Starting up? Just read this!
By Dave Blake | March 9, 2008
What a great post – how to save money running a start-up - by Jason Calacanis of Mahalo (and founder of Weblogs Inc). But boy, did he ruffle some feathers. In my view some people just took him too seriously and missed the fundamental points he was making about keeping costs down and hiring the right people.
Here’s a rundown on some of the tips offered by Jason.
* Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are often a rip-off.
* Fire anyone who doesn’t love working at your business.
* Buy everyone a second computer monitor, they save time.
* Buy an expensive coffee machine to prevent people leaving the office and spending money at Starbucks
* Get a fridge in, stock it full of sodas
* Use Macintosh computers and don’t buy more than a couple of copies of Microsoft Office. Most people can use Google Docs.
* Buy your hardest working staff extra computers for home use
* Don’t bother investing in a phone system; people use email, IRC, chat or mobiles.
* Outsource all Human Resources and Accounting functions
* Allow and encourage flexible working hours
* Use Google mail, don’t bother with stuff like Exchange servers
* Recruiters? Dump ‘em. Save money by doing your own using LinkedIn and FaceBook.
* Same with PR agencies on fat retainers. Use good freelancers on a project basis.
While I don’t necessarily agree with all these suggestions, I’m sharing this wavelength. Everyone starting up or running their own small business ought to sit down and come up with their own list, particular to their organisation. But start-ups have really got to pay particular attention to their costs and to the people they hire, otherwise it’s going to be much tougher to get to that break-even point. If start-up employees aren’t prepared to give their absolute all and ‘share the vision’, then maybe they would be better off somewhere else.
Topics: Start-ups | 1 Comment »
Blog is iPhone-enabled!
By Dave Blake | March 3, 2008
After posting my last piece, I though I’d better check whether the Business Mouth Blog was legible on the iPhone.
It was, but then I discovered a cool bit of code to automatically optimise a Wordpress blog for iPhone users. Check it out! (enough of this tech talk already)
Topics: Technology | No Comments »
iPhone aiming for businesses
By Dave Blake | February 29, 2008
Having recently taken the plunge and invested in an iPhone, I wasn’t immediately going to get rid of my other smart phones.
However I have to say, it’s simply blown me away by its ability to save me time. How so?
I do one heckuvalot of reading, mainly of blogs, which are nicely presented and aggregated through my Google Reader. None of my other phones including the Nokia P900i and the Treo presented the web in any way clear enough or fast enough to really bother with.
But on the iPhone, it is unbelievably quick – obviously over wifi, but less obviously over Edge. It is just so easy to use, that even if I have my laptop right there in front of me, I find myself opting to use the iPhone browser instead. I am just so surprised. Clicking on email http links whisks me straight into the web browser and having up to eight browser windows available is a real bonus. So what you might say, that’s just the web. But look at the huge inroads that web software companies are making lately on the market as a whole. Try running Salesforce on an iPhone – it rocks!
Apple are also looking to go on the attack with the pending release of the SDK over the next couple of weeks, which will broaden the existing thousand or so web applications by some degree. IT managers are hunkering after a hook-up with Microsoft Exchange – that feature alone will immediately blow away some of the Blackberry advantage.
It’s been said that the iPhone is the Trojan horse that Apple have built to sneak into the business enterprise market.
I was reading a survey carried out earlier this month by tech research company, ChangeWave Research. They surveyed enterprise smart phone users and found that 59% of business iPhone users were ‘very satisfied’ with their phone. That compared with only 47% of BlackBerry users and 40% of Nokia users. That looks like a clean sweep to me, and this is before Apple has gone head-to-head on the Windows email issue.
My bet is that Apple, having cleared their initial hurdle of getting early adopters on their side, will say thanks to AT&T in the US and thanks to O2 in the UK, you guys did well for our launch, but consumers and businesses are demanding that we make the product available to the other carriers.
Topics: Technology | No Comments »
Top online retailers check-out survey
By Dave Blake | January 24, 2008
Read a very interesting report today on the world’s top 100 online retailers.
The report looks specifically at the check-out process used by these successful e-tailers and studies what effect 23 tactics have on conversion rates. For example, what effect does a quicker check-out process have? Does live chat help increase conversions? Is it better to cut out all navigation links during the check-out process, to narrow the buyer’s focus? Should return policies be displayed on each page?
This excellent report is free and can be downloaded from here.
Topics: Ecommerce | No Comments »
Letting go of your business
By Dave Blake | January 13, 2008
Cutting the ties with the love of your life, the one who has occupied your thoughts every waking hour and filled your dreams every night for as long as you can remember, is a terrifying thought for most first-time business owners. Selling a business is almost as nightmarish a prospect as losing a family member for some.
Yet you know that a disposal of shares is rightly the ultimate goal and conclusion. Right from the very first stage of setting up or buying a business, the underlying thread to all your strategies should be to position the business for sale. ‘What is going to be most valuable to a potential purchaser?’ is the guiding question.
Understand the value-drivers in your business. Then take the necessary steps to make your business better and more attractive to a business buyer than the competition. Put robust systems and management in place that will facilitate rapid growth.
All the while, think about exactly who might be looking for businesses for sale like yours. Keep a file on potential suitors. When the time comes, this will form an invaluable ‘hot file’ of leads.
Try not to be too sentimental. If the price is right, ‘take the money and run’. Although in practice, you may have to hang a round a while for the best possible price. Many buyers will pay an initial tranche followed by the balance after a transition period, often insisting that the owner is at hand for this time. So you do need to think about whether the relationship is right between you and the buyer of your business, as you may well be working closely together for the period of the transition or earn-out, and a failure in co-operation might have an adverse effect on the final payout figure.
You may also be concerned about the welfare of your staff, and finding a buyer who you can trust in this respect is sometimes more important than scraping an extra hundred thousand out of the deal. You can do your bit beforehand by ensuring key employees have effective contracts with appropriate notice periods in place.
Good advice is to start negotiating with the potential purchaser not as an adversary, but as a friend. Being intransigent over every issue will ultimately be counter-productive and can put the whole transaction in jeopardy. You need to structure a win-win scenario, where everyone is feeling like they are walking away with a good deal.
Remember to demonstrate to the buyer that there is serious growth potential left in the business. Try to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes for a minute and think “where is the upside, what kind of scale is there here, how fast can I grow this business?” Strive to provide the answers to these questions beforehand; you need to offer convincing reasons, not a general comment like “the market is going to be huge in 5 years time”.
The road to a business sale is often fraught with emotional turmoil and anxiety. However the rewards for a properly planned exit always make it worthwhile in the end.
Topics: Selling your business | No Comments »