Full story, on design.org.

Not to be confused with the Pareto principle. Which I have written about before, incidentally.

I’d also guess that it remains in its current form because it exemplifies Buffett’s outlook on spending — which is to be conservative with money.

The design leaves a lot to be desired, but you must admit it gets the job done. The site is usable. I can find the annual report, or the GEICO affiliate link for goodness sake.

I have been thinking about this for a few days and something about it really irks me. It is that design doesn’t need to be expensive. My guess is that Buffett wants his investors to perceive the company as thrifty. By leaving the site as it is, and publishing annual reports without a thought given to the design he most likely achieves this goal.

But does he accomplish one purpose and miss another? Does the Berkshire Hathaway brand suffer because of a lack of design or does it succeed without it?

I believe that a good designer could give the Berkshire Hathaway brand some incredible design weight while holding to the values Buffett wants to convey.

This post was originally inspired by a post on Hacker News about this topic.

It is a cliche in our business that the first 90 percent of the work is easy, the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent – the attention to detail – makes a good product. — From a discussion on Hacker News

1) Squarespace
Squarespace
This is my favorite of the bunch. It’s not free. Pricing starts at $8 per month. That’s what a lot of us pay for shared hosting, so it’s pretty reasonable. This system is very user friendly and the menus and dialogs are very Applesque. One of their claims to fame is that Kevin Rose uses it. They also feature some really nice designs.

2) Brightegg

Brightegg is also a paid service (they do offer a free package) with pricing starting at $19 per month. If you happen to be a designer, they have a program where you can make money by submitting your designs. Another great thing about Brightegg is that they have a private label service.

3) Weebly

This site builder is totally free and features some nice designs. They offer a developer API that allows some extended functionality.

4) Synthasite

Finally we have Synthasite, a completely free site builder that offers (like the others) a design, hosting, and custom domains (custom domains cost money).

These are all great products and for canned websites, they have some very impressive designs and features. For free or for the cost of hosting, you can slap nice site together in minutes.

According to his bio, he’s most known for this post (called “How to be Creative” – long and very good). You should really take the time to read this post. It inspires without the superficial, patronising motivation-speak (he’s frank and direct). Oh, he’s also known for some pretty interesting cartoons.

At six years and counting, I think I’ve finally got freelancing down. Every time before this – this is my fourth time as a freelancer – I lasted about a year before my cash flow ran out and I ended up punching the clock for someone else’s pleasure. All because I wasn’t smart with how I handled time. I see that now.

Time has a flow, but unlike cash, it doesn’t rise or fall; it’s steady. Everywhere in the world, there are 24 hours in a day. Money comes and goes. Sometimes you have more. Sometimes you have less. (Well, more or less.) That’s why the cliché “Time is Money” is wrong. Time is not money. And as much as I like the implications, time is also not a river.

Before we can really talk about why time tracking is important to freelancers, we have to get a good look at this thing we’re all chasing and call it by what it really is. It’s not some clever metaphor or a list of things that all start with the same letter. Time is time.

Who’s Tracking Time?

I usually call myself a freelancer, but independent is probably closer to the truth. According to the all-mighty Webster’s, an independent is 1: not dependent; 2: not affiliated with a larger controlling unit; 3: not requiring or relying on something else; and 4) not looking to others for one’s opinions or for guidance in conduct.

When the very definition of how I see myself contains the idea that I don’t have any management issues to deal with because I’m an independent (or freelancer or self-employed; they’re interchangeable), it’s tempting to think it’s true.

But you know the truth. As a business owner, freelancers deal with decision-making, problem solving, goal setting and organizing every day. Sure, non-freelancers face those things, but they usually have the option of delegating those responsibilities to someone else. For freelancers, it’s something we can never get away from. Get better at managing yourself and you’ll instantly get better at managing your use of time.

How to Uncover Lost Time

Tracking time works best when it’s a conscious act. That’s doubly important to a freelancer because it’s a significant step in learning to anticipate distractions and teaching yourself to instinctively work around them. In my previous blog, I said, “Time tracking is important because it uncovers lost time.” Here’s how: That first post took me five hours to write. Because I tracked my time (in writing) and was conscious of where it went (and why), I was able to avoid those distractions and complete this post in four hours.

If I hadn’t kept track of today’s writing distractions (Twitter, email, phone calls I should have kept shorter) as well as the amount of time those things ate up, at the end of the day, I’d be at a loss to explain where all my time went. If I hadn’t kept track of my non-work time (“un-billable time”) and if I’d hadn’t done it in writing (like some casual way in my head), I wouldn’t have recognized these specific distractions when they came up and therefore, I wouldn’t have known how to handle them. You can’t avoid something you don’t know about, right?

The Heart of Time Tracking

Right now, you’re spending X minutes reading this blog. What if you could come away with three times as much time as the time you’ll invest reading it? A tongue twister, for sure, but it doesn’t need to be a head-twister.

You can uncover the most time by tracking time with your head (what we’ve covered so far) and your heart. Which brings us back, like some odd strain of time-travel, to where we started:

“If you’re a freelancer in your chosen profession and you don’t track your time, you won’t be a freelancer for long.”

Think back to why you chose this particular profession. Because that’s where your heart was, right? If you don’t want to track your time now, it’s either because it feels like a step backward or because you had a bad experience with it in the past. If uncovering more time each day sounds like a step backward, it might be time to consider a new profession. As far as recovering from bad experiences goes, that’s perfectly understandable. I used to hate doing it myself. Then someone told me something I should have known: If you don’t know where your business is spending its time, who does?

Which is well and good for a freelancer who is…oh, I don’t know, a writer…but what about other industries? Are the skills for tracking time the same in every profession? They are. And yet some freelance professionals who track their time are clearly more productive than other freelancers who also track their time, so what gives?

Next Time: What Time Tracking Clues mean to Consultants and Web-related Professions.

(Phoenix wordsmith Joey Robert Parks is primarily a non-fiction ghostwriter. In the last six years, he’s written five books for successful, entrepreneurial types; including: a fashion designer and stylist who got his start working for JFK and Oprah; and a book on creative innovation for a high profile, multimillionaire philanthropist. To see how productive Joey is this very moment, follow him on Twitter or visit www.joeyrobertparks.com)

There’s a real problem with content management systems. I’m not talking about the big enterprise platforms. I’m talking about the basic content management software that simple web sites need and use. They often do too much. That’s right. Modern content management software does too much.

For example, I have a friend with a pretty average technical acumen. This friend needed a simple website for an organization that he had started and I, being a web nerd, decided to help him set up a site. So we did the usual. I went to Godaddy and bought a suitable domain along with a basic Linux hosting account, while he stared over my shoulder in wonder. I found a template for his site and we paid a fair price for a nice pre-made design. So the next step was to get him up and running with a cms so he could manage all of his content without needing any further assistance from me.

My first instinct was to go with Drupal. I have tooled around with Drupal in the past and it has a good reputation among the web-savvy. So I installed Drupal, started configuring the site and I soon realized, this is way more functionality and configuration than my friend needs. Not to mention, it’s way more than he can handle. A little time with Joomla presented the same dilemma. These systems have too much complexity; too much functionality; too much configuration. Not only that, but working with the template frameworks of these systems was going to be a nightmare. Remember, I already spent some money on a pre-made template for this site. I was going to have to make the template fit the cms. Not fun.

So, with all these issues before me, I realized why so many developers end up rolling their own cms system. It’s because what’s out there is more than a simple site needs. A simple website needs a simple cms. Don’t get me wrong, Drupal, Joomla, Worpress and the like are all great systems and they have their markets, but often they are more complex than necessary for small sites. Another major issue with the standard content management system is the need to have a database running on your server and the need to install software. It’s always a problem to have to patch your cms because of some update, or deal with setting up a database to run your cms.

Just like software is moving more and more from the desktop to the cloud, it seems advantageous that server based systems might do the same. Instead of installing 10 versions of WordPress on the sites of 10 of your clients, on 10 different servers (all separate, all requiring maintenance), why not host your content in a central location? This way all of your client’s content is in one place and there are no software installations or databases to maintain. Centralizing content makes good sense. Using a CMS as a services makes good sense.

I realize there are lots (thousands) of content management systems out there and there’s no one system that’s right for everyone, but I think that Clover Content is right for most small sites and for people who manage a lot of sites for clients. Anyway, that’s why I boostrapped this startup and entered the arena. Let me know what you think.

When I decided to create a web based product and I really committed to it, I was pretty excited. I could envision myself working on it, marketing it and reaping the benefits of my hard work. I knew from the outset that it would be a long road, that it would be hard work. At that point, it was a vision. After it’s a vision, it becomes real work.

Real work is good, and for me, the coding is fun. But, there are un-exciting aspects of creating a product. Sorting out all of the ancillary details has been a challenge: doing design work (I’m not a designer), figuring out how payment gateways work, creating an LLC, learning about SEO, etc. But amid the technical and logistical difficulties inherent in any worthwhile endeavor, there is one intangible struggle that has to be dealt with along the way.

It’s the interior voice always reminding me that I don’t have to do this. There is any easier way; a path with less resistance. I have a good job and I make good money. It’s funny how this voice becomes louder when my day job is going well. Likewise, the voice is much quieter when the day job is boring or requires me to attend many worthless meetings. Either way, that voice is always there reminding me that I could be doing something else with my free time.

The internal struggle is not surprising really. I believe that anything worth doing will force you to constantly evaluate your values and your purpose. But even then, when you find that what you are doing is in line with your goals, that all your hard work is in fact amounting to something, the internal questioning does not stop. It may quiet down, but it’s never gone and you have to deal with it.

So if you are familiar with this internal voice that I’m describing, whether you’re trying your hand at bootstrapping a startup or just trying to exercise three times a week (another time when this voice becomes loud) and you find yourself in a valley, know that it won’t last. And when things are going really well and you find yourself on a peak, know also that it won’t last.

The worst thing an entrepreneur can do is believe that the peaks will last (when it’s easy). And the worst thing an entrepreneur can do is believe that the valleys will last (when it’s hard). I learned this from C.S. Lewis and it really helps keep me going. Once we realize that the internal voice of opposition is going to stay, and that it’s something we have to deal with, we begin to learn what perseverance is and we can get on with creating awesome software despite its presence. I’m going to go finish integrating that payment gateway now.

Notice the title of this entry. It’s not about how to be productive. Anyone can be productive, if they so desire, every now and again, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. My objective is to show you how to stay productive once you get there.

In Rise of the Creative Class (a personal favorite), author and sociologist Richard Florida wrote, “We are becoming a society in which Creative Class people literally live in a different kind of time from the rest of the nation.”

Who is this “Creative Class”?

If you can identify with the following quote – from later in Florida’s book – you’re part of it: “While Creative Class people do tend to work long hours, many other factors contribute to the feeling of being crunched for time…The big news about time [is that it] goes deeper than simply working more…We now try to pack every moment full of activities and experiences—at work, at home and at leisure.”

From where I sit, (Lux Coffeebar, if you must know), these are the things that cause me to be most productive in my mobile office:

(1) Account for my surroundings

• The local coffee joint has distinct advantages and disadvantages to working out of the home. Think of the cell phone commercial with the little time clocks in the trash. Pretend those little clocks are spread out all around your home office or moving around you at the coffee house. When you talk to someone longer than you should, you’re wasting time.

(2) Anticipate Distractions

• Make decisions before you get to your home office (or wherever) about where you’re going to sit. And yes, even if you’re in the bedroom, that’s still before you get to your desk.
  • If it’s at home, think about the kinds of things that are likely to beg for your time: the laundry, that new album you wanted to check out on iTunes, updating umpteen social media outlets (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and any number of other noisy distractions. For me, even too much silence can be a distraction.
  • If you’re at a coffee house, think about all the options you’ll be presented with about where to sit. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to this particular place before. Sit by the door (or facing it) and you’ll want to look up every time someone comes in; sit near the counter and you’ll be well-placed for shouts of , “Americano for Chris!”
  • You know where the productive spots are, just like you know the best place to sit in a movie theater.

(3) Be Proactive

• The average time tracker says, “I have an hour to fill. I’ll work on project X and see how much I can get done.”
• A better time tracker says, “In one hour, I want to have completed this, this, and that, and this. And I’m going to spend this much time on each part. And I’ll check it off as I go and adjust the schedule in the moment. But I’m going to do it all in one hour.”
• The difference is subtle, but significant.
  • It’s all about your motivation for tracking time at all. One person figures, “I have an hour right now. I’ll have another hour later.” The other person thinks, “I have an hour right now. I might have an hour later. I might not. I better use my time wisely while I have it on me.”

(4) Know when to say ‘No’

• To people around you.
  • Say you have a significant other and he/she likes to chitchat throughout the day, but you’ve got a project that needs 100% of our concentration. Let him/her know you’re going into hyper-focus mode – or opt for a nonverbal method like putting on your headphones. (When I’m working in a public place, about a third of the time I’m wearing headphones, I’m not actually listening to anything. Ha!)

• To Yourself.
  • There’s a difference between changing my mind about how long it will take me to do something and changing my time range because I’m tired of making decisions.
  • Don’t confuse “self-employed” with “freedom from commitments”.

(5) Track The Time

• It’s called ‘tracking’ because you’re actively looking for clues about where The Time, somewhere out there in front of you, is headed.
  • It’s not called ‘following’ because that’s passive and lets time make decisions for you.

• Time Trackers discover lost time.
  • They literally “find time” to do more work, because the act of tracking time helps them right then; in the very moment they need it most. Ever hand write a note and then — because of the very act of doing so — you realize you could probably just throw the note away?

The first four steps have one thing in common: They’re all decided and acted on before hand. Only the last one takes place in the moment.

I’d elaborate on that, but right now, my time’s up.

Next time: Why Time Tracking Is Important For Freelancers.

(Phoenix wordsmith Joey Robert Parks is primarily a non-fiction ghostwriter. In the last six years, he’s written five books for successful, entrepreneurial types; including: a fashion designer and stylist who got his start working for JFK and Oprah; and a book on creative innovation for a high profile, multimillionaire philanthropist. To see how productive Joey is this very moment, follow him on Twitter or visit www.joeyrobertparks.com)

There are a few requirements to enroll in the program: Your startup has to be younger than 3 years old, make less than $1 million per year in revenue, be web-based, and you must be enrolled by a network partner.

For an early stage startup with little cash, this is a great way to get full access to Microsoft development tools and server software. You can even use things like SQL Server in your hosted, production environment under the program, which goes a long way if you use their database.

I found a local network provider to give me enrollment access and I’m really impressed with how much software is available. It’s no joke. You pretty much get everything Microsoft offers for free. So, if you’re like me and you use the Microsoft .Net platform for your startup (even if you don’t), check out BizSpark to help you get off the ground.

I decided to look around at some of the pricing structures out in the marketplace and compare their design. I found a good sample and decided to share my findings.

If you look around, it becomes quickly apparent that pricing in buckets is the preferred model. The alternative is a per-user fee or a per-feature added fee.

“What is better: buckets or custom pricing?  Buckets.  How do I know we learned this?  Since changing the pricing page on our site, our sign-ups/trials have increased 30%.”
– Michael McDerment, CEO of Freshbooks (Source)

Basecamp which promotes a free plan as a business model really makes the it hard to find. It’s there on the bottom.

Beanstalk has a no-frills pricing structure, but why is the sign up button only under the free plan?

Tick keeps it simple with 5 plans and checkmarks.

Wufoo has the most inventive plan page ever! Very cool font and colors, fun names and big buttons. I like it.

Dropsend has clever little icons to represent the increases in capacity for each plan. If you are interested, they have provided some analysis and figures for how many people sign up for each plan.

“With DropSend, we found the best way to get people to upgrade is by offering them a coupon. By upgrading before a specific date, they would save anywhere between 10% – 100% of the first month.”
- Ryan Carson, CEO of Carsonified (Source)

“My advice for those of you building web apps based on monthly subscriptions: have a plan for getting people off of the low-paying plans. Or maybe don’t offer a low-paying plan at all.”
- Ryan Carson, CEO of Carsonified (Source)

Rescuetime is smart to have a free plan (heavily promoted) but also include plenty of business options. The big red sign up button is a plus.

Zendesk has a very clear graph. Showing an increase in size and explaining the features.

FreshBooks adds some clever plan names like “Time Machine” and “Limousine” to the mix. They win at clearly denoting that you can sign up for a free account. Big buttons rule.

Feel free to post any links to interesting pricing screens you have seen.

Pictures of Numbers
http://www.numberpix.com
Really great blog about information design. They have quite a number of great articles.

Info Design PDF
http://backspace.com/infodesign.pdf
Page 20 in particular has some great info design tips. Most of them adopted from this list.

That’s all!

• Customers can rate all HostGator responses. Your ratings will dictate how much an employee is paid and in turn improve quality.
• Employees are prevented from grabbing the easy tickets, AKA Cherry picking.
• Employees time is no longer wasted looking at spam and replying to spam to boost their ticket count. (spam no longer exists)
• We actually have reporting on EVERYTHING we need. Tickets abandoned, ratings, actions, etc.
• We can easily review responses and ratings to improve support.
• Dozens and Dozens of features that will speed up our lives DRASTICALLY which results in tickets getting answered quicker.

Wow! They actually pay their staff based on the ratings customers give them. Impressive! Typically bonus systems aren’t tied to any real metric in particular — just overall profits, or a big sale. But in this case, each employee can actually impact their paycheck.

Twitter can also be a great way to monitor customer satisfaction. Zappos.com, the online shoe store is using Twitter to monitor customer comments. They created a whole site dedicated to watching what customers have to say. It’s online at http://twitter.zappos.com. Check it out.

The five signs:

1. The person will almost always gladly pay the first bill, or your deposit amount. It’s the second and third bills you need to look out for. The swindler will pay the first bill to convince you that they’re going to pay future bills. Don’t be fooled.
2. The swindler almost always talks a lot. They will drop names to sound like they’re respected in the community. By talking a lot, they’ll control the conversation and put you at unease.
3. Often will have very ambitious business goals along with high confidence. This is an opportune time to quiz them on their awareness of what their competitors are up to. Often they won’t know much and have very bad plans.
4. Don’t assume your friend will pay you back. Your friends can go sour. I’ve had several friends who I worked with for years suddenly stop paying bills and leave me dry. Tell friends you won’t continue working until they pay you.
5. If someone is planning to rip you off, they’ll ask very few questions about your pricing. They’ll barely look at your proposal/estimate and be more concerned with how quickly you can complete the project. Since they’re not planning to pay, they don’t ask the usual money questions other clients do. This is a key signal! I’ve seen it multiple times.

So what do you need to do?

Actively collect on all of your accounts. You’re in business to make money, don’t let customers go 45+ days without a phone call from you or your accounting department. Send invoices and statements regularly, you want to be invoicing customers weekly and keep your cash flow going.

For new customers, get payment up front. This will help weed out the swindlers. Just do it.

You are not a bank! If a customer asks about a payment plan, give them one with interest if you think that will encourage them to pay. Remind customers with late balances that you take credit cards (if you do).

I hope these tips will help you to never lose money from a bad customer.

No, it takes far more than that, but also something very simple: building friendships with the people who visit your site. For a lot of companies with a commercial goal, this can be tricky. These are the sorts of relationships that are hard to establish on a 9-5 job.

For most companies, I’ve come to realize that this means hiring a “community evangelist.” Someone who’s sole responsibility is to establish a link between the site and the people who visit. It’s helping bridge that gap and converting people from simply visitors to users and then to members.

The community evangelist has many responsibilities, but foremost is helping the visitors feel like they are a part of something. Helping those people register on your site, and contribute.

If you’re interested in this subject, read this post: Understanding the Community/Evangelist Role, and profiles of a few of my Favorite Folks.

At our company, we don’t have a set rule, but just a suggestion that you be at the office between 10 am and 3 pm. That’s a comfortable range of hours that generally assures everyone is working during the same hours every day.

But how do you feel about this? What do you do where you work?

Do set office hours force people to be more productive? Often I change my mind about this and would like to open it for discussion.

The 4minutephoneman.com would like to share a sales and marketing tip for any sales person who picks up the phone to make a cold prospecting call. The old school approach to cold calling goes something like this.

“Hi! My name is Roger, I am from Xyz Company, and I am here to sell you something today. Get ready, we can do it all in one call if you will just listen, follow my agenda, pay attention and buy today”.

The New Business Development cold calling environment no longer allows this type of call to continue. The defense shield goes up and the call gets terminated. The average sales prospecting call lasts four minutes. The above call only lasted less than 30 seconds.

This is new information, pay attention:

• Change your way of thinking. Change your mental objective before you make your call. Change your mindset. Forget about your personal objective to make the sale, set the appointment or get a yes or no decision today.
• Think about how you can help the prospect to solve one of his business related problems.
• Learn how to shift your mindset so you can enter in to a two-way conversation with the prospect. This will help you to understand his needs.
• How can I gain his trust so he will be open to my suggestions?
• Are the products that I am offering at fit for his business?

This concept and strategy is the beginning of a process that requires more than one contact. There was no attempt to get the prospect to make a yes or no decision on the first contact.

First Contact: Introduction call: Follow the mind shift outlined in the above bullets. Test the water to find out if they could use our services. Gather information. Record names of persons who answer the phone. Ask for the key contact person if known or ask for the person handles the new business development for the company. Also get the number of employees and length of time they have been in business. The objective of this call is to open a line of communication using a Low-key approach with no high pressure.

Email the company information and give them the Web Site address. Set up a Customer Record file and record any information that will help you remember the prospective client and help him remember who you are and why you are calling. Use the information gathered to build rapport, credibility and trust. Everything you record can be used to structure follow up calls. This detailed record sets you apart from the other new business development people offering their services. This attention to detail portrays the image of being a professional. Prospective clients like to deal with professionals. They would like the have their own sales staff using these techniques.

Second Contact: Prospect receives Email with information about your company and products and how to reach the web site. Send the information out the day of your initial contact or when they give you permission to send something to them. Set up a call back file.
The reason to send something written is to be different and also get an 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper in their inbox or their active follow file with information about the products that are available to them along consider with your name on it. You will be different when you actually send something and then follow up to offer any additional help.

Third Contact: The second call comes three days after the information was sent out. The objective of this call is to confirm that the person to whom the information was directed did receive it. Do light trial close to determine the level of interest. Do not give a presentation on this call. Get in and out fast and ask the decision maker to read the information and let him know you will be calling back to answer his questions. The next follow up is usually one to two weeks later depending on the interest level. The best time to schedule this call is on Thursday.

Fourth Contact: Third call is a mini presentation to probe for their needs and hot buttons. Share more information about us and what we do and find out when they can fit us into their busy work schedule.

Fifth Contact: The fourth phone call is to engage in additional two-way conversation and offering to help if the prospect needs some. Continue to keep notes on the progress.

Sixth Contact: The prospect calls you back and thinks it’s about time he had someone to stop by and have a meeting with him. Record the day, date, and time and turn in a copy of the Customer Record file to the Business Development Manager.

Seventh Contact: Review the prospects record file information with the sales consultant. The next contact with the prospective client is an extension of the telephone contact person. This helps sales consultant to prepare for the first face-to-face meeting.

Eighth Contact: Sales consultant goes out on appointment.

Roger A. Simpson, the 4 Minute phone man is a Telephone New Business Development Consultant and Phone coach. He can be reached at 602-569-7755 http://www.4minutephoneman.com Go to the how to reach us page, scroll down to the large banner and click on it to get a Free Cold Calling Help Audio Seminar. Or email Roger.

A few observations and thoughts:

We decided to get a big place and share it with two other companies. The fact that this actually worked out is amazing.

Sharing office space is a really good idea because you can share resources. It gets tricky at times though because you have to sort little problems multiple times.

The more people you have the bigger your common space can be. In our case, we will have a lobby, a kitchen, share restroom and conference room. On top of that, we have enough leftover space for a pool table (soon to be acquired).

Picking paint colors is tricky. I never want to do it again.

If anything bad happens to the office (flood, fire, etc.) we have to sort it out with 3 insurance companies. I don’t want to be there if that happens.

We probably looked at 15 office spaces.

If you’re like most web design / development shops I know, you tend to put multiple people in a small office. At least two. Well, parking is a nightmare in 90% of the places you will look at. We finally found one that has tons of parking.

I cannot believe how difficult it is to find office spaces that are available. With all of this great technology available to us, why don’t any brokers take video and post it online? It’s easy to decide if a place is even worth looking at with just a short video.

Craigslist is a very good place to search for properties. In the end though, just calling the number on signs in front of properties pays off.

If you’re looking for anything over 500 sq ft, I suggest hiring a real estate expert. We did and it paid off.

Most landlords are willing to negotiate.

A lot of landlords are very cheap.

If you’re looking at office space for multiple decision makers, I suggest taking video everywhere so you can all discuss a property later on.

I wonder what other things could be sold as subscriptions, that aren’t?

A few that come to mind: clothing (shirts, ties, shoes), snacks for the office, fruit delivery, oil changes and basic maintenance on vehicles, and so much more.

2. Your co-founders take the weekends off
And you work all alone.

3. Your startup has been a concept for “years”
You are either a person ahead of your time, or slow.

4. Only one person really works on it, the rest talk about it and suggest changes
Who’s product is this anyways?

5. Your developers question whether it can even be built
“I don’t think it’s possible” doesn’t work in startup land.

6. Your co-founders aren’t passionate about your product
When your co-founders want to work on something else, it can’t be good.

7. Your co-founders just want to copy an already existing product
Where’s the innovation in that?

8. Your co-founders are content with their current income level
If your co-founders are content with what they earn, what is driving them?

9. Your product has no revenue model
What are you crazy?

10. You can’t pronounce your company name
Neither can your customers.

Bonus: You just outsourced development to a foreign country.

Suggest your own reasons in the comments…

As a bonus question, what percentage of you time do you spend working on your own projects (for example, creating your own product)?

But that’s the purpose of a whole lot of web sites. For example, Angies List is a subscription web site that helps people find quality home improvement contractors (plumbers, painters, landscapers, and so forth).

Someone could do well to make a blog that helps people determine whether something is high quality. I think a good person for that would be the CEO of Costco. I was reading in a New York Times article about how he said a shirt was Nordstrom’s quality. The problem is most people can’t tell the difference up front. A little education would be really neat.

I’d love to see a web site where people explained why something was quality and gave examples. That would be worth reading.

Most people suck at managing projects

Most people have more than one project going at a time, and when one deadline is moved it moves the other ones (whether you want to admit this or not).

The odds of a large project finishing on time are close to zero. — From Rapid Development (Amazon)

Today I learned that close to 25% of all airline trips are late

Wow, that’s stunning. It just goes to show that most people are optimistic and can’t even predict when a project will be done. There are countless tools that exist today to try to facilitate creating accurate estimates, but most of them are useless because we are all so busy, and a million things impact our days, thus impacting our schedules.

If missing deadlines wasn’t enough, there is a horrible failure rate in software development projects. Some people say 5 – 15% of all projects fail.

Say no, do less

Tips on the gentle art of saying no. I’m not going to comment further since I’m really bad at this.

Throw deadlines out

Stop thinking you can accurately predict the future. Give your customers a realistic expectation that you can have their project done during a window of time. You’ll quickly find that most people don’t need an exact “delivery date” for their projects. Instead they just want to know progress is being made.

I’m not suggesting that it’s good to be late on your projects, just that you accept the fact that it’s nearly impossible to meet deadlines the way you’ve been going after them, and you should change your procedure.

The deadline dance is not always productive.

SimpleSeating.com is a web site that helps you organize the seating arrangements at events like wedding receptions, conferences, and more. It is run by a two person team from Foolish Software (two great guys).

Numly is a web site that assigns a number to almost anything you can upload and there are several spin off web sites such as Docly and Sigly (for signatures). The service is built by a Phoenix developer named Chris Matthieu (another great guy).

vSocial.com is a video site run by a team in Tempe, AZ and they’ve been hard at it for over 5 years now.

Viddler.com (this is a site I am a part of) is partially Arizona so it counts. All of the design happens in Arizona and development happens by a team in Poland with management in Pennsylvania. It’s a web site that allows you to share and watch videos with a lot of premium features not found on the other video sites. The site is also hosted in Phoenix.

Mosoto, is an application for Facebook that enables file sharing, chat, and music discovery. Five University of Arizona grads joined together and created this application in Tucson, AZ.

Litepost is a web based email system entering the market with a different approach to email display. It’s a very competitive market but they may have a new strategy that could work: Overtaking all of the crappy open source email solutions like Horde and Squirrelmail.

PrimeCondition.com is a valley based web startup that moves to make your workout routine anything but routine. The service allows you to create an mp3 track for your workouts that motivates and keeps you on track. Built by Simon Allardice who attends Refresh Phoenix.

Best Party Ever is a web site that helps you plan events (and parties). Built by the folks at Obu Web, you can build a party and coordinate with local vendors all online.

Flare9 Website Builder is a web service that people can use to build an inexpensive web site with a WordPress backend management system (obviously highly customized).

Ajaxm helps web developers track domain projects for customers.

Just a few thoughts: With all of this talk about building web apps, it’s amazing that there aren’t more from AZ companies. Also, congratulations to all of the above companies for getting from idea to launch successfully. What are your tips?

Salim Ismail (Yahoo!, Confabbb) provided what I thought was the most insightful, and definitely most information packed 5 minutes of them all. The following four slides are from his presentation.

To view some of the other talks, visit the “ignite” tag on Viddler.

Update: Here are some other thoughts.

It begins with making only a minor compromise and ends with a product that is second rate. Some people are so focused on launching their web site, or releasing their product, that they cut corner after corner. I see it all the time and it’s stunning. I believe these people don’t realize they are cutting corners because each time they do it, it’s just a minor compromise. But after a few dozen times it really adds up, in a big way.

It goes like this:

“We don’t have good product photos right now, we’ll take good ones later.”

“We need this web site for our trade show next week, how fast can we launch?”

I could give endless examples, but you probably know the type of person I am talking about. The one that is always hurrying and tends to always need things tomorrow.

I’ve covered the hurry up aspect. Now, the failure is the result. This is especially true when it comes to building communities and customers online. The Internet is not a silver bullet. It typically takes years to build a vibrant online community and a lot of work. It’s not anything that happens in a month. The same holds true for almost everything in life. Patience is a virtue and the best things in life take years to develop.

Is this true?

Another story I remember from our first round of funding was when they gave us the checks – the lawyers were there, Kleiner was there, and I said, “Oh great, now I can buy that espresso machine!” and they all jumped me and said, “No, you’re not going to buy an espresso machine with this money. This is to start the company.”

And it became a sticking point. We were very frugal and we didn’t spend money on frilles, but after the IPO there was a really bad time for Marimba when it was very difficult to hire people, and all the early people that had been there 3 to 4 years were starting to leave. Morale was very low, and so I went to the CFO and said, “Look, I want to buy an espresso machine.” And he said, “No, we can’t do that, it’s too expensive.”

A few weeks later, when another senior engineer quit, I said, “Screw it, let’s go buy an espresso machine.” So Jonathan and I went online and bought this super-duper Italian, fully automatic, $15,000 espresso machine on his credit card and submitted the expense form. The CFO almost had a baby. It was unbelievable.

This was a beautiful piece of work, and they came and installed the espresso machine and it was the best money ever spent. Every morning, people would meet and crowd around it. This thing was just it, the bee’s knees, people loved it, they couldn’t stop talking about it. A month later, the CFO came and said, “I’m sorry, we should have done this years ago.” And it tells you something about where you spend your money and what you spend your money on. It’s not just business-related expenses. You also have to create an environment that you like so that people are happy and feel they are valued.

This one that I have quoted below is interesting, and what’s weird, is only two years ago I would have disagreed with this idea of having a cofounder. But I think it’s really important, now.

No cofounder

Not having a cofounder is a real problem. A startup is too much for one person to bear. And though we differ from other investors on a lot of questions, we all agree on this. All investors, without exception, are more likely to fund you with a cofounder than without.

We’ve funded two single founders, but in both cases we suggested their first priority should be to find a cofounder. Both did. But we’d have preferred them to have cofounders before they applied. It’s not super hard to get a cofounder for a project that’s just been funded, and we’d rather have cofounders committed enough to sign up for something super hard.

If you don’t have a cofounder, what should you do? Get one. It’s more important than anything else. If there’s no one where you live who wants to start a startup with you, move where there are people who do. If no one wants to work with you on your current idea, switch to an idea people want to work on.

If you’re still in school, you’re surrounded by potential cofounders. A few years out it gets harder to find them. Not only do you have a smaller pool to draw from, but most already have jobs, and perhaps even families to support. So if you had friends in college you used to scheme about startups with, stay in touch with them as well as you can. That may help keep the dream alive.

It’s possible you could meet a cofounder through something like a user’s group or a conference. But I wouldn’t be too optimistic. You need to work with someone to know whether you want them as a cofounder. [2]

The real lesson to draw from this is not how to find a cofounder, but that you should start startups when you’re young and there are lots of them around.