Bootstrap diaries: Will work anywhere…..

In the final throws of the launch product being ready it’s been all (my) hands on deck, so here’s today’s schedule.

6.00am – Coffee and fire up the laptop.

8.00 am – Get myself looking presentable (I think there should be a book called, “Dressing Gown Entrepreneurs”)

9.00a m – Car into tyre centre, made some calls to launch customers.

10.00 am – Back to the house, code a little more.

11.25 am – Head over to Portrush.

12.00 pm – Encamp in Ground in Portrush, coffee is excellent and the cinnamon swirly thing is going down a treat.  More work done…

1.20 pm – Head back to Coleraine, sit in the car park and do some more work in the car.

1.40 pm – Sainsbury’s car park, more of the same.

3.00 pm – Back at the house where my daughter and I play Super Mario Bros on the Wii

5.00 pm – Downtime…….

6.00 pm – Family time making dinner.

7.00 pm – My world stops for TV Burp, makes me honk with laughter which I am not ashamed about.  I need this programme…

8.00 pm – An evening of on and off development work, managed to get an awful lot done.

If you have a full time job and am working on a startup then the evening and weekend route is the way you’ll probably go.  It’s not easy, even more so if you do have a family.  The main thing to remember is that it is achievable.  Good luck.

Bootstrap diaries: pre launch feedback

Wednesday night was Open Coffee in Coleraine.  Though I’m now asked many times why I need it now there’s a steady stream of work, I still get a buzz from seeing the good things that businesses are doing.

Better still was I got some good feedback on my own product and my thoughts were aligning quite nicely with what was going through my head as well.  Feedback though leads to new ideas and sometimes you just have to stop yourself doing anymore development before you go to launch.

The main thing is to put your product in front of potential customers and not developers, they are breeds apart sometimes.  I’m not say that all developer feedback is useless, far from it, but you need to get to the people who are going to use your thing/thang/doofer/doobrie on a daily basis.

The one feature I was toying with is a firm requirement so it got put into the main system this morning.  And the product went from being excellent to being a game changer.  Me, for one, I am a happy man.

So to recap:

• Get to open coffee or any other networking event. Networking face to face is where your potential customers are.
• You can explain things is more than sentences of 140 characters.
• Seek out who you want to demo to, be picky with your potentials.  Are they a short term, mid term or long term proposition?
• If the product is work in progress say so but also have a firm roadmap in your head of when you are ready to launch.  Also mention the future roadmap, it shows commitment to your potential customer and the product you own.
• Open Coffee is usually a relaxed place, so you can relax too.

You’re only as good as your network says you are.

I think it’s fair to say, in reflection, that 2009 was basically spent trying to find my centre of gravity. Towards November I was starting to sound like a bit of a personal pity party so something had to change.  Thanks to my network, finding out the technology landscape and talking to good people I could put myself in the right place at the right time.

There were a few things that happened that did help it along.

Open Coffee and other network meetings do work

You can’t beat face to face networking.  There was a time when I didn’t have to do this, the work was streaming in during the boom times.  Skills are plentiful and it’s a case of being able to sell yourself.  From Open Coffee I’ve managed to show my face once at XCake as well.  On the online side I keep up with Digital Circle and the usual stream of info on Twitter.

Speaking

I don’t think it does anyone any harm to publicly speak once in a while.  I loved doing Barcamp Derry last October.  Prospective customers, investors, employers and collaborators can instantly see what you are like and what drives you.  From the Barcamp experience I would really like to do some more speaking in 2010.

You’re friends

Considering that I moved to Northern Ireland in 2004 it’s taken a good five years to find my networking feet.  There’s a couple of factors in that, partially to do with the existence of technology like Twitter.  I always had a LinkedIn account but I did my searches by sector, not location.

Through the likes of Open Coffee I’ve met some great people.  Even better that most have them have become good friends and are on speed dial if I really need them.  The help, advice and provision that these people are willing to give is also available to you, all you have to do is to make yourself available and willing to show your face.

Write

I have an “articles” section on this site.  These aren’t articles that I just wrote for the fun of it, they are important networking tools to prove your knowledge.  The likes of Java Developer’s Journal, IBM developerWorks and the Belfast Telegraph have given me the opening to write articles on a wide range of technology subjects over the last nine years.

So, to summarise, with this mix of activities I’m just starting to shape and form what 2010 is going to look like, I’m really excited for 2010.  There’s some big things to happen.

Bootstrap diaries – It’s good to share but not all the time.

I’ve been head down for the last week or so getting some things finished off with “TNS” (The New Startup).  Like I’ve said in previous posts (and talks at Barcamp etc) that it’s always good to have an advisory board of people that you know and trust.

For TNS I’ve got about 8 people that I can phone up or Skype at any time and go, “Is this part a stinker?” and I know I’ll get an honest opinion.  Good case in point this morning where I was talking to a client about a few things with the transaction path of TNS.

With Open Coffee’s and Barcamps the idea is share and share alike, it may be skills, ideas, content, time or whatever.  The overall notion that times aren’t great and we’re all in this together.  But (there’s always a but) there is also a time to shut up and get on with it.  Keep in contact with your advisory board and get product out.  Share to your potential customers not the rest of the development/startup community.

I find NDA’s a little pointless sometimes, all depends on the company and the stage that they are at.  There’s no point on earth asking me to sign an NDA on something that doesn’t exist, isn’t producing any revenue and doesn’t have anything remotely unique.  Get product out, get customers and then start getting NDA’s out when you are starting to stretch your arms.  At this point you have something to protect.

The Bootstrap Diaries – Part 2. Attempts of the past, the Aerleasing story.

No work is wasted, it’s just carried forward into what you are doing.  For better or for worse you will always have access to history and you’ll always improve on what you did in the past.  

The Aerleasing story, a few people have asked so perhaps it’s now time to tell the story.  In 2004 on moving back to Northern Ireland we found ourselves in the Belfast International Airport more times that I can remember, for two reasons: firstly the bookshop was better than all the others at the time and secondly Junction One was the only place with a Starbucks.  True.

I bought a copy of the story of RyanAir and all it’s trimmings and nestled within the first couple of chapters is the fact that Tony Ryan started leasing out Aer Lingus 747’s during the quiet periods.  Brainwave hit almost immediately…. 

A quick look on the internet and there was a few sites full of listings but nothing like I was thinking which was realtime brokerage between lessors and lessees.  Plus the thought of all those brand new planes in the desert doing nothing, it would be good to get those in the air.

Before I did anything I found the trade magazines: Airline Business, Air Transport World, Airline Fleet Network and Planning and Air Finance Journal.  I put calls out out to Airline Business and got a subscription based on the fact I was looking to advertise.  Turned out to be my goldmine, the listings of the top 50 leasing companies was staring me in the face two days later.  

I spoke at Barcamp October past about not being a wallflower, I was one of them and it was really my wife that challenged me to phone one of them up and ask for advice.  I phoned the first one listed and to my astonishment the chap happily spoke to me.  Over three weeks I got the low down on the leasing business and by the end of it I “knew more than the banks do”.  All the time I was coding the system up and actually paid a good graphic designer friend to come up with the branding.

When I got to a point of testing I was invited down to Dublin to have a look around a few things and got into meetings with various folk about the product.  I came back with a ton of feedback and then set about improving the system.  

As a bootstrapping startup you are your own PR company, market research company, sales team and IT department.  The press releases were good but not great looking back, the Start A Business Programme was good but by no means relevant to what I was doing.

Airline Business ran the press release and before I knew it people were signing up and the company names were flashing before me.  Air Transport World wanted to do a small interview and this was pretty important as it was with their main editor in the US.  He speaks and the industry takes note.  

So from my little admin console I saw people adding aeroplanes and then one day someone actually put a sealed bid in.  Then the cracks started to appear, people were just treating it like another listing site desperate to get their phone number out there.  Brokers hated it for the fact that the chain of brokerage was essentially broken by an upstart programmer.  You live and you learn.

About 18 months later I worked on an add on to Aerleasing called the Digital Broker, it could fire out a message to 350+ aviation dealers, end users and airlines with requirements from other airlines.  This would save the end user a good couple of weeks emailing and phoning around.  It was a lead generation tool and the airlines liked it.  The major coup was when Air Finance Journal offered to do a feature on the Digital Broker as the next step forward for the sector.  I was expecting a couple of column inches in the news section.  What I got was a full page, with screen shots…. the user base shot up.  From initial phone calls to getting the editorial took two years to secure, a lot of phone calls, talking to editors and generally having to sell the idea to them.  Once they got it, they wrote about it.

All the time there was interest but not adoption.  There was talk of selling it to Boeing for $2m and there was various other talk by well groomed talkers.  It means nothing until the mandate is signed and the money is in your account.  Deals fall through, some salesmen talk rubbish, it’s all part of the rich tapestry know as startup.  I’m a lot more guarded now.

So where is it all now?  Well Aerleasing just curled up and died really, users lost interest for the simple fact deals weren’t being done so people stopped logging in.  The real issue is what I’d call the “old boys network”, most of this stuff is done on the phone to the folk you know and trust.  Until the new wave come in then it will be hard to change the broker mentality.

It taught me a lot, a heck of a lot about product, people, testing, beta customers etc.  And it’s something that I’ve carried forward for the next wave of madness.

The story continues…. tomorrow night is Go For It programme night.

The Bootstrap Diaries – Part 1.

There are just days when you have to go it alone.  For those who don’t know I’m bootstrapping a company from scratch.  I thought it might be a good idea to chip in some blog posts along the now that I can talk about some of these things.

Since my last job finished at the end of June I’ve been wondering the best way to take things forward.  Ask anyone who really knows me and I can have a list of ideas that are ready to be coded.  The most interesting thing for me is that this is first start up where I’ve been asking a lot of opinion of the product I’m doing (it’s still in stealth, there’s only a chosen few who know).  

So here we go, the bold pointed things to keep in mind.

Writing it down on a one pager – It’s vitally important to write down on one page what your product is going to do, who the target market(s) are and what the total size of the market is.  From there you’ve got focus and what you think it’s all worth.  Ignore this step at your peril.

Blag, steal, borrow and blag again – If you design, get a good back end coder.  If you code then get a designer.  This also goes for business advice.  Some of the people I hold in high regard are willing to chip in and keep me on the right path.  Finally, don’t forget a polite thank you goes a long way.  

Crap code is fine – Product first, coding refactoring later.  There’s no point going over the finer detail of SCRUM or Agile methods if it’s not generating revenue. 

Market share or revenue? – In the initial stages it’s all about generating revenue (especially if you are a service company).  If you’re hellbent on creating a brand or a world changing-everyone-has-to-have-this iPhone app then market share is your aim.

What time do you realistically have? – If you are already working then it’s extra hours. I know some that are up at 5am and work through ’til 9am. I know some who do the late shift.  There are times I do both and within time I suffer for it.  Also, if you have family they will only put up with your Branson like enthusiasm for so long.

Learn to do a basic cash flow forecast – Yeah it’s boring but I bet if I asked you now you wouldn’t have a notion what your costs are for the next 12 months.  A simple spreadsheet is fine.  There are a loads of good cashflow templates out there on the internet.

Get an advisory board of people you trust – Ultra important this one.  I have three people that I bounce stuff off in various parts of the world.  I also have a number of industry contacts who I bounce ideas off.  I have one friend who I can just cyberly puke on when I’m having a bad day (and they with me if needed).  

Don’t over do the networking while you are developing the idea – Any networking event the obvious question is, “what do you do?”.  When you are just about to beta test fair enough.  From day dot without a single jot of code, forget it.  You could be using your time on better things.  One thing I’ve noticed over the last five months is that there are an awful lot of people who can talk the talk but when you really press them…. you pretty much know it will come to nothing.

Some of the above I actually covered in my talk at Barcamp Derry in October but they still ring true whatever the time of year.