Housing in Rotterdam - The Netherlands

I will move to Rotterdam this August and I am looking for a decent place to live there.

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The reason I am moving there is that I will take a research master at ERIM and hopefully in two years from now I'll start my Phd...

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Well... if I don't find a place to live soon I will not take a Phd in Marketing as I wish, but I'll be able to take one in real estate in Rotterdam for sure :)

Housing in Rotterdam

As I am going to move to Rotterdam this September, I am looking for a place to stay. What I can say is that this city is extremely expensive. I mean it... it's really expensive - about 400 euros for a room in an apartment. And the room is small - 8 - 14 sqm.

Does any one know a good deal for housing in Rotterdam?

Learn business on-line

A few weeks ago I’ve created PICANT Knowledge – a blog where I post videos with lectures and speeches that I consider useful for the people who want to learn about business in general and marketing and management in particular.

There are also a few videos in Romanian.

I hope you enjoy the videos I’ve selected. http://picantknowledge.blogspot.com/

About people

Man is the only creature on Earth smart enough to build the Empire State Building and dumb enough to jump of it.

Romania’s Crown of Steel

After the Independence War in 1877 – 1878 against the Ottoman Empire, in 1881 Romania became a kingdom and Carol I was crowned King Of Romania.

The Story says that the leaders of the political parties and other Romanian leaders of the time came to Carol I (who was of German origin) with a golden crown with precious stones. They offered him the crown saying that he should have this great symbol (the crown) of his power as the king of an independent country.

At that moment Carol I got really mad and said that the country needs money to recover from the war and continue its development as a modern European country. He didn’t accept the golden crown, told the political leaders to melt it, sell the gold and use the money for the country’s development.

Carol I told the political leaders that if they want to offer him a crown they should take one of the cannons captured during the war, melt it and make a crown out of it.

And so they did. Carol I, the first King of Romania as an independent country was crowned with a steel crown. And all of Romania’s kings that followed Carol I were crowned with the same steel crown.

This Steel Crown is exhibited at the Romanian National History Museum in Bucharest.

I believe that all political people, business people and social and religious leaders should learn from King Carol I.

Maybe this would be a solution to the economic difficulties…

Bucharest seen from the top of the Arch of triumph

I’ve lost 3 businesses in 5 years

I have 6 and half years of entrepreneurship.

At the age of 20 while in university along with other colleagues I’ve started an NGO of students called DaAfaceri (YesBusiness). Its goal is to support young people to start their own businesses. It was not much, but we have contributed to some startups and other students that took contact with the NGO got better jobs that they would have got without the NGO.

I left this NGO after almost two years of being president so that other students will get the chance to take it further. In November this year the NGO will be 7 years old.

After I left DaAfaceri (the NGO) I’ve started a small business along with another member of this organization. We were at the age of 22 and we said: “After what we did with the NGO we can’t fail”. Well it took us 5 months to fail. We lost all of our money, we had no investors and our project was a disaster.

It took me 6 months to recover from that failure.

In the summer of 2005 we (the two associates in the company) finished the university and decided to separate.

In September 2005 I have decided to try again on my own. I had no money (in fact I had about 350 USD), but I said that if I do not try again, I’d be sorry.

So I din try again this time with a less ambitious project. And with a lot of hard work, a lot of enthusiasm and not that much business knowledge I was successful … at least for about 16 months.

The business made little money, the market was very small, I wanted it to grow, but soon I realized that there was no place to grow unless I made a large investment. I didn’t have the money to invest; there were no investors willing to invest (in fact in Romania there are very few investors that are venture capitalists and invest in startups).

So in march 2007 I said that my small, very small business is almost broke. So I decided to start a new business along with a friend, a business on training for companies – marketing and management trainings for companies. That business is called PICANT.

PICANT started in July 2007 and we were more successful than we expected. It is true that we didn’t expect too much. 2008 started a little slow and business wasn’t very good, but since May 2008 till December 2008 the business was booming. We worked 6 days a week at least 10 hours a day.

The money was ok, we’ve built a nice brand and 95% percent of our customers were very happy with our trainings.

Unfortunately in 2009 the Economic Crisis touched Romania and the companies cut off their training and marketing budgets. So we who sold marketing trainings lost another business.

The great thing is that we are only 27 years old. (My partner turned 27 last week. I still am 26 for the next 3 months).

So after almost seven years of entrepreneurship, at the age of 27, maybe it is time to do some business…

Elections for the European Parliament

On 7th of June in all the 27 EU countries will be held elections for the European Parliament.

The European Parliament is a unique structure, being the EU’s Legislative. The European Parliament in theory represents the 490 million citizens of the EU.

But it is expected that only about 30% of the voting population to take part in these elections.

This might mean that Europeans are not that much interested in the EU… What I believe it’s very encouraging is the fact that a lot of young citizens will vote. At least this time the young ones will chose the future and not the ones over 70.

Enjoy the EU Anthem

Bags packed, car ready … going on a trip

I’m leaving tomorrow for about one week to visit some friends in the western part of Romania (Timisoara and Oradea). I’ll be driving for 1500 km in 6 days and there are no motorways on this route.

Afterwards I will speak at the event Marketing Days 2009 in Cluj Napoca. The students in marketing at the Babes-Bolyai University organize this event between 11th and 13th may.

I will speak about branding and what are the basics in brand building. I hope the students in Cluj will enjoy my speech.

But till then it will be an awesome weekend in Timisoara – great city and lots of pubs. Monday and Tuesday I’ll be in Oradea staying at some friends and drinking Palinka. Palinka is a local spirit drink with 60% pure alcohol. J

I’ll post pictures from my trip.

Enjoy a beautiful weekend.