alex black’s blog

Snapsort.com is live - Compare cameras

Yesterday we released our first feature up at http://snapsort.com.  Using the site you can compare any two digital cameras and get a concise summary of the differences and similarities, and see which camera snapsort.com thinks is better overall.

For example, my brother is looking for a new camera, he's looking for a camera with a lot of zoom (since he finds his current camera's zoom rather inadequate).  I recommended two cameras to him, each with different strengths, so I sent him a link comparing the Panasonic DMC-ZS3 vs the Canon SX20 IS.  You can see a number of major differences.  The SX20's major advantage is that it has 20x zoom compared to the ZS3's 12x zoom, but the ZS3 is much smaller (good for travelling), and has a better screen, faster continuous shooting, etc.

Here is a snippet of that comparison:

I also suggested he might compare the SX20 IS to the Panasonic DMC-FZ28, the FZ28 has almost as much zoom, but faster continuous shooting, is lighter, and has better low light capabilities.

So, the great thing about this is, you can compare any two cameras on snapsort.com, and quickly see the differences.  For example, you might wonder what are the differences between the Canon SX10 IS and the newer Canon SX 20 IS which I compared above.

You can even compare older cameras.  Years ago I bought the Canon S1 IS, for its great zoom and movie capabilities.  Its now been replaced by the SX 20 IS, snapsort.com can quickly identify whats changed between the Canon S1 IS and the newer Canon SX 20 IS. Its interesting, the SX20 is better on almost every feature, except for continuous shooting speed, even though its 4 years newer.  The SX20's bigger brother the SX1 IS is faster than the S1 IS though.  Unfortunately we don't yet have pictures of the older cameras.

We'd love to hear any ideas and/or feedback you have, and we'll keep you posted as we add more to snapsort.com in the future.

Be "of the internet"

In this post I want to persuade you to build web applications (or sites) that are "of the internet".  By this I mean applications that are built to best leverage the inherent properties of the internet, for example linking between sites, bookmarking pages, caching, crawling, viewing sites in different formats such as mobile or print etc.

Peter Sweeney at Primal Fusion opened my mind to this perspective.  For some people I'm sure its obvious :) But for me, a few years ago, it wasn't.  As a result, my efforts to develop our first internal web API at Primal Fusion were definitely not "of the internet". And for other people at Primal Fusion it wasn't obvious either, our first efforts at a consumer facing web application broke key features of the internet such as bookmarking and the browser back button.

What does it mean to be "of the internet"?  For me it means:

• To embrace official internet standards.  All of the stuff that makes the web work, like HTTP, DNS, RSS etc, its all been written up as standards that you can read about.  Its amazing how much web development I did before ever reading one of these standards :)  See the HTTP/1.1 request for comments (RFC). 
• Ensure accessability.  If your application runs on the internet, then consider your audience.  They're not all running Internet Explorer 8 on 1600x1200 monitors.  Some of them are running other browsers, some are search engines, some print your webpages, some are on mobile devices, and some are visually impaired.
• To adopt and improve best practices of the internet.  For example, use CSS, don't hard code your font sizes preventing your grandma from increasing the text size so she can read your site, use good caching practices to improve your site's performance etc.  

Why should you care?  By developing applications that are of internet, rather than applications that break the internet, you:

• Become a good net citizen
• Improve the usability of your site
• Improve the chances of google and other search engines properly indexing and ranking your site
• Save money by taking advantage of existing protocols and systems rather than building your own, for example why invent your own authentication protocol when you can use HTTP Digest

I was spurred to write this post because of some difficulty I'm having right now trying to get our application to respond nicely to not found URLs.  We're developing our website in Lift, using Scala, and the recommended approach to handle page not founds (see here) is to redirect the user to a page telling them that the page they are looking for does not exist.  This is the wrong approach because 1) it changes the url on the user, preventing them from possibly correcting a mistake in the url or say copying it and emailing it to you, 2) it sends the wrong message to search engines, instead of letting them know this url is not found, you're telling them its just moved, and 3) it goes against the standards of the internet.

When a user-agent requests a page from your site, if you can't find the page you should respond with a 404 not found status code, rather than a 200 OK status code.  Read Google's opinion on the soft 404 issue.

Here are a number of best practices that stand out in my mind:

• Support the browser back button. This is especially difficult when developing ajax applications, but if the user pushes the back button, they should return to the previous page they were at, if this doesn't work on your site, then its broken!
• Support bookmarking and linking.  If someone can view a page on your site, they should be able to make a link to it or bookmark it.  On many sites, you can't do this, because the page being displayed is a result of some state that is not on the URL, so if you give the URL to someone else, they might see something different.
• Use GET and POST appropriately. Only use GET for safe requests. Think about it, its called GET.  It should do nothing other than GET a webpage.  If you are modifying a shopping cart, or deleting a record in the database, it can't be done in a GET.
• Develop RESTful APIs.  All of the above suggestions apply to web APIs they same way they apply to websites.  REST is an approach for APIs that embraces web standards.
• Take advantage of caching.  A key principle of the web is that pages and responses can be cached.  Of course this only works well if you're already following web standards well.  If all your GET requests are safe (idempontent), then you can easily stick a web cache in front of your web server, and google and the user's web browser can also safely cache response to speed things up, and ultimately save you money in bandwidth and CPU time.

One last anecdote.  Years ago Google unveiled the Google Web Accelerator product,  The idea was they would improve the experience people had browsing the web by pre-caching pages for users.  One major problem they ran into was that many sites had not conformed to internet standards, and when google sent them GET requests for pages, these sites performed actions with side effects such as deleting data.  What they'd done was build their applications in such a way that when a user clicked a button on their site to say delete a product, the browser would send a GET request to the a url like http://yoursite.com/deleteProduct?product=1, when what they should have done is have the browser send a DELETE or POST request. GET is meant to be idempotent.

I've only touched the surface here, but I hope I've got across at a high level what it means to be of the internet, and I encourage you to make this perspective your own and use it to help guide your decisions when you're building your next internet application.

Bootstrapping: Advice you can use

Bootstrapping is the art of starting and running a business with little or no money.  Here are some practical tips from my experience for bootstrapping a technology startup.  I have some specific links and examples for the Waterloo region and Canada, but a lot of the ideas should be applicable anywhere!

Me wiring network cable :)

1. Do stuff yourself

When you have no money to spend, don't hire people to do things, do them yourself.  Design your own website and business cards.  Wire your own network.  Do your own accounting.

2. Find free or cheap services and tools

• Pay $3.50/mo for phone lines, and $0.01/min for calls across North America with an Asterisk VOIP server and a provider like Unlimitel
• Use free business software, such as Ubuntu, Open Office etc
• Use free development tools, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Eclipse etc
• Embrace software as a service, avoid any in-house servers, use tools like Zoho Office, Gliffy for diagrams, host your custom domain email for up to 50 users free with Google Apps standard edition
• Use residential internet such as DSL or Cable, as soon as you say business the cost at least doubles
• We used to host our website ourselves, don't do that, get a cheap online account, such as GoDaddy for $4.99/mo

3. Be cheap

Don't spend any money you don't have to.  We used to buy computers from TechnoTrade for less than $300.  The power supplies would die every few months, we'd replace them, the computers worked fine apart from that.  An early mistake I made was thinking we needed good quality computers, with good network cards and good graphics cards.  That stuff has all been commoditized for years.  Get computers with everything integrated on the motherboard, spend some money on RAM if its important for you.

Being cheap is a bit like saving power.  There's no point spending time turning of individual lights if you're leaving the fridge door open.  So likewise, don't make your life difficult trying to save money where its not going to make a difference.  Start with your biggest costs first, usually salary, office space, then equipment.

4. Leverage government funding

• Here in Canada there are many government programs available, for all types of business.  Go through them all, don't listen to people who tell you your business won't qualify, understand what the programs are for and find one that is relevant to you.  In the past we've been helped on a number of projects by two great programs: IRAP and SR&ED.  IRAP gives grants (that you don't have to pay back) towards salary and equipment used on approved projects involving commercializing new technology.  SR&ED are tax credits the government will give back to you at the end of the fiscal year against salary you've paid out, with similar prequisities as IRAP. 
• These programs take work, be prepared to write proposals, improve them, track time on your projects, file reports.  But its free money!
• Get to know someone who works for these programs, say your assigned rep, their job is to give out money to eligible companies, so help them do their job, if you're the type of company they are looking for they'd love to find out about you and help you succeed.
• Talk to Communitech, they have someone responsible for keeping up with all of the funding programs.
• One key with these programs is that they typically contribute money to companies towards salaries they have already paid out.  So setup a corporation, you can do it online for less that $1,000, open a bank account, and start paying yourself.  You're working, aren't you?

5. Free or cheap office space

• Setup office in your basement
• Even better, setup office in your parents basement, Chris and I did this for 4 months, we lived (and worked!) at his parent's place for 2 months, and then at my parent's place for 2 months.  I wouldn't do it again, but you can't argue with free everything (room, board, internet, furniture, phones, office space, moral support :)
• Sublease (or squat) someone else's office space, often comes with the benefit of shared internet, phone system and other facilities, people to hang out with, etc.  We got free space for a few weeks from one friend, and later subleased space for 4 desks from our first consulting client.

6. Consult on the side

Perhaps your business is a services business in which case this doesn't apply.  But if you're developing your own product, just work two jobs, write code (or perform other services) for other companies half the time, and spend the rest of the time building your product.  This isn't easy, or fun, but it can be done.

7. Start your company on the side

Keep your day job, work evenings and weekends for "yourself.com".  This usually works best before you're married or have kids etc. 

7. Hire smart

If you're just starting out you're probably not going to hire anyone, but as soon as you do need to hire some, its possible to keep your costs down and your success rate up.

• Hire coop students from the University of Waterloo.  Number one reason: they're easy to hire.  Unlike full time employees, you can get say 50 coop student resumes at a time, then interview the 10 you like in one day, and usually hire someone very smart and hardworking, often with experience from other coop jobs, or their own projects.  Our philosophy was: hire geeks who write code outside of class and work.  This demonstrates passion, independence, and talent. (Check out the coop tax credit)
• Hire recent grads and young inexperienced people in general.  Again, look for geeks.  You can pay these people less since they have less experience, they'll work hard because they are trying to make something of themselves, and they'll fit into your business because they don't know any other yet.
• Bring people in for 2-3 day hands on tests, pay them for their time, this helps you figure out if they're any good, and if you can work with them, and if they like you.  Saves you both time and money.  We did this many times, saved us huge.  We avoided hiring duds, and people knew exactly what to expect when they joined our company, not like most jobs where you basically get married to the company after a couple interviews with a couple people.

8. Get a cofounder or two

Find one or two other people who you trust and have the same passion and ethics you do, split the company between you, all of sudden there is more than just you working with no cash outlay.  See Chris Dixon's post on dividing equity between founders.

Choosing a cofounder is a very important decision, a bit like getting married, so take it seriously.  I gather many partnerships fail.

9. Focus on whats important

Spend your time and money on real things that drive your business forward.  Someone much more successful than me once told me that the first thing most people do when starting a business is to choose a logo, buy business cards, setup a website, buy a phone line, buy office furniture etc.  Don't do that.  Call potential customers,  Build a prototype.  Find a cofounder,   Being all setup is not worth anything. 

10. Join local organizations, network and get advice.

See my post about resources and links in the Waterloo region.

Which one should you buy?

Image via Wikipedia

I'm one of the co-founders at a new company called Snapsort.  Here's a brief update on what Snapsort is all about. (No, we don't have a website. Yet. Update: we now have a placeholder website, snapsort.com)

Often when I'm looking to buy something (which is usually something electronic like a new camera or TV...), I wish I could have a conversation with Mr. Data.  I'd tell him what I'm looking for, he'd ask me some relevant and insightful questions, help me learn a bit out what options there are, and ultimately give me personalized advice about which product I should buy....

That's Snapsort's goal, to be able to give personalized unbiased product recommendations, so you can choose the right product. 

I picked Mr Data because I imagine he'd have in depth knowledge of all the products out there.  I also imagine he'd have a good understanding about the implications of different features the products have, and would be able to balance my possibly conflicting requirements to determine which products might fit my needs best.  However, I imagine if I asked Mr Data the wrong question, he might tell me WAY more than I'd ever want to know, which is exactly what many sites do today, giving you pages of reviews, lists of tons of specs, just drowning you in information.  We plan to build a better way.

We've assembled a small team:

• Mark Feeney - software development
• Ihab Ilyas - solving the hard problems
• Chris Reid - strategy, finance, marketing
• Myself - product vision, software development

I'll keep you posted on our progress, and will let you know when we're looking for some early users to kick the tires, but don't hold your breath :)  Snapsort is just about 2 months old, and we've got a ways to go yet.  You can follow our progress on the Snapsort blog.

Waterloo Tech Startup Resources and Links

Waterloo is a great place for startups, although its no silicon valley we do have a thriving community here of startups, established tech companies, and great events and organizations to support entrepreneurship, as well as two incredible universities including the University of Waterloo.  I try to stay in touch with whats going on in the area, and although I often feel like I know all the names of the important people, and have heard of all the startups, I still get pleasantly surprised when I discover a new one, or find a new local resource.

Here are some links to local news, events, organizations, bloggers and companies that I follow.  I'd love to hear some of yours too!

(If I get any information wrong feel free to let me know, sorry!)

Organizations, News and Events

• Communitech - great local organization promoting technology and innovation in our region
  • Communitech blog
  • Waterloo tech tv - a great site with videos of local leaders speaking including: Ted Hastings (Moxy Media), John Baker (Desire2Learn), Dan Latendre (Igloo), Mike Worry (Nuvation, I worked there as a coop!), Ali Asaria (Well.ca), Omar Ismail (ProductWiki) and more
  • Entrepreneur Week - November 16-22 this year, speakers, events, networking!
  • They organize lots of peer-peer groups, tech breakfasts and more
  • Membership is free for startups with fewer than 5 employees
• The Accelerator Centre - a great place for short term leases with shared facilities for startups, and hub of events and activities
• Entrepreneur's Edge
  • An annual 5 day course (going on right now!), with great topics such as product management, teams and boards, sales financing, investors, pitching
• Unconferences
  • Startup Camp Waterloo (google group)
  • Demo Camp Guelph
  • I haven't been to one of these yet, but I gather the first rule is you have to demo :)
• Other events
  • Dev House Waterloo - (google group) run and hosted by Ilya Grigork (of PostRank), no business, just tech/code, hope to attend next month
  • Startup Drinks Waterloo - just what the name says, organized by Dan Silivestru
• Red Canary - not just Waterloo, but regional (across Canada) tech news, jobs and more
  • See their hot starts in Waterloo survey
• Kitchener-Waterloo Startup Index by techvibes
  • Updated for november
• Gary Will - publishes his Tech Digest of whats going on in the area
• StartupNorth - canadian focused
• Waterloo Tech News - aggregation of local news
• Velocity - a residence incubator for student startups at the University of Waterloo
• Update: techstartup.ca is a new site that aggregates news, blogs, twitter from local people involved in tech startups

Bloggers

• Jeff Fedor - tech entrepreneur of ParkVu (previously of Primal Fusion, Covarity...)
• Jim Estill - blogs about time management and leadship (previously ran Synnex)
• Ilya Grigorik - founder of PostRank, writes great technical articles about the latest tech including Ruby and Cloud Computing
• Joseph Fung - part time entrepreneur, seems to be involved in everything around here :)
• Jesse Rodgers - involved with Velocity and StartupCampWaterloo
• Declan Wheelan - local Agile and TDD evangelist and trainer
• Ali Asaria - founder of well.ca
• Peter Sweeney (the founder of Primal Fusion) blogs on their ideas blog
• Mark Connolly - designer at Primal Fusion
• Robert Barlow-Busch - user experience at Primal Fusion, also organizes local user experience group

There are many more great bloggers out there in KW, these are just a few that I identify with as either particularly interesting or influential within the local community.

The Search for a Thin Bezel Flat Panel

I'm interested in buying a new TV.  At this point I'm just looking/researching, which is half the fun. :) 

What am I looking for:

• At least 50", 55" would be nice
• 1080p
• VGA input
• Good picture quality
• No need for any features such as tuner, speakers, ethernet, photo cards etc

Basically just a display panel.

Its not too big a deal finding some TVs that match those specs.  But, my next deciding factor is appearance.  I would really like a panel with a very narrow frame/border, e.g. very minimalist, nothing but screen.

This is hard to find it seems.  It seems to be called "thin bezel".  Here's what I've found so far:

Samsung 460UTn-UD

The 460UTn-UD series of panels is made by Samsung, and is one of their Professional Displays, it looks like their marketed to businesses, and one of their key features is their thin bezel that enables them to be mounted next to each other and have large images composited across many panels without much interruption at the borders.

• Yes, they have a ultra thin bezel
• Unfortunately they only come in this one size, 46"
• They only support 720p, not 1080p

LG 55SL80

The LG 55SL80 looks very promising.  It was announced this summer and according to what I've read should be available now, but it looks like its not yet widely available at retailers.  The 55SL80 is one of a series of brand new LCDs from LG that have a super narrow bezel, and look like they support all the latest features such as 240Hz, 1080p, etc.

• Yes, ultra slim bezel
• Three sizes available: 42", 47" and 55"
• 1080p, 240Hz
• Single layer design - seems to refer to a single surface on the front

And thats it... So far I can't seem to find much else.

Got any tips?

Spam Content Sites are like Lettuce

If questionable or so called spam-sites actually do provide some value to someone, are they therefore valuable?  If you have a lot of sites which each provide a tiny bit of value to someone, do you have a lot of value?  I argue that you do not.

I had an interesting discussing with a friend about SEO and the value delivered by questionable websites, sparked by my previous post on SEO and Geosign. 

He pointed me to a rather timely article by the Record talking about the rebirth of Geosign as Moxy Media, and how Geosign (now as Moxy Media) is experiencing great success, making tons of money, and growing, now up to ~170 employees according to the article.

I spent a few minutes and investigated some of Moxy Media's media (sites), and I've concluded they are spam.  It wasn't an easy call though.  Their sites are attractive, seem to be well designed, appear to have original content that looks like it was legitimately written by a human.  But the question ultimately is do these sites have any real value? Did I learn anything reading them?  Did it spark a single new idea in my head?  Would I recommend the site to a friend?

Image by photofarmer via Flickr

Case Study 1: I read a lot of content on a couple of these sites, and it passed all my initial tests.  But the more I read the more I realized there was something wrong.  Yes, I was reading content, yes it appeared to make sense, but it was like eating lettuce.  You can eat lettuce forever and not get full or satisfied.  Check it out for your self, the site I looked at is called gizmocafe.  I read some pages about '13" - 20" TVs', then the pages about '21" - 29" TVs'... Guess what, I next read about '"30" - 39" TVs'.  And what did I learn, I don't really remember.

Case Study 2: I looked at another site of theirs, this time about local chiropractors.  I clicked on car accidents, and read a bit about injuries that can occur from car accidents.  Below that I saw a list of regional resources, oh, exciting, lets pretend I live in California and see what I can learn about local chiropractors in California.  If you click on California, you then see three links to news articles, and a list of Californian cities.  So, for the entire state of California, the only content they have is a list of cities in the state, and 3 news articles.  I'm still hungry.

You can argue these sites have some (small amount) of value to some one, and I'd have a hard time disagreeing.  But, its worse than that.  What about the cost of these sites?  What about the real sites contributing real value that are not being found because of these sites? What of the time people are wasting arriving at these sites, having the sites pass their intuitive spam detectors, and then spending time reading and reading eventually to conclude as I did that there is nothing there.

Yes these sites provide value, but their net value is negative because of the time they waste and the real value out there that they hide.  Google will improve, and Moxy Media will once again be in trouble, or be forced to adapt.

If you add up a lot of these sites, each providing their sliver of value, you don't get a lot of value, you get a lot of noise and pollution.

I'd apply this same argument to domain parking sites, and to email spam.  Maybe they provide value to someone.

But at what cost?

Is Search Engine Optimization a Valid Form of Marketing?

Derek Powazek posted a great attack on SEO.

He leads with a bold argument:

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.

And summarizes:

That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.

Then finishes:

It’ll take time. A lot of time. But it works. And it’s the only thing that does.

I agree with Derek.  At the end of the day, the way to succeed is to provide real value.  Geosign is the perfect example of what Derek is arguing against.  (Read about their here today, gone tomorrow story).  Geosign ultimately was not providing real value, instead they were providing the least value they could by creating low quality content sites and using all the SEO techniques they could muster to monetize those sites with ads.  One day Google got wise to their game, and basically pulled the plug, Geosign was no more.

I do however think there is a role for SEO and SEO experts, just as their is a role for marketing.  Good SEO should be like good marketing.  It should help people who might find your product/service valuable find it.  And like good marketing, it can be done well, and it should be done.  If you've got something great, that will help people get something done, you should tell the world.

Seth Godin tackles a similar question, is marketing evil?  Just like SEO, I think marketing is not itself evil, but both can be abused and used for evil.  A lot of marketing can be dishonest, which like dishonest SEO, only works in the short term.

So, get out there, produce something great, and make sure you're doing all the (honest) SEO and marketing you can to get your product/service in front of people who will care about it.

Does Your Startup Have a Napoleon Complex?

At our previous ventures, we suffered from a Napoleon complex:

Napoleon complex is a colliquial term describing an alleged type of inferiority complex which is said to affect some people, especially men, who are short in stature. The term is also used more generally to describe people who are driven by a perceived handicap to overcompensate in other aspects of their lives.

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

We were a small company who wanted to be successful.  I wanted us to be successful.  One of the things that I thought would prevent us from being successful was people thinking or realizing we were a small company.  Here are some examples of things we faced right away as we got started:

• We cold called schools to find customers for our multimedia yearbook software.  We didn't have an office, or land line, so we called from our cell phone. One of the first people we called (who was actually interested), noticed our number on his caller ID, and somehow knew it was an odd area code or exchange.  He asked a couple questions about that and quickly realized we were calling from a cell phone and not a landline, which in his mind somewhat discredited us. Remember this was 1998, cell phones were often called geek-a-phones back then!  He wanted to know why didn't have a landline, and worried that we weren't an established company. I immediately felt guilty and as if I'd be caught in a lie.  All sorts of negative thoughts entered my brain: he knows we're not a real company, this will never work, our software's no good, he won't like it.  
• Meanwhile, we needed to earn money to fund our product development, so we went in search of consulting revenue as BrightBlocks.  Since we were just starting out, we were doing anything we could to get business, and doing anything (software related) that people needed.  In fact we thought of ourselves as "software sluts", but that's another story.  So we'd find ourselves submitting an RFP to some company (a real company, not like our pretend company run out of our basement), and then we'd get requests like: can you please send us work you've done before, can you send us resumes of the staff who'd work on the project, can we meet you at your office, do you have a fast Internet connection to work remotely with us.  All of which sent us scrambling to appear like we were a real company :)

So, we took it upon ourselves to not look like a small company.  We did everything we could to look big.  If big companies did it, we wanted to do it too.

• We bought business cards and put fancy titles on them
• We used stock photography of offices and professional looking staff on our websites to give the appearance of bigger company
• We wore suits and ties when meeting people
• Our website looked more like a big 3 consulting firm than a plucky startup, with sections for our solutions, our products and technologies, impressive bios of the founders etc
• We wrote press releases on our website, announcing we'd moved into a new headquarters (e.g. we moved out of the basement into sub-leased space), or that we'd launched a new division (e.g. we'd hire a tech-writer part time)
• We bought an 800 number, if we had an 800 number we must be successful!

And it worked.  At least it appeared to work.  People were surprised to learn we were a small company after seeing our site, friends seemed impressed and surprised.  One friend commented that he thought he was at the wrong website because it looked like a big company.  Another asked if those people in the pictures actually worked for us!

One company we submitted an RFP to was FlowNetworks in Toronto (bought up by DoubleClick I think, and then Google).  Now remember, the great thing about using the Internet is that on the internet nobody knows you're a dog.  So for us this meant that if our website looked like we were a big company, and we had real email addresses, and they weren't suspicious that our phone was a cell phone, and we wrote a professional RFP then a potential client like FlowNetworks might have no idea we were a tiny company.  Even after meeting them (at their office), they would have no idea that our entire company (Chris and I) was at the meeting.

But, it didn't work.

Companies who really wanted to work with a big company would find out we couldn't deliver on something they needed.  Companies looking to engage a young energetic company got turned off by our website.  Other companies figured out we were small, and called us on it.  At that point, many would hire someone else.  But, some, were OK with that, and then proceeded to find out the real deal.  One company thought it was really important for us to have a high speed Internet connection to them so we could work remotely, so we ended up convincing them that our residential cable modem was actually fast, and they were OK with that it turns out, after some convincing.

• Us: yes we have a high speed Internet connection. 
• Them: What type of connection is it, a T1 or T3, I guess a T1 would do 
• Us: umm, its a cable modem. 
• Them: Its a business cable modem, right? You're not running this business out of your house are you? 

You get the picture :)

But more than that, it took a toll on me.  Trying to be something you're not is difficult.  It takes effort to be something other than yourself.  It takes effort to keep up the facade.  It would kill my confidence when I suspected or noticed our facade slipping.  On top of that, any company who hired us, or anyone we hired, anyone you work with, eventually gets to know you and figures out what you're really about.  I guess the plan was that by the time they figured out we were a small company they'd already be happy with our work and not mind.

So my advice to you is to embrace your small-ness.  As Jason Cohen says: you're a little company, now act like one.

Image by wOLD via Flickr

• First of all, be honest, to yourself, and to everyone else.  If you achieve success through deceit, is it worth it?
• Turn your weaknesses into strengths.  Don't be a big stodgy company, be a small nimble company. Be personable, respond quickly, work harder than the competition. 
• Express your company's personality through your website, express your personality through your company.  This way you'll attract clients who value who and what you are.
• If a potential client or customer questions your experience, be creative.  Tell them that yes you're a new grad, and no you don't have years of experience, but if they hire your company they're getting your dedication and passion as founder (and if they hire a big consulting firm, they might end up paying high end wages for a new grad anyways!)

What am I going to do differently this time? I'm going to be myself:

• Build trust through honesty and openness
• Talk actively about our challenges and successes
• Play up the fact that we're small, that we're the underdog
• Engage people in the community, add a human touch to our business
• Use titles that reflect what we do, not that try to make us look larger than we are.  We're 3 people right now, does it make sense for our titles to be CEO, CTO, and Director of Development? 
• We'll put real photos of us and our office on our site, taken by us

Ideas... Worth keeping secret?

Image by Felipe Morin via Flickr

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

 
(Quote from Howard Aiken)

When Chris and I started Booksoft while still at University (around 1998), we were a lot younger than we are now.  Looking back, we made a lot of mistakes.  Mistakes about what form our products should take, mistakes about how we marketed our company and products, mistakes about lots of things :) 

To give you some background, Booksoft's software enabled high schools and other organizations to produce multimedia yearbooks on CD-ROM.  The company is no more (its pushing up the daisies!), and the website is no longer online, however, here are a couple of links to let you peer into the past:

• A blurb about Booksoft at vbAccelerator.com (yes, we built it using Visual Basic 6, we were hardcore!)
• A snapshot of what our website looked like years ago (thanks way back machine!)

Image via Wikipedia

One mistake we made way back then was keeping things secret.  I honestly believed that all it took to build a successful company was an idea.  It was because of that belief that I was afraid to share my ideas.  If ideas were all it took to be successful, then ideas were worth a lot, and I didn't want anyone taking mine!  At the time my idol was Napster, I couldn't believe some guy started napster while at university and shortly thereafter had everyone using it without even trying to market it :)  I think the story goes that Shawn created it to share music with a few friends, and before he knew it one friend had given it to another and there were thousands of people using it. (Hopefully there is some truth to this legend).

When I started Booksoft, and at the same time when we considered or pursued other ventures, I didn't discuss ideas with other people. I was afraid competitors might copy us or that people might steal our idea.  In fact, at one tradeshow I had the opportunity to meet the CEO of one of our competitors, and basically screwed it up because I didn't want him to know anything about our company for fear that he'd use it against us or something.  In hindsight, I probably missed a great opportunity to meet someone new, to ask him some questions, maybe share some laughs at the challenges both of us were having etc.

Instead, as I start this new company, I'm trying to be pretty open, telling people what we're doing, what makes us different, and so far its going great.  I'm getting feedback from people, they're giving me new ideas, they're excited about it, and the more I share with other people the more they end up sharing back.  I've had people give me source code snippets, tell me challenges they had doing something similar, I've had people give me great advice that we'll be able to use soon, and I've made some new friends and connections.

To sum it up:

1. Ideas are not worth anything without execution - having the idea is just the start!  Finding a market for it, finding a product concept that resonates with people, funding it, building it, thats the real work :)
2. By sharing your ideas, you'll gain way more than you could ever lose, so get out and discuss your ideas!

We're now starting another company, and I'm sure we'll make a lot more mistakes, but we hope to avoid a lot of the ones we've made before.  On that note, I'll be writing a blog post pretty soon where I introduce what we're working on, stay tuned!