The outcome of the trip has exceeded all my expectations. After spending four days with the team deep in the Carpathian mountains, not only is everyone aware of and aligned to one big objective, but we’ve set goals for each member of the team and prepared a detailed product roadmap. In other words, we know where we’re going and how to get there. And we also had lots of fun along the way. I strongly recommend that you try it for your startup, regardless of whether you’re five people or fifty. And here are a few tips to help you get started:

Go somewhere remote. It will help the team mentally disconnect from the day-to-day stuff. We chose to rent an entire cottage up in the Carpathian mountains in Romania. All we had was an internet connection, our laptops and a whiteboard. Living and working under the same roof for a few days can create incredibly tight bonds within the team.

Set a clear outcome and keep a tight schedule. Each day, we had at least 4 hours of discussions on a predefined agenda. We had a different theme each day: strategy, BrainRolls, BrainAds and objective planning / product roadmap. Our plan was to align the whole team to the same objective and make sure everyone has defined their goals for the year and for the first quarter of 2012.

Use a planning methodology. It makes it a lot easier to plan things out and align everyone to one objective. At Brainient, we use OKRP (Objectives and Key Results Planning), a methodology used by the likes of Zynga, Facebook and Google. Here’s how Google does OKRs, for example.

Have fun. Product planning and brainstorming can be tiring, so we made sure we had lots of fun prepared. From trips to the mountains to barbecues, Texas Hold ‘em, four on the couch or pushing our cars out of the snow upon departure, it felt more like a fun camp in the mountains than an intense company planning trip.

It’s a very comforting thought for a founder / CEO to know that every single member of the team knows what they have to achieve, and I can’t thing of a better and faster way to do it than the Steve Jobs way.

What is it, exactly? Quite simple: you know those banners that keep following you on the web after you’ve visited a specific website? It’s just like that, but with video ads rather than banners. So next time you’re watching The Apprentice on SeeSaw and you see a video ad for that pair of shoes you looked at on Get The Label, that will be us.

Why we think this is cool? Well, you have to watch video ads before being able to watch your favourite show anyway, so they might as well be as relevant to you as possible, no? Oh yes, and interactive, which is something we’ve done quite successfully for a while now.

You can see a live demo here and, as usual, feedback is strongly encouraged.

Back in November last year, together with the folks at SeeSaw, Brainient launched one of the first A/B testing initiatives in the UK video advertising market. We decided to let viewers decide which Hotmail video advert they wanted to watch, with a selection of three ads to choose from – each represented by a thumbnail. If they didn’t select one, we would choose one for them. We generated an average CTR of nearly 9%. That’s, um, nine times higher than the market average. And we did it by A/B testing, tracking and using data: we saw that Thumb 1 (corresponding Video 1) got 60% more clicks than the other two, while Video 3 got 30% more clicks to the Hotmail site than the other two videos. So by simply switching the video behind Thumb 1 with Video 3, we generated nine times more results than the market average. That’s a big return for such a small change.

While speaking to networks, publishers & agencies over the past few months, I’ve spotted a trend towards using data and A/B testing display & video advertising campaigns, but it’s not moving the needle just yet. It may be because more often than not networks & agencies don’t have time & resources to do it, and advertisers rarely get involved into the actual planning of their campaigns, not knowing how big of an impact an A/B test would have on their budget spend. But nine times higher CTR means, almost every time, a ninefold increase in campaign ROI, so maybe advertisers & agencies should revisit a concept that’s bee used in the online world for more than a decade.

I think I’ll be quite busy in the weeks to come and won’t get a chance to blog, but I try to post interesting stuff on Twitter every now and then.

But after close to 5 years of entrepreneurship, I’ve learned that you should only hire people that you feel you can be friends with. You have to feel that you can go out for beers and spend your holidays together. If you don’t, you’ll probably find it difficult to communicate with that person and, ultimately, you’ll lose time and money.

Even more than that, I believe that a company’s team is its DNA, therefore every member of the team should feel like he can be friends with any other member of the team. That’s difficult and requires a lot of trial & error during the recruiting process, but it pays off.

And I have the best example to prove that it’s f**ing worth it. For the past couple of months, my brilliant friends in the Brainient team have been building our products all by themselves back in Romania. And they’ve been doing a fantastic job although I’m in London, focusing on biz-dev and other “boring stuff”, to quote a friend. Actually, I’m starting to think they’re better off without me .

A couple of years ago, I started one of Romania’s first online TV channels: BrainTV – TV for smart people. I made two fundamental mistakes with that project:

Firstly, I thought I know the market. Which I didn’t, because as it turned out later – there aren’t that many smart people in world.

Secondly, I didn’t ask my target audience if they want my product. I assumed smart people are going to watch “intelligent” video productions (which weren’t that intelligent now that I think about it). Assuming is bad, I tell you, as I discovered later on that most of them don’t have time to watch videos online.

Rookie mistakes, I know, but I was just a young chap with some money in the bank. It was the worst investment I ever made, now that I think about it.

Now, compare that with how we’ve done things at Brainient in the past 18 months: started with a video management platform, after a few companies told us they need it. Built an alpha and started signing contracts. The contracts showed us they’re really serious and they actually want the product. We continued building the product and asked for feedback very early in the product development roadmap. We iterated. Asked for feedback again. Discovered their main problem is video monetization, not video management. Iterated. Asked for feedback again.

You get the drill. As for feedback. Now.

Even better, whenever I need to work on something that needs concentration and focus, I go on our office’s terrace (with a beautiful view to Ceausescu’s Pallace) and I do my work, standing.

Here’s the top 3 reasons why I believe that standing meetings & work can boost your productivity:

1. You don’t procrastinate. You’re standing, so you don’t really feel like procrastinating or your feet will hurt .

2. Better blood circulation. When standing / walking / running, your blood flow improves, your heart gets more blood, your brain gets more oxigen, therefore chances are you’ll be smarter & brighter .

3. You become smarter . Not sure why, but whenever I work on something and I’m standing, I instantly get better and brighter ideas.

Try it out and let me know what you think!