Money: An Unofficial Biography of Money by Felix Martin

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When I was 15, I received a gift from my best friend, Max—a book that would shape my understanding of money. From that day on, my friends knew that books were the way to my heart.

Yap Island’s Unique Currency: Giant Stones and a Trust-Based Economy

In the remote Yap Island, found a hundred years ago, an extraordinary monetary system thrived. The inhabitants used enormous coin-like stones with holes in the center, known as Rai stones, as a form of currency. These stones were immovable, some as large as cars, and were quarried from distant islands and transported with great effort.

What made this system work was an intricate web of trust and communal understanding. Ownership of the stones could change without them physically moving. If someone wished to buy something, like 10 kilograms of fish, they would simply declare the transfer of ownership to the fisherman. Everyone in the community would acknowledge the new ownership and the transaction was complete.

The stones didn’t even need to be seen to hold value. In one legendary tale, a Rai stone was lost at sea during transport, but the community continued to recognize its value, and it remained part of the island’s currency system.

This unique approach to money, rooted in social trust and shared belief, challenges conventional economic thinking and provides a fascinating glimpse into how value can be ascribed and exchanged in diverse cultures.

The Birth of Forwards and Futures: Lyon, 1535

In the bustling market town of Lyon, France, in 1535, an extraordinary transformation was taking place. Amidst the cacophony of sellers peddling meats, fruits, and tools, one man stood out. He had no physical products, just a fountain pen, paper, and an idea that would revolutionize trading.

This man began selling the future by signing contracts to buy wheat at predefined prices and reselling them at higher rates. This practice, known as Forwards or Futures, was a radical departure from traditional commerce. It attracted attention, skepticism, and eventually imitation. Other traders started following suit, and soon, Lyon’s market was flooded with these future contracts.

The city’s reputation grew, attracting merchants and financiers from far and wide. Banks and financial institutions took notice, and Lyon became a hub for innovation in finance. By the end of the century, it was not only France’s financial center but also the heart of Europe’s burgeoning capital market. The man with the fountain pen had set in motion a wave that would eventually shape modern stock markets.

Eric’s Adventure: Risk, Profit, and the Birth of Joint-Stock Companies

Across the sea, in the small but ambitious trading nation of the Netherlands, a Dutch trader named Eric had a vision. He dreamed of building ships to explore and trade with distant lands, but his ambition was larger than his credit. Banks and friends lent what they could, but it was never enough.

Undeterred, Eric took a novel approach. Instead of seeking credit, he asked investors to buy a share of his profits. This was a new concept, and it attracted adventurous and like-minded individuals who saw the potential in overseas trade.

Eric’s first voyage was a resounding success, bringing in profits that exceeded all expectations. Word spread quickly, and more people clamored to invest in Eric’s next expedition. His fleet grew, and so did his reputation.

However, managing the growing number of investors became a Herculean task. There were disputes over ownership, profits, and investment terms. The government, too, struggled to track who owned what and how much tax was due.

The solution was as innovative as Eric’s trading model—a centralized exchange where shares in his ventures, and those of his competitors, could be bought and sold. This was the genesis of the joint-stock company and the stock market, concepts that would define global commerce for centuries to come.

With each new voyage, risks and rewards were shared among an ever-growing pool of investors. The idea spread across Europe, laying the groundwork for modern corporations and investment structures. Eric’s vision had not only opened new trade routes but also charted a course for the future of business and finance.

John Law: The Gambler Who Shaped France’s Monetary System

John Law, a charismatic Scotsman, was a gambler, banker, and economist whose ideas would leave an indelible mark on France’s monetary system. Sentenced to death in Britain for killing a man in a duel, Law escaped to Europe, where his financial acumen caught the attention of France’s regent.

France was in financial ruin after years of war, and Law proposed a radical solution: replace gold and silver with paper money backed by land. He believed this would stimulate the economy and reduce the national debt.

In 1716, Law founded the Banque Générale, issuing paper money that could be exchanged for coins. His ideas were initially successful, and Law’s influence grew. He took over the Mississippi Company, controlling French trade with the Americas, and his paper money fueled a speculative bubble.

However, Law’s success was short-lived. Doubts about the real value of the paper money led to a loss of confidence, and the bubble burst. Law was forced to flee France in disgrace, his innovations leading to financial chaos.

Yet, despite the catastrophic end, Law’s ideas were ahead of their time. He foresaw the potential of a centralized banking system, fiat currency, and the complex interplay of economics and psychology. His story is a cautionary tale about innovation, ambition, and the fragile nature of economic systems, but also a testament to the power of ideas to shape history.

These expanded sections provide a more comprehensive view of the unique currency system of Yap Island and the complex story of John Law. By delving into the details, the narrative paints a vivid picture of these historical phenomena, offering readers a deeper understanding of the diverse and often surprising world of money.

Beyond the Stories: A Rich Exploration of Money

“Money: An Unofficial Biography of Money” by Felix Martin goes beyond the fascinating stories of Yap Island, Lyon, Eric’s adventures, and John Law. It dives into the complexities of debt, the art of printing money (seigniorage), the ideologies of capitalism and communism, the evolution from the gold standard to fiat currency, and the prominence of the U.S. dollar.

This article was edited by ChatGPT, which assisted me in crafting the storytelling, paraphrasing sentences, and verifying facts from both the book “Money: An Unofficial Biography of Money” by Felix Martin and my own memory. The collaboration has helped shape a more engaging and accurate representation of the book’s rich exploration of money and its multifaceted history.

Rules:

The suit is only dark blue or dark gray. Black is allowed only at evening events with the black-tie dress code, as well as at funerals and weddings.
The jacket is single-breasted, with two or three buttons. Length — up to the middle of the palm of a freely hanging hand. The fabric is solid, dense, without iridescence (chameleon effect), and gloss.
Trousers of a classic cut, with arrows. The length is up to the middle of the heel with one front fold above the shoe.
The shirt is white, plain, opaque (not transparent), and without pockets. Cuffs with one or two buttons are acceptable, but French cuffs are preferable, with medium-sized cufflinks of laconic shapes. The cuff should peek out from under the jacket by 1-1.5 cm.
The tie without glossy gloss, plain, muted colors (dark red, dark blue, dark gray, graphite). Small geometric patterns or contrasting stripes are acceptable. The tie should not be too wide, and its knot should not be too large. The length should reach the middle of the belt.
The belt is only made of smooth matte leather with a classic laconic buckle. The color of the belt matches the color of the shoes.
Shoes — oxfords or derbies made of smooth matte black leather. Brown shoes are only allowed in the heat. The sole is thin, the heel is 3-5 cm.
Socks up to the middle of the calf, are selected in the color of shoes or trousers. White or multicolored socks are not allowed.

These are generally accepted rules. But some politicians deviate from the rules and add their own corporate identity: Trump wears a bright red tie and printed socks; Putin most likely has higher heels. Macron sometimes wears a turtleneck under the jacket. Canadian leader Trudo wears socks with ducks and star wars. Some civilizations are also wearing traditional costumes, e. g., the Saudi Arabian prince wears a thawb (or dishdasha).

The suits are meaningful. For example, Marcon wears a turtleneck under the jacket if he expects changes from the politician’s decision. The clumsy oversized non-ironed costume can mean that person does not care about the public – Trump is one of them. Obama, at the conference against terrorists, wore a beige suit, that seemed too informal in a context of a speech on such a serious issue. A light suid is only used at weddings and on the beach.

Brands:
Putin wears Brioni and Kiton (4000-8000€). Macron wears a local brand, Jonas et Cie, for just 380€. Biden wore Ralph Lauren at the inauguration. Hart Schaffner Marx and Hickey Freeman produce suits for presidents for 3000-5000€. So, the price of the suit may be any: 400€, 3000€, 8000€ and higher.

Source: RBC.ru

I love buying premium products. I buy everything I need and I afford any hobbies I want. But I don’t become poor after purchasing all of this stuff. And most of the time I only pay 20-30% of the item’s price. How can I afford to buy an iPhone for 300€? How do I get money after buying an expensive camera? Let’s learn about depreciation.

When you buy stuff, look at 3 things: a lifetime of a product, It is hard to break, for how much will I be able to sell this stuff in the future?

Buy 1-year-old stuff

I don’t buy new iPhones, Macbooks, cameras, or bikes (i hope soon I will add cars here). Instead, I buy 1-year-old items. For example, I bought iPhone 11 pro 256 GB just for 600€, while the 12th was priced at 1200€. This iPhone was in perfect condition and was just 6 months old. I keep it already for 2 years and I can sell it for 450€ (Sep 2022). However, I broke Face-Id while swimming and now I have to give a discount and sell it for 300€. The total cost of an iPhone usage was 300€, or 150€ per year or 12.5€ per month.

Some people sell their 1-year-old phones to buy new ones. They sell it for 50%-70% of the price. That means, that to have a new iPhone each year, a person should pay a difference of 600€ between the initial price and selling price, or 50€ per month. But if you wanna have the previous model and keep it for 2 years, the monthly payment is just 12.5€. It is 4 times cheaper to have the previous model. If you keep the old model for a longer time, maybe you can even pay 10€ per month. To clarify, it does not mean that you pay someone € each month, it just shows how much value the phone loses every month.

Depreciation is the value, that an item loses each month or year. It is also treated as the real cost of usage of a good. In theory, you should take the price of a good when you bought it and the selling price after the expected time of usage. Then you subtract these prices and divide them by the number of years or months that you plan to use that stuff. For an iPhone 14, it will be (1200-600)/3 = 200€ per year if we assume that we use a 1200€ iPhone for 3 years and sell it for 600€.

Depreciation can be counted linearly, or more complicated. For easiness, assume that in the first year the item loses the same cost as in the next 2 years combined.

Used items are Inflation-free. That means if the price for new models goes up, the used items will cost the same as before. It is just a rule. For example, in Russia, there is huge inflation in cars. The previous models of a car cost 100k€ 1 year ago, the new model cost 300k€ due to the import restrictions. We could imagine, that if these cars still have the same engine and interior, the price for the one-year-old car should also rise dramatically. However, it is not the case. For example, the used Audi Q7 of 2020 with 50k km costs 70k€, while the new one of 2022 costs 250k€. The only difference between them is the small adjustment in the exterior and interior.

Different countries have different prices. For example, I bought a used camera, Sony a7 II for just 570€. When I came to Russia, it appeared that I can sell it for 1.2k€. So, I can sell it here and get a 600€ profit. It is known as Arbitrage. It is when you profit from the difference in prices without risk.

Buy high quality

Don’t buy low quality. Such items are easy to break, and their lifetime is short. You will not be able to sell it, so you just throw it in the rubbish bin after some time. Keep in mind that cheap low quality items are sometimes made with the child force and in poor worker conditions. And by buying and throwing the bad quality items in the rubbish bin, you are polluting nature.

High-quality items last long, show prestige and are beautiful and comfortable.

Also buy new

Not every item can be bought or used. Don’t buy used headphones, parachutes, or stuff you know nothing about. For example, I want to buy a bike for 2.8k€. It is expensive. I could probably find the one-year-old bike, but I don’t know how to check the bike for quality, or I don’t want to change the details. In such situations, I can either hire a professional or ask a friend for help. Or just buy a new one. The bike, for example, has a lifetime of 7 years on average, and then the depreciation will be 2800/7 = 400€. Of course, a bike can be sold even for 1000€ in 7 years, because we can change details and make repairments each year, but let’s assume that we do nothing. So, the cost of a bike will be 33€ per month. It is not too much for high quality.

What about fashion

Fashion is complicated. The fashion houses know that people want to be trendy, and the style changes each half a year. I don’t know if it is a good idea to buy used clothes, but it is a good idea to buy expensive classical outfits. For men it is easy – just buy suits for 2k€ each and use them for a decade. Buy good shirts, t-shirts, and 8 pairs of shoes for different events. The men’s classics change too slowly. There are also trendy casual outfits that should be changed more often.

For women, it does not work. Fashion for women is much more important. It is a way to show her status and prove to herself that she is the most beautiful. However, some brands like Burberry don’t change their fashion style too often. Gucci can also be worn for a quite long time. I recommend not buying the brand stuff, but quality stuff. Don’t be a crank and don’t buy an item with huge brand logos. Instead, buy something attractive. You will never find a brand on a 5k€ dress and suit.

When buying new clothes, remember how can you combine them with other clothes or whether you already have enough outfits for some occasions. Maybe you just need to buy high-quality t-shirts instead of 20 t-shirts with cheap prints. I have an excel file, where I put all the wardrobe items in my Austrian house. It appeared that I have items, that costs 6000€ in total. But I have only a few things that cost more than 100€. I understood that I have too many cheap clothes up to 25€. And the thing is that I wear such clothes for 1 or 2 years. The expensive items, however, I wear for a much longer time. I also found out that I have 5 suits, and 4 of them cost less than 200€ each.

I hope, after reading this article, you will buy quality stuff for lower prices and will afford anything you want.

(the prices are being updated as well as information till 15th September) Let’s say, we open a coffee shop on the street, where we sell only espresso. How much should the price be? And what difficulties will we face when opening?

One-time purchase

• Coffee machine – 15000€
• furniture – 5000€
• tools and accessories – 500€
• brand development – 1000€
• card terminal – 50€
• certificate and legal procedures

Monthly purchase

• Rent – 1000€
• Electricity – 1000€
• Employees – 5700€
• cleaning, accountant, lawyer, insurance – 500€

Per-cup purchase

• disposable cup – 0.1€
• coffee beans – 0.4€
• card commission – 2%

Certification

To sell Coffee, you need approval from the state. In Vienna, it is WKO (Wirtschaftskammer Organisation, or economic chamber in English). By the way, you don’t need it if you sell beverages in cans or bottles and if you sell simple food, like sandwiches, but you can only have max of 8 guests inside of a cafe. Not our case.

Rent

We rent a coffee shop on the ground floor of the shopping street. Let’s say we pay 1000€ for 20 m2 and expect to have 15 customers per hour on average. You may also find an already equipped coffee shop and just pay an auflösung (price for the furniture and equipment).

If only one employee works in a coffee shop, you don’t need a toilet by the law. Baristas can work at different time and then they will be treated as one employee in WC questions.

The place should have clean water, a sink, air conditioning, heating, and low humidity. If humidity is high, the beans can become bad. If there will not be air conditioning or heating, the employee will not be able to work in a coffee shop by the law. For example, in the UK when the temperature is less than 16 degrees celsius the employee is not allowed to work. In Austria, I found only the maximal allowed temperature of 32.5 degrees. And we will have to pay the employee even though that the shop is closed.

We also need to take insurance that covers all the things inside, especially the coffee machine.

Electricity

Based on https://www.statista.com/statistics/1271527/austria-monthly-wholesale-electricity-price/Statista, the price for 1 Megawatt was 359$ on July 2022, while before it was just 30-50€. The high prices for electricity are compensated by lower rent prices as well as governmental help.

Coffee machine

The coffee machine is the most expensive stuff inside of a coffee shop and is as important as beans. There are two main brands – La Cimbali, La Marzocco. both of them cost from 10000€ to 15000€. La Marzocco is more traditional, while La Cimbali tries to implement new technologies in the coffee machine. La Marzocco attracts coffee lovers, and they are ready to pay a premium for coffee made in this machine.

read about the difference between La Marzocco and La Cimbali

Why is it so expensive? This is due to the pressing mechanism. By the way, Espresso got the name from “press”, the process of pressing the ground coffee and water flowing through it. The pressure a coffee machine can do and the boiling process is the most important in coffee brewing. The machines are made out of thick metal, which makes cleaning easy. These machines last for decades (in the museum of Salzburg I have seen the model of the 1950th that can still work well).

Therefore, the price of the used coffee machine is still high. For example, a woman sells La Marzocco Ep for 5900€, that she bought in 2017 while the new costs €11900. Ps., this model is not produced anymore, and I found only one seller. For such a price, you may buy better models of La Marzocco.

To count the price of usage of a coffee machine or depreciation, we subtract the selling price from buying price, for example, 15000€-10000€= 5000€, and divide the years that we use the machine. Let’s say, 5 years. 5000€/5 years = 1000€, or 83€ per month.

additional coffee machines

Some people like Moka, the 50$ pot with 2 separate levels: water and ground coffee on the lower level. The pot is boiling on the stove. The brown liquid goes to the higher level, which is Moka coffee. When the higher level of a pot is full, the coffee is ready to be served in cups. I, personally, don’t like such a coffee due to the lack of foam and too huge amount of water per gram of coffee. Italians love it and drink it every breakfast instead of tea.

Coffee beans

• Price of arabica – 40€ per kilo
• 10g for each portion, or 0.40€

For coffee shops, we use the finest coffee beans. Usually, they are not sold to households, but to coffee shops.
For each espresso, we need 10 grams of ground coffee.

Coffee beans can be kept 4 months after roasting, later they lose their taste.

Tip: Portuguese love espresso that is made of ground coffee that is left after making the first espresso. They think that there is less caffeine inside this coffee. They ask to pour the coffee into the second cup. For the barista, it costs just a second cup (0.10€) and hot water. The used ground coffee will be anyways in the bin. You may either set a small price for such coffee or even give it for free to get loyal customers.

We don’t count sugar and cinnamon, they cost just a cent per cup.

Cups

We don’t have sitting places. We could use the bar table as in Italy, but we have only disposable (1-time use) cups for simplicity. The average price of bio cups is 10 cents. If you want to have your cups, use 10 cents as the price for cleaning, and use of a cup, which includes the price of buying the cup (e. g., porcelain espresso cup for 9€ each), the risk of breaking and stealing.

We expect 1 customer every 4 minutes (15 cups per hour). We are open daily from 8 am to 9 pm (13 hours per day). 13 hours * 30 calendar days = 390 hours, or 5850 cups per month.

Employees

Baristas are paid hourly. They come 30 min before opening and leave 30 min after closing. They clean stuff and count the inventory. It is 15 hours per day. A person can’t work more than 8.5 hours a day in Austria and must not work more than 40 hours per week (I’ll check this information). We need 4 baristas – 2 for work days and 2 for weekends.

Tip: the less a person earns, the less % of taxes are to be paid in Austria. This is due to the progressive taxes.

First, we pay for social contributions, which is nearly 18%. If a person earns 18000€ of earnings, then an employer pays 3500 of social contributions, you pay 21866$ gross. We pay taxes from income – contributions, 18000-3500 = 14500. Then we deduct 11000 of non-taxable amount 14500-11000 = 3500 and take 20% of taxes which is 700€. But taxes are deducted from the income of a person, not from your payments. The real income of a person will be nearly 17300€.

In our example, we pay for 7-hour work for each worker. All of them work for the salary for barista, which is 12€ per hour. It totals 7*12 = 84€ per day or 1680€ per month for work-day baristas and 672€ for weekend baristas.

We pay 2040€ and 816€ to baristas. In total, it is 2040*2 + 816*2 = 5712€ per month.

Count

Fixed costs per month: Rent (2000€) + cost of use of the Coffee machine (83€) + Salaries (5712€) + other costs (600€) = 8400€ approximately per month

For simplicity, we count furniture in rent, tools, accessories, and payment terminals in other costs

Variable costs per cup = beans (0.4€) + cups (0.1€) + terminal use.

We also need to pay VAT if we earn more than 30000€ in profit. The VAT is the tax per selling of an item, which totals 20% of the final price. But we don’t pay so much. We deduct 20% from the goods that we have bought – 20% from beans and cups, or 10 cents. In the EU the majority of the goods produced and sold over EU are tax-deductible, even the coffee machine is tax-deductible, it is 16.6€ per month. The same with the rent, however, if you buy a place, it is an investment, that is not tax deductible.

To get the break-even, 5850cups*(price*(1-terminal commission(2%))-variable cost(0.5€)) – fixed costs(8400€) = 0. To find the price I created an online program:

I found that with the price of 2€ we are break even and even make revenue of 141$.
We pay pay taxes from profit, 23.1%. Our profit is 108€.

open a program. Change the number and find the best prices and amount of cups to be sold

As you have seen, the coffee shop cannot sell espresso for less than 2€. The next time you go to the coffee shop keep it in mind.

Educational advertising brings value to a person. The reader learns, explores new themes, and obtains new values. Let’s see an example:

Alex wants to buy coffee beans. Alex knows nothing about coffee beans. Alex does the next actions:

1. He googles “how to choose a coffee.
2. Alex opens the most relevant blog.
3. He reads the article, for example this one.
4. Alex reads about roasting, types of beans, such as Robusta and Arabica, tastes, and storing a coffee.
5. Alex clicks on a suggested article about choosing coffee producers.
6. He finds the best coffee and a producer based on his preferences, even without tasting it.

Alex finds out that he can buy these coffee beans in a shop that runs this blog. Alex trusts the coffee shop website because the website educated him. Moreover, Alex sees that the guys in this coffee shop know the business and know everything about coffee. Alex is loyal to them and is ready to buy a product. Even if the price is higher.

The coffee shop could also show their expenses. The customer then understands a fair price for coffee and sees how much the company profits from it. If the customer, Alex, got from the blog precious information, he will reward the company with this profit (margin). And Alex will continue buying from this coffee shop if the company brings him more and more value.

Alex will recommend your blog to friends or educate them himself, and he will more probably give a link to your website. Alex will not recommend some bullsh*t; that is why the product that the company sells must have a high quality. Otherwise, Alex is scammed.

The blog and articles are assets of a company. A blog is a property that belongs to a company. Articles can also be posted on foreign resources, such as business journals (in Russia: vc.ru or Journal.tinkoff.ru), personal blogs (to be paid), or social networks: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, etc.

blogs and articles are powerful tools to attract customers. In my projects, I use articles as the primary source of attracting customers, investors, and employees. For example, I posted an article about bicycle lockers and in 1 week, I got 7.5k views, 100 likes, and 100 comments. I made new connections with 3 interesting people in Austria and got 5 contacts of people interested to help in a project and help with production. I also made a survey in this article, in which 500 people participated. I understood the demand and price for a parking spot in a given sample. I paid nothing for this blog but spent 4 hours of my life.

Youtube videos are also assets. Videos require more time and equipment. It is harder to link to a video, and the information from the video is harder to access. For example, you want to compare 2 coffee beans. You are interested in the type of coffee, size, and taste. You can easily find it in a table in a text, but if you watch a video, you search for a timestamp where the table is shown. To find information about taste, you should listen to a whole video or a fragment that you also have to find. But the video gives you a picture: a cup in which you pour a coffee, a foam from coffee, the foam elasticity, videos from picturesque places where the coffee was taken, and the roasting process.

Videos are great to show the process of production or properties, and use of a product. for example, seven miles coffee shop shows educational videos of how to brew coffee, recipes, competitions, and funny videos. They sell coffee beans online and sell coffee drinks in cafés. They have 150k subscribers, and I am sure they don’t spend too much money on ads.

Videos get old fast. In 4-6 years, the videos become old, and just a few people will watch them – there are competition and design trend changes. With a blog, it is easier – you may edit text and add fresh information. In a blog, you may also change the design theme – just make some changes in a code, and that’s it.

why not use ads

Ads are also powerful. However, an advertisement mainly works if a company has enough money to provide many ads and show them constantly on different sources. If a company stops the ad campaign, the new customers will stop coming, and the existing customers will leave. Profit in companies that rely primarily on ads and don’t have a brand, like Coca-Cola, will be small or even a loss. Let’s see 2 examples:

T-Mobile is a cellular carrier, that decided to enter the Austrian market. Austria already had a market leader – A1. T-Mobile had to enter the market fast and take a huge market share. Marketologists decided to attract people from Vienna, the capital of Austria, by showing ads offline in a city.

Marketologist placed ads on all available banners in Vienna: on houses, highways, train stations, and even banners on trams. There were no banners left so A1 could not post ads anywhere in a city. The ads were shown for 2 weeks everywhere, and in the next weeks, the number of banners was decreasing. Everyone knew about T-mobile after this campaign, and thousands of people became customers of T-Mobile.

The company spent millions of dollars on such an advertisement. Nowadays, the company does not make too many ads and I have even forgotten about T-Mobile, and only after meeting with a marketing specialist from T-Mobile I learned about that case. That means, that ads should stay everywhere to remember a brand.

Casper Sleep company that produces matrasses and sells them online never made a profit. However, Casper Sleep went to IPO on NASDAQ, and the market capitalization was at a max of one billion dollars. Casper sold matrasses via Instagram ads and other sources (as well as any other company).

To acquire one customer, the company pays hundreds of dollars, and with all the costs, they sell mattresses at a loss. The idea was to make a brand like Coca-Cola, but it did not happen. Investors understood that such business did not work and sold their shares. As a result, a company was delisted from NASDAQ, with market capitalisation of 280m$.

Save contacts

If you visit events or talk to new people, you need to leave contacts. The most popular ways are to show a QR for LinkedIn or Instagram, tell a phone number, or give a business card. From my experience, When I write a phone number, I have only time to write the name and the name of the organization – it takes 1 minute to do the whole process, It may sound a little, but when you talk with 40 people on one event, these 40 minutes become tremendous.

I had a problem at a summit in St.Gallen with the LinkedIn QR code – I did not find how to open it. I spent 2 minutes with a person trying to understand where the QR code was – in the end, we just changed the phone numbers (we could also find the names on Linkedin, but we did not do it). And also, people have a thousand connections on Linkedin, so your contact will be one of the thousands of similar contacts. But I still think that LinkedIn is the best social business network.

Business cards are the easiest way to show leave contacts. Within 5 seconds, the business card is in your interlocutor’s hands (companion’s). Also, millennials and older people use business cards by default – they expect to get the business card from you. That is why I use business cards.

Old card

The first 100 business cards I made when I was 16, I was making a project coldcaller.ru. I wrote in Russian: “hello! I am Daniill Kovekh, a Founder of Coldcaller.ru”, my phone number and a corporate email. I put a QR code linked to a website on the other side. I used a white background and black text. I used capital letters without serifs (grotesques) that were tall and narrow. I used the mid-price matte paper so that I could write on it.

New card

In April, I made 150 business cards with a new design. These business cards are personal and for universal use. I pointed out the name of a blog as a header. This is the primary information because, in a blog, a person finds all the links he can be interested in – CV, Linkedin, Projects, and the art shop. I don’t need QR on a business card because Koveh.com is easy to write and remember.

I wrote my email daniil@koveh.com on one side. I didn’t add the telephone number – first, I have different phone numbers: 2 phone numbers in Russia and two phone numbers in Austria, and soon, 1 in America. So, mentioning any will not mean that I respond from the telephone. The email, as well as the domain koveh.com, remains unchanged forever. Moreover, I don’t want to give my telephone number to everyone, and it should remain private.

I mentioned skills: Art, Architecture, Finances, Investing, Data science. I also mentioned that I know 3 languages: English, Russian, and German. I am not planning to learn new languages to a high level, so the information will be actual for a long time. I also wrote consulting and projects, because I create my projects (AKA startups, but I don’t like this word, It is now a synonym for “looser”), and make consultations on Investments, Marketing in the real estate market, and I am planning to consult about Architecture, Construction, and Urban Planning, as well as investments in Art, Wine, and Real Estate.

To make a business card interesting, I made an infinite stripe of skills I offer. The idea is that these skills are infinite, but later I decided to end with the starting word so that it looks like a separate printing or a pattern.

The words in the middle are huge; the margin from the borders compensates for the size. I Increased the letter-spacing because the letter “V” has too much white space at the bottom. I chose the serif fonts – they are easy to read.
The letters also remind me of Russia, especially the letter “M” reminds me of Moscow. The letter is unique because it has two different serifs: Linear serif and curved serif.

Unfortunately, I ordered an American card size, that is longer than the standard credit-card size.