Nov 22, 2009

New Moon Startup: how to work hard without emo vampires around

New-Moon-startup

Coming back after a month of absence makes a strange feeling:  a sense of guilty mixed with a renewed energy. We’re working so hard, guys, that we can’t remember our last party.
So, what did we miss?

First of all: “New Moon”. Thanks God we missed it. I hope this doesn’t offend anyone, but we don’t like emo vampires so much. Well, I speak for myself, but usually Nico is more hardcore than me, so I presume he doesn’t like Twilight too. The other important thing that happened in this period is Swine flu. F**k off pigs! (I actually love pigs so much that I want one as my domestic pet).
However Nico is doing his best to ultimate the beta, and I did my best to cure my flu (not swine, but a bad seasonal one). Our testimonial, Wil, is around the world. He is in Las Vegas now: Wil, don’t finish your money, dude! You’re a bad poker player! And another thing: for you the statement “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” doesn’t count. We want to know everything, man. Last but not least: “Wandering an incredible life” , Wil’s blog, is now available only in Italian, but we are considering to make also an English version.

p.s.: We love you all people, but you, yes you, Robert Pattinson, if you are following us, don’t forget: We hate emo vampires! ( LOL )

Author: Alex Contarin

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Nov 10, 2009

How are you?

how-are-you

How are you?” – This is one of the question that lately has become really difficult to answer. I usually say “Working“, “Busy“, or my favourite, “I don’t even have the time to think how I am” .

As you already know, GlobePinners.com’s launch is imminent. Within less than 30 days the first release will be available to a selected number of beta-testers friends for a couple of week and then the site will be available for every one. For this reason 99% of my awake time is  in front of my notebook, writing and debugging code in Visual Studio (OMG I like C# so much!) and I don’t have time to think about anything else.

By the way, I have a big news. A big friend of us co-founders, Wil, is starting a round-the-world trip tomorrow. He’ll be traveling for six months, covering 5 continents. He’s also planning to do some PR for us, but stay tuned for that. If you speak Italian, you definitely want to read his blog at http://www.globepinners.com/wil/

Well, it’s 3.35 am here in Italy. Time for me to go to bed. I’m really confident that all the code I’m writing will become a very successful and usefull site :)

Just a couple of  “motivators”:

Author: Nicola Cassolato

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Oct 13, 2009

Sedatives for yuppies: how to manage a bad day and to turn anger into positive power

sedatives for yuppies

When you are a startup entrepreneur you are on a rollercoaster. Sometimes you have eaten heavy the night before. Everyone, sooner or later, have a bad day.  If you are focused on your job, on all its variables, and then some problem happens, it’s very hard to be calm like a Buddha (to be honest in these moments it’s hard also to be calm like Charles Manson).

There is a thing that makes us even angrier: an angry entrepreneur who hides his feelings trying to look like a saint. Having a bad day is not a problem. You need to keep a contact also with your bad feelings. The important thing is let adrenaline in veins becoming good energy. There are some ways to get it. For example many women go shopping (it isn’t just a stereotype, it’s the truth) and over a bag they go into the same raptures of an Emo goes watching “Twilight”. Instead there are other people who love to kill Nazis (by this we don’t mean the famous Inglorious Basterds’ quote).

Today one of the two co-founder had a very fucking shitty day. He played “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” for two hours, speaking like a longshoreman. Plus he booked 81 fights as birthday and Christmas presents for his friends. We’re talking about the Ryanair promotion for free seats so he spent a good 81cents for all of them! After this he was calm and full of energy. We give you this advice, young entrepreneurs: enjoy your anger!

p.s.: hey people, we don’t want to boost any form of violence here. But, if you’ve got some videos in which  you went crazy and for example you’ve beaten your room mate with a mace, send it to us. We’ll remunerate you for that.

Author: Alex Contarin

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Oct 05, 2009

My personal attention whore: how to create an advertising campaign and to send an endorser all around the world for six months

my personal attention whore

We hate you, Matt. And we hate your genius. Your great idea has been  very important for us; we watched “Where the Hell is Matt?” thousands of times (in some of them we started to dance with bad results). But now is the time to find our Matt, because we can’t clone you: our endorser is Wil. You’ll meet him soon.

Currently, we are creating an “ad hoc” campaign for his travel, which will start from San Francisco, passing through South America,  Australia, Asia and it will conclude in Japan.  We are defining the last details and partnerships. This initiative will support the release online of GlobePinners.com on November.

So, wait for the official news! For now it’s only a blog rumor. However, we are going to have our attention whore, too! Hurray! We are also thinking about some challenges for our pleasure…and yours. If you have any idea (without going too much against human rights), send us an email and we’ll see if we can do.

Well, welcome Wil (it isn’t a tongue twister!).

p.s.: The next time we will imitate Matt, I’ll update the video on youtube, so you can see how bad Nicola dances. (just kiddin’…LOL).

Author: Alex Contarin

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Sep 28, 2009

TechCrunch London Vampire Assault: How to lose a rare sunny day in London to follow an event, closed underground in a dimly lit room, trying to find investors from darkness.

TechCrunch-London-Vampire-Assault

A completely cloudless London. A rare event to see with sunglasses. You wake up surprised and very happy. Going to Hyde Park, you realize that in a few hours you have the TechCrunch London. Arrived at the Café de Paris, go down the stairs and… bye bye sun. So you begin to hate a little Mike Butcher ( :) ).

Welcome to the darkness. Few lights, a projector: 2 speeches, 12 pitches, and then 2 other speeches. Wil Harris (Channel Flip) was particularly funny with his doubts about the investment situation in UK. Can you imagine Italy?! So the winner of the pitch competition: Festbuzz. And … go! The hunt for investors! Everyone turned on Shiva-mode: four arms to deliver quickly as business cards as possible. While you’re looking for an investor to assault, you meet startup’s founders, exchanging advices. We also met SeedCamp finalists: among all the co-founder of VouChaCha.com, Ben Brown, is a very cool guy.

Now your elevator pitch is a tantra to repeat. In November Globepinners.com will be online and so we’re talking about it with “big fishes”. Good fishing: many of them expressed their interest. After 8 hours without eating, we decided to go back to the surface. It’s 11 p.m. and all around us is only darkness. We vampires can continue our investors hunting. Now London is done … next destination: San Francisco?

p.s.: Special thanks to Stefano (TheStartup.eu), who has published on facebook the photos of the event: in one of them, one of co-founders came out damned ugly. Thanks also to Johanna, Sebastian and Dario for the several drinks. Every meeting with investors is a hard proof for our liver.

Author: Alex Contarin

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