July 22nd, 2008
You are cordially invited to join us for an upcoming “Bootstrapper’s Breakfast.”
It will start at 7:30am and end at 9am. Your cost is your meal + 20% tip; we get the “back room” to ourselves. The other attendees will all be in early stage technology start-ups, it will be a chance to compare notes on operational, development, and business issues with peers.
We have several featured guest joining us. They will make some introductory remarks for about five minutes and answer questions and offer their perspective as a part of a roundtable discussion. Please bring your questions.
August 1: Robert Dang, Attorney at Fortis General Counsel, http://www.fortisgc.com who are start-up friendly and endorsed by attendees. Rob came last year and we had a very practical discussion about common legal issues that bootstrappers face: sign-up and bring your questions on Friday August 1, 2008 at Hobee’s Palo Alto.
August 8: Len Sklar will make a short presentation on “The Check is Not in the Mail” and answer questions on effective approaches to getting paid in full, on time, at less cost and without losing valued customers. Len came to our March 7 breakfast and facilitated some very well received interactive exercises, where several bootstrappers in turn took the role of a delinquent customer and Len demonstrated a variety of low key techniques to move beyond a current deadlock. Sign-up and bring your questions Friday August 8 to the Omega Restaurant in Milpitas.
Sept 5: Sam Schillace, co-inventor of Writely the collaborative word processor (now known as Google Docs) will discuss “Lesson’s Learned from the Invention and Sale of Writely.” He continues to explore collaborative and publishing application projects as an Engineering Director at Google. Sign-up now for this September 5 event at Hobees in Palo Alto.
July 14th, 2008
Debra Willrett, founder of Expert Software Consulting, will discuss “Lesson’s Learned from the Invention and Sale of MacProject”. Debra is the inventor of the Macintosh application MacProject, an application that has defined a paradigm for interactive graphical project management tools for the last 25 years. Motivated by the need to manage software projects Debra describes how the product evolved in our founder’s story Debra Willrett on inventing MacProject . She makes a couple of interesting points in the interview that are worth exploring tomorrow:
“When I saw a pre-release of Apple’s Lisa computer, I realized I had the components in place for a business. I had the problem to solve, the system to build it on, and the skills to build a WYSIWYG application with broad appeal.”
- Pasteur noted “Where observation is concerned, chance favors the prepared mind.” What do you do today to maintain your entrepreneurial perspective?
- What problems are you incubating as you continue to refine your skills and explore new platforms
You need to be flexible and realistic. In exchange, you can be firm about the issues which are important to you. One of the key terms of my contracts with Apple was that I would retain ownership of the software.
I also found that I could profit from being underestimated by others.
I requested a number of significant bonus incentives for meeting scheduled deadlines. Since software schedules are routinely slipped as additional features are added or the scope of the project changes, no one believes you when you say you will deliver something on time.
They will happily add terms in the contract which pay more for meeting delivery dates. And I happily collected on every one of my bonus payments. Of course, the customer also won, because having the new features earlier increased sales.
- What are key terms to negotiate with early customers?
- What were some techniques you used to deliver software on schedule that are applicable to today’s projects.
This promises to be an interesting conversation. We have limited space so please register here
July 3rd, 2008
It’s now a norm that a bootstrapped start-up with only three or four members may still span a half dozen time zones. Jonathan Hallet wrote about “The Long Hallway” in April of 2007 and observed:
On the surface, the long hallway of the virtual company shares characteristics with the well-established practice of telecommuting. Employees use tools like Skype and other VOIP services for telephone calls and phone conferences, instant messaging to keep in touch, wikis to preserve group knowledge and processes, and web-based project management apps to organize and direct workflow.
However, there is a fundamental difference between telecommuting and the long hallway. To be a remote worker means that the core function of a company lies elsewhere. Telecommuters work remotely for businesses that already possess an established culture and physical buildings. They are satellites orbiting a larger concern. For virtual companies with long hallways, the company exists wherever its people are—and nowhere else.
A year earlier in February of 2006 Greg Olsen wrote about “Going Bedouin”
(Update Aug-17-09 Note original link “http://www.charterstreet.com/2006/02/going_bedouin.html” no longer works but this one still does http://webworkerdaily.com/2006/09/04/going-bedouin/)
A technology startup begins in a state of simplicity and focus – some ideas, a few people and little else to get in the way. As the business grows, however, sources of complexity and distraction seem to appear from every direction.
The source I found most surprising, (when I last helped start a software business back in ‘96), was the operational overhead that came with setting up an office, which continued to grow as we got larger. Before we knew it we were dealing with real estate leases, leased-lines, routers, VPNs, servers, workstations, firewalls, DMZ’s, UPS’s, telephone systems, voicemail systems, email systems, web servers & website management software, accounting software, sales & marketing software, software development software, groupware, IT support staff, attorneys, and many other things – none of which were directly related to our core business. The VP of Marketing “had to” spend numerous hours looking at color swatches to select the “right” furniture. While still a small company, an office move (within the same building) required weeks of planning, dedicated staff, and days to complete.
I remember longing wistfully for the days when the company’s infrastructure fit into my backpack.
Olsen’s answer was to move all but the minimal endpoints of infrastructure, cellphone and laptop, into the cloud. As Parkinson observed “Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.” Better to keep things agile, easily re-configured, and evolving in response to new customer needs.
One advantage of working around the globe in a cloud infrastructure is that incessant work on a project doesn’t require anyone to lose sleep. Product development and support can “follow the sun,” whether it’s direct employees or partners with clear service level agreements. They can all access the same infrastructure, picking up where others left off and checkpointing work for a circular relay race around the globe.
What’s interesting is that the price points on service-based infrastructure such as blogs, wikis, skype and other VoIP teleconferencing, build automation and management tools, common calendars, and simple task and workflow management make them available for on the order of $100/employee per month. This takes an enormous amount of friction out of key processes like product development, support, and management.
July 2nd, 2008
Q: How many attendees are there usually per breakfast?
A: The number of attendees is usually between 6-18. Attendance is capped to keep it conversational and avoid lecture mode. From time to time we have guest attendees where you can ask them questions – they give a lightning talk of 4-6 minutes and then take an active part in the discussion. Here are a couple of examples of guest attendees:
Q: What do you talk about?
A: The attendees really drive the conversation and issues. All are welcome but we do ask that you bring your business issues and struggles. There is a high level of interaction and frank discussion.
Q: What are there typical backgrounds and levels of experience?
A: Experience can vary from people who have an idea and are thinking of starting a company to folks who are serial entrepreneurs. Products are all stages of development: in development to production with thousands of customers. Some attendees are serial entrepreneurs who have gone public (or bankrupt) or sold their company, most are in business and doing less than four million dollars a year in revenue with many just getting started.
July 1st, 2008
You won’t miss the fireworks, we will start at 7:30am and be done by 9AM at Hobee’s Palo Alto. A couple of quotes relevant to bootstrapping to tide you over until Friday:
From a Jun-16-2008 interview of Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies, by Javier Rojas on SandHill.com
Q: Any last words of advice for Founders starting a business?
A: Yes, if you are starting a business, don’t spend your time calling VCs; spend your time calling customers, figure out how to solve their problem and get them to pay for it.
An excerpt from C.S. Lewis‘ “Learning In War-Time” sermon
“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice…If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun…Life has never been normal.”
And finally an elaboration of carpe diem by Samuel Smiles
“Lost wealth may be replaced by industry,
Lost knowledge by study,
Lost health by temperance or medicine,
But lost time is gone forever.”
