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:
- Sales and Marketing.
- Development and Production Support.
- 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:
- Every member of the company knows at a high-level what is going on with every other group in the company.
- There is no ambiguity about what we as a company are working on, or what our priorities are for the coming week.
- 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:
- Connector and View/Spreadsheet Sharing
- Online Invoices
- 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.
