Tudor Bîrlea

The product you developed is not selling, even though you have already tried the 100s growth-hacking tips and tricks list. Even Neil Patel’s guide only brings you more confusion. It’s time for you to face what the real problem is. Instead of learning, experimenting and sometimes failing, you are spending time iterating on meaningless aspects and side features of your product. Meanwhile, someone, somewhere is working way more efficiently on a product similar to or better than yours.

In 2011, Marc Andreeseen, general partner and cofounder of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreeseen Horowitz, stated that “software is eating the world” and will continue to do so. Fast forward to now. We are reaching the end of 2014, and now more than ever there is an “entrepreneurial explosion” in which new companies are disrupting every niche of every industry. There are building blocks that allow for faster iteration (APIs, open sourced code, cheap hosting, free education on programming frameworks, etc.), industry methods that make it accessible for an aspiring entrepreneur to launch a company (eg, the lean startup), and accelerators and programs that offer hands-on support and assistance throughout the journey.

We all know it: startups have become a hot trend, especially in the last 7-8 years, with success stories which amaze us and give us a proper rush. If you are into tech, Silicon Valley is undoubltely a benchmark and a promised land for the entrepreneurs from anywere. And for good reasons. Cloning, more or less, the same model, places like London, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Tallin or even Paris have started to become more and more prominent as European epicentres for founding and developing startups. In a typically Transylvanian pacing, Cluj seems to follow the same model.