Nikolay's Blog | personal blog of Nikolay Piriankov

The Ant

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:34:00 +0000

I thought about the ant the other day. It is so very small. So small and yet it does a lot of what people do. It goes places, eats, builds and lives in a community where it plays its part to the survival of the entire group.

But the ant has such a small brain. I wonder if you can even see it with the naked eye.

So that just made me wonder: Our brains are SO BIG in comparison and yet how much more do we do than live just like the ants do?

I think we could be spending more time learning more, using our imagination and creativity to create, to innovate, to change the world. We only need 1 millionth of our brain to live like ants do... lets push ourselves to do more, be more, create more with the other 99.999%.

Starting to go social - its becoming far more measurable

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 14:15:00 +0000

During the past few weeks, thanks to the persistence of our colleague Andres Mejia, we have started engaging with our Facebook audience far more than we had before. The result has been a significant increase across all our metrics.

We have only been playing around for now but we anticipate this trend to persist as we launch Diamonds in Africa at the beginning of August and roll out our social media campaign next week (Diamonds in Africa offers ethically sourced diamonds at trade prices).

Very excited to start tracking what the $ value is of our network and if it leads to sales or at least recommendations which lead to sales.

A New Way Of Doing Business - true sustainability

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:38:00 +0000

Today I recalled one of my first Business Studies lectures in high school. The lesson was simple:

People (we) have unlimited wants and needs but there are only so many scarce resources that are available to satisfy them.

The lesson was important because it taught me about competition. Because people have a limited budget they will CHOOSE how to spend their money and you, as a business have to compete for their wallets.

But today I realised there was another lesson in that sentence which has taken 10 years to surface:

As long as people have unlimited wants and needs and resources remain scarce, inequality will persist. In fact, I am pretty certain that the more we are able to satisfy our desires, the more inequality we create by doing so.

Let me explain why I think this is the case:

When you are poor you want and need only basic things. You may dream of being wealthy but your limited budget only permits you to have so much and this is usually limited to food, shelter and safety. As you earn more you begin to want more and this comes in the form of education, comfort and at some point even happiness becomes important. It is happiness that is the most expensive good of all because it evolves and grows into an all consuming resource monster by the time you are among the wealthy few (think of the cars, yachts and properties the top 1% own). Along the way, people have been known to steal, bribe, murder, deceive and manipulate their way to riches. This is true not only of individuals but also for countries and large organisations which fight wars or compete by playing dirty on a massive scale.

All this has happened because "happiness" goods which have now become so much more important (as our basic needs have been catered for), cost a lot of resources. There are now 7 billion people and while the number of those in poverty is very large, so too is the number of people looking for happiness.

For as long as happiness is primarily fulfilled through products and services that require physical resources to be made, inequality will increase.

Now think of 10 products or services you really, REALLY want. Write them down. Put a price to them. Think about what was needed to make them. Can you image a world where everyone, all seven billion of us, had those 10 things too? Where would we find all the resources to make them all? Will we have enough resources left for our children? Now imagine if all the things you really wanted could be made out of thin air. They required no resources and everyone could have them. WOW! That would mean that happiness is within reach of anyone who wants it.

You may think this is an impossible dream. But I believe there is only one barrier to achieving this kind of world and that is the problem of imagination. People only want products they know about. How many people wanted an iPad or a car before it existed. None! The only people who can make this dream a reality are entrepreneurs, because WE CREATE PRODUCTS and SERVICES. We imagine them, we build them, we perfect them and we sell them.

Imagine a business that creates products or services that do not consume any resources but for the capital, time and people needed to create them (and even then very little). This business can sell happiness goods to those who have already escaped poverty and are now searching for happiness and self-realization. The money they make can then be spent on helping those who remain in poverty to escape it. Is this possible? I don't know, but through the internet I believe we finally have a medium where resource-less products are not only possible but also very scalable. E-commerce used to be about taking goods out of the store and putting them on to the internet. Can we now think about creating a new range of products, services or experiences that help people want less of what is physically made and more of what makes them truly happy?

As for an example, think of online dating sites - a good example of a resource-free happiness service. What's missing is for those profits to not help create one or two fat cats, but rather, to invest them into those countries that are poverty stricken. Perhaps it is when thinking about this last part where even a dreamer like me wonders if this truly is possible?!

Recycle for free Beer

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:04:00 +0000

After reading the book Nudge I have been noticing "nudges" all around me. Governments and organisations not making us do things for our own good, but just helping us decide to do the right thing on our own by presenting choices in a different light.

So I was amazed and inspired by the amount of nudges that were on display at the Rock Wercheter festival in Belgium yesterday (see the full awesome line-up that included Blink 182, the Cure and Justice).

Recycle for FREE beer

By far one of the best nudges I have ever seen (in my opinion even worthy of a mention in the Nudge book) is Coca-Cola's campaign to promote their new "plant bottle", which is 100% recyclable (DISCLAIMER: I am not endorsing Coke, I hardly ever buy their products; I am simply impressed by their campaign).

In short, the campaign offered you a free bag (made from recycled coke bottles) which you could use to pick up plastic cups and bottles. For every 20 you brought back, they would give you one voucher for a free drink (beer or cool-drink). One beer costed 2.5 euros, so if it takes us 6 minutes to earn one voucher (this is roughly how long it took), then we should be recycling if we value our time at 25 euros per hour or less (because that is the amount of value we could accumulate in an hour).

Of course we have to assume diminishing returns and a trade-off between partying and collecting, but economic theory predicts (very accurately in this case) that there will be an equilibrium because some people value their time differently and others will assign greater value to some rock bands over others - suggesting there will ALWAYS be someone collecting but never everyone (which is ideal because if too many collect or too few then this system fails).

The end result and why this is a great nudge

While for us the value gained was approximately 25 euro's per hour (at the expense of time we could have spent doing something else) the cost to the organisers is probably one tenth of that (the cost of ten 300ml cups of beer). So, the organisers also have a strong incentive for this campaign to work because the alternative (paying someone to clean) would cost more - at the very least a basic wage. Don't forget that we have an incentive to pick quickly because we do not want to spend too much time doing this (and because we want more beer) while employees would have an incentive to work slowly to earn more money.

But what about the real nudge hiding behind the apparent one (free beer if you recycle)? In my opinion (watching my brother's teenage friends collect bottles and cups), the end result was a clear positive association for recycling. The idea not only stuck, it also drove behaviour. It shows that people can be inspired to recycle through an immediate short term gain, at a low cost and without the need of punishment or social disapproval (which are two common ways people are currently motivated to recycle).

By the end of the night not only were there almost no bottles remaining anywhere in sight, but we had saved 30 or so euros in free drinks. We did all this during the intervals so missed none of the sets. Our trade off was between the time spent doing very little and the time spent earning free beer). Coca Cola anchored themselves as a recycling company in my mind and I feel good about recycling in general. The organisers also saved on cleaning costs at the cost of around 5 pints of beer (10 cups) per hour.

This is why I love economics, an effective and beautiful CSR campaign inspired by economic incentives, nudges, sticky ideas and decision making equilibrium.

More about this here:

http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/olympic-games/rock-recycling-olympic-games.html

Cheap Diamonds - our first money keywords

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Sun, 27 May 2012 19:46:00 +0000

From the good to the bad - Our first attempt to optimise a money keyword/phrase - "cheap diamonds".

We are on our way to a full recovery following our first ever Google Slap.

I have also just found out about the so called "money keywords" and how we can find them for Diamonds in Africa.

Money keywords are those keywords that are either on the top of the 2nd page of Google results or just below the fold on the first page.

With a little SEO push it is possible to convert those keywords into really good sources of traffic.

That is just what we plan to do. Our phrase is cheap diamonds and we are about to begin a big push to get it to the top of the search results.

Google Slap = "what we need to do more of" strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:25:00 +0000

We recently got our first ever Google "slap" a few weeks ago when Google launched the Penguin update to their search algorithm.

So many people posted solutions and possible interpretations of the algorithm changes and we tried everything they recommended. For the most part, we have now recovered.

Now, looking forward I have pointed a few things (having read this article) that we NEED TO DO, moving forward - things that will not only ensure we avoid future slaps, but also things that may help us win the SEO battles ahead:

Publish content that gets natural links because it just is INTERESTING - ensuring people we don't even know are doing the SEO work for us.
Build links slowly and consistently - not too fast and not in short bursts. A link a day keeps the Google slap away
Build deep links - not just to the homepage as this looks suspicious
Vary anchor text - avoid using only your url.
Focus on more than PageRank for links - look at age & content quality (sites whose PR will likely go up too)
Conduct competitive anaylsis for link sources - who our competitors are using

For Diamonds in Africa we are completely reviewing our link building strategy and for Rare Pink we are likely to start off with this new strategy very soon.

Featured on the Grad Factor TV

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Tue, 01 May 2012 16:57:00 +0000

Last week I was fortunate enough to be featured on the Grad Factor TV show. (watch below from 11:44 onwards)

I would really appreciate it if you could help out and vote for me to get to the finals in London:

If you're on Twitter just click the link below and THAT'S IT, your vote is counted!

Tweet to @gradfactortv

Top tools of the month - Zapier and KickOffLabs

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:36:00 +0000

This month I came across two really, REALLY cool online services that made it just that much easier doing business online (and a lot more enjoyable).

The first of these was Zapier. Credit to Google who somehow knew that I was looking for a service just like the one Zapier was providing - to link two otherwise unlinked online services through their API, without being a developer. Zapier lets you link several dozen services by creating a "zap" between them.

In my case I wanted to make sure that every time a customer fills out one of our Wufoo forms, our Desk account automatically not only received the e-mail, but also used the information from the form to create a new customer profile (complete with name, e-mail and phone number). This makes contacting each customer just that little bit faster and easier; over time leading to an increase in our efficiency.

Then thanks to Zapier, I found out about Kick Off Labs. I had been trying getting our graphic designer, Martin, to design us a landing page for Diamonds in Africa and while we had the design ready I was still dependent on the developers who needed to actually turn that design into a working page. When it comes to landing pages I can safely say I may never need a developer ever again; and here are two example why:

These two landing pages took less than an hour to create. What is equally impressive is that you can use Zapier to then link these landing pages to a range of other services we use such as MailChimp to manage the database of e-mails we collect for future marketing purposes.

Finally KickOffLabs also has a really cool feature. Even though it only asks the visitors to your landing page for an e-mail address, it then looks through the various social media sites to identify the name, age, location and other social networks linked to this e-mail address. You only ask for their e-mail, KickOffLabs gives you their identity. What more can I say?!

P.S. The 5 Diamond Secrets You Need to Know landing page leads those who sign up to this Diamonds in Africa report (just in case you were interested).

The New Rare Pink Logo

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:03:00 +0000

We listened to your feedback when you said our old logo for Rare Pink was not befitting our brand values: luxury, quality & reliability

I hope our new logo better illustrates these core values. Please let us know what you think

50 Day Challenge - Getting young people to start an online business

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Two weeks ago we launched the 50 Day Challenge, to help young people at university start their first online business. The challenge costs nothing, but requires passion, endurance and creativity. The 20 or so students who come every week have now completed 25% of the challenge and are well on their way to building their first online business.

See why I am doing the 50 day challenge and my thoughts on entrepreneurship below:

The 50 Day Challenge is based on Ed Dale's famous challenge and encourages people with little or no internet marketing knowledge to complete 7 weeks of video training on how to research a market niche, develop a website, get visitors to the site and right at the very end, make their first sale online. Every day, after completing the video, the students then have to act on what they have just learned.

Week 1 - "We're all in this together"

Two weeks into the challenge and we've got some interesting business ideas brewing in the classroom. I love how even students with very little money are thinking both BIG and BRAVE. Some ideas are for social enterprises and are not financiall motivated. Two groups are looking into developing charities. Others are helping promote some local businesses such as Pie Boy Clothing. Some students are thinking about developing affiliate businesses by creating video and written content on topics they find interesting and hopefully earning money from the adverts they put up.

As we break for the holiday I want to keep this momentum going so next week I will be hosting my first ever Google Hangout and doing a live stream of week 3. Stay tuned for more...

Networking in Amsterdam

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:05:00 +0000

When it comes to business we're always told there is no such thing as a free lunch. For the most part I would agree but in Amsterdam, once again, all the rules were broken.

For several months now there has been a lot of talk in the press about bilateral trade. Every country wants to boost its trade, taking head from Germany's example of how growing your exports can keep you on a path of economic growth while all the rest around you struggle in and out of recessions.

So when we were invited to Amsterdam for a two days Knowledge Transfer and networking event, we thought it might just be a good idea to attend (plus the food and drinks were on the house).

The Creative Industries "Knowledge Transfer Network" has been set up to help businesses in the digital/creative sectors in different countries do business with one another. Given that the Netherlands is not only the UK's 4th largest trade partner, but also a mostly English speaking nation that is a stone throw away, the opportunities to achieve something from this event looked promising.

We were inspired by the success stories of Jeff Coghlan (Founder of the multi award-winning MatMi) and Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten from The Next Web (TNW).

We also had the opportunity to talk to people representing Angel investors in both Holland and the UK. Some of the opportunities currently available to investors in the UK, thanks to a 50% tax break on investments of up to £150,000, makes the outlook of finding investors, even in the current climate, much more promising.

However, the most useful part of the trip from the island over to the mainland, was in the actual collaboration ideas that we managed to develop with several Dutch and UK businesses that were there. Exciting times are upon us... stay tuned for more details soon.

A stunning Rare Pink engagement ring

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:43:00 +0000

The first video of our Rare Pink engagement ring range. What do you guys think?

- Move it around 360 degress with your mouse
- Zoom in using the (+) sign loop
- Give us feedback

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Entropy - A Sad and Yet Inspiring Revelation

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:51:00 +0000

Many people who know me well will remember, at some point or another, having a light-hearted drunken conversation with me about the future of the universe and how one of my greatest fears is that the universe will end in a great contraction, much the same way it started, into a singularity. I argued that the alternatives, continuous expansion or eventual equilibrium, would be much better because they offered the slight possibility of living FOREVER, no matter how unlikely this would be.

A few days ago I watched a documentary called "Wonders of the Universe". It is a beautifully made series and in one of the episodes, University of Manchester's Brian Cox discusses a concept called ENTROPY.

What was curious to me at first was that I somehow could not remember ever learning about this even though I took A-Level physics and you would think I would know at least something about the "second law of thermodynamics" (given that I know the 1st and 3rd laws). So suddenly I was glued to the screen in eager anticipation.

I wont be a bore and go into details of the science, but I will mention one notion that stems from the concept of entropy:

ORDER tends to DISORDER

Think of a sand castle you have made. As time passes, the thousands of sand molecules are far more likely to loose their ordered form, from existing in such a way so that someone passing by would identify the sand castle, to eventually becoming nothing more than a pile of sand.

Disorder can only increase from an ordered state explaining the single direction of time

Similarly, over trillions of years, if the universe does not collapse in on itself, all the stars will burn out, the earth will long ago have been destroyed by our own sun and the version of the universe which lasts forever, will be one where the universe is a vast expansion of cold nothingness - all the order that once made up our stars and planets, will have become a vast equilibrium where every inch of space is exactly the same... just like our deserts. This was sad to hear; so much for living forever.

But just as this sad thought came and lingered, Mr Cox pondered out loud:

"It is not so strange that order tends to disorder, but rather, we should wonder why there was order in the first place?"

Curious...

Brian had managed to explain to me, using the concept of entropy, why we die; but I wondered why he had failed to attempt an answer to the question of why we live?

In a world where over time order tends to disorder, what lead to the miracle that billions of atoms should come together to create life, and not just any life, intelligent life, and not just intelligent life, but my life, someone who can stare back at the universe and contemplate its very existence? This is a question I love to think about. Mathematicians will tell us that this is not such a strange phenomenon in a universe this large, for while the likelihood of intelligent life existing somewhere is low, it is still positive. We are the one in a zillion places, the lottery winners of the universe.

Still, I thought deeper...

ENTROPY, is it possible it not only applies on a cosmic level, but also in our day-to-day lives. Could it possibly provide a reason as to why so few people are rich, why so few succeed, why so few live meaningful lives? We are born innocent and with unlimited potential, and yet time, parenting, our environment, the loss of energy and ambition as we age all seem to be signs of entropy in action. To fight against the strong pull towards disorder in our own lives is our one chance to make our lives mean something.

To build sandcastles in the sand, make something out of nothing, come up with inventions that change the world and grow businesses that outlive us. In a fight with entropy, man would resist the temptations that lead to mediocrity, avoid making poor decisions and he would have the will to act when most would do nothing. In this epic struggle, should we win, it feels like one little insignificant life on Earth can defy the very laws of science.

And suddenly a very sad thought was transformed into a happy one. Should we fail to find meaning, we should perhaps create it.

Entrepreneur vs Employee

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:20:00 +0000

Since I graduated and decided to not find a job and instead start a business, many of my friends have said to me, on a regular basis, one or both of the following:

"You're making quite a brave (possibly perceived as arrogant) decision to start your own business in these troubled times... I personally couldn't take the risk of not knowing where and when my income will come from".

OR

"Yes, starting a business is the dream, but I think it is better to go into employment, learn a bit, accumulate some capital and THEN do my own thing".

I used to think these were both reasonable points and wished those who stood behind them the best of luck in their endeavours - after all, not everyone can or is going to be a business owner and many first time business owners start when they are older.

Recently however, I have thought about some valid arguments against both lines of thought mentioned above.

The first of these is based on the RISK element. What is interesting about this risk, unlike say gambling, it is not easily defined or measured. It is definitely a perceived risk and perceptions, as we all know, are heavily biased and influenced by our upbringing and the media.

So, here is my possibly biased perception of both the risk of becoming an employee and that of starting your own business.

(a) Becoming an employee:

You risk not being able to develop the skills and capabilities that will make you employable for the rest of your life because you are not always able to CHOOSE what skills you develop in a job defined by your employer. Given the rate at which technology is advancing, people who are not constantly improving and learning may well find themselves the miners in a country that no longer mines 20 (or even 10) years down the line. Then what?
You risk loosing your job. In a growing global economy people forget about this risk, but we are currently in a troubled world economy and even if a grand recovery does eventually come, the economic cycle will surely deliver a number of other recessions in each of our lifetimes. What's more, companies go bust or contract for reasons completely unrelated to the global economy, putting all but the most valuable employees at the risk of being retrenched.
You risk not being happy. Many philosophers, work psychologists and more recently, behavioural economists argue that a major influence on our happiness is the ability to do meaningful work. In many large corporations it may not be possible to do this. How many people do you know who love their job?

(b) Starting a business

You risk not having enough money to live. However "to live" is a funny term. Sure, if I had a family and was used to a lavish lifestyle, "survive" may mean several thousand pounds per month. While setting up this business, to me, survive means something in the region of £500 per month. An easily attainable amount (even less that what some people in the UK receive in benefits each month).
You risk... um, I can't think of any others. Please feel free to mention any you may think of in the comments below.

Of course some people may say, you risk "failure" or you risk "having to sleep less" and so on. Like I said, this risk is a perceived risk and will mean different things to different people.

The second argument I have against being an employee is based on the concept of TIMING.
It seems like a reasonable argument: "Get a job, learn, accumulate wealth, exit, start a business, succeed."

Looking at my dad as an example, I put forward my argument against this type of approach.

My father is a major inspiration to me. During his life he has changed so many jobs, always looking for something better, something to stimulate him and wherever he goes, no matter the industry, he advances within the company at a lightning speed. He is soon going to be 50 and in the IT industry age tends to be against you - not in his case. He is doing better than ever and has managed to do all this while immigrating out of Bulgaria with nothing and then returning to start again many years later.

For the past few years he has been also working on starting a chain of Montessori schools with my step-mom. There is a huge demand for these schools in Bulgaria and they have already successfully opened several. He continues to inspire me with his ability to adapt and take advantage of opportunities. Had my dad been born in a capitalist country and had he not had a son at a young age and immigrated to a country where he had to provide for his family, I think my dad would have become an entrepreneur at a much younger age and a great one at that.

His example shows me several key things:

Specialising - great for an employee, but not necessarily the key to success for an entrepreneur. After years of specialising, you might know a lot about the one thing you do really well at company ABC but could you start your own company to compete with ABC? There are natural leaders, but there are also those that are made through effort and learning; and to be made takes time. It is a great (level 5 - Good to Great) leader that makes a business succeed.
Family and marriage - your perceived risk increases with having a family as the possibility of not being able to put bread on the table for your wife and kids is riskier than if you are alone. The average age for people getting married in the UK is 27. So once you graduate, on average, you have 4-5 years before you are married. This is a window of opportunity. Go tell your new wife you are leaving your investment banking job to start a business that may fail and see how she responds.
The Rat Race - Good employees progress in a company. They earn more with every year and therefore the financial opportunity cost of starting your own business increases. At first this may only be the amount you would earn in a graduate position but it may easily become 6 digits or more before long. This makes the financial decision to leave and start your own business even harder when you have been employed for a few years.

In summary, I think for young people, the risk of being an employee is generally greater than starting your own business. I also think there is a strong inverse correlation between the passage of time and the likelihood and ease with which people can start and succeed at starting their own business.

One possible solution that meets employee and entrepreneur mid-way, could be starting a job in a small company where you can be INTRApreneurial. You still get a salary, you are more likely to do meaningful and creative work and should the business succeed, you are likely to have equity options available to you, helping you make the transition from employee to business owner.

Below is my presentation on Intrapreneurship presented at the Manchester Entrepreneurs: "What's Next" event.

Intrapreneurship - success stories and how we leverage this concept at Rare Pink

The Four Quotes I Try To Live By

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:10:00 +0000

"Know Thyself" - Plato

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." Harry Truman

"Fail Fast, Fail Often" - Unkown, Silicon Valley

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to loose. You already are naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." - Steve Jobs

Rare Pink Logo - Your Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:19:00 +0000

We were going for:

Trustworthy

Luxury

Innovative

Elegant

Welcome to Brussels - Home of Bureaucracy and Red Tape

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:05:00 +0000

For the past 6 months I have been getting through all those once-off or yearly administrative business requirements such as registering, opening a business account, applying for and paying your VAT, compliance, regulations etc. To be honest, while it did take up time I did feel like the UK government and institutions had made a good effort in making as many of these requirements easy to understand and easy to get through (and many can be done online).

I applied for the business registration online - got it in a few hours. I walked into the bank and opened an account the very same day. I registered for VAT online, maid a claim to get back the VAT I spent on company expenses and got a deposit into my account just a few days later - which I found out about while checking my online banking. The truth is, I even got used to the amount of things I could do online and started taking this for granted.

A few weeks ago we came to the conclusion that we need a small office here in Belgium to facilitate a part of our business processes. So I planned to spend a week here to get things done. I started trying to do everything online - FAIL! Not only is there no English spoken or written in the home of the EU, but not much can be done online any way. Even the instructions regarding what to do when setting up were contradictory from one site to the other.

Land in Brussels and start visiting the organisations that are supposed to help me get things done. "No appointment, no meeting... sorry!" The biggest bank in Belgium does not work with companies in our industry - others don't seem to want your custom either. Documents must be written in French, Dutch or German and then once you spend a thousand hours preparing them, you take them to a notary (what the hell is that anyway???) and he charges you 1000 EUROS to put his signature on documents he couldn't even be bothered to write for you (after all you are funding his beach house).

The point of this rant is to (a) give my compliments to the team of people in the UK that have made taking care of our obligations to the state a breeze, and (b) to express my disgust as to how bureaucratic and anti-business Belgium is. This place would be nothing but a socialist non-country if it wasn't home to the EU parliament and institutions, with old grannies watching you as you empty your glass bottles into the recycling bins - ready to inform the authorities if you get it wrong - here "Big Brother" is no capitalist.

Necessity has made my tasks here a burden I have to face - but if we really had a choice, I would need a very good reason to set up a business or invest in Belgium.

Outsourcing Web Development - Learning the hard way

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:10:00 +0000

There is nothing more stressful than getting frustrated at someone for not doing their job, have a row with them and then realising that there are half a dozen simple things that could have been done to insure that the project is completed on time and as required. I realise now why good project managers are so well paid.

I am now glad I studied economics for 3 years because it has helped me to understand that so many things in life are about punishment and incentives - the carrot that keeps the donkey going and the boot that kicks it when it goes astray. Let me explain...

Several months of paying 50% for the development of our site, we still do not have a finished working copy. I recently spent some time on a website called VWorker and while I have yet to use their services and see if they are any good, the infrastructure that the guys have set up on this community makes it so much easier to get work done.

The community has over 250,00 registered free-lancers and companies which bid on the projects people post. Within 24 hours of posting we have had over 20 bids to do our work with the cost ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. We see everyone's reviews (something you can not easily do with companies you find when googling), and most importantly people are ACCOUNTABLE. If they agree to do the work within a month and they fail to complete the project within that time frame, then you have the option to not pay a cent or give them an extension.

They let you know from the get go that only 25% of development/software projects in the entire industry finish on schedule (25% are never completed and 50% are delayed) and they reckon if we think a project will take 2 weeks it is more likely that it will take 2-to-5 times that amount of time.

All of our 20+ bids agreed to pay only a 10% deposit (and not the 50% we have currently paid) and there are requirements such as weekly feedback which make it easy to gauge how far along the developers are.

Incetives and punishment - a community that has both.

Overall, I can not wait to try out this service as we were really happy with a similar service (only it was for design and not development) from 99Designs. We got 19 designers to submit 59 designs for our new logo. After choosing the winning one we were also able to ask the winning designer to tweek the design to our heart's conent. Check out our new DiamondsInAfrica logo below:

Global from Day One

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:10:00 +0000

What a crazy few months it has been, and all because we boldly decided that we would launch this business into the global market from day one - selling our products in any currency, any time and to any location in the world (with a few small exceptions).

When we first committed to our global approach I was certain that our flight and travel expenses would break the bank but the internet truly has made global commerce not only possible, but unbelievably easy as well. From incorporating a limited US business and opening a bank account there, to registering toll-free numbers in all our major markets - all of this was done from the comfort of my office.

I have also been calling customers from around the world using Skype and our very first client found us online from Serbia and made a detour on his way to a hunting trip in Namibia just to make a purchase in South Africa.

I have not been in the same room as our other two co-founders since April and yet we are all on the same page with regards to developments on a daily basis. Conference calls from our mobiles and bitesize e-mails seems to be all it takes.

There is only one last challenge I have to overcome with regards to the "think global" approach - that being reaching out to all our suppliers (spread across 5 countries around the world) and agreeing upon our terms of trade. This challenge begins today.

Apologies to any regular readers for the post drought of late, it seems the more I have to blog about the less time I have to blog.

Much Harder Than I Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Mon, 30 May 2011 11:23:00 +0000

Yes, running your own business is rewarding, but no one ever tells you when it gets to be rewarding and that before that happens its a confusing and difficult time of transition.

Even the rat race, while we all hate to be in it, is at least comforting in its predictability. As an entrepreneur, there are now two processes I have to habitualise and develop to keep doing what I'm doing. These are:

The Will To Act, &
The Endurance of Risk

The Will To Act

As straight forward as it may seem, it is the first one that has been a nightmare to come to terms with. To get up and to set a plan for the day and to then go on and complete the tasks listed is perhaps the single greatest challenge I have ever come across. People in jobs find this much easier to do for two reasons. First of all they have momentum. For the most part they have been doing what they do for a long time so, going to work and "working" carries a very strong inertia. Employees also know that if they are ill or lazy or hung over or need to take a holiday, for the most part the company they work for will not shut down and die in their absence.

Running your own business, there is no momentum (at least not at first), the business stops when you stop and there is no "Big Brother" watching - the will to act and the motivation to do this on a day to day, hour upon hour basis is a test of endurance and stamina - two things I will admit, I had in short supply at first, but I seem to be finally accumulating more and more of both.

The Endurance of Risk

I seem to be coping better with the risk element of being an entrepreneur than I had at first anticipated. Sure, the fact that my income now depends almost entirely on my own efforts and that it may take a while before these efforts are rewarded, did scare me at first, but I am at least no longer afraid of failing. After all, I have little commitments, no children and no credit card bills to pay; as long as I have a roof over my head for the next few months, success or failure, nothing much will change in my lifestyle as a student to that of being a poor entrepreneur.

"Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance."

Virgil

Dabs (verb) – “To Touch Lightly and Quickly”

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:36:00 +0000

This is how the dictionary defines the terms “Dabs”. In many ways, my three months here will have this effect on the company, however the effect this experience has had on me will be far more pronounced.

My third placement began with all the usual excitement and possibilities to impose a positive change in the 11 weeks we have to do so. The only difference this time was that Dabs was the one placement I was really excited to be going to – an e-commerce company for someone (me) who is passionate about Internet marketing – what a match!

The first few weeks flew by and despite the fact that my commute took up to two hours of my day, I was enjoying my job.

Towards the end of February, something happened at Dabs which changed everything. I refer to this event as the fortunately-unfortunate incident. It was unfortunate because together with the other lovely people at Dabs, during the next few months we all had to enter a “crisis management” mode; but fortunate because I experienced, first-hand, the issues and difficulties which come about when a company has to upgrade to a new system. To cut a long story short – the company decided it was time to implement a new system, but once they migrated everything on to the new one, there were more problems than they had at first anticipated and unfortunately many of these affected their customers.

The lessons I learned over the next few weeks showed me that e-commerce is not only an amazing disruptive innovation, but also an economic system where agents operate in a manner far quicker than the traditional business world. Problems (and opportunities) are noticed instantly and people expect these problems to be corrected within days, hours, and sometimes even minutes. Things are almost back to normal now, and I feel like in the long term Dabs will be better off with the new system.

Of course I also got to ask literally thousands of questions, cornering various people in their offices or at their desks and extracting vital information from them. When starting up your own e-commerce business (as I hope to soon be doing) you never really know what you don’t know, but once you start digging deeper you find certain questions taking form; questions about shipping, protecting the company from fraud, the various systems being used and dozens of others. The more questions I asked the more questions I seemed to have and at Dabs I also managed to get many answers (Thanks to Neil, Helen, Michelle, Mat and Jag).

All-in-all, it was a very interesting placement. To cheer everyone up (and because its my birthday), I’ve made pancakes on my last day and leave the cool gang at Dabs with a few lessons I have learned:

Good customer service is a far more difficult job than I had at first thought. When we hire people to do this, make sure they can handle angry or difficult customers. Take them out once a month to paintball (or some other activity where they can de-stress and let go of all the anger customers impose upon them).
Always, and I mean ALWAYS have a contingency plan – not just for the good times but also for the bad. Plan for unlikely events using the “if…then…else” type of logic.
Don’t pay for expensive software unless you have a dedicated person who will be trained and have the time to use it. Even then, regularly re-evaluate its usefulness to the company.
Customers are morons. They will cry and bitch and moan and threaten. Do everything you can to please them.
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. If it is breaking and you choose to get a new one, make sure you’re not getting one that is even more broken than the original because anything that can go wrong will go wrong, so make sure you plan for the worst case scenario.
Be very careful when deciding that the job two employees are doing can be done by one. Overworking people suppresses creativity and innovation – especially if you doubled their workload but not their salary.
Finally, after the system migration there were some serious problems on days when it looked like the world would end. While some people could have just gone mental from all the stress, everyone stayed cool. So the last lesson I take away from Dabs is - DON’T PANIC, everything works out in the end if you’ve got a cool head.

Thanks to Dabs for a very important 3 months, now to put it all into practice in my own business.

Placement four is at Rare Pink. A new chapter begins.

Its Time

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 08:36:00 +0000

There is nothing quite as liberating and empowering as the simple realisation that we do hold our destiny in our hands and we are in fact masters of the universe.

Our business successes and failures become the ups and downs of a rollercoaster ride where in the end, no matter what rollercoaster you're on, you still get off saying: "That was Fucking Awesome!"... and you're off to find the next one!

As of today I am officially unemployed and super excited to be starting-up Rare Pink Limited - going live June 2011!

Student Entrepreneurs and Reshaping Britain

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:24:00 +0000

This weekend I attended the National Student Enterprise Conference (NSEC) in Manchester. You may wonder what a bunch of students from around the country, who usually spend their weekends indulging in booze and sleep deprivation, are doing at a 2-day weekend conference? It turns out that my peers were all there for different reasons among which there was one which we all shared – to become someone who drives change as opposed to merely accepting it.

The weekend was about how we can make a difference in helping the UK economy, how we can create disruptive innovations, how we can change companies from within and how we can start and grow companies that either make loads of money or help society, or both.

There was a perfect mixture of inspirational talks (from the likes of John Griffin - Addison Lee and Houston Spencer – Alcatel Lucent), panel discussions hosted by disruptive innovators (such as Rich Martell – Floxx.com and Kresse Wessling – Elvis & Kresse) and informative talks on various aspect of starting up a new business (Christian Busch – Sandbox and Ben Sheils – Accelerate).

I think, if you take away one thing from each conference you attend, then you can consider it time well spent.

My big "WOW" moment this weekend was Christian’s talk on “Creating the Winning Team”. I had given some thought to the fact that we would have to recruit some people almost as soon as we start but I thought of hiring like you think of finance, IP, operations – just another part of the system.

Christian managed to convince me in a talk just short of an hour that I was looking at this all wrong. He started with a saying VCs use in Silicon Valley:

"I would rather invest in an A team with a B idea than a B team with an A idea”.

Companies like Facebook and Google buy other companies not for their ideas but for the people behind those ideas, as well as people who made those ideas happen.

Christian discussed 5 ways in which you can convince high quality people to work for you (even though you may be offering them less pay than larger companies); see my video for more on this.

Finally he introduced us to Belbin’s team model as a useful tool for figuring out what kind of people are missing in your team:

As a final thought, you may wonder why people would work for a start-up or start their own business when the economic conditions are so unstable. From my NSEC experience I can give you two possible reasons.

The first is that starting your own business is actually less risky than working for someone else. You avoid all the risk factors which are out of your control: such as becoming redundant, not developing your skills, being unhappy with what you do and trade these "risk factors" in for: flexible working hours, an opportunity to develop and control over your own destiny.

My second thought on why becoming an entrepreneur is more rewarding than getting a job is based on the insights shared in this RSA video on what motivates us to work harder:

Berbatov - A Rare Reason to Be a Proud Bulgarian

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:38:00 +0000

Like Dimitar Berbatov, I am Bulgarian. It’s not the easiest country to be proud and patriotic about. We are small, eastern European, involved in organised crime all around the world, classified as the most corrupt country in Europe, our lovely beaches and seaside support a recent explosion of alcohol-related tourism and most recently, we have been ranked as the most unhappy nation relative to the money we earn.

Despite all this I do like to feel proud about my people and birthplace, even though I have not lived there for most of my life. True, I like to feel proud about South Africa as well (another place often associated with more bad things than good), but when asked where I’m from, I always say “Bulgaria”.

Moments to be proud of my country include singularities such as the 1994 Football World Cup when Bulgaria reached the semi-finals and Hristo Stoichkov got the golden boot. More generally I am proud of things such as our beautiful mountains, forests and seaside and the world-famous Bulgarian yoghurt and cheese.

Compared to some countries, you would think that when we do have an opportunity to be proud of our nation, we take it by the horns. Well actually, no.

Take our most famous recent football export – Dimitar Berbatov, for example. He appears to be, at least in public, a modest guy and true professional. He carries himself well and I personally have not once seen a scandal relating to him in the press. He has had a topsy-turvy start to his Man United career but no one can dispute that this season, he has been one of the star players of not only United, but I dare say, the world. Look at the Bulgarian press and you see a different image. Hatemongers spew out one criticism after another; the press for the most part ignores his successes and only blurts out his short-comings and that all famous team of 1994 seems to be playing a major role in ensuring that no one, not Berbatov or any other rising star ever emulates their success.

Excuse me for generalising, and as someone who hasn’t lived his whole life in Bulgaria, I may make some assumptions that others will dispute. I do however know that a people’s shortcomings are often reflected in the jokes we say about them. It comes as no surprise that there are numerous jokes and anecdotes of this “if your friend is successful you better pull him right back down” mentality which is engraved in the Bulgarian condition.

From the moment Berbatov scored 3 against Liverpool to claim a late victory for United, or when he almost made a new record by scoring 5 against Blackburn, or even last night when his 2 goals helped us stage a dramatic comeback against Blackpool, people around the world have talked about this man, this Bulgarian who lead Manchester United to victory. Football fan or not, United fan or not… Berbatov is another reason to be proud of our country and I personally hope he goes on to become the most famous and well-regarded Bulgarian footballer of all time.

Some Interesting Discoveries - part II

noreply@blogger.com (Nikolay Piryankov) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:55:00 +0000

A few new sites I think are interesting, useful or both.

Here's a 10 second overview of each one and why you should check it out:

Thumbshots

I have recently become more interested in getting visitors to my site to act, than getting those visitors in the first place. Why? Because there are many ways to get people to your site, but once they are there, if they don't buy or use your service, then you don't really have a business now do you? Here's a tool that makes links to your site VISUAL with a small thumbnail preview. This helps with getting traffic as people who see a link to your site will also see a site preview.

But what about conversion? Well one of the biggest problems webmasters face is "how to decrease the bounce rate?" What if your internal linking also had previews, making sure people STAY on your site, and hopefully end up committing or purchasing.

The fact that so many companies and websites are using this tool tells me there are more benefits... soon to be checked out.

OnlyWire

I looked at social bookmarking a few years ago but then abandoned it - somehow it felt unnatural to be posting hundreds of links on different sites as bookmarks and I was worried that Google would penalise sites that do this.

Social bookmarking has since come along way with loads of different sites specialising in different ways. OnlyWire is an aggregator, automatically posting your news, blogs or links to about 50 different services, and you can easily post only to the specific site you want, without having to log in each time. Seems to be a useful tool for link building (to help with SEO) if used with moderation and if you know which sites would work for each particular link you are posting.

investment required: loads of time
return on investment: automatically use 50 different tools which bookmark, organise and promote your links to different communities; building links and making your information more accessible.

NetVibes

Think iGoogle but much, MUCH better. I love Google and use so many of their services, but I am afraid NetVibes is everything iGoogle could have been and more.

In my opinion, NetVibes has two main uses:

Use it as your browser homepage - with all the information you want to see when you first come online: mail, facebook, twitter, weather, news, blog feeds etc. This profile is private and only accessible to you.
Use it to promote yourself, your company or an interest. Think a combincation of about.me, squidoo and iGoogle. Here is my unfinished public NetVibes profile: http://www.netvibes.com/nivoda

Camerabox

We recently bought a new Canon G12 from Camerabox, and while it is yet to arrive, I can say that this site is by far the cheapest (we looked at many sites and different models), unless you can get your camera from the States, which is even cheaper. Also, they provide a 5 year warranty. Can't wait for it to arrive.

--update--
Two weeks and no camera. Camerabox may be cheap but their customer service is nothing near the level we have come to expect from an e-commerce business. Next day delivery... FAIL. call-back request.... FAIL. promises to fix their mess... FAIL. Buying from them again... NEVER!

Let me know your thoughts.