Cubicle Bailout

You probably remember the childrens story about the tortoise and the hare and how the hare is faster, but eventually the tortoise wins the race.

Think about this in the context of a startup – the hare can often be represented by the traditional startup, the ones that need to get Venture Capital funding to keep going.  They are stressed in the “race” at times.   Have to keep getting funding to stay afloat, etc.  Sometimes this is referred to as a “Ramen” startup – referring to the cheap dried noodle-like mixture everyone had at some point or another.

If you are a cubicle dweller like me, you want to be the hare.  Slow and steady wins the race.   Take some hobby activity that you enjoy working on and see if it can be profitable.   Then if it looks feasible, just start!  Start small, short steps on your race.

This is all I can afford to spend now, both time and money, anyways.  So focus on that one thing you want to try out and just start.  You don’t need to think of it as a take over the world approach and that you’re going to work 80 hour weeks on your startup, simply because you are still holding down the day job.

The point is to just start.   Get moving in the direction of creating a second income stream.  Once that income stream is there (not for me yet), then you know you have something profitable and can explore other options, maybe even quitting the day job for good.

So be the tortoise, start small, but just start.

It’s better than doing nothing.

by Lisa Andres

An older startup, called MySpace,  has decided that it needed to cut 30% of it’s workforce to “return to what it calls a startup culture.” This is a new one.  Usually you hear things like downsizing, rightsizing, outsourcing, offshoring, best-sizing, layoffs or other similar terms.   This must be the terminology in use by start-ups that have grown into a bloated stage.   MySpace was bought nearly four years ago by News Corporation for $580 million dollars.  Hardly a startup anymore.  The thing to think about is that every company on the planet was a startup at some point.   The East India Company is the first that I can remember reading about and, according to Wikipedia, started out on December 31st, 1600 getting a Royal Charter from the Queen to conduct spice trade.   Back then, the ocean was the internet.   It was the path to riches and prosperity.   There were new lands to discover, gold, spices, and opium to bring back to your homeland and sell.    The East India Company went through various phases and was dissolved in 1874, having run for 273 years in some shape or another.  Surely in it’s 200th year, the word startup wouldn’t have applied, nor in it’s 5th year.

What exactly is the size for a startup?

When should all the media outlets refer to startups as companies?  According to the articles on the net, MySpace will have about 1000 employees left.   How on earth is a 1000 employees considered a startup?   A startup to me sounds like a couple of guys working out of their garage starting something up.   After you have left the garage, or your mother’s basement, or the local coffee shop and have hired some people, you are essentially a small business.

Startup tends to be a term used for technology companies and usually has the word “web” in front of it, and somewhere after that you might also see “social media”,  or “web 2.0″.   These startups are different because the ocean of our time (the Internet) has vast network paths to places all over the globe, with many markets to enter into and sell your wares.    When someone starts a web or online company, they have a storefront for everyone here on planet Earth, no sailing vessels required.

Internet or web companies are visible to anyone stopping by.  The theory is that you can scale your web company infinitely – you could theoretically handle every customer ever interested in what you do – just by adding more hardware, software, etc.   Look how long it takes a company like Wal-Mart to become well known – like 30-40 years.   It has taken web companies like Amazon a fraction of that time, and they are known globally.

Why does this draw us in?

For me this is the ultimate American dream.  A way that nearly anyone can grow richer and have prosperity, regardless of the lot in life you were born into.  You just need some technical skill (which can be learned or bought), vision and some business plans.   Or maybe no business plans .  It takes that dream of starting your own company to the next level – there is so much potential out there, with access to a global economy, even someone making Bingo Card software can etch out an extra $20,000+ per year, part time.

And the risk?  Not much.  If you bootstrap yourself, and ultimately fail – all you have lost is probably a couple thousand dollars.   Or you could think of it as taking Web Entrepreneurship 101 and paying tuition for all the lessons you’ve now learned to go try again.

There’s an ocean of possibilities out there, get started.

Just when you think you can start spending some “quality time” with the side project, everything else hits you at the same time.   The day job has been crazy lately, the weather has finally been nice in the last couple of weeks and I have a professional certification test coming up, which I’ve been studying like crazy for.

by fazen

And of course, the evil Amazon and US mail system decided to ship that technical book I back-ordered a while ago.   This is a book on the technology I’ll be using for my side project, and I am a book addict.  There is nothing like the smell of a new book! Technology books have all sorts of promise in them too.   So that shows up right when I should be studying, doing work around the house, spending time with the family, etc.  It has taken an amazing amount of willpower not to start plowing through it.

I have been keeping up on my reading lately and will share a few here that might help motivate you:

1. You’re stressed with a project or are in a rut.  Well check out 6 Amazing Techniques to Staying Happy During a Stressful Project.   I’ve started splitting my ToDo lists – just jotting down realistic goals like, “Finish chapter 10, write blog post” and it feels great to accomplish exactly what I set out to do.
2. Looking for a new job?  Take this into consideration: Forget the resume, kill on the cover letter 37 Signals is a very admirable small company to see interesting ways of doing things.   Make each cover letter and resume targeted to each job you’re applying for.  Check out the “gold standard” link at the bottom for an example.   Large companies may not appreciate this, if you can get it past their HR drones, then maybe.
3. A very inspirational post for those of us starting out: Too small to fail: How startups can grow in recessions I’ve found the story behind these 1 person software shops to be very inspirational.  Can you imagine grossing $162,000 in your first year?  Or maybe around $2000 per month for selling Bingo Card software?  It’s what keeps me motivated.

I did make some minor progress on the software product I’ve been building.   An hour here, an hour there and a basic proof of concept is working.   It is really ugly, but just achieving this much is motivating.   Now if I can just keep my hands off that new book…

It is a struggle to find time to work on the side project, heck, it’s hard to find time to write quality posts for this blog too.   Things are getting hectic at work before the summer months slow down hits, I have work on my side project to do, a list of posts for this blog and of course life with my wonderful wife and kids.   Here are seven ways to try and maximize the free time you have:

• Make your time with family quality time.   If you’re like me and have a couple of toddlers in the house, you are commonly their best play friends.  So maximize the quality of your time with them.  I’ve realized I can’t focus enough on the side project or writing to do either of those when they are awake so instead of lazing around the house make the best of it.  Go to a park on nice days, go to events or festivals in your area, have a movie night, get out every single toy and just play all day.
• Make lists of next actions for your muse, side project, new business, or whatever it is that’s going to enable you to leave the cubicle life.  Then when you do have some time (like now when everyone’s napping, shh! don’t read too loud) look at your lists and knock off a couple items.  Make sure those items are small enough that they can be accomplished in a short time span.
• Stop at a coffee shop for 2 hours on your way into work.  Spend that time working on your blog writing, your side project, etc.  As much as the stereotype of some new media person blogging away in a Starbucks bothers me, I’ve tried this and it works fairly well.  There are other people around giving you the sense of socializing, food – I can’t think or work on an empty stomach, and you don’t have any of the distractions you would at home or work.
• If you have kids, setup shifts with your spouse.   It is very liberating to know you have the night off, just don’t spend it getting sucked into the latest reality TV show.
• Try not to even turn on the TV at night.  I fall into this trap all the time.  A knowledge worker’s day sucks a lot of brain power out of your head and it feels refreshing sometimes to just sit there and “veg out” watching TV some nights.   Try to plan ahead and pick a night when there is something you’re interested in on, and then don’t even click the power button on those other nights.
• Get your boss to agree to you working from home 1 day.  Then try for once every couple weeks.  And actually do work from home, just make sure you focus heavily on work and eventually you will begin to knock off 8 hours of work in less time than that.   Then start using the commute time, lunchtime, and breaks for working on your side project.
• Cut down on the information firehose. Really evaluate all those blogs, twitter feeds, news websites, etc. that you keep up on and get rid of those that aren’t really holding your interest (even if that means this one ).  If it is something you are casually interested in, maybe try out Alltop once in a while or just move the bookmark to a folder for checking monthly.

I can’t admit that I follow all seven of those tips all the time, but these are things I try to do consistently.  And they do work when I try them.   Got any tips of your own that you’d like to share?

from AMagill

I’m introducing the first tool to the site here, a Profit Calculator.   There are tools online where you can explore what people are searching on and then what an estimated price for an ad would be.   Then it is just working through some generic formula’s to explore if it is a profitable idea.

I’ve entered default values for two critical parts of the formula, Click Thru Rate (CTR) and Conversion Rate.  There is a general consensus that you should expect about 1-1.5% for each of these.   If you’d like some recent data that supports this, look at the work Andy Brice reported on his blog.  Keep in mind his work was based on an informal poll of people selling software products, you should probably expect similar results for other types of products as well.

You can find the link to the right under Pages, or simply click here.

Please let me know what you think, any and all feedback is welcome.