We started off in the attic of my house for two reasons. First because it would buy us some hey-we-started-in-an-attic street credibility. And second because it would save us some money.
After half a year, the startup was having two interns and I was having a second baby, so we had to move. We looked at office spaces. Free advice: do not rent an office space! You want to pay for services. You do not want to pay for square meters (or square feet, if you please). Finally, we ended up at our current location, a full service business center.
Our office is cleaned regularly, trashcan cleaned and recycle bin emptied. When we are on the road, our incoming (land line) phone calls are answered, our FedEx deliveries and certified mails are taken care of. If the lights or the heating is broken, help is already on its way. The receptionists of the business center can provide services as management assistant, on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Last week, we ran out of black toner for our laser printer. This could be a major problem to a company that is just about to have a meeting with a VC. A quick mail to the front desk with the PDF took care of the problem: our document was printed on their color laserjet. Does it cost extra to have stuff printed for you? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely!
The same day I ordered a new toner cartridge online, which was delivered to our office the next day. As any HP customers might know, you are encouraged to put your old cartridges back in your new box and send them to HP by mail. I've done that before: go to the post office, wait in line, wait for the post officer to print a large label and stick it on your box, say thank you, get back to the office. Not very productive, and HP makes extra money from me standing in line at the post office. Turns out we have a big box in our building: I just throw in my cartridges, somebody else collects the box and the value of the empty cartridge goes to a charity. Big time saver.
I have one roll of "normal" post stamps. Anything out of the ordinary (too heavy, too big, international,...) is handled by the business center's front desk at a small surplus charge over the post stamp's cost. I don't have to know all the silly rates for international mail (or look them up every time) and I don't have to buy seven different post stamp values.
Bottom line: first, outsource your computer stuff, second move to a business center that offers you good and flexible support. That way, you can concentrate on building your business.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Outsource everything, part 1: SaaS
If you run a startup company or you work as a contractor, you are not good at many things. Actually, you are great at one particular thing. In my case this is creating an intelligent development environment for electrical engineers. This means neither me nor my co-founder are good (or want to be good) at dealing with paperwork, setting up mail servers, cleaning the office, shopping for office supplies doing dishes and so on and so forth.
An important decision we made early on is to move as much IT as possible out of our company. We are computer scientists and we love working with computers, but we hate maintaining servers. We started out by buying a big fat server, and have regretted it ever since.
SaaS is great for startups and contractors. You don't have to worry about buying hardware, getting broken hardware fixed or installing software upgrades. It all just works. Google Calendar has improved since I started using it, but I never had to upgrade. If a Google computer breaks down, I don't even notice because a zillion computers are ready to take over its job. If something bad happens with the service, a thousand Google engineers are getting paged to fix it. That is a thousand more than I want to afford for software maintenance.
From day one, our e-mail was hosted by Google. No, we never used a GMail address for our business. Google lets you link your domain to its services, including e-mail, calendar, Google docs and more. We have written entire project proposals using Google Docs. Docs is not as good as your average word processor, but it allows to work on a document together, at the same time!
You don't want to spend time keeping your own laptop or desktop computer up and running. Our desktops run Fedora Linux, who's modern versions are pretty self-maintaining. Linux on laptops is and remains problematic (especially finding compatible drivers for audio, video and network), so we have Macs. Macs work out of the box, period. I get headaches when people ask me to fix their Windows PC, and for good reason. Even for IT guys, a Mac just saves you a lot of trouble.
To wrap it up, here are two nice hosted tools. We use Dropbox for file sharing, even with partners outside the company. Crashplan for off-site backup. (You need backups, hard drives will eventually crash!)
Bottom line: get a maintenance-free computer, outsource all you can to SaaS providers and spend your time at building your business.
Next post will be about outsourcing non-IT tasks.
An important decision we made early on is to move as much IT as possible out of our company. We are computer scientists and we love working with computers, but we hate maintaining servers. We started out by buying a big fat server, and have regretted it ever since.
SaaS is great for startups and contractors. You don't have to worry about buying hardware, getting broken hardware fixed or installing software upgrades. It all just works. Google Calendar has improved since I started using it, but I never had to upgrade. If a Google computer breaks down, I don't even notice because a zillion computers are ready to take over its job. If something bad happens with the service, a thousand Google engineers are getting paged to fix it. That is a thousand more than I want to afford for software maintenance.
From day one, our e-mail was hosted by Google. No, we never used a GMail address for our business. Google lets you link your domain to its services, including e-mail, calendar, Google docs and more. We have written entire project proposals using Google Docs. Docs is not as good as your average word processor, but it allows to work on a document together, at the same time!
You don't want to spend time keeping your own laptop or desktop computer up and running. Our desktops run Fedora Linux, who's modern versions are pretty self-maintaining. Linux on laptops is and remains problematic (especially finding compatible drivers for audio, video and network), so we have Macs. Macs work out of the box, period. I get headaches when people ask me to fix their Windows PC, and for good reason. Even for IT guys, a Mac just saves you a lot of trouble.
To wrap it up, here are two nice hosted tools. We use Dropbox for file sharing, even with partners outside the company. Crashplan for off-site backup. (You need backups, hard drives will eventually crash!)
Bottom line: get a maintenance-free computer, outsource all you can to SaaS providers and spend your time at building your business.
Next post will be about outsourcing non-IT tasks.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
a gap between students and ex-students
Yesterday, I gave a talk to engineering students about career planning and job applications. It was really a talk about networking, or rather: connecting with their future employers.
I only left grad school a few years ago, so I remember being a Ph.D. student quite vividly. Still, I notice some serious gaps between academia (or rather: students) and industry (or rather: entrepreneurs). Which is a shame. It's a shame, because students and entrepreneurs are two classes of people with a spectacular freedom to operate. Both get judged by their output (grades or profit) and not by their input (hour of work invested). As a result, both have a choice to spend the entire thursday morning in bed or to spend the entire saturday night working (and they do).
Nobody cares about how exactly entrepreneurs or students get to results. They can use any (legal) means necessary, but the cold numbers are presented at the end of the year, be it the book year or the academic year.
In a sense, we should feel connected. I know I do.
And still, when students make contact with entrepreneurs or with a corporate environment, all of a sudden most of them switch to a whole new set of social rules (a different protocol, if you will), which is awkward both to the student and to the entrepreneur. Which is a shame, because a good relationship with their possible future employers would make their job search a whole lot easier.
Example: I had a discussion with the president of a CenEka, a student's organization. She tried to contact companies, trying to get sponsoring and to get her organization invited for toured visits in interesting companies. She asked me how long her e-mails should be for getting in touch with companies. Apparently, she never got an answer to her two-page long e-mail. She wondered if she left anything important information out, while she should be wondering how to the e-mail shorter and more powerful. If she had talked to anybody who runs a business, she'd have had a better e-mail and probably some direct introductions.
It would be nice if students and people from the industry would be able to interact more spontaneously. After all: we are future colleagues. So I'd like to call on all students to start interacting with their future co-workers -- I'm sure entrepreneurs and employees are willing to accept student's invitations. Ceneka has made it its core business to organize toured visits to companies. This is a good starting point. But it would be even better to build lasting relations between the companies and the student's club, or even better: between the people.
I only left grad school a few years ago, so I remember being a Ph.D. student quite vividly. Still, I notice some serious gaps between academia (or rather: students) and industry (or rather: entrepreneurs). Which is a shame. It's a shame, because students and entrepreneurs are two classes of people with a spectacular freedom to operate. Both get judged by their output (grades or profit) and not by their input (hour of work invested). As a result, both have a choice to spend the entire thursday morning in bed or to spend the entire saturday night working (and they do).
Nobody cares about how exactly entrepreneurs or students get to results. They can use any (legal) means necessary, but the cold numbers are presented at the end of the year, be it the book year or the academic year.
In a sense, we should feel connected. I know I do.
And still, when students make contact with entrepreneurs or with a corporate environment, all of a sudden most of them switch to a whole new set of social rules (a different protocol, if you will), which is awkward both to the student and to the entrepreneur. Which is a shame, because a good relationship with their possible future employers would make their job search a whole lot easier.
Example: I had a discussion with the president of a CenEka, a student's organization. She tried to contact companies, trying to get sponsoring and to get her organization invited for toured visits in interesting companies. She asked me how long her e-mails should be for getting in touch with companies. Apparently, she never got an answer to her two-page long e-mail. She wondered if she left anything important information out, while she should be wondering how to the e-mail shorter and more powerful. If she had talked to anybody who runs a business, she'd have had a better e-mail and probably some direct introductions.
It would be nice if students and people from the industry would be able to interact more spontaneously. After all: we are future colleagues. So I'd like to call on all students to start interacting with their future co-workers -- I'm sure entrepreneurs and employees are willing to accept student's invitations. Ceneka has made it its core business to organize toured visits to companies. This is a good starting point. But it would be even better to build lasting relations between the companies and the student's club, or even better: between the people.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Careers, sabatticals and entrepreneurship
I've been talking to a friend who is close to graduating. He plans on building his own business, but at the same time he's finding a job. Bad Idea.
In Belgium, you the government pays you while you are working on a Ph.D. The exact amount of your paycheck, is around €1500 or €1600, after taxes. Especially Ph.D. students that adhere to a student-like lifestyle do not spend anywhere near that amount. The result is that after four years of doctoral research, most Ph.D. graduates have a nice savings account. Moreover, many young graduates are not bound by a family or by mortgages and real-estate.
A graduation is a big milestone. At milestones like this, you should take some time off to think things over and decide for yourself what you want with your life. Just accepting the first job offer you come across would be a waste of opportunity.
Only a few times in your lifetime, and perhaps even only once, you get the opportunity to take a year to try something new. Something you really want to do, whether or not this new thing yields an immediate financial return. If you have this chance, it is your duty to yourself and your community to follow your heart. If you'd just take the first job you run across, you risk ending up with a mediocre career.
Some people would call this opportunity a sabbatical. A sabbatical however, to most people implies that you spend time doing something fun but useless (like traveling around the world). If you can afford to spend a year pursuing your passion, traveling is only one option. Other options include
Think this through: what have you got to loose? You know how much you will spend each month and you know how large your savings account is. After 12 months, you can always just find yourself a job. I started my company using my own savings while having a family and a house (i.e. mortgage) but also having a loving spouse to support me. If you have none of the above, the choice should be even simpler for you.
After a year of spending your savings, but more importantly: following your heart, you may decide you do not even want to pursue the career you previously had in mind. Especially people who want to start their own business, do this with the intention of making a living out of it, and changing the future of their lives.
But even if you have to/want to go out searching for a job, future employers will surely appreciate a person with a mind of his own, who thinks outside the traditional box and takes chances. And if they don't appreciate that: would you really want to spend 40 hours per week in that organization?
Bottom line: you have nothing to loose. You know how much this sabbatical will cost and the benefits are yet to discover. Do yourself a favor and take this opportunity.
In Belgium, you the government pays you while you are working on a Ph.D. The exact amount of your paycheck, is around €1500 or €1600, after taxes. Especially Ph.D. students that adhere to a student-like lifestyle do not spend anywhere near that amount. The result is that after four years of doctoral research, most Ph.D. graduates have a nice savings account. Moreover, many young graduates are not bound by a family or by mortgages and real-estate.
A graduation is a big milestone. At milestones like this, you should take some time off to think things over and decide for yourself what you want with your life. Just accepting the first job offer you come across would be a waste of opportunity.
Only a few times in your lifetime, and perhaps even only once, you get the opportunity to take a year to try something new. Something you really want to do, whether or not this new thing yields an immediate financial return. If you have this chance, it is your duty to yourself and your community to follow your heart. If you'd just take the first job you run across, you risk ending up with a mediocre career.
Some people would call this opportunity a sabbatical. A sabbatical however, to most people implies that you spend time doing something fun but useless (like traveling around the world). If you can afford to spend a year pursuing your passion, traveling is only one option. Other options include
- starting a business venture,
- starting a non-profit,
- building your own new FLOSS project, or
- building your own house with your bare hands.
Think this through: what have you got to loose? You know how much you will spend each month and you know how large your savings account is. After 12 months, you can always just find yourself a job. I started my company using my own savings while having a family and a house (i.e. mortgage) but also having a loving spouse to support me. If you have none of the above, the choice should be even simpler for you.
After a year of spending your savings, but more importantly: following your heart, you may decide you do not even want to pursue the career you previously had in mind. Especially people who want to start their own business, do this with the intention of making a living out of it, and changing the future of their lives.
But even if you have to/want to go out searching for a job, future employers will surely appreciate a person with a mind of his own, who thinks outside the traditional box and takes chances. And if they don't appreciate that: would you really want to spend 40 hours per week in that organization?
Bottom line: you have nothing to loose. You know how much this sabbatical will cost and the benefits are yet to discover. Do yourself a favor and take this opportunity.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Getting your neck chopped off
This week, three prominent Belgian athletes received a 12 month suspension from the anti doping authorities. Not because they tested positive, not even because they are accused of using any forbidden substances, but because they failed to comply with anti-doping formalities. More specifically, they did not log into anti-doping website to fill in their whereabouts.
The government requires athletes to disclose their whereabouts, so that they can at all times send an inspector for doping tests. Three failures to comply with the whereabouts requirements is equal to a positive doping test. Penalties are one to two years of suspension.
The three suspended athletes were highly successful and highly respected. They worked hard for their career, performed well and were good sports ambassadors for their country.
In a radio interview, an anti doping official explained that the suspension was conform the law. The Law, he explained had been the result of a Democratic process. And the athletes shared the responsibility in the war against doping.
So there it is: Long live Democracy! Long live the War against Doping! In the name of slogans, we let these people hang out to dry. They stick out their neck. The work three times as many hours as their average countrymen. They become heroes, both national and international. And what happens next? Their necks get chopped off. A twelve month suspension can easily finish of an athletes career.
So shouldn't athletes take responsibility? Yes they should. Shouldn't there be consequences when they break the rule and fail to disclose their whereabouts? Yes there should be consequences. But these consequences should be targeted at improving anti-doping enforcement, not at breaking careers. All officials state their sympathy for the three athletes in question, but still willingly take part in destroying their career. These officials choose to follow procedure instead of showing common sense.
As an entrepreneur I stick out my neck. I solicit funding from the government and from investors. I invest my own time and money. I do this to change the future of hardware design, to create value for my customers. I strive to contribute value to my community by paying taxes and creating new jobs. But if this community chops off heads so easily, where will we keep finding people that are willing to stick out their neck?
The government requires athletes to disclose their whereabouts, so that they can at all times send an inspector for doping tests. Three failures to comply with the whereabouts requirements is equal to a positive doping test. Penalties are one to two years of suspension.
The three suspended athletes were highly successful and highly respected. They worked hard for their career, performed well and were good sports ambassadors for their country.
In a radio interview, an anti doping official explained that the suspension was conform the law. The Law, he explained had been the result of a Democratic process. And the athletes shared the responsibility in the war against doping.
So there it is: Long live Democracy! Long live the War against Doping! In the name of slogans, we let these people hang out to dry. They stick out their neck. The work three times as many hours as their average countrymen. They become heroes, both national and international. And what happens next? Their necks get chopped off. A twelve month suspension can easily finish of an athletes career.
So shouldn't athletes take responsibility? Yes they should. Shouldn't there be consequences when they break the rule and fail to disclose their whereabouts? Yes there should be consequences. But these consequences should be targeted at improving anti-doping enforcement, not at breaking careers. All officials state their sympathy for the three athletes in question, but still willingly take part in destroying their career. These officials choose to follow procedure instead of showing common sense.
As an entrepreneur I stick out my neck. I solicit funding from the government and from investors. I invest my own time and money. I do this to change the future of hardware design, to create value for my customers. I strive to contribute value to my community by paying taxes and creating new jobs. But if this community chops off heads so easily, where will we keep finding people that are willing to stick out their neck?
Thursday, October 1, 2009
"I have been busy"
Everybody has heard this excuse for an unaccomplished task: "I've been busy." I would like to make a plea for not using that phrase ever again. First of all, it's not an excuse for not doing something, it just means exactly the same as: "I haven't done that thing." OK, not exactly the same. There is always the possibility that you weren't busy but you were just bored to death, but you still didn't do that thing. Let's assume that that was not the case (and if it was, you wouldn't want to admit it). So saying you've been busy is (for most people) a non-statement.
I'm always busy, and I bet you are always busy too. Busy working, busy calling customers, busy spending quality time with my family or even busy sleeping, which is absolutely necessary if I want to spend the next day being busy and productive. Come to think of it. Perhaps we should just ban the word altogether.
So let's look at some alternatives that are more honest or more meaningful. And then, let's find out how if these alternatives can be made to sound socially acceptable.
I had more important (or: urgent) things to do.
That's honest. It's probably true, too. Depending on who you are talking to, you may need to convince them how important those things were, and that you'll get to their task as soon as your important things have been taken care of. Be careful not to make this sound like the other person is not important!
I was really busy working on a project with a big deadline next Friday. After that, I'll get to your task.
I had planned on doing this task tomorrow.
Yeah right! Try to avoid this one. If you had planned to do it tomorrow, you probably should have informed the other guy three weeks ago that is would lay on your desk for three weeks before you'd look at it. If it's just an excuse (which it probably is), then (a) make sure you have it done by tomorrow, and (b) mind your reputation and avoid using the same excuse twice.
It slipped my mind, but I'll have the report ready tomorrow.
Your task (or whatever) is on a low priority for me now.
Honest. But not very helpful. However, if that's the way it is, you should really get this message across in a way that the other person would know what to expect. This puts him in a position of uncertainty, akin to the halting problem.
As long as I we are struggling with quality assurance, I can't make a priority of this thing.
I'm not planning on doing it at all.
Good for you! You've just freed yourself of all guilt and all future reminders and requests to complete this task. Downside: depending on your relation with the other person and the nature of your task, you may need to
I'm not going to mob the floors any more, but instead I'll make arrangements to get a housekeeper. (or: I'll buy an iRobot)
Best solution is to be very clear to other people on what you want to commit to, and by what time you can deliver. Also let people know what the implications are when you agree to a task.
I'm always busy, and I bet you are always busy too. Busy working, busy calling customers, busy spending quality time with my family or even busy sleeping, which is absolutely necessary if I want to spend the next day being busy and productive. Come to think of it. Perhaps we should just ban the word altogether.
So let's look at some alternatives that are more honest or more meaningful. And then, let's find out how if these alternatives can be made to sound socially acceptable.
I had more important (or: urgent) things to do.
That's honest. It's probably true, too. Depending on who you are talking to, you may need to convince them how important those things were, and that you'll get to their task as soon as your important things have been taken care of. Be careful not to make this sound like the other person is not important!
I was really busy working on a project with a big deadline next Friday. After that, I'll get to your task.
I had planned on doing this task tomorrow.
Yeah right! Try to avoid this one. If you had planned to do it tomorrow, you probably should have informed the other guy three weeks ago that is would lay on your desk for three weeks before you'd look at it. If it's just an excuse (which it probably is), then (a) make sure you have it done by tomorrow, and (b) mind your reputation and avoid using the same excuse twice.
It slipped my mind, but I'll have the report ready tomorrow.
Your task (or whatever) is on a low priority for me now.
Honest. But not very helpful. However, if that's the way it is, you should really get this message across in a way that the other person would know what to expect. This puts him in a position of uncertainty, akin to the halting problem.
As long as I we are struggling with quality assurance, I can't make a priority of this thing.
I'm not planning on doing it at all.
Good for you! You've just freed yourself of all guilt and all future reminders and requests to complete this task. Downside: depending on your relation with the other person and the nature of your task, you may need to
I'm not going to mob the floors any more, but instead I'll make arrangements to get a housekeeper. (or: I'll buy an iRobot)
Best solution is to be very clear to other people on what you want to commit to, and by what time you can deliver. Also let people know what the implications are when you agree to a task.
- I'll mob the floors tomorrow, but then I won't have time to go grocery shopping.
- I can have your report ready by next Friday, but that means the other project you assigned to me will be delayed.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Google sites vs Blogger
Just a quick note to let you know that I move this (two-entry) blog from Google Sites to Blogger. Google Sites gave the impression that they had a "blog" feature, but comments are restricted to "collaborators", so that's pretty worthless for a blog, right?
Anyway, I hope I can get used to this new home.
Anyway, I hope I can get used to this new home.
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