George Lemnaru

Interview for How to Web

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 02:23:00 -0700

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...

Start small if you plan to become Big

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:07:00 -0700

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!

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Romanian Internet Chippendales Video leaked

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:49:25 -0700

So finally we couldn't keep this secret anymore: Biz magazine found out that the Romanian online entrepreneurs are creating a "chippendales" type band. Together with Radu Ionescu, Sergiu Biris, Bobby Voicu, Marius Ghenea and Cristi Manafu we decided to take this step in order to bring the Romanian online industry to the next level. Why we did this? I think everybody had his own reasons: Sergiu Biris: "I was always an animal rights activist so I want to use this opportunity to tell to the people that animals should not be used for their fur. If this means using my body to bring more attention to this issue - hell, yeah!" Cristi Manafu: "I think women in Romania don't have enough reasons to be happy. The reasons for this start from historical background to the state of our economy. Appearing half naked is like a present that I offer to them, and I hope that this will be just one of the first steps that we all have to do to make Romanian women happier." Me and Bobby Voicu: "First we didn't agree. We didn't wanted to reach this state where every woman that we meet considers us just a pack of muscles. We don't want to be considered only objects!!! But then we changed our minds." Radu Ionescu: "I thought that it was a stupid idea but I've been told that Marius Ghenea was in so I participated too." Marius Ghenea: "Somebody told me that there is this cool photo shooting where Radu Ionescu is participating so I found it quite an interesting idea." More pictures and info can be found in this month edition of Biz magazine. PS: This blog post is a joke. The guys never said those things (or at least I never heard them).

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If you want to be extraordinary, nobody can stop you

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:29:10 -0700

The movie "2081" is a masterpiece of the cinematographic art presenting a future where everybody is forced to be equal. It is only 30 minutes long and during this time it makes you realize how lucky you are for having the freedom to become smarter, more beautiful and stronger. Our parents and our grandparents, living a big part of their life under a communist regime, didn't had this opportunity. The sad thing is that many of them don't even realize that this opportunity exists now. Is this true or people of our age have the same problem? Click here to see the movie

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eRepublik - The most promising online project created in Romania

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:54:31 -0700

During the celebration of their 10th year anniversary Biz magazine offered to eRepublik.com the prize for the Most promising online project created in Romania. I am really happy to see the amount of trust that eRepublik receives and I do hope that more and more interesting international start-ups will appear from Romania.

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TechCrunch Europa Awards nomination

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:13:04 -0700

eRepublik has been nominated in the Best Entertainment Application or Service in Europe Middle East and Africa at TechCrunc Europa Awards. Any vote for eRepublik helps: http://bit.ly/2zy0c Thanks

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eRepublik raises €2m to further develop the New World

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:57:33 -0700

eRepublik right now represents about 20% of the final product. I do believe that the project is a huge opportunity and has huge chances to continue and even increase it's growth. And it seems I am not the only one to believe this as AGF Private Equity invested 2 million euro in this development plan. More details in the eRepublik blog. PS: Here's a video of me and Alexis chatting about this funding (sorry, I am nervous in front of camera, as always :) ):

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Romanian top 100 young managers - “Business magazin”

Mon, 25 May 2009 09:37:07 -0700

I was honored and surprised to know that Business Magazin selected me as one of the top 100 Romanian young managers. I was nominated for the IT&C and Entrepreneurship categories and won the special prize: "A world without crisis". Being the youngest manager to get a prize I received an absolutely beautiful Maurice Lacroix watch. I was also the luckiest winner because I could have the chance to present in a few words eRepublik, with it's beautiful crisis and drama. In the end I would like to point out that in my opinion this prize was received because of the great eRepublik team and because of the extraordinary community of more than 100.000 active citizens that we have. Thank you

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Enemies or comrades

Tue, 19 May 2009 12:43:59 -0700

A great presentation of what eRepublik offers done by one if it's own citizens (Dishmcds - ex-president of United States): "Erepublik teaches us how to properly organise, manage, and implement techniques which we've all wanted to try. How many people try to organise Communism because they want to see if it really works, and believe it's basic theory? How many of those people realise the basic reason it hasn't worked isn't said theory, but rather it's implementation. Erepublik offers us a platform in which to test such things, and often times teaches us how to manage various situations within our own life, be it family, friends, or work. " To complete that we can see also the results of our latest poll (15.000 eRepublik citizens responded): 37% consider social interaction the most important element of eRepublik while 29% consider fighting as more important. Still about social interaction there's a line in the same article that I love it: "You're going to get more accomplished working alongside someone rather than against them." The article is "A Whole New World Part 3: Lessons In Life"

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eRepublik on Academia Catavencu

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:59:22 -0700

Happy to see that one of the top quality (from my point of view) publications in Romania, Academia Catavencu, has a very nice presentation of eRepublik. It's comments also are very interesting to read. Checking the latest articles in eRepublik, it looks like the Romanian community is doing it's best to make that article stand out so that more and more Romanian join their cause. That's quite similar with what the Hungarian community did, when thousands of new Hungarians were born because of a very good Hungarian article about eRepublik. At that point citizens of eHungary helped with info and pictures to create that article. It was the reason for the second Hungarian baby boom.

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Happy birthday, eRepublik!

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:32:04 -0800

One year of Erepublik. Lovely hardworking year :) More details in the Erepublik Insider

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Erepublik V1 launch (3 days after)

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:29:34 -0700

3 days passed since Erepublik V1 became public. My conclusions: 1. Short term it was a very bad decision, because: - still there are bugs to be resolved; - still we have to work more on scalability; - the citizens were not yet prepared for all the huge changes we have done in the game mechanics; - a complete change in the design hard to be digested in a short period. 2. Long term it was a very good decision, because: - there were much problems in Beta that in long term would not allow the project to develop, as later as we've made the change, as harder the change would have been; - instead of having 2 projects to work on (beta and V1 development) we now have one version where is much easier to fix problems and add new features on it. - we had 35.000 people putting pressure on us to launch "NOW"; - we now have 35.000 people putting pressure on us to improve the project "NOW"; I address a big THANK YOU to all the citizens that trust in our power to resolve those problems and to improve the project furthermore. I also address a big THANK YOU to all the citizens that are telling us what they don't like in V1. I know that they tell us because they care about Erepublik. At least for me 3 days of V1 were like 3 months of Beta.

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Erepublik angel round - full speed for V1

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:42:21 -0700

Happy to announce that we closed the Erepublik angel round. For more details please visit Alexis Bonte's blog or download the press release from the Erepublik media section. The most important benefits that we have: - we are now able to focus on our next goals: 1. launching V1 in autumn, 2. reaching 140.000 active Citizens by the end of the year; - investors with very good internet experience not only as investors but also as start-up founders and executives. Here is how excited we are at 11 PM in the office:

erepublik angel round Vezi mai multe video Diverse »

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Helping people

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:41:31 -0700

"I want the people that have self motivation to get shit done. And people that don't have the drive to succeed fail. You don't get stronger by having things handed to you." Credits: GnolTac , from an Erepublik forum discussion.

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Centrofarm starts delivering outside Bucharest too

Tue, 20 May 2008 15:16:47 -0700

Starting this week www.Centrofarm.ro delivers the orders outside Bucharest too. The minimum order value is 20 RON, the shipping tax is 21 RON (for Bucharest the shipping is free) and the delivery time is maximum 24 h. An interesting fact is that, until now, the medium value of an order is double for the deliveries outside Bucharest. Centrofarm.ro is managed by Liviu Negulescu and his team.

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