I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Do you think we should phase out IE6 support?
Our reasoning for why we should is here.
The latest Start Up Magazine this month seems to feature everyone I know. You can’t walk out of the building without running into a tech entrepreneur.
Peter Griffin did a great article of Silicon Welly. Laughed at the Glazier Mafia bit, but it is amazing how many businesses you can trace from our humble beginnings in Wang House.
I’ve been meaning to catalog them for while. Can anyone remember any more names of businesses that started from people at Glazier?So far I’ve got Utlilyx, Viatx, Context Connect, AfterMail, Intergen, Xero, ActionThis, Navitas, Provoke, Ponoko, Get Staffed, Plan HQ, WhatsInPlay, Mindscape …
Intergen must have over 200 people now. That’s awesome.
Our very own Craig has been learning and positioned himself well on the front cover. Dock 10 points for not wearing any branding.
It is is fantastic being part of a community that helps each other as much as people do in Wellington. It’s also fun when the band reforms (it’s like a geek version of the Dunedin music scene) as you get to work with people from 10+ years ago.
Great to see how much people develop and learn, and apply their skills.
Subscribe to the magazine at www.start-up.co.nz
In contrast to the LTSA advert I didn’t like the TV One Business ads are brilliant. Saw them in print last week and now on the web.
Clever humor with the tie into the messaging of the sponsor. Excellent.
Another article up on NBR online …
Great to connect with so many smart people and some old friends last night. It’s pretty cool to present at Haymarket. Last night the sky was clear and it was very hot. Such a great view of London.
The KEA events are a great way to connect with other New Zealanders.
I went east towards the UK this trip and had to stop in the cell in LA. Flights through Hong Kong were too solid to go the preferred, but longer, left route.
One of my skills is being able to be first to leave the plane regardless of what seat I’m in. Those skills are important in LA as you may end up queuing for an hour to stand in the Transit box for 30 minutes.
This time the transit immigration people didn’t turn up so that meant going through normal immigration.
Being so close to a shower I went outside. Big mistake as the queue back in through security was a 40 minute exercise. Made it with 10 minutes to spare so got a quick shower.
Love that the Koru Club wifi key (through unnecessarily complex) is the same all over the world.
Air New Zealand now allow movies from when you arrive at your seat to wheels on the tarmac at the other end. Fantastic.
The key to overseas trips is to start 4-6 weeks earlier on your appointments. Nothing worse than being on the otherside of the world with downtime. In London you can do 4-5 meets a day. Breakfasts and dinners are meeting time. I’ve got 20+ scheduled meetings this week, with a free afternoon for follow ups and lucky meets. You just have to use the time.
Looking forward to meeting up with people at the KEA event tomorrow night. Looks like its a full house so that will be a good event.
It’s great to tap into local connections and resources. Deloittes have a fantastic facility we have access to which is great for meetings and workshops.
Doing business in the UK is fun and exciting. As you fly in over the city you can just see the size of the huge market. The people are friendly and smart. Things are definitely up a few notches up here.
It’s great having a full time team in country. With other businesses we’ve flown through with a once over lightly. We can have our local people manage the local relationships which makes a big difference.
8:00 start tomorrow and an hour of humid and sticky travel to get there. Time for sleep.
Rare glimpse on the economics of software companies with scale.
Microsoft expanding Mac team ahead of new products
It’s believed the Mac BU currently employs around 180 people whose products — including Office, Messenger, and Remote Desktop Client — combine to generate over $350 million in revenues each year.
Say the average person’s annual cost is, say, $US150k. That’s 27m. Even with a lot of marketing spend that’s a good return.
When pressed for details, a spokesperson for the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant would say only that the company expects to release new versions of Office for Mac every 2 to 3 years.
I was hoping the days of 3+ year releases were gone. Seeing the progress that web office companies like Zoho are making in months - imagine how far they’ll go in 3 years.
OSX is being updated every few months. 10.5.4 is almost here. 10.5.3 had quite a few new features. So complexity is no excuse.
I’ve been playing a around a bit with web office tools. The collaboration features are awesome, but they are still clumsy to use. As Silverlight, Flash, AIR, Java and other web hosted runtimes roll out over the next year I’m sure we’ll see office parts that you can embed. You would have to think that’s all going to accelerate well within the 3 year horizon.
It staggers me that the biggest horizontal categories are so ripe for innovation and the door is open so wide. And the rewards for getting it right are so large.
The use-case of office documents are they are ‘hot’ for probably a day - maybe even just an hour of intense collaboration. Once a document is done, 99.99% of them never change again.
Probably 5 times a day I’m hunkered over someone else’s PC collaborating on a document. Or I’m emailing changes around that have to be in series or we have a version control nightmare. That slows collaboration and minimizes review cycles. Worse it’s embarrassing to have to go around again at the last minute. An emotional, painful response. Something you seek when looking for high value problems to solve.
It would be so good if we could use all that processing power on the desktop to deal with the rendering of multiple users attacking a document at once. Easy rollback of changes. Full tracking ability and difference detection. The bandwidth requirements are minimal as it only needs to keep a track of a few people typing and where their mouse is.
Use the power of the computer to empower across the world what people are doing next to each other everyday. It’s such an obvious scenario.
I hope that’s what the Office and MacBU teams are working on.
We are seeing innovation in this space. Zoho seems to be in front technically, speeding past Google. The experience the web guys are gaining in collaborative editing will be invaluable. But I wish they would work on fat client versions as well. They seem reluctant to charge. Hard to find any pricing info on Zoho. I think they should charge so they can accelerate investment.
These numbers show it is a high value space. New entrants getting close to the sacred cow will hopefully drive faster innovation in Office.
In the technology industry, one the things that define you, is your bag.
For travel I have big boy, mid sized and overnight Samsonite wheeled suitcases. I wheelie suit carrier, and a one night away, fits in overhead locker, wheelie case. (Never travel with what you can’t wheel.)
My laptop bag is an issue.
My #1 bag expired a few months ago. It was a Line7, canvas bag with rubber handles. It had a big, but dated, Xero logo embroidered on it which was great for starting conversations and flashing 120 people at a time on the plane.
I was saddened when the clasps went as it it took me a long time to locate last #1 bag. But our logo had changed so I knew it was time.
I saw some OK bags in Sydney a few months ago and splashed out on 2 that we could brand up. After a 3 hour flight I had bag buyers remorse. They weren’t quite right.
My current squeeze is a WAS bag generously sent to last years Small Biz Expo exhibiters that was lying in my conference bag collection. WAS bags are made up from the billboard skins of the their ads. I needed to find a bag quickly and as I was heading into this years expo season so I thought I’d get points with SarahT. (It worked). It’s safety orange so is off brand.
The time has come to find a new #1 bag.
I need your help.
Rowan brought a nice bag from NY but his taste is german cars is at the opposite end of the spectrum to mine so is not suitable The bag is such a personal thing we need a model to assist with selecting.
I’ve plotted my bag related personality on the model below.
So I need a dark coloured, mid+ sized, primarily canvas with leather trimmed, brandable, executive laptop bag.
Probably a great opportunity for some rails guys to turn this in a web 2.0 start up.
So please help, send me links to your best bags.
Billy is one of the many great people I met at Quest. We were travel buddies on a few trips.
I’m a cross between football coach and computer nerd.
Much as I love technology, my favorite topics are about people, leadership, and teamwork. That’s my passion for coaching coming out. There’s no better feeling than helping someone to succeed. In my current role, I get to marry passion for people with the coolness of technology.
Worth following Billy if you’re interesting in the people and personal development side of tech biz.
RobinB flicked me this link. Very useful if you’re into SaaS. Easy to read format.
http://www.interop.com/downloads/mckinsey_interop_survey.pdf
Big points (italics mine)
- Software industry is on the upswing with SaaS a key driver.
- SaaS is becoming mainstream.
- Battle between traditional mega vendors and SaaS vendors. Questions whether traditional vendors can transition.
- Demand driven by the SMB sector. Sales models are key. Huge new market
- SaaS momentum is happening faster than expected.
- Ease of conversion is key. We see this at Xero.
- Growth in the sector should be immune from the current economic downturn.
Useful report the confirms a lot of the things we’re seeing.
After a day to digest the iPhone news I have a few more thoughts.
They are going after a very broad market:
- Kids. Addition of parental controls makes sense and I’m not aware of any other phones doing that. Clever.
- Consumers. They are hitting a price point that makes this a fairly compelling device at the moderate to high end consumer level.
- Small Business Owners. Integrating the iPhone with push email and shared contact services gives smb’s access to services normally associated with enterprise software. Questions remain over if they will allow hosted domains, or if the client applications will work with Google Mail.
- Enterprise. It may take another version but this is a credible first offer to Enterprise customers.
The breadth of this is also noticeable in the simultaneous launch in 20 countries, coordination of device and hosted services with MobileMe and embracing Windows users. Even the way that the country sub-sites all updated was impressive. This is an awesome execution project. Compare to HP who launched 50 new products today, including a gorgeous looking laptop, that I can’t find on HP.com.
They are also going Enterprise. Not just iPhone but broadly with Exchange support in Snow Leopard, the next update to the MacOS. This was overshadowed but is big news on its on.
Apple have become a broad execution company. What other companies are executing simultaneously on so many fronts - to this quality?
As well as this, it’s hard to think of another company that can hype up the entire world like Apple can. They have the marketing side cracked as well. Nuts.
Yet there are some holes. Like iHome that Lance notices and I’m hot on. Would be nice if Apple fixed their home beachhead before heading to the Enterprise.
There are a few potentially insidious bits. Coated in sugar.
The distribution network of iTunes is potent and quite reasonable priced at 30% margin which includes hosting and credit card payments. As it goes to so many countries all ISV’s need to think - do we have an iPhone app strategy just to get access to that channel. That is very interesting for SaaS vendors. Software + Services to get the distribution.
The application notification service ties Apple into such a wealth of information. Yet it makes sense to solve the background application issue. This is a scary/brilliant part of their strategy. Very, very clever.
The MobileMe applications were slick. The demo’s looked like some of the the best web apps I’ve seen to date. More importantly, here is a compelling Software + Services model.
So Apple gets hardware, software, clips the ticket on apps, and has regular SaaS revenue. A multilevel, vertically integrated cash machine.
Who is doing this stuff at Apple? The very few exec’s they wheel out don’t really blow you away and have gaffed a few times. It can’t just be SJ. There must be a very tight strategy team in there somewhere.
Will I get an iPhone? Depends on the soft keyboard experience. I assume they’ve learnt a lot in the last year and it will be improved. The BlackBerry is still the ‘power email’ device.
I don’t think Vodafone locally know too much yet but the burning questions are
- Price/plan?
- What if you’re already on an Enterprise plan?
- Visual Voicemail?
- Mobile data rates?
A lot of stuff came together today. A few holes but the breadth of execution is unprecendented. Fanboy or not, that’s what impresses me.
Surfing stuff.co.nz this week I’ve been noticing this LTSA advertising message for ‘cars with stability control’.
I guess there is a joke here on pop up’s.
But I don’t think it’s good practice for web advertisers to mimic browser elements and fool the user into a click. Especially not a Government department.
Older web users get flustered by pop up’s and while this is no doubt well intentioned I think this crosses the line.
Maybe because it’s election year but as I know from experience what advertising on the few big New Zealand web sites costs it offends me to see my tax dollars spent on such a campaign which I can’t imagine has any cut through what so ever.
What do you think. Does this cross the line?
Been a busy week. Deep south end of the week. Excellent X|MediaLab event over the weekend and been in Auckland today doing a World Class New Zealand workshop.
One of my WCNZ colleagues is next to me in the koru lounge waiting to fly home and just whooped loudly. Alison just got her IT Governance Standard approved. ISO/IC 38500.
That’s pretty cool. Contact alison.holt@concretecampus.com for more information. Global influence.
X | Media Lab was quite a cool event. I was a mentor which meant that I got to spend an hour each with some very cool companies and talk through strategy and give them feedback. It was very rewarding and a lot of fun. I was blown away by the quality of much of the work. I especially noticed how rich media was just another data type for many companies. Coming from a business software background I get blown away by how sophisticated cross media applications can be.
Met some great people who were visiting. If you get the chance I’d recommend heading to an offshore X | Media Lab event to build in market connections. If you are in NZ this should be an event you shoot for next year.
We’re a Microsoft Gold partner and really appreciate our relationship with MS. Lots of friends there.
Only a few years ago the Microsoft powerhouse was unstoppable. You couldn’t even imagine Microsoft could have a competitor and there were calls to break MS up.
Then two fronts happened. The Internet, which challenged the lock in of the desktop model, and Apple came back.
It’s a fascinating tech story that thousands of people commentate on. But this article was a bit of a wake up call as to where MS is at.
Can Hotshot Ad Guy Alex Bogusky Make Microsoft Cool?
Firstly this
Over the past couple of years, Microsoft’s already problematic reputation in some circles — as the soulless, power-hungry purveyor of lackluster products — has suffered a series of self-inflicted wounds. It spent two years and $500 million on the media blitz around the long-delayed Windows Vista launch, only to see the January 2007 “Wow” campaign, which likened Microsoft’s new operating system to Woodstock and the fall of the Berlin Wall, derided as arrogant and creatively void. Vista itself sold poorly, leading to price cuts of up to 40%. Worst of all, the flop bred a new generation of Microsoft haters. “Microsoft has really lost control of its image,” says Rob Enderle, an influential advisory analyst for tech companies including Dell, HP, and Microsoft. And with its two most formidable competitors — Apple and Google — boasting their own consumer cults, that’s the last thing Microsoft can afford to do.
I’m sure Microsoft strives to do better but the fact is as companies grow it is just hard to be nimble and the technology market allows new entrants to come in unencumbered and change the rules. In that climate long term brand demise is entirely predictable. But at the same time a cheeky challenger, smaller with a lot more focus, but big enough to make an impact has been accelerating that brand erosion.
Nothing is doing more to carve away at Microsoft’s reputation — and contribute to its loss of market share — than the assault launched by Apple two years ago in the form of the “Mac vs. PC” spots featuring The Daily Show satirist John Hodgman. The ads became immediate pop-culture fixtures, spawning more than 1,000 video spoofs on YouTube and taking home last year’s Grand Effie, the ad industry’s highest honor for effectiveness. “Nobody messes with anyone in the tech industry the way Apple has messed with Microsoft,” says Enderle. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a major national campaign that disparages a competitor, and the competitor just sits back and takes it. If somebody tried to do that to Oracle, you wouldn’t be able to find the body.”
It is so interesting to watch this battle on such a big and public scale.
Microsoft is reinventing itself. SharePoint is growing like a wildfire in the enterprise and the cash keeps rolling in.
Far from being complacent Microsoft has lots of smart people and lots of money. They know they’ve missed the market in a number of public areas and that has removed any corporate arrogance they might have been accused of a few years ago.
They will have learned a lot of the past few years, and especially over the last few months on the so far failed Microhoo bid and the unrestrained reaction from the community.
I expect Microsoft to reinvent themselves over the next few years. Now there is real competition and that leads to innovation. That is great for the industry.
What would you do if you were Microsoft? If big Steve tapped you on the shoulder and said, your turn?
Here’s my strategy …
- A lightweight operating system. Forget backward compatibility. Just needs to run Office v.next which has to be compelling. Make it not need a hardware upgrade. Less is more. Open Source it.
- Leverage the Office platform for a powerful Software + Services model. Collaborative Office has to be the goal.
- Win the Enterprise. That means double down on SharePoint, but make it a database, not a collection of objects.
- In fact promote everyone in the SQL Server team. The Enterprise is about databases.
- March out everyone in the Exchange storage team. Exchange is your corporate anchor. There has been no innovation for years. You need to port it over SQL Server immediately. Shoot anyone that stops you. Mail is a database application. Period.
- Clean sheet redesign or your mail client. Mail is broken at all levels and is the most important application.
- Buy a big Services company. Maybe HP. Microsoft has to be the new IBM. Straight partnering won’t cut it anymore.
- SilverLight has to win, or buy Adobe. Don’t let Apple get them or you’re done.
- Resurrect Internet Explorer for OSX. You’re going to loose OS market share in the short to mid term, at least have a chance to keep them in the browser.
- Lock in Dell. As computer hardware gets cheaper the OS becomes the biggest cost. They’ll go Linux unless you fix those relationships with a great OS. You need a tighter hardware/software partnership. Surely together you can build a stunning computer. Look at OLPC2.
- Significantly up your Open Source strategy across the board. That will win back the geeks.
- Win the SMB market. No one there yet and they already have Office.
- Do lots of small acquisitions to fill in the strategy.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) .Net and Windows Server with compelling licensing.
- Sack all the existing design guys and hire a design dictator who overseas everything. Microsoft Web properties, packaging and applications are ‘over designed’. You need someone who understands less is more. Not Chris Bangle but like a Chris Bangle at BMW who drove design.
- Do a total redesign of the Windows Mobile interface. It is not a scaled down desktop computer. It is a handheld device. Hire some RIM guys to do it properly. Or buy RIM.
- Maybe use some cash to buy or lock in a global fibre network. Vertical integrate your Enterprise Software stack with the network layer. Then you can QoS connected applications and add value to the stack with Enterprise Messaging Services, off site back ups etc.
- Xbox/Media center has to be default lounge computer. Double down but really model user scenarios so it works as people want to.
It’s a big list but MS has a big team, the brains and the resources.
I was at a meeting last night with a number of senior people in our ICT industry. One of the discussion threads was what aspirational goals should we have as industry.
Buoyed by the broadband discussion last year I think we’ve seen that you can actually change things if you get coordinated.
Some of the general themes we’d like as an industry would be around
- Encouraging more people into the industry
- Certification programs
- Immigration
- Education
But what would be some specific and measurable things we could achieve if we worked together?
Here are some that I’ve been thinking of.
- Establishment of an ICT procurement ombudsman, so that procurement issues can be raised without the vendor being penalized in the market.
- A work visa program between New Zealand and Silicon Valley so that we can send our talented people up to work there for a few years and bring experts down here tightening the relationship between ourselves and the center of the tech universe.
- R&D tax credits limits lifted if you are exporting products developed from that R&D.
- The industry supporting Government initiatives on Online Identity Management for individuals and businesses facilitating electronic commerce. We could lead the world here.
What do you think? What else could/should we do?
… when US companies start marketing against you …
Excellent. You should definitely check out Netsuite before looking at us.
http://www.netsuite.co.nz. Tell them I sent you.
Ask them about pricing. For some reason it’s not on their site. Here’s ours.
Interesting to benchmark how they are doing.
Big milestone today as we put out first annual result as public company and checked off where we got to against our offer document issued a year ago.
We only have a few slots a year where we can talk about how we’re doing so for what it’s worth here are some comments and a few things I’ve learnt over the last year that will hopefully be useful to others in the software industry.
Firstly, it’s obviously great to get an IPO away as we did last June. But once the hangover clears you realize that you are on a treadmill and you have to deliver on your promise. There is no hiding. If you screw up you screw up big. And in a small country like New Zealand that means moving to Mexico. To borrow Rowan’s poker betting analogy (you can imagine the hand actions) - it’s an ‘all in’ strategy.
That can be pretty scary but for where I was at in my career I liked the step up in responsibility to do a public company. I believe it is the best/only way to build a significant software company from NZ. All in.
You soon learn it’s a merry-go-round you can’t get off. There are no days off when you are in a public company. You can’t say ‘I don’t like it anymore’. You took the money, you have to deliver. It’s pressure that never goes away.
Because from the start Xero was going to be a public company we engaged great advisors to help us early one. The IPO process and subsequent activities around being a public company are not that onerous. Being public was baked into our DNA from the start. Good governance makes the business better and forces rigor and disciplines that are good practice. This is especially good for the entrepreneur as creates the platform for operation excellence needed for success. I hope other NZ software companies go down this route as well. It just creates better companies.
Having a great board is vital. Our board has a mix of experience and are very challenging but supportive. After a board meeting our management team all feel like we’ve done 10 rounds in the ring but you also know the business is better.
When you plan a business the main things are costs and revenue. You can manage costs, but you can’t directly manage revenue. You can manage the things you do to create revenue but it is not completely in your control.
So made made very sure that we kept our costs within budget. That was completely in our control so we just had to do it. But you take money to invest - not for it to sit in the bank - so you want to make sure you spend up to, but just under, your plan. You can see that in our results.
The revenue curve we experienced was where we learned the most lessons that will be useful for other new SaaS providers.
In most start up business plans you see the infamous hockey stick revenue curve. You see it so much that you discount them. I think we had this in the back of our minds when we did our forecasts 16 months ago we did a more linear curve. But we did experience the hockey stick. With the benefit of hindsight I think we understand why the hockey stick occurred, especially in our market.
A key reason is that accounting systems are sticky. They are not a whim purchase so you tend to validate a change decision with other people. So word of mouth endorsement is a key aspect of the buying process.
You also need to just be around for a while. You don’t change your core information system to a company you have only just heard of.
We also believed that, in our market, accountants are an important validator. We weren’t expecting such a favorable response initially but when they did give us the feedback that Xero was going in the right direction in July/August last year we took the longer term view that we should focus on them first. This delayed adoption as they are less likely to change a customer mid financial period.
That decision also delayed ARPU features we had planned as the accountants message was get the core accounting engine complete first. This was a plan departure which we had to announce. Our philosophy, as an early stage listed company, was to be upfront about what we were doing so we explained that to the market at our half year.
For SaaS vendors the first customers are the hardest. You need to build the base for the word of mouth effect to take place. We took a hand-to-hand combat approach. It was just hard one-at-a-time stuff. Lots of events, presentations and lots of phone dogging. Not glamorous but effective.
It starts off with a sale every few days, then you up to one every day, then 2-3 a day and it goes up and up. 1300 seemed a long way away but we knew that we were building the word of mouth effect and that eventually it would kick in and get easier. It was so satisfying when we got customers that we hadn’t spoken to. With each new software release we’d remove another objection, then another and another.
As we were building out our functional breadth over the year we had to sell what we had, not what we were going to have. That means finding verticals that matched our feature set at that time.
Coming into our first key change over period, March/April in NZ, the hard work we did earlier in the year paid off and customers accelerated quickly.
We noted an unintended benefit of the ’small releases frequently’ model. Normal the feedback cycle for software is so long and often annual or worse. Releasing customer driven features every few weeks accelerated our trust relationship with customers and partners.
We learned, and continue to learn, a lot about marketing to small businesses. This year we tried lots of things deliberately to test what worked and didn’t in the small business market.
The biggest lesson was that small business owners are really busy and that they are not listening for you. Even now I’ll speak at a business event and many people have not heard of Xero. (Did you not notice we listed on the stock exchange last year!). Surprisingly, many accountants we meet still have not heard of Xero. That is a big reality check as to who really cares what you’re doing.
We experimented with newspaper ads and radio. We heard anecdotally that people had seen the ads and they may be good for brand building (which is very hard to measure) but we noticed almost no measurable action from horizontal offline advertising. A PR based approach was much more cost effective and generated many more comments. When we took the message vertical and more tailored to specific industry pain we saw a better response.
We noted it is very hard get people to do an online action in response to an offline message. Online advertising to an online response gets a much better hit rate.
In the end, at this stage in our life, its word of mouth. And that means delivering a great experience, great support and listening.
So how did we do? We achieved our primary objective, hitting the customer number and building that solid base of customers to grow from. We have more cash than planned so that makes our runway longer. I think we have removed the key risk elements and Xero is now all about sales execution. Getting customers in the UK was major milestone.
What was the best part? Having the resources to build a team of talented people and get them all working together to create something special. I just love seeing what our team comes up with and the results of smart people working together.
What would we do differently? There were a few key functions we should have done before launch that took a while to retrofit in later, but I can’t believe how much we’ve got out in the last year. Even more R&D would have been better.
Would you do Xero again as a public company knowing what you know now? Absolutely. In this space you can’t separate your funding strategy from your business strategy.
What’s next? Well last year was about putting the platform in place and doing the things we had to do. This year the fun starts as we exploit that platform. We’re all really excited about the next year!
Responding to a comment on my last post. All companies should have a concise company summary. When you are making contact, especially over email, it’s essential you present clearly who you are.
So you get the idea, here is a sample one that we use for Xero.
Whenever I send an email to a person I haven’t met before I normally attach this so they can see who we are. We do a slightly different one for the UK.
I did a session last night at an AngelHQ event on the subject of DD. I’ve been through a few of those. Phil from Movac spoke and gave a great perspective of DD from an Angels perspective. I’m usually the DD’ee not the DD’or.
Andrew Simmonds from SimmondsStewart had some great practical advice during the sessions. Andrew and Victoria have done lots of Angel investment work and really understand all the issues around startups so I recommend you talk with them when you get set up. They can work you through Shareholders agreements and all the other legal things you need to get sorted.
DD is a fact of life for small companies so my advice is to understand it from day one and always be ready for DD. Having all of your information to hand is a good discipline for business owners to get into.
I’ve used John Horner from Quigg Partners as well on a number of DD projects. John was happy for me to post this DD checklist so you can see the sort of things you need to think about.
Quigg Partners sample DD checklist
For me the main things an early stage tech company should keep on file are:
- All material contracts
- Shareholders agreement and constitution
- Employment contracts
- A register of all 3rd party components you use and their licenses
- Any NDA’s (you are dumb enough to sign)
- Board minutes
- Financials for each month (easy in Xero)
Congrats to Wellington game guru’s Sidhe shipping Speedracer.
Sidhe shifts a gear with Speed Racer
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Presents Speed Racer - the Videogame
As a developer of business software I’m in awe of how much work must go into a video game.
NZ Internet identity Peter Mott of 2day fame (sold to ICONZ a few years ago) is back in the market with a new hosted service based on virtualization.
Swizzle Business Model
Simple and practical
Like an ocean going yacht, we have two or more of everything that’s important, and things that are not so important don’t exist.
This means you don’t pay for unnessary frills, and what you do pay for stays running.
Core ingredients
- HP Proliant DL series servers
- VMware ESXi Hardware virtualisation
- The Swizzle web site
HP enterprise-class servers, especially with the amount of processor, memory, disk and redundant options we run in them, are often well beyond the budget of a small business.
Fortunately, with the aid of hardware virtualisation we can slice them into a number of smaller servers (virtual machines) and rent them to you at prices that fit your IT budget.
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