry.

I went to LA with my company, expecting to see interesting achievments or trends in mobile entertainment. Unfortunately, that was the weakest part of this E3. Except Nokia / N-Gage with its spacious booth, nothing significant was there.

Anyhow, the show was impressive. As usual, millions of dollars were spent. And the Sony party, a 10M$ night, was a bonus.

Hot titles of this edition: PS3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 (I did like that circular screen)… A lot of pictures here.

Personal opinions:

Dennis Ray is a great speaker with a great background in studying this “interesting breed” of entrepreneurs, especially in exotic countries such as Vietnam, China, Singapore, Belarus and others(now Romania as well).

Very nice brainstorming on “the entrepreneurial mindset” - systematic search vs accidental discovery of opportunity.

The Asian model of organic growth vs the western one of external funding.
Business plan means exactly creating a fictious business on paper. Everything around you changes: why should you change 10 pages of your well-written business plan when you can just change a Powe Point slide? Asian investors write the business plan for you. Business plan is not planning. For putting down your ideas, Power Point makes the best development business plan tool: concise. A business plan should be written when undecided about launching, for first time entrepreneurs or when entereing a very complex business or field.
The other speaker (Cristian Tudoran, N-Zeta): I don’t like people full of themselves; even if this makes them successful entrepreneurs. I don’t like being told what qualities an entrepreneur should or shouldn’t have. I simply don’t like lectures on an entrepreneur should/shouldn’t risk, he shouldbe a visionary. hardworking, leader, etc, etc, Bullshit, BS again, etc.. ; all my respect for successful entrepreneurs; still, it doesn’t mean anyone unlike them is doomed. Hey… sorry… I simply dislike most HR and communication “specialists”. And I also dislike making a god out of a successful manager.

I’ll be back with more thoughts on the event, on the following days. See ya!

Via Razvan Antonescu, I got to an interesting reading on 7 reasons why web apps fail, a refreshing new(or old) look over the Web 2.0 scene. While my opinions on Web2.0 are already known, this article makes a nice point: perhaps it’s not the fault of Web2.0 per se, but that of the myriads of webapps that make some of the 7 mistakes…

I found yesterday about an interesting event/conference on entrepreneurship, now at its second edition, called Good2Go(here is the presentation page); while I don’t know almost anything about the guests(their CV’s are linked on the page above), the topics of discussion seem quite interesting.

The downside? Limited places, therefore motivation letter and admission interviews. I’m applying as I speak, I’ll let you know if I’ll get in and, most importantly, if I get to attend…

Alex’s note: I finally managed to convince a friend to join this wonderful piece of blog. Everybody please welcome my new collaborating editor, code-name giures, for what I hope will be a productive collaboration.

I am having a dilema for some time: should i start my own company or should i still work in my current one? Here is an interesting article that claims that you could actually be doing both: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/05/01/8375910/index.htm

Yet Another Paul Graham Post to be read: The Hardest Lessons for Startups…

And another post startup-related, although not of Paul Graham’s : Don’t be an employee

Via Lifehacker there is a pretty neat interview with a self-made man aka Marc Allen over here. While I’m not at all a fan of “how to make money fast” and “believe and meditate and you will succeed” mantras, there are some interesting and pretty motivating quotes in there; such as

Take risks. Don’t fear failure — every successful person I’ve ever known has had their share of failures. If you keep intending to be successful, each failure is just another stepping stone on your way to your inevitable success.

Enjoy the reading…

Seeing that the latest post on this blog was more than two weeks now, you might have started to believe I got shot in the street on some dark alley, or that I have just plainly stopped blogging, the way Russel Beatie did or Dragos Novac(a Romanian blogger I’ve been reading for two long years) threatens to do. But none of these alternatives suits me. I’m more energetic, alive and blog-addicted than ever.

I’m on my road to a new adventure. The one of entrepreneurship. The real kind, with plenty of annoyances, dead-ends, bureaucracy, unexpected, procrastination and many, many others. For the moment I’m moving from Paris to Bucharest(where I was expecting life costs to be smaller, thus putting less strain on my start-up budget, but I’m discovering, that while rent gets about three times smaller than in Paris, there are plenty of other time-consuming inconveniences that risk to threaten my venture).

Enough complaining for now. The one thing you should keep in mind is that my Internet Access for the moment is highly restricted, but I hope it will get better in a as-close-as-possible future. So please forgive the update delays, and help spread the word about this site.
In exchange for it, I’ll unravel the secret purpose behind this website, blog and it-related ressource site: to show and tell, step by step, some of the adventures of an entrepreneur wanna-be, an adventurer in this realm of self-employment, IT-research and development, management, marketing and, generally, microISVs(see the previous post for the definition). I’m starting this with no specific idea in mind, only the dream to succeed and, hopefully, become millionaire befor my thirties. Wish me luck, or hate me, but go on and read my blog. I hope it will be worth it… :D

PS. I’ll be inviting, from time to time, some guests on this blog, bright young minds with interesting things to say on IT-related news, thoughts and ideas on IT matters and entrepreneurship. If you want to be one of them, go on and drop a comment over here or in a private email. I’m waiting for conversations…