I've been neglecting this blog -- Jul. 9, 2010
Ye olde homework:
- Continue with strategy-planning -- I should have, at the very least, my recruitment processes and next steps, a dream-list of advisors and how to reach them, and an easy-to-implement marketing idea or two.
- Start preparing the tutorial video we'll be recording -- script it out so the flow is right, and rehearse it.
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Yeah, I know. Neglect neglect neglect. If this blog were my wife, it could have sued me by now. And taken half my stuff. Which would probably mean half of YouPhonics... Garry, Sachin? Don't get any ideas, okay?
Quick updates, as it's nearly 2AM, and I'm going out to my friends' DJ night before they leave on a 3-week European tour:
- DONE with the strategy work. I have printouts of the next three months covered with Post-It notes. I know what I should be doing, on a 30,000 foot and 50,000 foot level, for the next three months. It feels awesome.
- I've started planning Phase 2. Phase 0 (late-August 2009 to December 2009) could be dubbed "Assembling the Allies." Phase 1 (January 2010 to end-of-July 2010) would be "Birthing the Baby." Phase 2, which will be starting in mid-August (it needs a bit of setup before actual progress) will be all about "Crossing the Chasm" (thanks, Ian!).
- I'm going to be home for a maximum of 10 days in August. Fuuuuuuuck. Throwing myself into a bloody cage match against my travel habits. I'd better come out victorious.
- After one of my two last investment-talks today, I've finally started to draw up a list of common issues with my business, my philosophies, my business model, and my ask. Here are a few of them, in paragraph form:
Nobody likes to invest in the music business. So few people have won in the past, and wins have been smaller than they should be. Everybody that does like to invest in music is likely doing so already (see: Foundry holding both Topspin and Next Big Sound). The pool is way, way smaller.
This is something I'm just going to have to deal with if I continue to look for investment. If, however, I bootstrap and start making the revenues I need to break even, it will likely get a lot easier to convince the non-believers.
Investors truly hate single-Founder companies. I get it. Paul Graham says it's bad. You want to see a team working behind a product. You want to see that the Founder can inspire others.
My gut tells me that this desire for multiple-Founder companies lies in a heuristic, not a law. But it's become so prevalent that it's almost impossible to break free of. I've already shown that I have a compelling, inspiring vision. I've got an amazing team working behind me. In fact, my moral weakness (not feeling right asking someone to make the sacrifices I've been making this past 11 months) has become an amazing strength (a development and design team that I can scale up or down, as necessary)!
I truly, deeply believe that this multiple-Founder, in-house team approach is akin to hosting one's own web servers. Sure, you need it when you need it, but AWS or Rackspace are much more efficient when you're not a behemoth. This is something I'm not going to easily budge on.
(That said, I am now considering hiring a full-time, in-house bridge between me and my development family over at BNOTIONS. If this ends up being the road we travel, it's going to be because the right person -- for both sides -- bubbles up when he/she's needed. We're keeping our eyes open while powering on.)
Our business model needs more proving. I don't want to get too detailed about this, as it's kind of our competitive advantage. But there are assumptions that we're making that we need to further flesh out in customer development, or bringing on deep-industry advisors.
No arguments here. I believe in what we're doing, but some more external validation (and maybe even some letters of intent) would boost everyone's morale!
We're asking for too much money. We've been asking for $600K. We were looking at that for a 12-month burn, plus any extra runway we could get by making sales and applying for all applicable tax credits.
That's wayyyyy too much. And, after seeing firsthand what one-and-sometimes-more developers working full-time-ish can do, this can easily be cut. I was looking at way too much manpower, and looking at salaries that should be paid after Series A, not seed funding.
We've cut things by 25%. We're now looking at $150K for the year. This would pay two full-time salaries (me + tech lead), near-full-time contract development (scaling up and down as needed), a bit of design work, way more money than we'll need for conferences/travel for two (and guerrilla promotions at said conferences), high estimates for our server needs, a fair bit of legal work, and allows for potential computer upgrades if we make a minor sale.
Not perfect, but muuuuuuuuch better.
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Lessons learned:
- People will always critique. Triangulate the advice between multiple sources, and see how it fits with you.
- Sitting back and looking at the high-level stuff is so satisfying after months of near-gruntwork.
- I'm tired of writing and need to leave my house!
Weekend homework:
- Email the remaining SF people (see Post-It) and NYC people (also see Post-It, plus Jay Frank) about possibly meeting up when I'm in town.
- Invite friends! They've been neglected for too long.
- Start scripting the video.
- Start wireframing the partnered implementation we've started discussing...
(I don't necessarily plan on doing both 3 and 4. But at least one of 'em needs to get at least a bit of thought into it.)
