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Bootstrapping Start-ups
An anonymous reader writes "How many of us wanted to follow
our dream and start our own start-up? How many of us thought that it can't be done due to costs, the need of big bucks and convincing some snotty VC? Well it didn't stop these guys. The most current success story is
social networking software Huminity which
has been on /.
before. The recipe for their success was: open source, clustering $100/mo
servers, using the web to find native translators instead of using over priced
local ones and hiring GUI designers from popular skins download sites."
Argh my eyes! They're still blinking!
I have several ideas that could make great money but they ultimately require money to make money. Does anyone have a good suggestion for raising capital without forfeiting the rights to one's intellectual property?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
... their bandwidth costs have forced them to close down.
and i am the only employee/CEO of the company....browse pr0n all day. haven't figured out how to get somebody to pay me for it though
I thought I tried Huminity out once and I didn't find it particularly useful or accurate. Maybe I just used something similar. Anyone have any experience with this thing as it is now?
There are no more angels willing to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Sure, if by angels you mean idiots.
yeah, if you use the web to get translators say, in india or canada then you can save money by relocating otherwise american jobs into third world countries where you can get an hour of labor for a dime or so without paying for insurance or anything.
Good Idea.
That's not it. It's already set to English U.S. as the primary language. It is detecting something else. And, as I mentioned before, GNU's website does it too.
I have been pwned because my
Try toothpicks.
are just lazy and know that we will never do the work involved with a startup anyway.
Site? What site?
really now, how many people have made a web based version of this already where we don't have to bother with installing an application. and as for the design of the site and the product, i'm sure there are plenty of skilled designers out there who would give them a helping hand, because they sure need it.
What is their business model? Selling people t-shirts while they use the software for free?
I'm one guy. I also sell t-shirts and give away software. I'm a startup too!
Contract out to a conservative Christian thinktank and sell them statistical reports on the amount of depravity on the net.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Hey...saving bucks on the servers / connection surely "pays off" now ;P
If you're a start up, like me, do not, repeat, *do not* make the government your first contract. They will bleed you dry with all the waiting due to red tape and politics.
I now understand the $700 toilet seat:
* $5.95 for materials
* $694.05 for overhead
Completely justified IMHO
tallgreen.com Recent startup, still relativly small, Provide Open Source CMS hosting using WebGUI (cms), Communigate (email) AWStats (stats), Resin and other open source software. No VC, No debt, No CTO, Low overhead and primarily service based. It doesn't take much to start a small company and grow. Know your market, find ways to reduce costs, provide good products/services.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Sometime you don't need money to make money, just the will to rummage in the trash.
There's always the story of Wallflower, a company that makes digital picture frames. They got their start by buying ancient laptops (considered scrap) and re-shaping them.
Sometimes, you can start a business with nothing but a little cleverness, and an order from the scrapyard.
Yep - so much for $100/month servers.
On the negative side... In a country such a Canada where you can claim R&D tax credits, you can only claim these credits on real expenses - so if you pay yourself (next to) nothing, you won't be able to claim any of that as a tax credit...
Platform independent bug tracking software
hiring GUI designers from popular skins download sites
There's a reason these people don't already have jobs. Just look at the software. Or the site.
this is a dupe post from a dupe article . come on mods, this is ridiculous.
...I think the "local translator" for germany was called babelfish ;-) (or at least a close relative of it ;-)).
Ok ok, it's not _that_ bad, but I guess it's been translated by either a non-native or a native with quite small technical understanding (translation of specific IT terms sound a bit funny...).
This is a brand new account reposting a highly moderated comment from the previous slashdot story.
While the comment remains true, I hope the mods will send him right back down to -1. It looks like a troll charging up karma to me.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The recipe for their success was ... hiring GUI designers from popular skins download sites.
Too bad they didn't hire any actual user interface designers [or at least a graphic designer for their website or even someone who could figure out that it doesn't draw scrollbars in Mozilla]. The 'skin' scene is nice if all you want is eye candy and shiny objects but little else. And looking at their software it doesn't even look like they listened to those desingers much.
User interface design for software is not a paintjob or some quick usability fixes while you're in beta, it's a part of product development.
Your main goal is to immediately quit your current job. If your goal really is to start something new, then in many cases (but not all)your dedication and discipline will weigh more heavily than your financing.
There's always the hours after your 9-to-5 (assuming it's a 9-to-5), and they are yours to spend as you wish. If you want to risk your time (and maybe a few of your buddies' time) on a venture that may or may not generate any income, the risk/benefit is pretty well in your favor.
Yes, it is hard to be disciplined enough to find the time when you go home, or to treat it like a real project rather than a hobby, but these are matters of self control, and usually within a person's own determination.
The moment you ask someone else to fund your venture, you are turning over some part of what determines success or failure to someone else.
Need a simple, easy to use data tier generator? http://www.gryphinsoftware.com/
Go more than 500 miles away, make friends with local druggies, move up the chain, gain their trust. Do little deals for a while until you have the capital to pull a big one, rip off the supplier, move back home (or better yet, elsewhere) and sell off your stolen drugs while holding your ill-gained cash. Most mid-level pot/coke dealers aren't nearly as tough as they seem, they aren't going to go more than 500 miles out of their way to recoup under $5,000.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Remember, Hewett Packard and Apple were started out of a borrowed garage.
I am currently running a web developement firm and an ISP from my basement. It's not enough to quit my day job, but it does help line the pockets around the holidays. My market is small non-profits and family run businesses who are sick of dealing with large ISP's, and getting raped by web designers. My product is reliable service for a good price, and the ability to tweak the system to make it do what THEY want it to do.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
.. is control.
If you do it the VC way, they will force some people on your board, heck they will force you to _have_ a board. They call it "adult supervision". There is alot of flexibilty you are going to have to give up.
I went through all circles of VC hell and finally decided to go slowly and by myself.
The flashing graphics sent me into a trance ...
Your are in luck a /. reader is doing it in real time and talkign about it on my blog..
..paper work for LLc company formation is being prepared for incorporation ..expect approval back beg of Jan..
Current status
Business plan is currently bering prepared for VC review in March to July 2004 time frame..I foudn a Buziness plan contest that allows me to get the review by VCs..
First product release beg jabn 2004..
and yes I contribute to opensource!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
"It's inconceivable to us that people wouldn't want to know about our valuable service!" How very self-serving.
I think you're being a tad too cynical and perhaps just a little snotty. How else are they supposed to let you know that they have your information on file, and provide you an opportunity to remove it? I mean, even Majordomo sends out confirmation email.
If they sent you some "newsletter" every day because you're a member, that I can see as shitty marketing, but a single email is hardly some spammy marketing blitz.
NO CARRIER
I think the fucking article should be removed from the front page then.
Don't repost stories that will generate discussion that can have this happen.
While the above aphorism may be true. Think if you apply the same reasoning in an evolutionary framework. If you don't take a chance, you don't survive.
The question is whether you can make that $1 do more for you than give you a 1 in 65,000,000 chance at retiring early.
Teela Brown has to come from somewhere.
- Sketch out a business plan that gives you some clue of how much money you really need. Hint, you do not need a million dollars.
- Pretend you're optimizing code and shrink the hell out of it. You don't need to pay for a hosting service above and beyond your cable modem in the basement. You don't need brand new machines when you can buy from ebay. You don't need an office, or business cards, or a travel budget. You don't need to hire person X if you can convince them to do it for free for version 1. Repeat ad nauseam.
- Go out and get the stupid money. Ask relatives. Rack up credit card debt. Tell them you're making an independent film or something. Move back in with your parents if you have to.
- Get customers. You may even find yourself a sugar daddy that likes your idea so much that they will pay up front, enabling you to do more sooner. This is how many startups get started, when a big company says "I am willing to be your only customer for awhile, even though I know you have no product, and I will pay you to build it, on the promise that I will get lots of profit once you really do have product."
It's been done plenty of times before. It's not inconceivable once you have a better handle on how much you need. Everybody thinks they need a million dollars to start, but in reality you can probably get started for a few hundred or a few thousand. And if your idea has any legs, then raising a few thousand bucks should not be out of the realm of possibility.www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Here's a karma burn. MOD PARENT DOWN!
The site is large and not going to buckle under the load of Slashdot's linking it. Ads are few and non-obtrusive. No registration is required to view. Let alone the fact that copying the whole of the text is illegal. But, hey, since when did the typical /.er care about copyright infringement.
Oh, and the text is mutilated. Our friendly AC replaced "power" with "penis size" in the final sentence. Then again, maybe that's why it's being modded up as insightful?
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
When evaluating services like this, I want to see who's already there. I want to do this without calling attention to myself or anyone else. If I like what I see, then I'll participate further -- fill out a profile, hook up to already-registered friends, tell other people about it, etc. Forcing me to offer up five contacts as tribute violates this principle.
www.mailinator.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Many companies have you sign explicit NDA/Non-Compete agreements which will explicitly disallow you from doing any outside work.
Some will even claim that any intellectual property created as a result of you working outside of work hours will be owned by them.
Many people have been screwed by this in the past.
Funny; I didn't see that in the original article.
Majordomo doesn't insist that you sign up five "friends" who probably don't want to be signed up.
I started iDREUS (www.idreus.com) about a year ago. No investors, no loans. All operations are run off profit and yes we have been profitable for the last 4 months. All it takes is a good idea, hard work and making sure you treat your employees and customers like they are family.
My partner and I have an online service that we have launched with basically no money. We are entering our third month, and we are breaking even already. Actually made a peep of a profit last month.
Since we have no money to play with, we find advertising to be the most difficult aspect of starting a business. We do the cheapest things imaginable, and quite often simply ask for established sites to support us, flat out. Google adwords helps also, especially since our keywords are cheap. For payment processing, we use paypal because we cannot afford the setup and gateway fees of a proper service.
The site design and hosting was actually the cheapest part, as he is a graphic designer and I sling code and already have adequate hosting for our service. Hehe, I would post a link but no way can I survive a slashdotting, even a mild one. We have just enough to get by on.
Anyway, we are not making a lot of money, but we started with almost nothing and are ( however pathetic ) profitable and growing rapidly. You just have to be creative, have a service people want, and be willing to beg for eyeballs sometimes. Good luck to anyone who is trying it. With a bit more money than we have to work with, you might do quite well. You will certainly get there faster than we are.
Unless I can't read, there is no *nix version of their chat software.
./'ed, but no one (well, *nix-inclined ./ readers at least) can even use the software... pitty.
So, their site gets
"Oh, and the text is mutilated. Our friendly AC replaced "power" with "penis size" in the final sentence."
You gotta admit that the story is much more compelling with the mutilated text.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Where have we heard that before. Are we now advocating shipping jobs offshore as long as it saves a lot of money and does not affect quality? Or is it that these jobs were not IT positions, so no one cares.
Anyway, the whole post sounds like an advertisement. Hope /. got comensated.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Are you sure they paid someone to translate pages ? The french translation must have been made by some guy who had never talked french before :)
____
nico
Nico-Live
It was the last time /. posted "Huminity".
They're hawking a SPAM harvest bot. This is garbage technology. It's a Pump and Dump scam.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Does anyone recognize any of the mechanics of the App? I'm wondering how it was written. It doesn't look like a typical MFC or wxWindows Application. I don't think they did all their own controls...
????
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
...was an entire inside wall of a compartment from an airplane, with an integrated toilet seat. It's held up as an example of wasteful government spending, but it's not as represented. I'd expect the hundred-dollar-hammer and similar stories probably have similar truths behind them.
Not saying governments don't waste our money, but this one just plain is misrepresented.
Problem solved: it's been slashdotted into oblivion!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
...because your presentation and writing skills seem like they're not up to the task.
..a "start-up" again, I just want my own business(es).
As it is right now, I have 4-5 (another is launching) small virtual businesses of my own, each of which contributes a nice solid chunk of money to my bottom line every month. You add them all up, and I'm doing as well as I ever did.
I may have to take on 2 people soon, and that's fine. It's all within my cashflow. My wife and a friend are look at a real-world, bricks-and-mortar (sorry) business, so that will be another thing on my to-do list.
I'll leave the gamesmanship to others. There's plenty of work and money around. The money people screwed me (and plenty of you) the first time around; I won't let it happen again.
[And no, I had nothing to do with it -- I was the CTO at a company that got taken down when the CEO took up with investment bankers. We were otherwise cashflow positive then, too.]
said software for Windows only? How about developing one for *nix? and for Mac too? han solo
Part of their "recipe of success":
using the web to find native translators instead of using over priced local ones
Did I miss something? Aren't we opposed to outsourcing jobs overseas? Don't our big tech companies consider us "overpriced local programmers?" So, when it's a little guy, outsourcing to cheap, overseas labour is "innovative," but when IBM/Sun/Microsoft/Dell does it, it's Anti-American, and worthy of a global-scale boycott?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
How many of us thought that it can't be done due to costs, the need of big bucks and convincing some snotty VC? Well it didn't stop these guys.
Those with short attention spans are doomed to repeat recent history.
Unless your startup needs a factory, gobs of employees, or other extensive capital, you don't need megabucks, only kilobucks. No need for snotty VCs, selling off rights to future IP, etc. It's still hard, but 95% of existing businesses have done it.
You just have to start small. One of the worst legacies the dot.boom left us was the general perception that businesses have to be large to be successful. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't have the current statistics, but last I heard them a few years ago, 80% of businesses in the US had 20 or fewer employees. In other words, small business is king.
I've worked closely with many individuals who have started businesses from scratch. It's not cheap, but it doesn't require millions from venture capitalists. Your credit cards, retirement savings, relatives and a trip to the local bank are often all that's needed to start out small. And small is all that you need. You'll be working your butt off eighteen hours a day, but you can do it.
If this is software, you've got a headstart over most other businesses, since you don't need to carry inventory, rent warehouses, or run factories. All you need are salesmen and developers. The developers may be expensive, but your salesmen will be cheap, since they'll be bringing in their own paychecks. As a bonus, your product is infinitely reproducible at no cost. Heck, you can even contract out development to bring in cash flow while your main product is getting ready.
Your hardware isn't going to be that expensive, if you stop thinking like a gamer. You can get away with old i386 or Sparc5 boxes for your servers. If the software is ultimately an end-user product, you'll need a variety of current hardware to test on, but otherwise it's a luxury you can't afford.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I started a software company as an experiment a couple of years ago. After a lot of long nights it is slowly getting to the point where I might be able to make a living at it. I have one full-time employee now and I manage to take a couple K out each month. Through the whole process I have worked another job to pay the bills. My take on your question is that nothing is going to get you off the ground but hard work. Nobody is going to throw money at you. Build a simple product that works well and performs better than what is out there. People will buy it, distributors will find you. But you have to work hard and be dilligent about quality or you shouldn't even start.
Sell franchises to raise capital, patent unique concepts/devices, grow like mad by keeping costs/profits low...
Startups are easy, just a few hundred get's a business "legal". Finding people to buy stuff and then delivering are the hard parts. Actually selling stuff is not so hard either, nor is delivering "something". Creating something that a customer finds useful enough to get them to make another purchase(or recomend) is really the hard part. Without that you won't last. Really big succesful startups look at consumers for long term revenue streams. Take TiVo for example, if you want to know howto do it, study them.
Throw the top ten at em for free, then charge
$10 for access to the guide!
Jeesh - come on use your head a little (chuckles)
IT's because, well, it's like reverse marketing. You might think it's dressed up nicer, and their methods are better, but... it's the same thing.
How is it different than, say, some spammer that sends you email saying "Log into this website to have your personal info removed from our database"
Yeah because it's set to Japanese now right? Smarten up.
and thats two times too many. crappy website. crappy product. htf does this stuff make front page ??
Hate to say it but it looks like someone found a formula that works. The catch is that someone with a lot of money will use this "new" strategy to make more money and crush the little guys. A few will get thru but not many.
Run guys! Run! Here they come!
CompleteLinux.Info is my startup.
As a Linux Admin, one thing I have realized I'm not very good at is marketing -- I tried Google AdWords, but I didn't get a high-enough hit ratio to survive.
Maybe it is just hard to produce a non-free product or service for the open-source community. Of course, if the demand is there, I'm sure businesses would be the ones to provide the cash-flow...
(DNS seems to be an issue right now though.)
One of the big points made in the book is that the incredible overhead of venture capitalists can, and often does, sink a startup company.
The book covers Arnold Kling's attempt to start homefair.com (an online real estate service) way before anybody had a clue about what the Internet could do for real estate. It's funny/frustrating to read how many clueless bankers and real estate agents blew him off.
Ben in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde
no kidding,
The recipe for their success was: open source, clustering $100/mo servers, using the web to find native translators instead of using over priced local ones and hiring GUI designers from popular skins download sites.
With all the money they saved maybe they should hire somebody to do these things.
And for the love of god, make your page have scroll bars! I'm in Galeon, and the only way I could scroll through the mirrors was by click-dragging my mouse to highlight things. Very annoying.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Heh. "Snotty VC" in the blurb reminded me of 1999, when I was employee #4 at a software startup. The company makes software for a specific type of business. Through tests we had done, we could prove that we were capable of increasing profits for companies in the target market by 25%-100%. /. terms, many of these companies did indeed leave out step 4 before claiming that step 5 would be "Profit!"
Unfortunately, as I said, it was 1999. Smart VCs like John Doerr had seen good business opportunities in companies like Yahoo!, Amazon, AOL, and others, and made huge wads of $$$ for their firms through shrewd investments. The clueless wannabe VCs apparently missed the point that-- internet or not-- the success of investors like Doerr was based on careful evaluation of business plans and business models. The Doerr wannabes apparently said to themselves "John Doerr made a lot investing in internet companies, so we have to do the same." I figure that's how multiple internet pet shops and ridiculous internet businesses got funded, with many even going to IPO without having anything resembling profit in the foreseeable future or even a decent roadmap to achieving profitability. In
Getting back to how this was relevant to my personal experience, the founders of the company (employees #1 and #2) would make their presentation to some VC, again, showing that the company's software could produce billions of dollars of value for companies in the target market, and the response was almost always the same: "OK, but what's your internet story?"
Most of them were really snotty, saying that "these days," anything that isn't internet-based doesn't have a chance, or something equally short-sighted and clueless. But they said it with such authority and such snottiness that it would make even the strong of stomach want to vomit.
At the time, I said "Let's just change the name of the company to 'e-(Real Name of Company)-dot-com' and we'll be swimming in money!
After that, I became a big fan of F**kedCompany, which now seems to include non-dot-coms a lot more than it used to. Back in the day, it was more focused on reporting disasters in dot-coms that probably never should have been funded. Every time I saw another online business with no clear sustainable revenue stream (the $$$ from idiot VCs desperate to pour money into anything dot-com doesn't count-- it has been proven not to have been sustainable) go down the toilet, with an amusing report on F**kedCompany, I would snicker and say to myself "Yeah, I've got your internet story RIGHT HERE!"
--Mark
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
1.) Get the names of SCO investors 2.) Bilk them for a few bucks 3.) Profit
No favors They've decided to go it alone, without venture capital. Meet some Israeli bootstrap start-ups. Batya Feldman 1 Dec 03 16:54 In recent years, there have been quite a few entrepreneurs wandering around with good ideas (at least in their heads), but unable to raise capital. There are no more angels willing to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars. The number of venture capital funds making seed investments has sharply contracted, and those still willing to invest do so only after long and painstaking study, especially in cases of entrepreneurs without prior experience. The chasm between the supply of technology entrepreneurs and the demand for them is evidence that the great high-tech and venture capital crisis did not suppress the spirit of the average Israeli entrepreneur. Last week, Walden Israel general partner Eyal Kaplan told "Globes" that following a lecture at the Israel Center for Management (MIL) start-up forum, he was handed 17 business plans by new companies seeking financing. The situation is similar at other funds that have announced plans to make seed investments. But it turns out that there is another way, too: "bootstrap companies" in the venture capital jargon. These are entrepreneurs who simply go it alone rather than making the rounds from one venture capital fund to another. To those who wonder, the phrase originated in the tales of Baron Munchausen, who described how he saved himself from drowning by using his own bootstraps. Translated into the language of high-tech, the concept refers to a company that finances itself. No venture capital and no directors. Can you imagine? It was possible to find such Israeli companies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before the domestic venture capital industry began to flourish. Dov Moran's M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers (Nasdaq: FLSH) and Yanki Margalit's Aladdin Knowledge Systems (Nasdaq: ALDN) were just two of the companies that established themselves almost without external financing. They developed an idea, then a product, and initial sales were miniscule. Company growth was directly related to success on the market. "The funds were in the bunker" Nir Ben-Halevy and Oren Rossen are the entrepreneurs and sole employees of start-up Huminity. Rossen was previously an analyst at Investec Israel (TASE:INSI) and Ben-Halevey was a member of the high-tech team at Deloitte and Touche - Brightman Almagor. Over a year ago, they decided to found a company based on the concept of a social networking product that combines chat and instant messaging, enabling users to share their personal networks. After a brief round among the venture capital funds, they realized that they could not raise money and decided to go it alone. Ben-Halevy reminisces, "A year ago, it was simply impossible to raise money from the funds. They had gone down into the bunker. We believed that if we had a working product, their attitude might change. We believed that we could get it up and running on our own." Ben-Halevy and Rossen left everything behind, moved to Turkey to lower costs and for the past year dedicated themselves to developing the product. Last month, they announced that they had raised $2 million, at a company value of $10 million, after money, from the same venture capital funds they had approached previously. The deal is now being closed. This time, they came to the funds with a working product and 400,000 registered users. "We did everything very cheaply. We developed the product on an open source code system. It's true that Oracle's (Nasdaq:ORCL) system is more stable, but on the other hand we don't pay a $5,000 a month license fee," says Ben-Halevy. Huminity's open code-based product also allows the company to obtain the help of the operators community. "Why pay a lot when you can pay a little? We slashed costs. We didn't buy a big computer the size of a washing machine. We work with clusters. In the US, it's possible to rent a server for $100 a month, instead of buying a server for tens of thousands of dollars." Huminity's entrepreneurs were also creative in t
Patents are the best way to protect your IP while trying to sell ideas. Find a patentable idea, outlay to patent it, then you have a solid basis to try and and sell it/licence it.
1) It's a troll story.
2) It's a dupe.
why not re-cycle comments in this case?
Can you spell F-R-E-E--W-A-R-E or O-P-E-N--S-O-U-R-C-E competition?
Let's play buzzword bingo today. Get out a scrap of paper and write down all the buzzwords you can think of. Try these on for size: leverage, startup, incubator, robust, enterprise, blah, blah, blah ...
I worked for a now defunct non-dot-com company that tried to become a dot-com and it succeeded in the fact that it failed like so many other dot-coms. One of the more hare-brained ideas was for an incubator incubator. I think he meant a some kind of factory for minting startup companies.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Hello friend.
I encourage you to use the Jihad's database tool in your karma whoring efforts.
I recently took a new products development class as part of my MS Management of Technology degree (shameless plug: UNH MS MOT) and what the above poster described is mostly true. Other sources of funding include:
Government grants (Matt-Lesko-style)
Government small business loans (these are largely the reason for Subway's growth since franchisee's typically take one out to open a Subway.)
Your Rich Uncle
An angel investor. An angel investor typically will invest in early-stage companies to help them get going. They are tough to find, but usually have lots of experience and business acumen to help you out. Like other forms of VC, these want a return on their investment, but will want you to be heavily involved in the company, which means you will own your IP.
Paizurishitetai desu ka?
Tallgreen brings something else to my mind...l Very lucrative in the artificially regulated market we have here in the U.S.
...that they went about getting someone in skin design (where they don't have to cater to a mass audience at all) to do the GUI rather than someone who actually specializes in GUI development for applications and sites intended for a mass audience.
Right now it looks rather amateur and sparse, with little in the way of attractive design sensibilities. The "As Seen on TV"-like presentation of the software in the main content window doesn't help any. When people see bad effort in a GUI -- that's their first impression from people about the underlying software. People (in a mass audience, with abundant worries about viruses and spyware) these days get skittish about downloading from sites that look bad, and doubly so if it's an application they want you to download. It's simple psychology.
Don't get me wrong -- I wouldn't mind having some software like this to get in contact with and find new business prospects. In fact, I welcome it and may very well see if it gets me anywhere. I'd just like to see them look to people whose living comes from real-world GUI experience and some semblance of understanding of the "why" of design.
Just some advice from a peer in the trenches.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
It seems like a lot of developers have great ideas for programs that will make "lots" of money if they only had about 10 million to develop them.
My bet with my own shareware company is to start small and hang in there. Right now it is just a job for when I come home, but eventually, hopefully, it will build up to something.
I know a few guys that run brick and mortar and web based businesses, and there whole secret is persistence. Just, start small, then, hang in there. Look how long Linux hung in at the hobbiest level before it really took off? How was 1994, 1995, etc, for Linux? Really? Those were some lean years.
Start small, keep building, then, hang in there. Either you will make it or you won't.
This is my sig.
Trillian is a brilliant example of a site that's taken the point I made into account. They invested in a good designer to build one hell of a website, and the default skin. And a good designer doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg, especially with the market we've all just pulled through.
After that, let people go to town and skin it however they want. It's all in the first impression.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
I'm in the middle of a bootstrapping enterprise right now - its not IT but the idea is the same. My savior has been buying surplus. My field is a bit more 'old school' than IT, and I need to worry about regulatory issues (chemicals). That said, I've been able to rent space ($500/mo), get permitted, buy basic lab equipment for about 10% of original cost, and use my own skillz to put together a web site, business cards, brochures etc.
I will say a business plan helps a lot - even if you don't follow it to the letter. It does give you a place to start and forces you to think about what you want to do and who your customer is. It may all change by the time the business is running, but it at least does make you think.
The hardest part of the business is ahead however. Its pretty easy to get a spot and make some pretty cards up - the rubber hits the road when you start going to trade shows and calling old industry chums trying to get people interested. Luckly at this point its pretty cheap to keep the business open so some patience and marketing should start the revenues rolling in.
Then the question becomes - how do you handle growth?...
I thought it was a good idea
Given that they hire their GUI designers from popular skins download sites, they probably did have their 'experts' design their website too.
Aren't flashy skins good UI???
I read the article and maybe I missed something. They talk about how they cut costs and have a burn rate of $3,500 a month. Great, but I don't see how they are even going to break even by selling T-Shirts and coffee mugs. Didn't they learn that a business has to be able to make money? Just because you have a popular software product does not put any money in the bank if you give it away. Just ask AOL. They are a giant as far as market share, and yet they are burning through more than they can ever get back in profits. Develop a product and take two routes. Open Source - for fun, or Commercial software for a business. You can't have both.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
I worked for a label company at one point. By "label", I mean stickers. This company made stickers that you'd put on lawnmowers (Do not put your hands in here, dumbass), cars (the dashboard overlay with the speedo & such), planes (the "Please fasten seat belt" overlays), and everything in between. I was an account manager. The gov't regularly paid $80+ PER STICKER that cost us about $0.10 to make for those "fasten seatbelt" overlays. And, our company won the bid because it was the cheapest, if you can believe that.
Oh, the Huminity!
Make her your wife! Then she'll be only too eager to ignore you and what you do on a daily basis....
Need a simple, easy to use data tier generator? http://www.gryphinsoftware.com/
Good to Great by Jim Collins is also worth a read. The concepts are simple and the ideas are based on emperical research. At no time should you think that any book has the *answer*.
Best of all don't buy the book, save some money and read it online.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
I wonder how many Wives/Husbands will get to meet their signifigant others Guy Friend/Girl friend this way.
a good read for any startups is Joel Spolsky's journey in building his company from scratch. Put aside your predjudices about his software origins or the market he is aiming at, but make sure you read and digest some of the ideas.
It's a cheap way to read how he's organised his company from 1999 to the present.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Remembering back to 1997 when I first used ICQ, I remember that it was originally created by five young Israeli men (see ICQ History). It's interesting to note that Huminity is also a company founded by Israelis. I wonder if it is coincidence or if there is some aspect of Israeli culture that leads towards creating communication and IM software.
I'd expect the hundred-dollar-hammer and similar stories probably have similar truths behind them.
Boy: Do not try and purchase the $600 hammer. That's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Boy: There is no $600 hammer.
Neo: There is no $600 hammer?
Boy: Then you'll see that it is not the hammer which costs $600, it is only yourself.
Yes, you may have to run up credit cards and eat bread & water for months, but here's what's really important: Customers
Every single work day, dedicate 9:30 - 11:30 AM to nothing but cold calls [ok, I hear your moaning...] Or have your S.O. do it -- if s/he has a less threatening voice.
Google "cold calling" and learn the best techniques, on-line -- they do work. Do calls every day! Fill out a spreadsheet with who you're going to call the next day and, just like successful aerobics, get up in the morning and do it without thinking about it. Use a similar spreadsheet to track who you've called and call again the next month. And the month after that.
Eventually, you'll turn those calls into appointments, you'll turn the appointments into sales, and you'll turn the sales into (life-long?) clients. Eventually you'll be paying all your bills, on time. Eventually you'll be paying down your debt and even saving a little for retirement. Eventually, you'll be eating out in style, again. Eventually, you will not need to do any cold calling!
We do about 20 calls a day, and a day doesn't go by that I don't get at least one appointment. Sometimes it's someone who's rather friendly or curious. So I go the next day and introduce myself in person and ask a slew of questions about their business. I don't tell them anything about mine unless they ask -- then I keep it to just one sentence worth of info. and get back to them.
After about 4-6 "appointments", I make a sale. If I do a great job the first time, the first sale can lead to many, many more. A client tends to return to the one person s/he knows. They rarely let another geek into their sphere, unless there's a good reason.
I also think it's good to "spread the wealth". So for other geeks I trust with my clients, I throw work their way as much as possible. Clients like to know there's a "hit-by-truck" backup for your services.
Remember how hard your first real job was in IT? Took you a while to get to real "success", right? This is no difference, except you're having to sell to several "bosses" instead of just one [cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-assed, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spineless, worm-headed sack of monkey shit] Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol...
The problems today are that people still exist in the 1999 frame of mind.
Do you need VCs to begin with? Its often an overused flashy word. How much capital does your company need to start? Can you supplement it with your current income working a "regular" job?
Thats how I did it. I paid bills with my day job and used the left over money, not on entertainment but on growing my own company. After a couple years I reached the point I left my day job and was able to put more time into my own business while getting an extra 20 hours/week relaxation.
Its tough in the beginning but that is how its done. Plus its more fun building it yourself.
A lot of people want to start their own companies and thats a given. The problem is that they have nothing tangible. No worthwhile product or service that they can offer. Really they have no reason to exist (sorry, I don't want to hurt your dreams because you do cherish them). But that is the truth of it.
If you have a great thing to offer and nurture it well you can grow it on your own. People think if you throw VC money at something it will become a killer app. Sorry it doesn't work that way.
If you are young like I am, and have 2 friends who are in on your idea then don't hold back. I even did it myself (but it is harder mind you). If three young adults with no children (or wives) make say, $40k/year... then you can live frugally on 20k and still have some to enjoy yourself. 3x20k and your group will have around 60k saved up. If you are focused on software development then perhaps by the time your done your project you have spent a year (thus the 60k). Now get a real office, marketing campaign etc or whatever.
My point is that too often you don't need VC and its more rewarding without. Just manage your money and don't get things that you don't need until they are needed (including an office because god knows those are expensive).
Wait! Isn't that what defined success in the Dot Bomb Era as well? Have we learned anything?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The acid test of this program is if will hook me up with barely legal teens
- either that or 45 year old, sexually confused geeks...:)
VC's will want 70% or more of your business too. Starting on a shoestring is the way for software/software-based services. My two partners and I have spent $2K thus far in the past year (plus 8000 manhours coding), we'll see if this thing we've built takes off.
70% is insane. The whole point of starting your own business is so that when you bust your ass, you do it for yourself, and for nobody else. If you're giving away 70% of your company, that's almost as bad as working for somebody else. On top of it, VC is no guarantee that the business will succeed. While some small businesses are under-capitalized, I would worry more about starting the company on a bad note (ie: spending recklessly). I started mine on a shoestring and I very quickly understood how to make a dollar, and how to stretch those dollars that I had. If somebody dropped a few million in my lap, I think I'd just giggle hysterically, and roll around naked, in $100 bills. Plus, who's got the better story to tell Inc. Magazine... the guy who got the VC, or the guy who maxxed out the credit cards?
Proudly paying down my credit cards...
This will be a bit of a long one, but here goes anyway.
I am involved with trying to secure funding for my own business at the moment, and it has taken two years before people are seriously looking at throwing money at it.
In the last two years, my business has morphed as I have worked hard at recognising the core skills and competencies that I have, and how that applies to what the market place wants, and will want in the future. The problem in the IT sector is that there are too many snake-oil salesmen (Microsoft I am looking at you), who sell promises of bullshit, and only deliver bullshit. Unfortunately, the market has come to accept this as being the norm, and when things work as promised, they get suspicious.
While my company has been through some tough periods (and has shut down for a few months at a time), I continue to work 50 hours a week at another job, and the entrepeneurial spirit sticks. Looking at the successful entrepeneurs it isn't in how big you make it straight away, it is in how many times you get back up after you fail. As long as the times you get back up is times failed + 1, you will eventually succeed.
Talking of funding alone, I have literally sold my soul to the devil numerous times attempting to secure VC funding, but no one likes investing in R & D. At least I have controlled my IP, and have been very cautious around people who tell me that they need access to it to invest. I started asking, and being offered hundreds of thousands (with severe restrictions), but in my latest efforts, I have been offered tens of millions (with fairly comfortable restrictions).
Having the right advisors on board is essential, devloping business skills, and learning to become a salesperson is essential (even if you are the world's greatest ubergeek), ethics and morals help, and knowing where you want to end up, and how much control you want to relinquish is also important.
Ultimately, you have total control, you can say no to someone who is asking for too much from you. The money is still out there, but it is a lot more cautious about being invested. A solid business plan and direction go a long way to helping.
Probably the best yardstick that I have found is that if you can get potential investors and other business people as interested in the business and projects as you are - and can see the potential, and aren't afraid to wear out some shoe leather, and to have people tell you to piss off, then the money will find you.
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
That's one of the worst Japanese translations I've ever seen on a business site. I can't believe somebody would pay for this. Couldn't the translator check his Japanese grammar and spelling?
"Over priced"? Hilarious. You just get what you pay for.
"...but I'll be damned if another person/company/weasel takes me in and switches to a fee based product midstream. It's sad that I've seen enough of this happen to smell it coming now."
Well there goes the illegal drug and porn market.
It is a word-by-word translation, rather than the translation of meaning. Technically, it is Russian, but its roots in foreign language are prominent.
In our case, the project was already successful while it was a non-commercial (i.e. hobbyist)project. How we got funding eventually? We agreed to the terms of the 3rd VC investor who approached us on their own. In a country where VC money wasn't abundant and the market wasn't big enough for expectations of a huge short-term revenue. 3 years later, we're a small company still (25 people), have bought back the shares from the VC investor and make a healthy yearly profit (with a margin comparable to that of a "well-known software company").
It keeps looking better and better.
The other is a straight consulting company what was started with and continues to prosper with $1k a piece from four partners. We'll do around
Anyway, one is cheap and will make money as soon as the first customer is signed up. And the other is just making sure that our sweat goes back into the company.
If it's an idea that *reallY* takes money to get it started, you're going to have to find a sugar daddy or lose part of the company. Losing part of the company is probably smart thing if it's the right partner/VC. They'll have smarts in areas that you don't. No one knows it all.
I need a AS/400 person for a day or two. Email me
Ask him if you can claim points for -1 insightful in the Slashdot Game
A lot of good suggestions.
I Denken, daB der "lokale Ubersetzer" fur Deutschland babelfish; - genannt wurde) (oder mindestens ein naher Verwandter von ihm;-)).
OkaycO.k., ist es nicht _, das _ Schlechtes, aber ich schatzen, daB es entweder durch non-native ubersetzt wird oder ein Eingeborener mit ziemlich kleinem technischem Verstandnis (Ubersetzung des Besonderen benennt ES Ton eine lustige Spitze...).
Your typing sucks.
Your grasp of English is shaky.
And none of that matters.
Your website looks interesting, and you seem to be doing things - even if some of the things you're doing are mistakes, you'll learn from them.
Keep it up!
In order to increase our penis size, we'll have to examine all kinds of possibilities.
This is a quote from the last para. nuf said.
Didn't these guys go out and spend a couple of hundred grand buying the rights to this software. This wasn't a real cashless startup.
As I've read through this article, I've seen many references to cold calling, I'm amazed with all of the fuss that /.'ers and other's have made about the DO NOT CALL list...
:)
How have people delt with the FCC's DO NOT CALL list? How does that work into people's cold calls, the costs, etc?
Just wondering
I cannot confirm nor deny the allegation or allegations you may or may not have just made
One more thing that came to my mind... theoretically, you don't save ANYTHING by doing the managment yourself. The reason is because YOU have to be compensated. YOU, acting as an overseer/manager/whatever, should be paid for your services. Whether you pay yourself from the profits or with a salary, it's all the same (ignoring taxes and stuff like that). Unless your time is FREE (not true since you have to make a living), you technically aren't saving any money.
So, you really have to have a competitive advantage of some sort (as I mentioned in my previous post). Simply doing it yourself doesn't mean anything (although, you may be able to extract some advantage out of doing it yourself).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Yes, I realize some would consider the passing out of flyers as "spam" of sorts. Yet, I think it's much less of an issue than email spam.
For starters, I'm the one incurring the costs of distribution. I have to spend money for gas to drive around and put out the flyers, pay for the paper and the printing, and put in my time to get each one delivered to a doorstep. Email spammers take advantage of flat-rate Internet pricing to dump hundreds of thousands of emails upon ISP's mail servers, and let everyone else deal with any problems that creates.
Also, my flyer appears at someone's house only once. If they don't want it, they throw it out and that's all there is to it. I'm not inconveniencing them by making them "unsubscribe" to keep from getting more advertising from me.