"Microsoft: We Suck Less Now"

So this ad popped up on Pandora this morning and I just had to grab a screen shot.  I find this whole Windows 7 campaign to be one of the more perplexing that I’ve seen in a while.  Microsoft is actually trying to sell us on their new products [...]]]>

"Microsoft: We Suck Less Now"

So this ad popped up on Pandora this morning and I just had to grab a screen shot.  I find this whole Windows 7 campaign to be one of the more perplexing that I’ve seen in a while.  Microsoft is actually trying to sell us on their new products by reminding us that their old products sucked so much that they drove customers to write them angry emails in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.  Way to go guys.

His background was very interesting to me.  In the late 90’s, he had raised several [...]]]> The other day, I met an entrepreneur who came into the office to meet with Support My Web about a new project he is building.  We ended up talking, and both of us shared the projects we are working on.

His background was very interesting to me.  In the late 90’s, he had raised several million dollars for a dot-com company which also ended up being a casualty of the bust.  Currently, he is trying to raise money for his new venture and he was very interested in our fundraising pursuits — of which, we explained, we have none.

As it turned out, raising money was ALL he seemed interested in talking about.  Even after explaining to him that we were working to bootstrap our business, he kept pointing out things about our service and site that would “sound so great to investors.”  He wanted to know when we were planning on “bringing on [our] whole team” and seemed almost perplexed when we explained that we were going to grow our team organically according to our needs and revenues.

While it was impressive to us that he had raised several million dollars for previous projects, it became very clear to us that this was an entrepreneur who equated success to raising venture capital, rather than to growing a sustainable, profitable business.

Jon and I work well together as partners because we see eye-to-eye on many important issues.  While we are not eachother’s Yes-men and will not hesitate to voice disagreement on matters regularly, we mesh very well when it comes to core business philosophy.  One thing we have been able to agree on is that raising money should always be viewed as a last resort and should be avoided whenever possible.  It’s a distraction, plain and simple; time spent raising money is time that would otherwise be spent focusing on better meeting the needs of customers.

I explained in a previous post, on the YongoPal blog, that I used to hold the same understanding of fundraising as this particular entrepreneur.  I never studied business in college, and the entirety of my business education consisted of participation in business plan competitions.  Professors who coached me were eager to invent reasons why I needed money, because that’s the purpose of a business plan competition, and they wanted teams from their schools to place (which I did).  I can’t fault them for that, but this process contributed to a drastic misunderstanding of what it took to really start a business.

I probably wasted a good two years of my life trying to raise money for a business that actually cost zero dollars to start and grow.  It wasn’t until a 2008 meeting with Chris DeVore, of Founder’s Co-Op, that this fact really sank in.  While intrigued by my concept, he asked me point-blank why I needed money, and I discovered that I didn’t really have a good answer for him.

Of all the experiences related to entrepreneurship that I’ve had, this has almost certainly remained the single most important and eye-opening.  It was during this exchange that I fully realized the importance of just starting and understood that I actually could.  (Just yesterday, Andy Sack - also of Founder’s Co-Op, had a great video post on his blog dealing with this same issue, which I highly recommend.)

In any case, I wish this entrepreneur all the best.  He has a solid concept and a solid market.  I really liked his project, but I know that there’s a lot he could be doing that requires no capital, and I’m fairly certain that his flawed conception of success will always prevent him from actually achieving it.  The advice I would urge him to take is the same advice that Mr. DeVore gave me a year and a half ago: just start!

Repost from YongoPal:

It’s almost ready! We have had to delay our soft launch one week (to November 7), because we realized that the YongoPal scheduling app won’t have the ability to adjust to standard time from daylight savings. We’ll have plenty of time to fix this before the switch back to DST [...]]]>

Repost from YongoPal:

It’s almost ready! We have had to delay our soft launch one week (to November 7), because we realized that the YongoPal scheduling app won’t have the ability to adjust to standard time from daylight savings. We’ll have plenty of time to fix this before the switch back to DST happens in March.

In terms of development, we’re just about wrapped up. People say that the last 20 percent of development projects take 80 percent of development time and they’re not wrong. We’ve been patching bugs and are still waiting on two final bits of core functionality, both relating to the ability of tutors to manage their own customer service: conflict management threads and credit refund functions.

Over the last week, our admin functionality has expanded greatly: we’ll have the ability to view new profiles and edits before the updates go live so that we can weed out inappropriate content; we can add and delete credits from tutor and student profiles; we can actually control a broad number of business rules, such as how many hours before a scheduled session a student can cancel before credit payments are finalized, how many hours before a session alert messages are sent out, etc…; we can now send mass-messages to students and tutors; and we have added financial controller functions over credit redemption requests. Hopefully managing YongoPal will be a relatively simple process, but bugs in admin are difficult to test for. We’re planning for the worst.

Our developers are as eager as us to wrap up the project and they are working at hyperspeed to get the last loose-ends tied up. After this week, we’re told, the project should be completed. Once complete, the whole process will have cost us around $8,000. Jon and I rock the bootstrapping! (With the very-much-appreciated generosity of our developers at Support My Web, of course.)

Look for YongoPal on November 7!

So we estimate that we’re about a month from launch as of right now. By next week all of the core functionality of the site will be completely in-place, after a small re-working, and we will be left with the task of debugging the site and fleshing it out with content.

In [...]]]> Repost from YongoPal:

So we estimate that we’re about a month from launch as of right now. By next week all of the core functionality of the site will be completely in-place, after a small re-working, and we will be left with the task of debugging the site and fleshing it out with content.

In the meantime, we wanted to share some screenshots of the new YongoPal site. Just so you know, there are changes currently being made, so the final site won’t look exactly like this. Also, the student side of the site, when complete, will be entirely in Korean. With those things in mind, enjoy!

Main landing page.

Students.

Tutors.

Okay, so it’s been way too long since the last YongoPal update, so I should probably fill everyone in.  A lot has happened in the last couple of months, and it’s been a bit of a roller coaster.

Almost two months ago, the developer assigned to our project abruptly quit his job and [...]]]> Repost from YongoPal:

Okay, so it’s been way too long since the last YongoPal update, so I should probably fill everyone in.  A lot has happened in the last couple of months, and it’s been a bit of a roller coaster.

Almost two months ago, the developer assigned to our project abruptly quit his job and managed to disappear off the face of the planet.  Along with him, went all the passwords that provided access to the work that he had done for YongoPal.

Shit happens, but we dealt with it.  Our developers had to start over from scratch.  It was disappointing, primarily because the developer who left had made us feel very confident that he understood our business and was thorough enough to detect problems early on and posit their solutions.  But now that the new guys have had almost two months to dig into the project, it’s clear that things are coming together very, very well.

We have had to delay our soft launch until the end of October, but we’re very confident we’ll make this deadline.  From the development side, all of the core functionality is essentially in place: calendars, profiles, search, ratings, and a robust admin interface are in place and being polished up.  Credit management should be up within the next week.

A few weeks back, we hired a content developer/translator/customer service extraordinaire named Youn-hee who is working remotely for us in Seoul.  The content is coming together very quickly and it’s starting to be inserted into the website.  Youn-hee has also given us our new Korean slogan:  ”더 말하고, 더 배운다!”  It basically means, “The more you talk, the more you learn.”

Additionally, a childhood friend of mine — Steve Ibsen, of the Kitty Cat Dance fame — is creating an engaging animation that will explain to first-time Korean visitors exactly how the service works and how to get started.  The story boards I have seen are very, VERY cute.

In theory, all of this will come together in mid October and be online by Halloween.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed.