London’s treating me well .

Also, here’s a list of 150 Classical Masterpieces discovered by thegirlwithherpearlson.com, for those of you who are on Spotify.

Me – I’m not that successful just yet. So I only have one hater. But boy, what a hater. I think he spends all his spare time hating me, one way or another. His name is Cristian Arbunea, and I hired him when I was 21, while I was running an outsourcing company called Brainient Media. He was a pretty smart guy, a bit strange (he never had lunch with us at work, he never came to any of our parties or any of the company’s team building trips), but for an outsourcing company he was great: always on time at work and relatively good with deadlines. He worked for me for a couple of years.

The outsourcing company I ran back then, Brainient Media, was also the company behind BrainTV, one of the first online TV channels in Romania and one of the worst investments I’ve made in my life. After spending way too much money on content production, hiring people, marketing & hiring more people, the outsourcing business started to suffer. We were burning cash like crazy, so I decided to shut down BrainTV, which I did in the summer of 2008. I had to let go most of the people that were working on the TV channel, but by that time a lot of our outsourcing clients were unhappy. Some of them were even asking me if I could recommend other outsourcing companies in Romania, and a few of my developers quit. Hardest summer in my life, I tell you.

Late 2008, I still had a few outsourcing clients that we needed to finish some work for, and a few developers working on those projects. And while I was doing work for our clients, I was also planning my next venture. A new company, focused on smart tools for the video market. First – I wanted to build a video management platform, because I already had a few clients lined up for it. So I asked Cristian and another developer to create an alpha version for that, in the spare time they had after working for our outsourcing clients. It didn’t really work, ’cause they didn’t have enough time for it. And then, in January 2009, because the recession hit some of our clients, they had to delay their payments. And I had to delay the salaries. Cristi hated that, and one day in February 09, he sent me an email saying that he won’t come to work until he gets paid. It was the moment when I realized that outsourcing + product development is never going to work, so I decided to start fresh. Late February 2009, I finished the projects for our outsourcing clients, got our payments,  paid the employees, fired everyone, pointed the clients to other outsourcing shops, chapter closed. Start fresh.

Or, that’s what I thought. Cristi wasn’t happy with the fact that I fired him and that I wasn’t interested in working with him anymore, because he saw the opportunity of the video management platform. So he started accusing Brainient Media SRL that we din’t give him his two week notice when firing him (he didn’t even come to work for almost two weeks, but anyway), and that we owed him two weeks of extra salary (600 euros or so). And – hear this out ’cause it’s a good one – he accused me of forgery. I still don’t know how he came up with that.

Anyway, with the new venture plan in mind, I started another company, Brainient 2.0. I put most of my economies in, received angel funding from a well known angel in Romania and hired back 4 of the best people I had in the outsourcing company, who were more than happy to jump back on board. What did Cristi do? He emailed my investor, telling him that I didn’t pay him and that he shouldn’t be doing business with me. My investor showed me the email and told me that I should learn to grow a thick skin, ’cause the number of haters is only going to go up. I’m still working on it.

Fast forward to the autumn of 2009, my attorney in Romania calls me to say that an ISP in Romania sued Brainient Media SRL for 1,500 Euros, for hosting BrainTV in the period of Aug 2007 – Dec 2007 or so. And because no representative of the company showed up, the judge declared the company bankrupted. And, besides that, there’s another guy, “Cristian Arbunea”, who claims the company owes him two weeks of salary and I’m accused of forgery. I asked him what’s to be done, and he said we can’t do anything about the actual company because it’s already been declared bankrupted, but that he’ll prepare a file proving that we paid Cristian to the last cent and that he was legally let go. Which he prepared. A 3 cm thick file, that is.

If you still think Cristi’s not the hater of all haters, read on. The saga continues.

Late September 2009, with a fabulous team, a great product and awesome plans, we won Seedcamp Week. Bells and whistles, second Romanian team to win Seedcamp Week, two years in a row. What does Cristi do? He went to every blog that wrote about Brainient, and left a comment with the same story. I won’t repeat it, you already know it by now .

That brings me to where we are today. We just got selected to launch some pretty cool new stuff at The Next Web in Amsterdam. What did Cristi do? Well, what do you think he did? He went to the blogs that wrote about us and did what he does best, of course. Oh, and by the way – he’s such a man that he’s never done it under his name, but if you look it up you’ll find the pattern. Currently, he’s using our CTO’s name, Andrei.

And that’s how the story goes. It can be confirmed by any of the people around me, whether it’s my former or current colleagues, investors or attorneys. And because I don’t find chasing him on the internet fun in any way, I’ve decided to write a long blog post (sorry, I didn’t think it’s gonna get this long) that I can just point to.

I’m the type of guy who tries to learn something from every experience. And from this little chapter of my life I’ve learned two things: Firstly, never hire someone you wouldn’t be willing, or able, to spend a weekend alone in the mountains with. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that with Cristi from the moment I hired him, but I didn’t trust my instincts for whatever reason. Secondly, and this is something I just realized recently – it’s better to expose your haters than fight them. Lessons learned.

The problem is though that nowadays most people just start arguments, refuse agreeing with you and at the same time avoid debating. They just sit there without providing any sort of thought, solution, reasoning or squabble. Worst of all – they don’t listen.

I’m a guy who loves arguments, and I can be very fierce about them. Some people get me wrong, but I don’t do it just for the sake of it. I do it because I’d rather stand up than shut up. It’s how I am. I don’t care about winning, I don’t mind losing face, I just want people to listen, analyze, conclude and start again, until they get to common ground. That’s how I do it, but some people don’t get it.

I’m starting to think I might be wrong. How do you approach arguments?

I’ll be at South by South West Interactive in the next 6 days and it’s my first time here, so please feel free to take me to all the best parties and introduce me to the nicest people you know, ok?

And if you’ve just typed in emigal.com after getting my business card, feel free to check out my about page, linkedin profile, twitter stream, yada yada, you know the drill.

For those of you who don’t know, Jonathan Klein founded Getty Images together with Mark Getty, back in 1993. Getty Images is the leading stock photo business in the world.

Last week, thanks to Saul Klein and Seedcamp, I had the priviledge to listen to him for two hours, speaking about how he built a business that makes hundreds of millions of dollars in profit every year.

What struck me the most was how “normal” Mr. Klein was. Extremely friendly and patient with all our questions, some of which were rather stupid, I think . Then, I was amazed at the fact he had a set of ‘principles’ for every aspect of the business, whether it’s hiring people, scaling the business or creating sustainability. And last but definitely not least, I loved the fact that he was fun, easy going and had a constant smile on his face.

Besides talking about how he built a billion dollar company in 15 years, he gave us 10 tips that can help us do it as well. And I want to share that wisdom with you:

1. Raise more money than you think you need. If you’re on to build a large business, dilution doesn’t matter anyway. You’re in the business of minimizing risk.

2. Cash is the only thing that matters. That should be your focus. Create an automated, scalable business model that will generate cash.

3. Invest in your company’s culture. It works as a filter for making small, easy or complex and tough decisions.

4. The two most important things in your company are: your employees and your customers.

5. Be honest, transparent & realistic. Especially with yourself.

6. Decide fast. It’s better to be wrong and fix it than sit around for 3 months and miss on opportunities.

7. Wrong decisions are OK. As long as you’re wrong really fast!

8. Focus, focus, focus. Say NO to stuff. Constantly.

9. LEAD. People are crying out for leadership. Know where you’re going, and they’ll follow. You can find Jonathan’s leadership principles here.

10. Have fun every day. “Sometimes it’s even black humor“, he said.

Besides the “10 rules for building a business”, he constantly showered us with other various bits of advice, like: be unglamorous, make it easy to use, be accessible, understand your market and be relevant, speak the same language as your customer, do a lot of research, explore, and my personal favorite – make the customer look good.

With that said, I’d like to thank Jonathan for inspiring me to try and be better, work harder, lead thoroughly and have fun while doing it. Oh, and I finally understood that building a great business will take at least 10 years. I’m up for that.

While contemplating on why I’m usually this productive on airplanes, the obvious suddenly occured to me: I’m completely offline. Not just because I don’t have Skype, internet, phone, sms, but because my brain knows I don’t have them.

I believe there’s something magic about knowing that no-one, absolutely no-one can bother you. So I’ve decided to do a test, for the next two months. Every week, I’ll pick a day, and for at least 5 hours I will disconnect from any pottential interruptors: mobile, skype, email, IM, etc. I’m going to keep the internet on, though, as I find it rather difficult to work with no internet when you run an internet startup .

I’ll track and measure everything, and in March I’ll get back to you with some metrics, thoughts and conclusions.

PS: If you try to get the hang of me and I’m nowhere to be found, it means I’m in the middle of my little experiment . Wish me luck.

And in good 2009 spirit, I twitted about the top 3 things I learned, of course. Without further ado:

Firstly: most important thing I’ve learned this year: if you’re crap at something, delegate it as soon as you can

For example, I’m a complete mess at administrative / finance stuff. It took me a few years to finally understand accept that and find someone to delegate it to. Now it’s done, and it’s sooo much better.

Secondly: second thing I learned this year: communication is key. And boy, I learned this the hard way! #fb

For a long, long time I hoped that avoiding a problem will eventually make it vanish. And it happens. Sometimes. But in 90% of the cases, it doesn’t. Avoiding to communicate regarding a problem will only make it worse. But hey, better to learn later than never, no?

Last but not least: 3d thing I learned this year: always try to do the right thing, even tho it might be damn difficult. #fb

Doing the right thing is always more difficult. It takes guts and character to do it. But doing the right thing always makes you stronger.

That’s it for this year. Happy New Year and all that .

From here.