Startup – Page 15

more on co-working

Back in 2006 I seriously investigated the possibility of setting up a co-working facility in Belfast. At the time I was pretty much asset-free 🙂 I had a working, profitable business but not enough capital to undertake something of this magnitude. We were looking at a 3 storey building within half a mile of Queen’s University as a potential location for this nascent business. We worked out cash flows based on a cafÃ©, with pay-for workspace ranging from shared desks to enclosed, secured offices. We even drew maps and applied for funding but, being asset-free, I was kinda buggered when it came to financing it.

Just bad timing really and I think that maybe my plans were a little over the top.

It doesn’t mean, however that they were bad plans, I just didn’t have the reach I needed. I probably still don’t have the reach I need but I do have other potential plans. For instance, considering moving Mac-Sys to the centre of Belfast (because, yes, it’s a pain to get to Mallusk to get a simple Mac repair done) and sharing the resulting space with a Co-Work facility has been heavy on my mind for a while and definitely given solidity by the co-working thoughts bandied around last night.

co-working

OpenCoffee Belfast It’s kinda refreshing to see more than just me being interested in new ways of working. David is working on a CoWorking business plan, Andy spends his days camping out in a coffee shop. Belfast needs co-working facilities. Like, tomorrow. (and yeah, we showed off some iPhone game stuff which the guys have … Continue reading “co-working”

OpenCoffee Belfast

It’s kinda refreshing to see more than just me being interested in new ways of working. David is working on a CoWorking business plan, Andy spends his days camping out in a coffee shop.

Belfast needs co-working facilities.

Like, tomorrow.

(and yeah, we showed off some iPhone game stuff which the guys have been working on and talked about Macs a lot)

Working conditions

â€œself-funded small business that encourages people to stay away from the VCs, says you donâ€™t need to live in San Francisco to be successful, suggests that charging for your products is a good thing, espouses the advantages of small teams, applauds shorter work weeks with more reasonable hours, rejects the notion of traditional â€˜seriousness business … Continue reading “Working conditions”

â€œself-funded small business that encourages people to stay away from the VCs, says you donâ€™t need to live in San Francisco to be successful, suggests that charging for your products is a good thing, espouses the advantages of small teams, applauds shorter work weeks with more reasonable hours, rejects the notion of traditional â€˜seriousness business stuff,â€™ and believes keeping it simple is the way to success.â€

Yup

Jason Calacanis was hounded a little last week with his comments about workaholics but it’s worth looking at what he said rather than the rants about how people interpreted them.

when you don’t love what you do it sucks.

I can totally empathise with this as I keep working on trying to do the switch again? Explain? Okay. I will, but not here.

Jason also says
Very much paraphrased here…and removing some points which I don’t feel can apply universally.

Buy Macs. They’ll save you money in the long run
Buy an extra monitor for everyone. Makes people happy and productive
Buy lunch. Often.
Find a good accountant to handle tax and wages

This, the Jason Calacanis/37Signals model is the model I already run with for the most part, but there are limits, e.g.

I think most customers would prefer that Mac-Sys was open 6 days a week rather than 5 (but that limitation comes from the Enterprise Park and not from us). We have campaigned repeatedly to get this changed…
The hosting company needs to be available 7 days a week. That’s just a reality. Nothing can be done about that and it’s up there with my own expectations.
Infurious could get away with a 4 day week, probably less considering everyone is working at it part time at the moment anyway.

but the issue with all of this is in terms of equality. Rolling out something to one group and not another isn’t egalitarian and therefore I’m not willing to consider it. It’s not an issue at the moment because the hosting company and Infurious are both still in startup mode. Working conditions are not bad at all – it’s not a stressed environment, they get to work with interesting people every day, they do stuff they enjoy and the only aggro was who gets to play their music on the Airport Express. But it’s not perfect, we’re starting to get tight on space and I’m feeling more and more that a city centre location (or one walkable to from the major bus and train stops) would be better for everyone.

I think 2008 will be a time for me to work on improving the working conditions for everyone.

Thirty percent of everything

Let’s say you’re a developer producing applications. Your livelihood depends on applications sold and you really want to get the best penetration for them. How much would you pay for: a) no need to set up a web shopping cart b) no need to pay for bandwidth and hosting c) greatly reduced need for marketing … Continue reading “Thirty percent of everything”

Let’s say you’re a developer producing applications. Your livelihood depends on applications sold and you really want to get the best penetration for them.

How much would you pay for:
a) no need to set up a web shopping cart
b) no need to pay for bandwidth and hosting
c) greatly reduced need for marketing
d) reduced need to ‘package’ an app
e) listing on a web store that will be in front of about 7 million customers at launch.

Apple wants thirty percent (though they’ll host your free app for free). For this thirty percent, they’ll approve, list, maintain a reviews database, process payments and send you the income monthly.

Some people think this smacks of greed but I’d counter that it smacks of reality. If you’ve spent a lot of time working in software but not in the retail side then you have probably very little experience of the costs. We are agreed that Apple is a publicly traded corporation and therefore needs to turn a profit. We’re going to have to agree that the App Store will be a hot trick for software distribution.

So let’s look at the competition. Who else hosts software for download like this?

The obvious candidate is Handango.

From Electronista:

Small developers who sell less than $250,000 in gross revenue will see exactly half of their income stripped from each sale — up from 40 percent, Handango reportedly says. More profitable firms will see even more money siphoned away, with all businesses selling between $250,000 and $1 million supplying 60 percent of their revenue and all larger outlets conceding 70 percent. The notice will be made public within a few days and should see the new distribution agreement take effect by March 15th, the alleged source indicates.

Handango makes Apple’s 30% seem like a bargain.

On the other hand, Mobihand gives developers 80%. What do we get for that extra 10%? I’m guessing we get placement on the device itself. Mobihand claims to have the lowest rates in the industry for application hosting.

MobiHand will pay to Content Provider 80% of Net Receipts occurring at www.mobihand.com and 60% of Net Receipts at all other channels.

So, Mobihand will charge you 20-40% of the cost of your software for hosting the sale depending on how and where they bought it.

Even at 30%, Apple’s deal is no strings, no nonsense and is going to have the advantage that every piece of software you see there will work on your iPhone.

And it’s shitloads better than Handango.

Workplace Experiments

37Signals are one of those companies that you either love or hate, I guess. I like them a lot, with their cheeky, no-nonsense approach to things. It’s true that a lot of problems come down to doing the right thing so you have to ask – what are the barriers to doing the right thing? … Continue reading “Workplace Experiments”

Here’s an example

At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy.

They’ve implemented the following so far:

Shorter Work Weeks
Funding People’s Passions
Discretionary Spending Accounts

Love them or hate them you have to admit it’s pretty forward thinking. Some people will dislike the environment in a 4 day week and you could follow the pattern recursively until down to a 0-day week and then they’d be happy. You’d be out of business soon after and then they’d be sad. But they’d blame you.

The last two points deal with money and my opinion is that if it can reasonably be counted as a work expense then it probably should be one. For example, woodworking and pilots lessons would not, but driving lessons might, as should cooking, because really, everyone benefits from cooking lessons.

I think that it should be standard practise for a technology company that is established to have some sort of account with O’Reilly or one of the other book vendors so that the staff can get reasonable access to decent materials like these. If there’s an IT conference, let them go. (in comparison, getting just paid leave to go an IT conference is difficult in $BIG_CORP even if you’re paying your own travel and subsistence).

Why not just pay a higher salary?

Well, for a 4 day week, you’ve just got a 20% bonus. And if you provide a higher salary, people will adjust their lifestyle to fill it and still want work to buy books. And then you have to consider the tax implications. It quickly gets to a point where you’re going to pay people more money just for a third of it (or more) to go straight to the government. And no-one likes that.

My interest in this comes more from the work-life balance. I’m more interested in the results from a 4 day week or from the opportunities to be gained from remote working or working from home. In my experience it made me a lot happier. I missed out on being in the office but my team was virtual anyway – we only spoke over the phone or via email/IM.

Founder culture vs Employee culture

Joel Spolsky on lessons learned from the Army applied to Corporate Culture: After several years of working days, nights, and weekends to build a company, after scrimping and saving and making a desk out of a door and two filing cabinets, business owners often forget that the employees they hired are not co-founders: They’re employees. … Continue reading “Founder culture vs Employee culture”

Joel Spolsky on lessons learned from the Army applied to Corporate Culture:

After several years of working days, nights, and weekends to build a company, after scrimping and saving and making a desk out of a door and two filing cabinets, business owners often forget that the employees they hired are not co-founders: They’re employees. When you give them a door for a desk or ask them to work on weekends, they’re not going to see it in the same way as you.

This is so obvious when you think about it but it bears repeating. Employees have contracts and they are entitled to keep to them. They’re usually reasonable and won’t mind being called at 6 am for an emergency but they should reasonably expect to be allowed to leave early as a result. This is the difference between employee and founder for sure.

The difference, however, is when you have an employee who wants a slice of the pie. They have to put in the effort that a founder put in. This means going above and beyond the salaried employee. It means working more than the contract, coming in early, leaving late and showing results from it. I busted my balls getting the company running, you can at least make the same effort if you want a percentage of the pie.

As a founder you’re going to have to have a way of measuring this performance because it has to be more than just turning up early and leaving late – especially when there’s people idle during the day because you’re in a support function and everything is working fine. It’s not about how early your bum goes on the seat but the output between those hours.

Does an employee deserve rewards because sales increased by 25%? I don’t think so, that’s them just doing their job and justifying their paycheck. Increasing by 200% and requiring additional staff makes a difference. I’ve had previous employees that worked 3 hours out of 7, pissed about on MSN for the rest, griped if their music wasn’t playing through the Airport Express, took extensive smoke breaks and turned what was previously a 2 day job into a full week of work with no return. This sense of entitlement is why they never went anywhere in the company. Anywhere other than out.

Some people will never be ready for founder culture however. I think that they’ll know who they are. They’ll always expect more (pay, time off, free stuff, dancing girls) and you’ll never be able to make them wholly happy.

Microsoft gives away Development tools

From the Associated Press: Microsoft Corp. is giving students free access to its most sophisticated tools for writing software and making media-rich Web sites, a move that intensifies its competition with Adobe Systems Inc. and could challenge open source software’s popularity. The Redmond-based software maker said late Monday it will let students download Visual Studio … Continue reading “Microsoft gives away Development tools”

From the Associated Press:

Microsoft Corp. is giving students free access to its most sophisticated tools for writing software and making media-rich Web sites, a move that intensifies its competition with Adobe Systems Inc. and could challenge open source software’s popularity.

The Redmond-based software maker said late Monday it will let students download Visual Studio Professional Edition, a software development environment; Expression Studio, which includes graphic design and Web site and hybrid Web-desktop programming tools; and XNA Game Studio 2.0, a video game development program.

The company will also give away SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows Server Standard Edition.

Very smart.

Now, Apple, about the non-Java version of WebObjects and the Enterprise Objects Framework….

…and the iPhone SDK?

Seriously though, this stuff should probably have been free a long time ago and it’s something that Apple should consider as well. Getting people using Windows Server early, or XNA Game development tools will undoubtedly bolster mindshare.

When I was teaching in the local college, the only tools available for “web” development were Word and Powerpoint (yes, I know!!!!!), though later we were provided with Frontpage. We weren’t given a test server. We didn’t have access to a public web folder.

My solution was to provide them with a MAMP setup, each with their own account and get them to use FTP and Notepad.

So, come on Apple. Come on….people who…like…Linux – find a way to compete.

20/100 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What

Far away in some coffee shop there are three guys sitting, taking gulps of their frappes and writing an insanely great idea on the back of a napkin. They’re going to blow apart the world of social network and provide the basis for the next great revolution. Internet/Web 1.0 seemed mostly to be about discovering … Continue reading “20/100 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What”

Internet/Web 1.0 seemed mostly to be about discovering how to sell things online – dog food, books, videos and content. We discovered that food was a bad thing to sell online unless you were local to your customer. We discovered that books and videos can be compelling if you have a great supply chain and a few huge warehouses. We discovered that people don’t like paying for online content but if it’s a reasonable price, they’ll part with their readies.

Web 2.0 was hyped as being about the conversation but it really continued the idea that content should be free. Not just free to the consumer but also free to the provider. That’s why YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook are all doing so well. They chewed through investor money and then were either acquired or got huge investments from massive companies. What’s paying for these services? Eyeballs. Companies seem convinced that online advertising is worth billions.

Our three entreprenerds are working on inventing Web 3.0.

I see it as being some of the following (inspired by the Web 3.0 article on Wikipedia)

ubiquitous mobile connectivity
open identity, portable reputation
semantic web and service oriented architecture
distributed databases
intelligent ‘pro-active’ web (building on intelligent applications)
more open access to data and services
cloud, as opposed to grid, computing
persistent statement-based datastores
expansion beyond the vanilla web

I’m expecting better and more intelligent heuristics in my mobile applications. I think SaaS/SOA only works with properly ubiquitous networking, something which we do not have yet and it will be a while before we do. So we need storage and processing power locally – not a lot though more than ever before. A rich client accessing web services is obviously the way to go as evidenced by the Google Maps application on the iPhone. The experience is much better than the vanilla web

I’ve used that term twice now, vanilla web. That’s the web we access every day using a web browser. It’s a lot better than it was, with all this AJAXy goodness but it’s hard to beat a dedicated client. That’s why I prefer an RSS reader app compared to Google Reader. Why I prefer Maps on the iPhone to maps in my browser. Why I want an IM application rather than using web-based IM clients.

I think Web 3.0 will be the start of the end for the Vanilla Web.

What do you think?

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

Silicon Valley -> Ireland

Pop on over to eirepreneur: Gareth Coen and colleague Diane Roberts were inspired by the Enterprise Ireland bash during Paddy’s Valley to offer a similar event here in Ireland. Gareth, based in Silicon Valley, and Diane, based in Dublin, recently started a consultancy firm with the goal of helping bridge the gap between Valley and … Continue reading “Silicon Valley -> Ireland”

Pop on over to eirepreneur:

Gareth Coen and colleague Diane Roberts were inspired by the Enterprise Ireland bash during Paddy’s Valley to offer a similar event here in Ireland. Gareth, based in Silicon Valley, and Diane, based in Dublin, recently started a consultancy firm with the goal of helping bridge the gap between Valley and Irish tech start-ups.

If you want to know more, and save money, read on.

I remain sceptical about this approach, still likening it to trying to make Ireland into Hollywood by shipping a couple of casting agents over here but if you’re in charge of a tech startup and you’re running the kind of tech that would benefit greatly from a step onto the first rung of the ladder then you should register immediately using the secret code provided and enjoy.

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