Ruminations
Thoughts, experiences, ideas and reflections
A blog documenting the trials and tribulations of starting and running a tech startup, of living in these exciting but challenging times, and of learning and becoming – bit by bit – the best one can be.
Am I wrong to be pedantic?
Its been a long time since we started developing my site... many many months. It is a relatively complex application, and I have the extra challenge of financing it with my own savings, and using a (brilliant) team of developers in Europe, whilst I sit here in Sydney... so its not too terrible that its taken so long. If I had more money to throw at the problem, I could be more demanding and more tough, but the developers are working as hard as
Still going…
Apologies again for my lax communication. Its just that the message has not changed overly. I'm still almost there, but not quite ready for public consumption. Sometimes I think its just that I'm terribly pedantic and proud, but there are some pretty major bugs in it still, which are getting worked on, but just not there yet... What I am trying to do at the moment is just focus on obvious bugs that would impede a user's ability to use or understand the application.
The final touches
This is the frustrating part. My site, my darling site, that has taken almost a year to coax into being, that is almost ready, is still not launched! Its almost ready, but some major issues are holding off its full launch. The Homepage is the main thing - a designer friend has kindly offered to help out, so need to wait until this is completed. And there are a few largish bugs, but my amazing team are getting through those. I am finally changing
Top 10 books
A little while ago, I was sent a tantalising email. Two of my friends in London had challenged themselves to list their top 10 favourite books of all time. Once they had responded to each other, in their thirst for discovery, they emailed me in Sydney to ask my opinion. I reveled in responding. I took some time and a great deal of pleasure coming up with the list. I enjoyed it so much, I thought I might copy the discussion here for others
Being frugal
The challenge with starting a business using your own savings, is you have to try to achieve elegance while being stingy. A few of my challenges at the moment: I need a legal opinion on my site so I can get public indemnity insurance. Just to get the Terms of Use document written is $4000. I do not have this money. I also need further advice to avoid being sued for copyright infringement, which with my type of site, is a risk. I cannot
I’ve launched softly
A massive apology to those kind souls who have been supportive and interested in my burgeoning business. I have been terribly recalcitrant in keeping this blog up to date, instead distracted by the ever demanding nature of work and late nights. I have lots of good news though to finally impart. Although not yet launched, I am now in what I call the 'soft launch' phase of my business. The site is live, and I have invited friends and those in the industry to
It’s been a while…
Apologies for my scarcity of entries lately. Life has been tough and busy lately. My day job has gotten hugely demanding, and I'm on the verge of launching my business. Life has become all about work at the moment, and my sleep levels, social life and exercise regime have suffered. I keep thinking surely this is only short-term, but the truth is, I cannot see an end in sight: until this business becomes self-funding, I have no choice but to work these crazy hours.
Writing an ‘About us’
For the last few days I have been in issue logging mode. Days and days of testing, describing issues, thinking analytically about flow and logic and aesthetics. Now, my beleaguered developers have an avalanche of issues to deal with (bless them, they are getting through them valiantly), and I can turn my attention to all the writing for the site I have put off til now. I have to write a Features section, the entire Help guide, and an About us. I think Features
Death of my social life
I finally caught up on all my sleep this weekend, so I am ready for the onslaught of the next fortnight. We are in the final stages of development before user testing begins, so its when I need to be more actively involved than I have been to date. This means I have to do what my parents still think is impossible for me to do: kill my social life. My bank account and my day-job clients won't accept me taking any time more
Heartbreak – my first seed funding rejection
Well, I finally heard back from the seed capital fund I had requested funding from. I guess unsurprisingly, they declined. Their reasons were that they didn't have enough evidence of market validation and limited proof that I had the experience to execute on the plan. But of course, come see us later when you are more successful. I guess its unsurprisingly because the Australian VC market for internet companies isn't as buoyant or risk-taking as the US market. And, it was the first company
Pink Aussie flags and customer feedback
Bear with me, I am going to get to an interesting business point, but I have a seemingly unrelated story to tell first. Quite a few of my friends are gay. Its Mardi Gras season in Sydney at the moment, which means it’s a very busy time, particularly as almost all my gay friends have senior roles organising the various events around Mardi Gras. Its busy for me as I tend to be asked (and quite frankly, I very much enjoy) to volunteer wherever
Top 5 things I have learnt so far
I've been working on my little business for the past 8 months or so now, and most of that time was spent developing the idea and getting it ready for development. So here are my top 5 learnings that I have gleaned in that time: Don't worry about NDAs. Firstly, they don't really protect you; secondly, they are a lot of fuss, and thirdly and most importantly, its better to talk about your idea to friends and colleagues rather than hide it ferociously from
The challenges of finding a business name
Its hard enough thinking up a clever, original and catchy company name. Its made infinitely more difficult by then having to see whether the domain name is available. The process of coming up with my company name (which is, of course, still under wraps for now!) was an arduous and frustrating experience. I came up with so many gems that shone with brilliance and wit, only to be devastated to find that the domain name was not available. And it would have been fine
Am I disadvantaged being based in Sydney?
I read an interesting post (with interesting comments) on one of my favourite blogs Read/Write Web about whether the location of your web business matters to its success. Read the post here. I found it interesting because I had met up with the Director of ad:tech the evening before, and we discussed the relative merits of being based in Sydney, particularly from a web innovation perspective. My view is that its a tiny community here, I have only been back in Sydney for a year,
White versus colour in web site backgrounds
In designing my soon-to-be-released web application, I pondered for a while over what colour background to use. A trivial concern you may think, but I am aware of the potential it has to affect the way your site is perceived. My obvious initial assumption was that I would go for a white background. When aiming for simplicity and elegance, the white-backgrounded site seems to be ubiquitous. See Google, MyBlogLog, Riffs,YouTube, Amazon, etc. Alternatively, there are sites using coloured backgrounds effectively: The Best Stuff in
To work or not to work…
Not that I have a choice at the moment, but not a day goes by when I ponder on whether I can do this – whether I can start an internet business – while working in a full time job. Obviously I need money to live, and I have the unfortunate curse of requiring quite a bit to live (damn that shoe addiction!), so some form of healthy income is a necessity. This means I have a few options up my sleeve: try to
Designing a logo
Now, I admit, I made this a bigger deal than perhaps it warranted. On the other hand, why start a company if you don't aspire to be the best: if you aspire to mediocrity, you will likely achieve poorly, its by aspiring to greatness that you at least achieve mediocrity. It all began with the design of the logo. You see, the complication with design projects where you are a not a designer, is that you know when something isn't right, but you cannot
Negotiating contracts – part 2
Once the price and scope of works was finalised between myself and my supplier, it was time to finalise and sign the contract. This process generally involves lawyers and long documents and much to-ing and fro-ing, but we are a small company, and my supplier is as well. There were no lawyers involved on my side, and the contract that the supplier proposed was only 3 pages long. However, we were able to pool together other contract and non-disclosure agreement templates from other software
On the eve of my 30th…
In my usual habit of celebrating symbolic dates, I now sit and ponder on the significance of this day. Tomorrow I turn 30, a date as a little girl one fears as an impossibly distance and ancient-sounding age. Now on the verge of reaching this age, I am bemused to find I fear it no longer. I do however, enjoy the momentary wallow in sentimentality in which I am about to indulge. Exactly a year ago right now, I was resting in my flimsy
Negotiating contracts – part 1
It was quite a scary process for me to finalise the contract with the development house I engaged to develop my site. They are based outside Australia (where I am based), and so all negotiations and discussions were conducted via email and telephone. You don't realise how difficult it is to develop rapport with someone unless you can see them and engage with them in a physical environment. My business partner at the time found a useful technique to deal with this constraint was