Bluyah Development Blog

This morning started pretty much like every other morning:  my two youngest boys began chasing each other up and down the hallway promptly at 5 am.  As if it were not enough of a wake up call for them to be up and running around at this hour, they’ve recently decided to introduce props into their routine.   Tinker Toys used as “swords”.  Squishy balls they throw at each other’s heads.  My oh-so-favorite invention, the Fisher-Price Corn Popper, run up and down the hallway at near lightspeed.  Or — even more shocking — the sudden and complete total silence that is the immediate precursor to either (a) a blood curdling scream, or (b) a compulsive artistic expression perpetrated against the unwilling walls of  their bedroom with a crayon or pencil or (God-forbid) a Sharpie I forgot to put under lock and key the last time I used it.

Yes.  This morning started off in typical fashion.

And it is probably because of this that I didn’t really pay attention when, later that morning as I was driving my oldest son to school, a car passed us heading in the opposite direction, flashing his lights wildly.

In hindsight, I remember seeing the car.  And I remember seeing the headlights flickering on and off.  And I vaguely remember thinking : “Hmmmmm…”  But not much more.

But then a second oncoming car came at us, the driver flashing the headlights.  Then a third.  By the time the fourth car approached I had run through all of the possible scenarios I could think of.  Did I have my brights on?  No.  Was something wrong with the front of my vehicle?  Didn’t seem to be.  Was there a speed trap up ahead?  I didn’t know — but of all the options presented this was the only one that made sense.

I immediately slowed to 5 under the speed limit and almost as quickly the driver behind me began expressing his frustration with my choice.  A quick honk of the horn was not enough.  He gave us several — just in case we missed the point.  And at the first opportunity he sped past us, flashing us the “You’re #1″ sign as he went by.

I’ll admit it.  At times like these I really wish vehicular assault was an acceptable response.  Not that I wanted to do the guy any bodily harm — but I really would have loved to see the expression on his face as that tinny little horn of his was wrapped around a tree.

It was almost as sweet as actually seeing him flagged over to the side of the road by a cop with radar gun in hand as we came around a sharp corner a little further up the road.

So what does any of this have to do with running a company?

A lot, I think.   Or at least more than I had previously thought.

The experience I’ve garnered so far has shown me that it’s very easy to get drawn into the “routine” of running the business.   Bills get paid on the 5th of the month.  Payroll gets run every other Monday with checks going out on Friday.  Standing status meetings every Monday at 9:30.   Advisory Board meetings.  Invoice runs.   Feature releases every third week.  The list goes on and on —  ad nauseam.   I can get so caught up in running the business that it becomes easy to forget to actually manage the business.

What do I mean by manage?

For me, this is simply heeding the warnings of the flashing lights as they cruise by.  This is taking the time to sit with Sales and actually hear to what is being said about the deficiencies in the marketing message — and then trying to get them resolved.   This is keeping an eagle eye on the checkbook and ensuring that we delay until the last possible moment every expense we can — if only so we have “just a little more” working capital.  This is ultimately having the stomach to admit that we may have embarked upon a mission that no one —  and I mean no one —  but our own small team seems to really “get”, and making the decision to stay the course and stick with our guns, staying true to our mission, our values and our future, when everyone else is trying like hell to convince us that we should become something we know in our hearts we are not.

This means giving the team every possible thing they need to succeed while removing (or circumnavigating) every possible roadblock to that success.  We’re going to take our lumps along the way, I know that.  There will be critics we encounter along the way with their own version of the “You’re #1″ salute.  And there will be competitors we’ll vehemently pursue (Crystal Reports — we’re coming after you).  But in doing so we won’t veer from our objective.  In the end we’ll simply stay the course.  We’ll do what we believe to be right.  And we’ll get to where we’re headed.

Of this I am certain.

---

---

It’s really strange.  It seems like every start-up CEO I meet lately is sitting on a nice little war-chest of cash.  Flush from a recent A-round, or having just cashed in their freshly-vested Amazon stock options (at a strike-price that would make a grown man cry, no less), all seem extremely enthusiastic about their latest venture (as they should) and — oddly —  seemingly unconcerned with how they’re actually going to make money as a company.  Sure - I know making money is in each of their business plans.  But it’s not currently a necessity.  They have cash to operate.  They  have freedom.

Don’t get me wrong —  I don’t begrudge any of them one iota.  I wish them the best of luck.  And I fully believe that within the next two to three months (or four), we’ll be sitting pretty right beside them, having attracted the right investor(s) who believe as much in our vision for Bluyah as we do.  But all of that good will and optimism about our own future doesn’t change the fact that recently I’ve been feeling …. well ….  a bit “stuck.”

Watching my boys play outside this evening, it finally dawned on me exactly what I’ve been feeling “stuck” about.  

You can play after your chores are done

From the first through the third grade, we lived next-door to a family with 8 children.  Their 4-bedroom house sat on about 2 acres of property right in the middle of a subdivision of smaller houses on quarter-acre plots.  The family grew all of their own food in a massive garden, had chickens for their eggs, a cow for milk, and a pig —  I’m not making this up —  named “Bacon.”  Needless to say, the family was a bit of an oddity in the community.  And the middle son, Alan —  who happened to be my age —  was my best friend.

Every day after school a gang of us would tear home on our bikes, check in with our mother’s, then disappear into the nooks and crannies of the neighborhood, exploring every square inch of that desert town before the sun began to set and a gaggle of moms would begin calling us in, one-by-one, for dinner from the front porches.

And nearly every day after school, Alan would check in with his mother only to hear: “You can go out and play when your chores are done.”  In all of my recollections, I can’t seem to ever remember him being outside with us on any day except Saturday (the younger boys of the family were excused from chores on Saturday afternoons).

Seeing my boys playing outside this evening it finally hit me:  I think I now know what Alan must have felt all those years ago, watching the other boys tear off on their bikes while he went off to the chicken coop to gather up eggs.

The Uncertainty of Support

I’ve mentioned it before.  Currently, we pay our bills by doing custom development work for local companies. It’s a great way to fund development of our Bluyah application.  And it introduces us to facets of IT and all that that entails in a way that under other circumstances we would not have the opportunity to witness.  In short — it reinforces on a near-daily basis the need there is for an application like Bluyah.

But having an on-going service contract, or an on-demand support agreement with a set of customers has a way of skewing your priorities.  In short, your customers’ priorities become, as they should, your priorities.  And their emergencies become your emergencies.  And your development cycle — when push comes to shove — takes a back seat to your client’s development cycle.

Jon, one of our rock-star developers, often jokes about having to “do the chores” whenever I assign him a client development task.  And he’s right.  They are chores.  The work needs to be done — and be done well — but they are chores nonetheless.  In essence, we’re stuck inside doing all of the necessary work for our clients so we can keep the lights on and the Bluyah development cycle moving forward while, it seems, all of the other Seattle start-ups are outside playing in the sun.  If I were eight again I’d probably scream “It’s just not fair!”  

But I’m not.  

I’m 41.  I’m about a decade older than most of the other CEOs making pitches to the VCs.  I’m reinventing our company (and, I would suspect, myself to a certain extent) at an age when most people are settling in.  I’m doing my damned best to run a company that I think has a serious shot at making a meaningful impact.  And at this stage of our young start-up life, as far as I can tell,  that means that we have to do everything in our power to ensure we get to keep playing the game.  

And that means: until an investor aligns with our vision for Bluyah, we’ll keep doing our chores.

---

---

There is a never-ending stream of information on the Net about how to start your new company, or things to watch out for when talking with investors, or even how to properly shake hands if you’re an entrepreneur.  But there doesn’t seem to be a lot of day-to-day insight from the trenches.   With that in mind, I thought I’d start sharing some of the more mundane things we’ve been doing.  Maybe it will resonate with an entrepreneur out there.  At the very least, it will help me keep better track of our new company’s history and day-to-day operations.

Monday Morning Huddle

We do it every Morning at 9:30.  Don’t bother calling at this time - we won’t answer the phones.  It’s an “All Hands” meeting and the agenda is dead-simple.  Each person in the company talks about what they did last week, what they are planning on doing this week, and any roadblocks to success they may face.  We order it by Department as follows:

1. Sales and Marketing.
2. Development and Production Support.
3. Financial and Executive

The goal is to keep the meeting to under 30 minutes.  With only 5 people currently, we’re usually able to keep it under fifteen.

Running the meeting this way accomplishes several key goals:

1. Every member of the company knows at a high-level what is going on with every other group in the company. 
2. There is no ambiguity about what we as a company are working on, or what our priorities are for the coming week.
3. Everyone is aware of any roadblocks other individuals may be encountering and can provide insight or assistance.

Like I said, we do this every Monday.  So, the obvious question becomes: what did you all discuss today?  Here are the highlights.  Just a warning: I won’t name companies we’re talking with here for all of the obvious reasons.

Today’s Meeting Notes:

Sales Stats: Adam had several meetings last week with potential clients, one with a potential strategic partner.  DEV needs to provide an estimate on integrating with potential partner’s product before we can move forward on licensing negotiations.  3 sit-down meetings planned this week.  Needs to make more phone calls and emails to “fill the hopper.”   Sees a trend emerging in discussions: companies want to see more analytical capabilities in the tool.

Development Stats:  Dev just finished up code for client release (we do custom development for various companies to fund our product development).  Currently prioritizing development activities for Bluyah.  It was to be: Sharing, Online Invoices and XML Post processing - but given feedback from Sales, release 1.1.1 will now be:

1. Connector and View/Spreadsheet Sharing
2. Online Invoices
3. Pre and Post Filtering, sorting, basic analytics (to include much improved charting capabilities)

Financial Stats: It looks like an SBA loan is out of the question - we have no tangible assets to put up as collateral, and even if I put my house up, the loan amount we could get is well below the financing we need to execute on Phase I of our business plan.  CFO has a talk with a major local bank this week to talk about other loan options.   Additionally, we’re assembling a list of Angel Investors to whom we have referrals.  We need to finalize the Go-To-Market plan before we can call this group, however.  Which means we need to know a whole hell of a lot more about our pricing model margins and associated costs when under stress.  Follow-up meeting scheduled later in the week to work through break-points in the revenue model.  Lastly - as much as we hate to do so - we simply can not financially afford to execute on the excellent marketing plan that was presented to us by a colleague last week.  It’s up to me to figure out how we can get them to deliver the Marketing materials in “phases” that can coincide with when we hope to see the first round of financing.   I always get the fun jobs.

---

---