OurielOhayon

Good entrepreneurs stay frustrated

i recently spoke in an event and was asked at the end "how do you keep yourself motivated as an entrepreneur?" 

It is easy to be motivated and passionate at launch. But how do you keep the fire going on on a ride of a few years with many ups and downs?

To which i answered "stay frustrated with your own work"

The biggest danger is, in my opinion, being satisfied with your work. Satisfaction cools down the temperature and the energy you need to move on. 

I don't know any good entrepreneur that is really happy with the current status of their business: not enough customers, not enough revenues, not enough feedbacks, product not good enough...They are always frustated and want more.

You need to feel what's wrong and where it's wrong. And many times you are the only one to be able to detect that. It does not matter. As long as you feel something is missing.

Transforming frustration in positive energy is the next important stuff. And the only way it can happen is when you have happy users or customers (or at least enough)

Happy users is what matters most. More than the features you dreamt of in your last release. 

This is why getting attention to feedback is so important. And that is why any developer should dedicate all his energy to collect, as efficiently as possible, the impression from their users

Specifically in the app world this is very difficult because apps are little piece of software with no real user interaction with the developer

In our case we spent an important part of our time building the necessary bricks to collect in real time users' feedback. Believe me. IT IS AWESOME

Every notification you get is a drop of fuel in the motivation tank.

Bottom line: don't settle, find what's wrong, get feedback and stay motivated to iterate.

PS: if you want to know how we do it reach out...

Mike Arrington's legacy

Mike Arrington is leaving techcrunch. I knew that would happen at some point but not like that. 

i worked 3 years with him building Techcrunch France from scratch and contributing sometimes to Techcrunch.com. I experienced everything from real enjoyment to frustration. This experience created a (amazing) pivot in my career. A boost i could have never gotten otherwise. And somehow i keep very good memories of working with him. He trusted an unknown french guy he never met to create the second (or third) blog of his network. And i think this is something that he did consistently: hire guys that know that take things a step further in the right direction without him.

I am sure Techcrunch will still be successful but still will be different. since inception i read every single of his post. sometimes many times. he's a terrific writer. i hope he keeps blogging (what happened to crunchnotes.com? )

I have little comments on this BS "ethic as a blogger/VC" story. the only part i can testify is that even my own stories (post Techcrunch France or as a VC) never got a special treatment in any ways. Many times they even got ignored. Many times my competitors are treated way better than my own company. Read also Loic's post about how things happen.

I am fine with that. I know Mike has managed to create a "clear in the game" publication creating rules readers respect. and that startups respect.

This game is not over. With or without mike, Techcrunch will remain the spicy tech publication that no other network has managed to create. Precisely because of the rules Mike has created and that penetrated Techcrunch DNA. 

PS: congrats Erick on the new Job :)

disclosure: i own techcrunch stock and could be perceived as a biassed teller. if have the right to think so. that's fine...

Mac and Hebrew. tips and failures.

It is amazing to me that in 2011 it is still painful to correctly use your mac with hebrew for text editing. As a non israeli native i find it so complex to use in a same doc hebrew and english. I mean that is not a piece of genius to get this done. right? 

Most amazingly i asked the question to my social network and you know what? every one is stuck with the same damn problem.

want to have a double check? take any piece of hebrew, copy paste it in word and pages, then try to edit it...

There are a few tips you need to know to make sure this is going to be as painless as possible

Let's start with this. Microsoft word for Mac and Apple's pages are not fully compatible with hebrew. They don't fully support right to left and tweaky editing like bullet list on the right or multi columns

Here is what works decently that i tried

• Google docs, when set correctly is really the best option. BUT you need to be online to use it.
• Mellel is a [ugly but efficient] paid text editor that will treat well hebrew input
• The native Apple's text edit will do to but has very limited editing capabilities.
• I heard Neoffice is hebrew friendly but i have not tried it [available on donation only...]

Apple, Microsoft if you read this: Make Word and Pages fully hebrew compatible. like now...

What are your tips/best practice/top soft to use hebrew on mac?