Money and Software » Software Startups

Creating a guide page, and then amplifying it

Ted_Graham — Thu, 03 May 2007 14:29:17 +0000

Successful software exists to solve a problem; be it boredom or too much stuff. One way to drive traffic to your site and improve your search engine ranking is to write a helpful guide to solving the problem without your software. It is important that you actually offer solutions, not just describe why the problem can only be solved by your software. Many ISVs don’t have enough helpful content available, and those that do often post it to their blog, where it is fragmented and hard for a first time visitor to read. It is worth writing a separate guide that covers the basics and posting that outside your blog. A guide not only drives traffic, it can be an integral part of your website.

Once you have a guide written, consider using that content to create a lens on Squidoo and a page at eHow.com. While you can’t just paste it in, you should be able to adapt your content quickly. In addition to the SEO benefit of inbound links, this thread suggests reasonable amount of traffic is flowing from Squidoo.

To take a concrete example, LinkedCells lets users share Excel data. We’ve been working on this guide to sharing Excel data. It is challenging to strike a balance between offering options on how to distribute and consolidate Excel data, and hoping that our advice leads the reader to try LinkedCells, rather than finding an alternate solution. Our solution is to describe all the options available from Microsoft, but not to discuss competing third party solutions.

Best software startup information – Week 15

Ted_Graham — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:33:22 +0000

How many users do you need for usability testing? 5.

Patrick has an interesting comparison of Crazy Egg vs Google Analytics. The blog comments include some interesting points about CrazyEgg’s approach.

We’re currently debating “do more marketing” vs “add more features”, so this thread is relevant and interesting.

In the ongoing search for good SEO resources, GrokDotCom looks good.

Most computer people have stories about helping clueless friends. However, this epic thread contains some amazing examples; way crazier than I’ve ever seen. Responses are split between, “you have to learn the basics” and “we have to make the software easier to use.” I’m firmly in the make it easier camp.

Best software startup information – Week 14

Ted_Graham — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 01:44:27 +0000

We’re having performance and mail server problems with our shared hosting plan from UltimaHosts, so this discussion of mail problems on shared servers was very interesting. Our problems are with performance, rather than being blacklisted, but the consensus of not doing real work on shared hosting is compelling.
A forum regular recently distributed his software on GiveAwayOfTheDay, this discussion about why is very interesting. He later posted his experiences, looks like he got a huge increase in users. Another regular describes his experience on Bits du Jour, a similar site that sells software at a discount, rather than giving it away.
Thanks to Ian Lurie for making his book on Internet Marketing freely available. The initial reviews noticed a few typos, but the writing and the content are getting raves.
For those ISVs looking to get noticed in the press, I found this article quite informative. It is slanted towards more expensive software, and the discussion of fedexing CDs shows its age, but it is a great place to start.

Best software startup information – Week 13

Ted_Graham — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 18:19:18 +0000

Thinking about getting business cards printed? Once you have a nice logo, check out these opinions about where to get your cards. VistaPrint gets slammed. When ordering, it is a good idea to have the back matte, as many people like to make a few notes on a card about what was discussed.
As I wrote a couple weeks ago, many successful founders believe that one-person ISVs are much less likely to succeed than multi-person companies. Several micro-ISV founders disagree with that premise. One pointed out an old strategy letter discussing two types of businesses and how they act differently. I found this interesting. Our business has few competitors and strong lock-in, so the advice would be to use the get-big-fast model.
Most small ISVs don’t have enough support calls to justify subscribing to WebEx for the occasional customer troubleshooting. CoPilot was designed to tap this market. CrossLoop is a new competitor in this market, they are in Beta and currently free.

I’ve been using IrfanView for years now, and I really like it. It is a freeware image viewer that handles every file type I’ve ever needed. It is fast, and supports batch operations on images. I like using it to embed my comments about photos inside the picture (through the comments), so I don’t end up locked in to a single photo management tool.

Best software startup information – Week 12

Ted_Graham — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 20:24:27 +0000

New entrepreneurs are often paranoid that someone is going to steal their idea. With time and experience, most come to around to Howard Aiken’s point of view, “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” More experienced entrepreneurs often decide to take on an established market. Competition proves that customers are willing to pay for a solution.
The lure of working from anywhere often motiviates micro-ISVs. My wife and I want to move to Mexico, others are planning to move to Europe and the Sphinx is going to Egypt. Other people move somewhere cheap to take advantage of the low cost of living while launching the ISV. If you don’t have a country in mind, you can pick your new location by the friendliness of the tax and business environment. But if you are looking to find partners or hire staff, you have much less flexibility in picking a location.
Many micro-ISVs think that Marketing means $100/month on Adwords. If you have a bit more money available, this discussion on how to spend $50k is interesting.

Best software startup information – Week 11

Ted_Graham — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:07:25 +0000

TechStars is a Boulder, Colorado based clone of Y Combinator. They are doing their first round of companies this summer. They provide $5k/founder, plus office space, servers, classes and some pretty serious contacts. They take 5% of the company. They have received 175 applications so far, and accept a maximum of 10 companies. I plan to attend their end-of-summer presentations to Angel Investors, and I’d be surprised if a couple of the companies don’t get another round of funding.
I just discovered Techquila Shots, where Steve Poland posts random business ideas. I like Classifieds by Cell best and hope it is chosen for RingsideStartup. If you are looking for business ideas, check it out.
I attended the launch of the Colorado chapter of the Keiretsu Forum this week, and was impressed by the passion of the existing members who came from other chapters for the launch. CTEK Angels and RVC are already active in Colorado, it will be interesting to see how Keiretsu fits into the mix. Keiretsu Forum’s ability to syndicate large deals to other chapters will make them appealing to entrepreneurs looking to raise larger rounds, and deal flow of already funded companies to the Denver chapter seems likely to attract Angels. As a novice Angel, I’m attracted to their commitment to education through the Academy. If you are curious about Angel Investing, this article provides a good introduction. I also like the book Winning Angels, although it is heavily flavored by the tech boom and Capitalyst angel fund that the authors started in the boom is dead.
Everyone wants more traffic, many of the traditional suggestions are discussed in this thread.
Setting up the accounting for a micro-ISV can be painful for a first-timer. QuickBooks is the standard, and has a free edition, although I’ve been tempted to try Microsoft’s Small Business Accounting package.

Taking Funding?

Ted_Graham — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:04:47 +0000

Most micro-ISVs have a single founder who works in his spare time until there is enough revenue to quit. While safe, that violates several of Paul Graham’s 18 mistakes that kill startups. I’m almost done reading Founders at Work, which reinforces his points; many of the founders warn of the risks of the sole developer doing a side project:

A single founder is a huge point of failure. Having a partner or two keeps the momentum up, so even if you are in a slump or busy with outside commitments, the company keeps moving forward.
Commitment keeps you going. Quitting your job, publicly announcing you are doing a startup, raising money from family and friends, indicates to the world, and yourself, that you are serious. This commitment makes it more likely that the company will keep going when you hit the inevitable problems.
If you have competitors, development speed is important. A lone developer working nights and weekends can’t keep up with a 1-3 developers working fulltime, or fulltime AND nights and weekends.

We are currently doing our startup part-time, although two people have dedicated days during the week. We are starting to have the conversation about taking funding to allow us to go fulltime, I’ll be blogging more about that in the future.

Tax credit for Angel Investments?

Ted_Graham — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:45:14 +0000

I wrote about a proposed change in the accredited investor definition a few days ago. From talking with Steve Murchie at the Keiretsu Forum, I learned that,

…there is an even more progressive measure in Congress with bi-partisan support that would give a 25% tax credit to individuals making angel investments in the year the investment is made. This measure apparently is written with the current definition of accreditation, and actually promises to unleash a lot of capital that is now in other instruments and markets

This measure has been introduced in both houses of Congress, and appears to be progressing. The reaction among investors appears to be generally positive, although some experts are concerned that it will lead to more bad investments.

Best software startup information – Week 10

Ted_Graham — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:20:45 +0000

We’re developing an Excel Add-in and we are trying to figure out the size of the market. I asked the BoS forum about this, and several people pointed out that the Excel user base is not a relevant number. Adrian said it best,

Selling software is about solving someones problem. What you have to ask is does your target market want to solve that problem within Excel? The total number of Excel users is irrelevant.

Google has launched Pay Per Action Ads; these allow advertisers to define the end action they want from visitors (e.g., signing up for a newsletter, or downloading the product) and how much they will pay for that action. It will interesting to see how well this works. Many software companies would happily pay $50 for a qualified lead, but that price point makes action fraud very profitable.
Quite a few ISVs have switched their email hosting to google apps, which lets you use GMail for your domain. Lots of people are happy with the switch, others are worried about GMail blocking exes and zips that contain exes. Everyone agrees that the Spam protection is great.
Discussions about revenue are always popular, the hot one this week was revenue per line of code.

Protecting investors from themselves?

Ted_Graham — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:42:30 +0000

The SEC is considering changing the accredited investor definition from $1M including your primary residence to $2.5M excluding your residence. Most of the protests center around excluding investors from higher risk/higher rewards opportunities. It will also reduce the pool of eligible Angel investors, which hurts startups that need seed funding.