Stop building features, start building an experience

Tomorrow at 12.00 pm (Bucharest time) I’ll be live at Radio Lynx and Wall-Street.ro talking about entrepreneurship in gaming. 

You can find more details in this articole. 

As you might already know I will start soon a new gaming company. If you’re a tech guy or an UI Design guy and you’re passionate about gaming you migh want to see my presentation and join me at Bucharest Hubb.

Here is the link:

http://www.meetup.com/BucharestHubb/events/52713032/ 

Good article written by Natasha Starkell about eRepublik:
Success story: Romanian George Lemnaru tells story behind MMOG eRepublik 

So you have this great idea for an online project but nobody would invest in it.

I know the feeling: you need the money so bad for tons of things, mostly for the code and design. 
You keep trying to convince those potential investors and they keep not getting it. Until you realize that they won’t get it at all no matter how good you would explain it. 

Yes, investors do that often. And you have 2 options:

1. To become frustrated as the world around you is so dumb. Starting from the investors that don’t see the potential of the project, continuing with your parents that are not rich and maybe blaming also the politicians that are so bad at doing their job. And those are great excuses – how can you do great things when those people are not what you expect them to be?

2. To get over frustration and solve the bottleneck. Learn how to code and learn how to create an interface if that’s what’s stopping you. 
You will do a lousy job as you’re not the best at coding or design but you will solve the bottleneck and you will be able to continue with your idea.

The second option is the harder one and a very small number of people choose it. Those are the people that later will talk about their successes. 

More than 5 years have passed since I started working for eRepublik. As I went through both great and difficult moments, now is time for me to look for a new challenge. So, last week I resigned from eRepublik and kept just an advisory role in the company (besides my role as a shareholder that wasn’t changed).

Why? We built a great team and a great company. Nevertheless we’re close to that moment when my experience will help the company only marginally. So I am looking for a new challenge, a new start-up that I will build.

This is what I’m leaving behind:
- one of the biggest online start-ups that started in Romania;
- a financially solid company;
- a really great team.

Thanks to the people that were close to me:
- the eRepublik citizens – I’m proud for the moments of joy that you guys had while playing eRepublik and I apologize for the moments of frustration. What’s clear for me is that we couldn’t make it without you.
- the eRepublik team – It was a pleasure to work with you, guys. I personally learned a huge amount of things by growing this company together.
- Alexis Bonte – the best partner that I could ever had.

What will happen furthermore:
- eRepublik – my responsibilities are divided between Alexis and Mihai Adamut (Mihai being the Product Manager of eRepublik in the past 12 months). They are the most competent people to do that and, together with the rest of the team, I’m sure they will help the company grow even more;
- me – I will take 2 or 3 months in which I will relax (pretty interesting feeling after all those years) and meet people that will help me build my next company.

PS: You can contact me on the same mobile number and on my gmail address (george.lemnaru).

Really smart and interesting questions. It was a pleasure to participate at this interview:

http://economie.hotnews.ro/stiri-it-10540296-cetatenii-erepublik-decis-kosovo…

I know you have this dream about creating the greatest product ever.

You’re seeing all those cool features that will allow the users to do many interesting things and not get bored.
There are 2 ways to do that:

1. Start building that kick-ass product with all the planned features.
And this is what will happen:
- You will actually see and try for the first time your product quite late in the development phase;
- No external user will test your product during all that long term development process;
- Meanwhile, you’ll be changing your mind and as a result, you will also change features This means even longer development time. Plus that the changes will be based on your guesses, not on users’ feedback;
- Crunch Time will be your team best friend;- You move the mindset of the team from creating an experience for the users, to creating features. Remember that users are not excited by great features, but by great experiences;
- By the time you will be able to get feedback from the users your team and budget will no longer be in a good shape.

2. Or build a small prototype with basic features that you can play with very fast. Later you can add all the other features.

Basic learning: test the first prototype of your product as soon as possible!