Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

In the post about Excel, what I initially wrote was really long and heavy that I ended up having to write second post that wasn’t as long as the first for those that had been interested in the subject of the “exploratory trip”.� For those brave souls, here are some tips for the planning and following through of that trip.

Leer más…

Right now, I’m reading a book that says in order to really be really successful at something you have to dedicate 10,000 hours to it. Making an analogy, to really know a business to the point where no one can steal your idea, and you can model it and convert it into a project, you need to find the answers to 100 questions. This post is about the best place to find those said answers.

Leer más…

Considering that there are many people who asked to see an example of what I have built, instead of sending it to each person I am going to upload it as a post (it’s too long to be a comment).

It’s a little boring to read, so I recommend that only those that are dying to have an example of what I talked about in the last post, read this. In saying this, I feel liberated to post something long and difficult to follow, and it’s only for the really motivated who want to know more about this. If you get bored, don’t complain! Before you dismiss me, think of the work I did to make this “complexity”.

To get things straight, this is not a complete list. This is a more detailed explanation of how to build a business model in Excel, using Officenet as an example. I have the list that we once used to plan ON before launching but without explaining it would result in something incomprehensible, I think.

Leer más…

In the post about the theft of ideas I started a discussion thread about the earliest stages of an enterprise. Here I want to talk about another related aspect of launching a business. The post might get a little long or heavy but within it, there is a secret that I believe is key.

Imagine that we have come up with a potential business idea.� What should you do first?� The first thing I do, apart from evaluate my own idea like I was an impartial third-party, is get a helping hand from my old and dear Excel. The majority of people think that in business, Excel only helps with financial projects.� But the reality is that, for me, it is much more than just that.

Leer más…

In the comments to my post on Boca, Ramiro BM refers to a comment I made in a post he wrote on optimism. There I stated that “you don’t need to be optimistic to be an entrepreneur and that I myself am the living proof of it”. As I find this subject very interesting, instead of answering to his comments in the other entry, here goes a whole post.

I believe optimism is a double edged sword. On one side, often, being convinced that the results lying ahead of us will be positive reinforces our determination in adverse circumstances. Many entrepreneurs are “optimism driven”. Optimism is the fundamental fuel for their engines.

But, on the other side, optimism may be a great source of problems in two similar yet different ways.

Leer más…

In this world, there is no sure recipe to succeed. But making sure we fail is quite easy and we can do it ourselves, without help from anyone.

A few years ago I read the book “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. I did not like it at all. The basic philosophy can be summed up in that “when a person really wants something, the whole universe conspires so she/he can realize her/his dream.” It is, in short, the prototypical “you can”, carried to the extreme.

This week I wrote a post on the impact of the financial crisis. In a comment, with great diplomacy Ines (which by one of those coincidences happens to be my mom!) objected to my vision of the crisis as an opportunity, assimilating it to that kind of philosophy.

I acknowledge I may have sounded like that, but nothing is further from my way of thinking. This is a world that in general conspires so that most people do not have what we want. It is almost never true that “if you want to, you can”.

Both the “if you want, you can” and its logically equivalent “If you can not is because you do not want to” are cruel oversimplifications. They generate false expectations, then put the blame on us when we fail.
In my view there is, however, a very important rule that is almost universal: “If you DO NOT want, you can NOT”.

What this rule says is quite different from the other two. It states that something good never occurs without the power of the will to make it happen. The will is not enough, but it is essential.

Leer más…

This week Officenet won the Mercurio Award, given by the Argentine Marketing Association, in the Technology category. This award recognizes the companies with best marketing in the country. For me this is the best prize of all because it wasn’t won thanks to me but despite me!

Leer más…

Given what has been happening in the last few days, the title might lead you to believe I am writing about Lehman Brothers or AIG. But I am not. Today I will tell you about an idea I had many years ago for Officenet that I always loved and failed miserably.

Leer más…