Less Everything Blog - Business

How to Choose a Consulting Company to Build Your App

2008-07-01T21:02:00Z

How to choose a consulting company to build your app:

Don’t use an NDA.
- This means that it will take longer to find a company because you will first have to screen who you even want to talk to. This is a good thing. With certain exceptions, time to market is most important to the investors who want payback as soon as possible. An extra week or two of searching will probably payoff in the short run.
- Read yesterday’s post about NDAs being stupid.
Get recommendations from a friend or ask around.
- This is obvious. It’s only useful if you have friends.
Read their blog.
- Does their company philosophy match yours? Very important.
- Do you find yourself shaking your head up and down when you read them?
- Do you feel inspired when you read them?
Call them and talk to them.
- Did you get along with them?
- Did they make time for you? Did they talk to you or did they just say “We like your idea and will be glad to help, when can we start?”
Choose a small company.
- It is really, really hard to find top developer talent. The odds are a company with a large staff has not found a lot of top talent. Who will be working on your site? If you are OK with a consulting company that will give you mediocrity, then it doesn’t really matter. But if you want something that is among the best on the net, you have to use a boutique company.
- A company who has chosen to stay small is a company that really cares about what they put out.
Ask them what consulting companies they would recommend.
- A great consulting company will want you to succeed even if it’s with another company.
Choose a company that is picky.
- A great consulting company can afford to be picky. Being picky also means that they want to do it their way, and that they are very concerned with the end result, not just your money. These are very good things.
Pick someone you trust. And then trust them.
- Unless you have a proven track record of successful web apps, any company you pick will have more experience at this than you do. Let them help you, even you are sure you’re right. (Don’t pick someone with less experience than you.)
- If you are worried about not using an NDA, then embrace this constraint: Only pick a company who you trust will not steal your idea. If you don’t trust anyone that much, search or talk more with the companies. You should have faith and trust in them before you begin.

Extras:

Once you pick someone let them do it their way.
- Don’t play armchair quarterback. They will make your product/idea/business better if you let them.
Do you feel like you can’t afford a great consulting company? How can you afford not too?
- Maybe you should reconsider how serious you are. If execution is everything, only talk to people that have already executed well. They are rarely inexpensive. (Rarely as in never.)
- It is always cheaper to pay someone more to do it right the first time.

NDAs are unnecessary because ideas are worthless

2008-06-30T13:21:00Z

People are always asking us to sign NDAs. We sign most of them. Signing them has become a necessary step to open the discussion of someone’s idea. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve signed an NDA and the idea winds up being, “I want to build a website that is just like this other one, except with better navigation.” We have a bunch of NDAs in our filing cabinet just like this. And they are worthless. This is because an NDA only covers things that are not already publicly known. If an idea is 97% stuff that is already out there, even if its out there by others, that NDA is only going to cover the 3% that is new.

Paraphrasing Fight Club: “Your idea is not special. It is not a beautiful or unique snowflake.”

The 3% coverage NDA is also unnecessary because ideas are worthless. An idea might not be worthless because it’s a bad one, although it might be bad (we’ve seen a lot of bad ones). It’s worthless because ideas in general are worthless. Anyone can have a good idea, and they do. What has value is execution. The ability to take an idea and transform it into something real, something people love, something someone will pay for. I’m not talking about having insert your most hated consulting company here take your idea and create the latest, greatest PHP based ASP.NET WS-* compatible collection of HTML and bad CSS that is only a website because some color-blind “designer” figured out how to point a DNS entry at it. I mean something that people LOVE. (People has to be more than your obviously overly kind mother.)

To illustrate the point of how worthless ideas are. Here is a list of five good ideas (how good they are obviously depends on your own perspective).

Monetize Twitter.
1. Collect the public stream.
2. Have people pay you to send an @ message to any person who uses a certain key word.
3. We do this sometimes with people who mention “Quickbooks.” I send them a message asking them to checkout Less Accounting.
Social network for finding golf buddies.
1. Create a profile and find people to play golf with. Kind of like match.com for golf without the expectation of sex.
iPhone pizza search.
1. Show me all the pizza delivery places that will deliver at the current time, their menu’s, coupons and dial the number for me.
iPhone/photos/gps/cloud.
1. Upload your photo to the service.
2. It will forward to flickr.com or your favorite photo site, but it will also show you all the photos taken in the same place that others have uploaded.
3. It will show you all the stories that people have written about those places.
Screen cast tutorial site.
1. Create a site where people can upload tutorials they have done and you will pay them for each viewing (which you charge for).
2. People can rate the tutorials and the amount paid can be be a formula that includes popularity and quality of the tutorial and author.
iPhone police notifier.
1. Two buttons, one for cop going in my direction, one for cop going in opposite direction. If the cop is not moving, still just click one of the two buttons.
2. Display a warning when you are approaching a cop. Call the app “Bacon.”

Note: I said I’d give five, but I gave six because they are so easy to come up with.

It’s not your fault.

I think it’s human nature to think that ideas are valuable. I certainly get excited thinking I’ve created something precious when I have a new idea. I feel like I should guard the idea and not tell anyone until I have developed it. What I should do is tell my circle. I should have a circle of people who are smart and we all talk ideas through. Cultivate an idea until we either give it away or execute.

Tomorrows post will talk about how you can choose a consulting company without using an NDA.

Brick Walls

2008-06-20T13:34:00Z

Take the time to watch Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. There are many great quotes in the video one of my favorites is...

"Brick Walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things."

There are many great quotes about facing or overcoming adversity and Randy's is one to remember.

Here's a few other quotes about adversity that I like

“Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.”
“Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember”
“Adversity is a fact of life. It can't be controlled. What we can control is how we react to it.”
“There is no education like adversity”
“Adversity introduces a man to himself.”

There's always a point in your career as a business owner or boot strapper of an app that you'll look at greener pastures. The Dip of adversity only makes it harder for people to follow and overtake you.

Those who can't...teach

2008-06-18T14:55:00Z

Here's my issue: How can a web consulting company NOT have their own products.

I've heard people say that a web company can either do services or products, that you can't do both. I say you're wrong mister! How can't you do both? How can someone sell their services to a client, who's paying them to successfully build/launch their product when the web company can't do it for themselves? Maybe its not that they can't do it, its that they're too scared or just don't want to have their own product(s). That make sense, right? It doesn't make any sense to me, have you ever taken music lessons? I took guitar lessons for several years growing up, a prerequisite for being my teacher was that my teacher had to be able to play the guitar as well. On my first day my guitar teacher didn't say "well I can instruct you to play the guitar, but I don't really play the guitar. I'm a guitar teacher not guitar player, you can't do both."

Want to see a company's work in its purest form? Ask to see their own apps.

How can you have a product that you don't use? Well, that's another blog post.

No more Internet Explorer 6 support

2008-06-05T17:24:00Z

As of right now…this minute…the very second you are reading these words, all Less Everything products will no longer support Internet Explorer version 6. We invite you to pause for a moment and enjoy the the calm that just came over you.

We should have done this a long time ago. IE 7

Please join us in saying no more and abandon this browser with us.

The Internet is a Tool to Help You Provide a Better Service

2008-05-29T14:07:00Z

The internet has made a lot of our jobs easier. But the internet is a tool, a tool to help you give better service to your customers/clients. I recently purchase a home in Panama City Florida, where I grew up. I had an agent tell me "find a house on the internet and I'll show it to you". It seems this agent has forgotten the reason why he's around and what his job is. Why do I need to use an agent if I am just going to use the internet to find a house? The internet is a great tool for agents if they can use it to narrow their client's search, that's providing a better service. My advice, don't push the internet to do your job, or it will take your job from you.

Evaluate Yourself

2008-05-19T15:41:00Z

In any job, in any industry, you must constantly be getting "better" at what you do. The only way to improve is to evaluate yourself. I do this constantly, I look back at the work, the situations and the outcome. I ask myself questions like... What makes me good at what I do? What makes me different? In what facets of my skill set am I subpar? When and why am I unproductive? Be honest, its pointless without honestly. Criticize yourself, find the path to improvement.

I will evaluate myself now...

What makes me good at what I do? My business partner, Steve makes me better. He raises my work quality. He questions my decisions and pushes me past my initial solution. Research makes me better by knowing what others are doing, spending time signing up for other sites and evaluating them. Maybe we (Less Everything) need more QA help to question my UI choices more often?

What makes me different? The opinions I give, my thought process, the final product. Being honest with a client telling them my honest opinion. Another differentiator is bad jokes, clients and even our employees love them! :) They can't get enough of them! Well maybe not, but maybe I do handle a client differently than most. Can I improve my relationships with our co-workers and clients? Yes, I probably need to work on being more patient and in tune to their needs and feelings.

Am I growing/improving as a designer <insert skill set here>? Not as much as I should be. I have booked several conferences to attend this year. I am lacking in face to face interaction with others. I need to spend more time throwing ideas around with others. I need to spend some time learning haml. Working out, I need to keeping going to the gym, I really think it must pump oxygen to my brain it really helps my creativity.

Where am I unproductive? What slows me down during the day? My lack of rhtml knowledge. I need to add that to my need to work on list. I need to turn my phones off more and IM as well. I am interrupted too much. And I have got to stop watching my AAPL and GOOG stocks like a hawk.

If you work alone in a freelance or contract position, you will slip and slide down the slope of unproductivity and fall behind on your learning. If someone isn't watching over you pushing you, you will lose your edge. You must be that judge, be honest it will pay off.

I am so pissed right now

2008-05-14T13:51:00Z

Normally I am a happy type of dude. I was in a pissed mood yesterday. Here are my fixes for being in a bad mood.

Get more sleep: I need 7-8 hours per night.
Drink more water: As I work later at night I drink more coffee which leads to me being dehydrated. As I get dehydrated my creativity drops and I get into a fog.
Lack of exercise: There's something about sweating that gets rid of bad mood mojo.
Change tasks: If you've run into a road block, skip it and knock out several small issues and come back to the bigger problem.
Change perspective: Stresses, its never as bad as it seems. Step back, IE6 will eventually be obsolete.

If you find yourself in the fog of a bad mood and you're just not being productive do this. Go chug a couple large glasses of water, take a multivitamin and grab a quick nap.

Pitfalls of Guaranteed Success pt. 2

2008-05-13T15:21:00Z

Two weeks ago Allan wrote a post about Pitfalls of Guaranteed Success. Today “James” added a comment that made me think that maybe other people could benefit from elaborating on a few points.

James said about #1: ignoring server scaling leads to disaster, just as ignoring UI leads to disaster. (this should not be taken to mean that I think all resources should go into server scaling.)

My opinion: Most people worry about server scaling long, long before they really need to. Who cares if your site can’t survive getting Digged? Planning to get Digged before you’ve done anything good is a waste of energy. This is an example of people trying to solve problems before they are problems. You do not need to worry about scaling servers until you have a server scaling problem. It is exactly this mentality we see all the time: A client wants to make sure their brand new website can survive being Digged. We appreciate the excitement, but it happens so rarely that it is not an issue. People think the problem is real because when someone goes through it a lot of people find out about it, usually through Digg. I promise you that 99.999999% of people will not have this problem. Until you have a server load problem, exactly ZERO percent of your resources should go into server scalability. And once you have that load problem you should start by looking to your code, not your server. Planning a server infrastructure to survive being Digged is like driving an 18-wheeler ever day because one day you might move. The real difference is that you will almost certainly move one day.

James said about #2: depending on the type of business, people may be much more likely to hire too many people out of fear of not getting the work done successfully during an up-blip in business than they are because they are thinking success is guaranteed. the result is similar but the motive isn’t the same.

hiring the right people is always key, of course.

My opinion: 2. Those two motives are actually the same. Most people don’t see an “up-blip,” they see the beginnings of success. It is a rare person who sees the pragmatic reality that this might just be a blip. People tend to think that they can finally start to hire people, buy better computers, buy a boat or a new house. It’s much better to just wait and see what happens. But hiring people can be disaster. Hiring someone just to fill a seat hurts more than just the additional payroll costs. It hurts because the person hired is probably not the “right” person. Their lack of productivity, passion, dedication, excellence will spread like a virus. One of the best things I heard at the Y-Combinator Startup School was that “Eventually the quality of your managers/employees falls to the level of the worst manager/employee.” This happens because it is human nature to say, during the hiring or promoting process, “well this guy is bad, but he’s no worse than __.” The hiring process must be about fighting entropy. I think only Google has managed to overcome this. They pass up a lot of really good talent because of it though.

James said about #5: gut is not reliable. if yours has been you have been lucky. you said it in number 4. trust your gut to start but plan to iterate.

My opinion: I’m sorry your gut is not reliable. If it wasn’t so arrogant, I would recommend trying to improve the reliability of your gut feelings. Allan’s point here is about trusting yourself. If the majority of people think your idea is great, it probably isn’t. Do you think most people would have told Microsoft that they had the killerest idea and that they would be huge? What about Google? Most people would have said “why compete with Yahoo, they have the search market locked up.” Worrying about what other people will say will make your product mediocre. Be bold. Trust yourself. Follow your gut.

I don’t know James, and I certainly don’t mean to pick on him (I hope no one takes this post that way). He brought up some great points that are worth clarifying. Thanks James!

Take the Leap

2008-05-09T13:05:00Z

A week or so ago a friend of mine asked me for a bit of advice. He is a smart guy and like most people has a decently fine/boring/semi-fulfilling job. He has an immediate family member who is in need of regular daily medical care. And he has an idea for a web site/company. He asked me how I managed to work so many hours last year. (I worked a lot of hours last year. More than anyone you know did.) I was very busy when he asked and gave him a short answer of “I am (or was) a machine. I am Superman, blah, blah, blah.” But that is far from the whole story and I want to give him an answer he deserves.

I did indeed work a lot of hours last year. More than anyone should have to. My marriage has suffered for it, although thankfully not too much. My children missed me more than they should have (and I work from home). My business partner, Allan, and I got into a few fights that we wouldn’t have had if I had not been so tired. (Being tired makes stress harder to deal with.) I am fatter, my hair line is worse, I have many more grays hairs and the bags under my eyes are larger. And the truth is I simply can’t work that hard anymore. This year when I work very late I am near useless the next day. I can still work twelve hours every day, but no more. I am no longer a machine. I am no longer Superman.

Last year took a lot out of me. But this year I have a successful business with a very bright future. I (and Allan and my wife and my children and Allan’s wife and children) payed a price for my (and our) hard work last year. I think it was worth it. I don’t recommend it to anyone else.

So the question remains, how does one create a new site/business/product/book/wood carving while still maintaining their current income and responsibilities.

Getting more hours in the day is the key. Obviously that means less sleep, but you don’t have to cut your sleep in half. Try sleeping two hours less. If that doesn’t work try sleeping one hour less. Find the balance that works for you. Then find other places in the day where you can find time. Get rid of your television. TV is the single biggest waste of time. Although my family watches DVD’s, we haven’t had cable TV in about seven years. Cut it out. Next, see if you can arrange to eat and work at your desk during your lunch hour. Working 8:00 – 4:00 will save an hour a day.

Realize you don’t have to work eight hours at your job and then another eight on your project. Set a goal for yourself to work two hours a day on your project. That might not be a lot, but try. Add more hours if you can. If you can’t then you have to make those hours count. Do you really need that feature? Yes. Do you need it before launch? No. Do you need it now? No. Not only does writing fewer features take less time, it usually makes for a better app. Stay focused.

Stay motivated. Remember why you are doing this. You will have a better life, you will have more money, you will be doing something you love, you will be more fulfilled. Keep at it. You are on the right track.

Schedule your time. I have found that the best way to ensure I put those hours in is to do them first. Set the alarm and get up early. Be late to work. Hopefully by the time they fire you your project will be taking off.

Bet on yourself. Use your savings to live and quit your job. If you are not willing to sacrifice because there is no guarantee of success, then why would any investor give you money.

Ask for help. What about partnering with a friend? Ask you parents for money so you can quit your job. Ask a relative. We get a lot of people who approach us asking us to work for equity. I always ask these people what did their parents/in-laws/siblings/cousins say when they asked for money to fund their project. I have yet to have anyone say that they have even asked. Why would I take the risk on you when don’t even believe in yourself enough to ask your family for help?

The point I want to make to my friend is to take the leap. Try. Find a way to make it work. If it fails then so what. Try again. I work hard, but I have the best job in the world. I LOVE my job. If you feel the entrepreneurial spirit, then do it. The world is changing. It is becoming easier and easier to make a living with a very small company. A one or two person company can do things that giant companies can’t do. You can do things that giant companies can’t do. Do it. And feel free to ask me for help along the way.

What to do about Forever Unhappy Clients...

2008-05-05T16:30:00Z

We love our clients and thank goodness have never fired one but I have spoken to many people who have been in this situation. They are worried about losing that income from their forever unhappy client. Neither the client or contractor is happy with the results or relationship, but they continue to work together. Ending a working relationship with client a NOT a negative thing. If you aren't happy in the relationship, they most likely aren't either. There is no need to hold them back from finding someone that can make them happy. One of our rules in business is "Want your clients/customers/employees to be happy. Even if that means going somewhere else."

No one likes to end a relationship but it’s usually for the best. For the best? How is firing a client and losing that income better? Simple answer, in the time it takes to try to live up to their expectation you can make three new clients happy. Which makes more sense?

3 Steps
1) Be Honest, "I don't think I can make you happy, fulfill your need, I don't have the time."
2) Refer to someone else better suited.
3) If you refer to someone check back with them and make sure your referral is living up to your recommendation.

Pitfalls of Guaranteed Success

2008-05-01T16:04:00Z

If you think success is guaranteed you will…

Worry about Server Scaling instead of good UI.
Hire people you don’t need instead of hiring the right people.
Add features you don’t need instead of trimming the cruft.
Your overall attitude changes and you…
1. start believing you have all the answers.
2. stop listening to users.
You worry about what people will say instead of going with your gut.
You opt for vanilla solutions instead of being bold.
You turn into an asshole (might have already happened).

Rules for Business

2008-04-30T16:12:00Z

Always do what is right (as in righteousness, not correctness).
Work hard.
Don’t cheat.
Don’t ever make decisions based on greed.
Do your best work.
Want your customers to be happy. Even if that means using a different service or product.
Want your employees to be happy. Even if that means working somewhere else.
Only hire the best.
Your business partner(s) should not always think like you or agree with you.
Encourage push-back.
You will be misunderstood, get ready.
You are not always right.
A business that ruins your marriage is not worth having.
If your work sucks, get better or change careers.
Negative people and relationships will kill your passion and business.
Be thankful for everything all the time, even when times suck.
Your reputation is your first and last product.

My Dad, the Sith Lord

2008-04-15T13:17:00Z

I was talking to my Dad (one of the greatest businessmen I know) the other day and I asked him to "give me a topic or a statement to blog about". He said "I dunno." I replied "How about your customers are always right?" He replied "People who talk in absolutes are always assholes and they always will be".

I hope you caught his sly joke.

Only the Sith deal in absolutes.

Find that one sentence...

2008-04-07T10:57:00Z

Steve and I recently attended BarCampOrlando a two day event with 300 in attendance. If you don't know what BarCamp is, google it. When you attend a conference/group meet-up don't try to remember every talk, every conversation, don't take notes. Don't memorize the conference, instead, soak up the words in that moment, find one sentence, one phrase, one thought that can inspire you. If you can leave a conference with one inspiration and a new friend then its been a success.

Here's my sentence from BarCampOrlando "We only give our clients one design, so wire-framing is important" by @alexdesigns