The Pursuit of Happiness » business

Startup in 13 sentences

Tom — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:39:08 +0000

This is a great list of startup commandments by Paul Graham

1. Pick good cofounders
2. Launch fast
3. Let your idea evolve
4. Understand your users
5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent
6. Offer surprisingly good customer service
7. You make what you measure
8. Spend little
9. Get ramen profitable
10. Avoid distractions
11. Don’t get demoralized
12. Don’t give up
13. Deals fall through

Paul elaborates on his points on his blog

Number 9 is my favourite!

“Ramen profitable” means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders’ living expenses. It’s not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It’s also great for morale.

Competition is great!

Tom — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:20:40 +0000

With Android becoming a force Apple can’t afford to ignore developers any more – and it seems they realised that too. Since New Year the AppStore approval process is much much faster. Earlier this month I had an update approved in two days but I attributed that to low volume of app submissions after Christmas however it seems Apple is keeping the momentum – today I had an update approved in less than a day with another (new) application moving to “In review” status after just 4 hours. Let’s hope it lasts!

Thank you Apple!

Tom — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:05:15 +0000

Apple’s AppStore flaws are well documented – long review times, inconsistency and lack of transparency leading the pack. But I can’t help thinking that the hysteria that developed around hating developing for Apple is somewhat unfounded. Like influential developer Joe Hewitt “quitting” Apple over its tyranny. The whole tech blogosphere was appalled and disgusted! Let’s just gloss over the fact that it must be really easy to quit Apple when someone else is paying your bills (Facebook). The AppStore is the best platform to make money from at the moment and if that’s what you care about (or have to because you have to, you know, eat and pay bills yourself) there isn’t anywhere else to go. Android is growing but developing for it and making money there is still pain. Sure the AppStore and its review process have flaws and especially long review times are inexcusable for company of Apple’s stature but calls for opening the store to everyone are frankly ridiculous – Apple’s close control of its products is single most important factor in great user experience they deliver.

Why do I say all this? I quite recently decided to ignore the critics and develop my first app. Review process took 7 working days which is long and needless to say I was very anxious as to whether it’ll get approved or not. But once it was I was sorted. I have marketing plan but I didn’t need to use it yet (saving it for version 2 that should be approved soon). Within two weeks it was in TOP 10 paid apps in Reference category and doing well. Now show me a platform where I could launch a product, not tell anyone about it and still be making thousands of dollars every month.

So I thank you Apple. Thank you for amazing phone and platform that is fun to develop for and profitable too!

Happy New Year everyone!

What is a quality design?

Tom — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:53:49 +0000

I was very recently told off for my oppinion that the best indication of e-commerce(!!) design quality is its conversion rate. For me there is nothing else I could possibly base my judgment on.

What do you think? Is this too materialistic view? What other factor should I consider?

Please use comments to answer. Thank you in advance!

The role of strategy

Tom — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:14:36 +0000

Lately various suppliers have bombarded me with strategy proposals. Marketing strategy, sales strategy, expansion strategy…

There is deadly truth about strategy though – it’s almost always over-resourced and over-emphasised. Many business leaders think that if they just get their strategy perfect they will beat the competition. That’s very rarely the case and strategy is very often nowhere near as important as some organisation think it is.

Good strategy establishes common purpose, directs resources and tells organisations what to focus on (and what not to do).

The key differentiator for business is execution.

A ‘competent’ strategy well executed is worth a thousand times more than a perfect strategy badly executed. We took this view in one of my businesses and rather than spending to much time creating strategy and bigger picture we came up with simple and ‘good enough’ step-by-step plan in one afternoon and all the efforts were directed into execution. Turnover tripled within two months!

It’s very easy to talk days about disruption and changing strategy but using newly available technology to execute existing strategies better seems to be working very well for majority of businesses over last few years.

Don’t get me wrong though – strategy if fun. We all love ‘strategy away retreats’ don’t we?