Come for the Ride…

There are a lot of hard choices to make when you’re a bootstrap startup (and even more so when you’re funded). Mis-managed funds or mis-projections could easily send your startup crashing and burning. However, despite the need to be stringent on money, I do believe there’s value in rocking a dual screen setup.

The first and probably most important reason is that if you know how to pay attention to two screens at once, you will benefit from having both at your disposal. The one thing hungry entrepreneurs lack more than money is time. Cool factor aside, having two screens will actually help increase your productivity.

For example… you’re working on some proposals, need to manipulate an image for the presentation and at the same time you’re communicating with developers over seas or even just your loved ones on IM. Each one of these activities take up screen space and the more clutter you have on your screen, the harder it is for you to concentrate on any one subject. (On a side note, why do I NEED 4-6 chat programs to make sure I can communicate with everyone I outsource? It’s crazy but it’s true…)

Not only is it annoying to try to work on something on top of a few other windows, it’s even more annoying when you have to click back and forth between your primary project, emails, chat windows and/or other documents and web pages you’re referring to.

Though I haven’t officially timed it, having two screens - one large enough to display two full page documents, does help reduce the clutter and make multi-tasking easier and faster. (If you’re lucky enough to own a Mac with Leopard, Spaces really help as well.)

The days where large monitors and multi-screens are reserved only for programmers or designers are over. If you’re an executive, it pays to be able to keep track of multiple things at once. Even if you’re a straight out of college and your job is to generate multiple daily Excel reports, it would benefit you to have the screen estate so you can do your job faster.

Let’s face it… all employees that sit in front of a computer today multi-task at work. Whether it’s switching between the web and various documents, organizing their music play list, or chatting on IM; the amount of things we do at one time on the computer has made it a mess to manage.

While the investment for dual displays may seem pricey for any company, I believe in the long run it will pay itself off in more ways than one. You’ll get more productivity from your team, your employees will be happier and of course there’s the cool factor for your office. Don’t you want to be the cool place where everyone wants to work at? I know I do.

After working with our developers in both India and America over the past month, I have come to think about various differences between the two. I have started to see similarities in people I know here in the US and able to divide them into groups with respect to the skills needed to be an entrepreneur. For example, our American developer is a very independent person who can take an idea and run with it. He lays out a variety of prospective directions to take a project and goes out of his way to present the best solution for a given project. With his knowledge, we’ll be able to use Amazon Web Services and EC2 services to process a large portion of the code we’ll have to run on a daily basis. It will cost us money, but in the long term it may save us quite a bit due to the costs of maintaining hardware and the omnipresent possibility of hardware failure. He’s creative and really knows everything within and surrounding the scope of what we need, allowing us to expand what we would otherwise be able to do.

On the other hand, we have our Indian developers who are very strict about what they do. Any questions and there is constant contact. There is very little initiative and creativity involved in their development. Much of the project is done with a lot of hand holding. There’s not as much initiative. There is, however, consistency. I can expect consistent updates. I can expect questions every few days. And in the end, we do still get excellent code that works.

What this all comes down to is Americans value creativity and innovative thinking well above and beyond most other cultures. I had read an article a long time ago about why startups work in America the best and one reason was our educational system. It’s unique structure often allows for children to go through 21 years of schooling and still not know what they want to do when they grow up. It allows for a higher degree of success (and failure). It values hard work and creativity above pure intelligence (Warren Buffett is a very smart person, but if you’ve read his biography you’ll see that hard work and creativity got him where he is today). That’s what entrepeneurialism is all about: hard work and creativity. It’s the reason you go out and start you own company. It’s the same need for freedom, not the “promise” of security, that drives people to put time and effort into a project that may or may not succeed. It’s faith in something you’re passionate about.

KISS it. Keep It Simple Stupid. We’ve all heard this before. The phrase can apply to many things including website development, business ideas, and so on. When an entrepreneur has too many ideas, they become an inventor with no real path. When a website or a program launches with too many options, users who don’t like bloatware scatter.

Such is the case yesterday when I tried to play a DVD on my Macbook Pro. Being a new Mac owner who is still discovering programs and features on my laptop, I assumed that this process “would just work” as many other things have over the past few months. However, it was not the case. (Disclaimer: some may say I was in a unique situation by having VM Ware installed and running both Windows and OSX)

So I popped a movie into my drive and nothing happened. (I found out later my instance of Windows on VM Ware had hijacked the drive.) Like most computer users, when things aren’t brought to me on a silver platter, I start hunting.

The first thing I tried were programs that were on my dock. I pulled up iDVD which turned out not to be a DVD viewing program at all. (Odd) The next one I tried was iMovie - again, not a DVD viewing program. Apparently there are more people making movies on these computers than people watching movies.

Frustrated, I then turned to Quicktime… unfortunately that did not yield the right player. Confused and frustrated, I opened up iTunes which completely ignored the DVD drive. That’s 0 for 4.

Although my situation here is a bit different than regular Mac users who don’t have multiple OS’s installed on their system. It does show how interfaces and naming conventions that were designed to be intuitive can still be confusing.

Ultimately after consulting with a friend, I learned there’s a DVD Player program that goes by the same name on the Mac which plays DVDs. Imagine that…

If nothing else, this experience has taught me to not name a number of different features with similar names. Of course the bigger lesson is to keep things simple. Instead of getting your users to figure out how to use your system, make sure they can use it effortlessly to do the tasks they need to do.

As of Friday, I have joined the ranks of web entrepreneurs who have built, grew and sold a successful Internet company. As someone who’s currently doing “non-profit” work waiting for the next pay-day, this was very welcoming news.

So what was learned from this experience? Well, a few things… but the top three were:

1. Know your competitors - While I was chatting it up with my potential buyers / former competitors, I learned that the larger, more successful brands all communicated freely with each other. Yes, we were all competitors and all wanted to be the leader in the space, but sometimes, certain things strike the industry that need the collective help of all involved parties. Prior to the negotiations, I really should have tried to communicate with them to establish a relationship. Had I done that earlier, the sale process probably would have happened a lot sooner.

Ultimately if your company isn’t absorbed into an investment firm, your current competition would be your next best bet at selling off the assets. Let’s face it, a lot of times we see people who are looking to sell their site on ebay or various market places but when push comes to shove, you probably won’t get your money’s worth if the buyer has no clue about your business or industry. On the other hand, your competition will easily recognize the value of your assets.

2. Create assets and sell at your peak - Unless you’re the next Amazon or Google, chances are the only viable exit strategy for you in the next 3-10 years will be to sell off its assets to a bigger brand. If you’re in this for the large payoff, that’s pretty much the only way. Therefore, as a startup, not only should your business plan include ways to get real money, there should also be a detailed section on how to get users and repeat visits. Ultimately your domain name by itself will only be worth so much. Without new content or new services, all traffic to any domain will eventually die off. Therefore if you are considering selling your business, make sure you get your money’s worth by selling at the peak of your game. Once you lose focus or interest in a property and let the web traffic deteriorate, it will be very hard to build it up again.

3. Go out with a bang! - Selling your business or site means two parties have benefited from the transaction so make sure you let the world know by throwing a press release out there! Your buyer will walk away with more customers and awareness of their brand and you will walk away a successful entrepreneur ready for the next big challenge.

Oh yeah, also remember to reward yourself! You worked hard and did a great thing. Before you dive head first on to the next project, take a little time off and buy yourself something nice.

If any of you have tips or other lessons learned from selling a business, we’d love to hear it!

This post is written by Trevor Mi, a guest blogger from Soft Launched Corp. that’s currently working on a Facebook application.

After what seems like ages (3 weeks), I finally got my incorporation papers back. Upon closer inspection, I found 1 minor error in the name. I wanted Soft Launched Inc. and the certificate is for Soft Launched Corp. This is a small fix but will take time and money, so I am going to have to stick with Corp for now. It’s just a name.

In the progress of setting up a corporation, I have discovered the following:

1. Location
If you are an internet company who is hoping to receive funding, Delaware corp is probably the best way to go. While tax benefits are no longer relevant as most of the states have passed new laws to become more competitive, the sheer volume of existing Delaware companies make it a huge plus. VCs prefer startups that are incorporated in Delaware because they understand the law there. There has been many precedent lawsuits involving companies in Delaware to fall back on, making most legal issues swift to resolve.

2. Who to use
I used www.incsmart.biz. You can do a quick google search for Delaware incorporation and shop around. Incsmart is the cheapest I found. Others range from $300-500. I think I paid around $300 for the incorporation, registered agent service (if you don’t live in Delaware, you need to have a physical address there to receive mail from the government. Registered agent provides a physical location in state to forward these mail to you), and a corporate kit which includes a nice thick binder with bylaws (constitution for your company), corporate stamp, stock certificate printouts and other toys that make you feel more legit. Would I use them again, maybe. Like I mentioned, they got the name wrong. They just did not provide much confidence with their website design but they did get the job done. They were also very responsive with their email. If you decide to use them, make sure to ask them to email you a scanned version of the application before give them the green light.

When you shop around, make sure to look into how much you are being charged for the registered agent services. This is a recurring cost. Since every penny counts if you are bootstrapping like me, this future expenditure should be factored in. Incsmart charges $50 but I have seen as high as $150.

3. EIN
EIN is like the social security number for companies. You need it to open a merchant account, to buy things without sales tax , report corp taxes etc etc. Many incorporation services offer to obtain your EIN for an additional $25 to $50. Do not use this. You can obtain your EIN number at http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98350,00.html for free and receive it as soon as you complete the online app. If you use a 3rd party, not only do they charge, they will not be able to file online and will take up to 2 weeks.

Next step for me-sign the bylaws, shareholders agreement and issue stocks (stocks can be issues with printouts from your printer. It feel like I am print money lol). So far, no lawyers yet. However, I did work in corporate finance for a while so I do understand superficially a lot of the agreements involved. If you get stuck, I would recommend a trip to your local library or bookstore. There are many good reference books on this topic. Nolo is the terrific publisher for this sort of books.