Finding business partners the eHarmony way.

So much for the quiet long weekend.  I got into a fairly long Twitter conversation with Nichola Bates (@growsalesonline), Chris McCabe (@maxer08), Jackie McGonigle (@whatsonni), Lyra McKee (@LyraMcKee) and Mary McKenna (@MMaryMcKenna) about something that really makes me tick… data!

Well I was looking at the data angle of it I’m pretty sure the rest were looking from another angle.  It was triggered by a blog post that Mary did a few days ago about having two pros of having two heads at the helm of the business (you can read it here).  The question then was raised, how do you find the perfect match of a business partner?

There are some sites out there like LinkedIn and Collab.ie which do provide a start but nothing that could actually predict anything.  The key to all of this are two simple things: rules and knowledge.

eHarmony works in the same way.  The questionnaire when you sign up is the key bit, it’s the data gathering that figures who you are and what you are prepared to put up with.  The next key is figuring out what you are actually looking for.

The following is an actual advert (why they listed on Gumtree I’ll never know but there you are, each to their own and all that).

We are an angling retailer based in manchester. We are a new breed of retailer, with a great USP. We have a vision for future growth and are now looking to grow the business.
We are looking for a partner/Investor/Mentor. Preferably someone who has an interest in angling. The ideal person is someone who would like to take an hands on approach. Experience in the retail trade and IT.
We have been trading since June 2009, much work has already been done.
We have a website already up and running, ecommerce site, 200+ Customers.
Business name, brand name and trademarks have already been registered with IPO.
This is a great opportunity for the right person.
Ingoing is 10K.
Quick return is predicted and all targets are seen as highly achievable.

So the jump out points:

• Hands on investor in sales/IT
• Min invest of 10K
• Likes angling (call it active interest in the investment)
• Based in North West of England
• Early stage startup
• Retail experience

You could network your brains out for six months getting to every event you could, shaking loads of hands, doing lots of meetings and it could all come to nothing.  Or you could go the eHarmony way plough all your wants and needs into the system and let the site whittle the list of eligible partners down for you.  That filters the wheat from the chaff.  Then it’s a case of meeting them all (pink carnation and a newspaper job) and doing the rest from there.

Obviously a system like this is only as good as the data it has from potential plenty-of-fish-in-the-sea business partners.

Weekends off, who needs them?

The JFDI Chronicles – My little black book.

I suppose everyone has “a book”, it might be a journal or a word document.  It’s the place where everything goes into.  For me I have an A4 sketch book, it’s coffee stained and a bit bashed around the edges, not great to look at it but it contains every note about Datasentiment’s development from day 1 (and the previous four months from that).  I started this book during unemployment, it was a horrible time as well.  On the positive side this was the time I started meeting likeminded people in the startup arena, ones who I will keep in contact with wherever I am on the planet.

It’s got screen shots, market research, quotes, everything that got planned and binned, everything that got planned and implemented.

Rough business plans, projections, customer segmentation, buying patterns, phone numbers, interested customers.  It’s got SQL statements, recency/frequency/value calculations….

I’m sure you get the idea.

Most things I’ve been involved with never start at the computer, it starts with pen and paper.  It forces me to start with a bunch of notes and ideas and refine them into something usable that I can produce.

Every month I revisit the black book (today is my scheduled day) and I’ll go over notes from 12 months ago and see if there’s anything I’ve missed.  Oddly enough things that I’ve put on the back burner (but are in the book) are now starting to emerge into something usable again.  It didn’t go in the direction I’d originally planned but it’s good to see it’s not wasted.

This book makes sure I don’t forget.

Bootstrap Diaries: Knowledge is cheap.

Very cheap in fact.  Obviously there’s the Google/Bing/(Name your other favourite search engine here).

When it comes to knowledge for Datasentiment I had a bit of a head start from 2002 when I worked for a data mining company. I learned an awful lot about things not to do to your employees, how bad some Phd coder’s Java can be and watching reams and reams of data from a well know supermarket that couldn’t compete with the clubcard.

For those who met me last year when I was talking about free tables the like on the phone, well the next three months were an unfocused blur and the months between October and March have been the most rewarding, productive and exciting times.

Any gaps in knowledge were basically filled with the books below:

One of those books was listed on Amazon at £0.00, yup it was in their warehouse and they wanted rid of it, all I had to do was pay the postage.  The majority of these books were below five pence and all of them have domain knowledge that I couldn’t easily find on Google.  Tesco certainly don’t give their clubcard secrets away.

There’s no excuse for “I don’t know” because i) The knowledge is out there and ii) there’s probably a dozen people who’ve asked the same question.

Post-It notes came in handy for my copy of Rework when it landed.

StartVI – The incubator

Oh how I have waited for something like this.  When the huge slow to react monsters can’t deliver what’s actually needed then it gives space for smaller more nimble creatures to evolve and react.  Welcome the small, mobile and beautiful www.startvi.com

VI is:

VI (pronounced ’six’) is a Virtual Incubator for very early stage companies based in Northern Ireland which focuses heavily on mentoring and operational readiness.

And how Northern Ireland needs it. All we have to do is get the Derry branch sorted out….