Eating Your Own Dog Food

"How a Company Builds Trust in its Product Through Internal Use"

It is no secret that the Linux community keeps a close watch on Microsoft. Even though the once-mighty OS giant from Redmond isn’t the force that it used to be, many still like to keep an eye out for Microsoft not “eating its own dog food” and using its tools and Windows operating system for its own business needs. 

After all, Microsoft’s tool suites and platforms have overwhelmingly been geared toward the B2B market, and so they should be ideal for the company’s own needs, right? However, as long as there has been Linux/Windows feuding, stories such as this, from 2003, that points out that Microsoft used Akamai’s Linux-based site acceleration service, typically generate waves in the tech blogosphere. Of course, the purpose of mentioning this is not to rip on Microsoft, but to demonstrate that it can be a source of embarrassment when a company does not trust its own tools, and even opts to use the tools of its competitor even when it is considered the leader in the problem domain. Not only does expressing the willingness to use a product internally build high confidence in it with the public, it also has other advantages: Historical Pattern of Successful Technologies 

One interesting trait of technologies that have succeeded with the larger public, such as programming languages, is that often they were developed for the use of their creators to solve internal problems.
A good example is C, developed in-house use at Bell Labs as a programming environment for Unix, as opposed to Ada, which was developed for a general market and never flourished as a language. 

Lean Approach to Testing Testing is an expensive but necessary practice, and it often results in some duplicated effort and communication headaches. However, say that you are a VoIP telecommunications provider with large network and a globally distributed workforce. If you use that VoIP platform to connect your employees, you are essentially having your personnel double as field testers with no added costs to either the employees or the company. For a lean startup, dedicated test teams are often out of scope and budget, and therefore this approach can work as an alternative. On top of this, a startup that continues to use an internal technology even after it grows implicitely demonstrates the product's scalability.

How To Stay in Touch With the UFO While On Our Mission

Do you want to know more about how to establish a lean startup and how to involve the crowd? Are you interested in the development of entrepreneurship in Europe and the U.S.? Would you like to stay up to date with our product and business development? 



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-- Join our first "Global Crowd Network" for Lean Startup funding! Connect with facebook on www.ufostart.com and calculate your Startup Value. Interested in how you can leverage the power of the crowd for your startup? Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter!

Our Intranet Solution: Combining Cloud-based Collaboration Tools

Source: company websites

In large, monolithic business environments, a software license can become make-or-break in terms of productivity.Just managing such licenses (how many clients they can be installed on, what versions they cover, the serial number, etc.) can actually become someone’s full-time job - not even taking into account the technical components of software management. 




Thankfully a cash-strapped startup these days does not have to take this kind of hit on productivity; almost every business need is served in the market by one or more online tools.

Need group chat and collaboration? Google Hangout. Office productivity suite? Google Apps. Storage? SkyDrive, Google Drive or iCloud. Large file transfers? Box. Code repository? Github. Accounting? Freshbooks. Legal matters? Lawpivot. Logo design? 99design. This is just a small selection of the many online solutions we implemented in our every day working life (Which Online Tools should every start up use? Check out our blog). The possibilites are seemingly endless, but selected tools combined in the right way are enough to get a minimal startup off the ground.

Of course, online applications are subject to outages, security risks, and sometimes vendor lock-in. However, most have scaled very well as they have taken on larger volumes of clients and have gone a long way to maintain availability SLAs that approach 100%.

One other potential problem with online applications is that they are sort of created in a vacuum – they are not inherently designed to play nice with each other or be easy to use in conjunction. While the old business intranet was loaded up with local solutions that IT professionals could customize and patch with scripts and in-house apps, bringing web applications together on an intranet is a fairly untested path.

We went out on the search for an intranet that will consolidate all of our tools and can:

• Search over all services: cue, google site search, elastic search
• Bookmarks/site of all services
• Activity stream of all updates: hipchat, yammer etc.
• Calendar events, birthdays..

Thanks to the comments we received we identified three powerful cloud services for our start up. Here's a synopsis of their pros and cons:

Meldium: Logging in and out of the various services needed to keep a business flowing with purely online applications can be a challenge. That’s where Meldium comes in:

Pros:

• Access management (account sharing without sharing username and password with the team)
• 500+ world class apps are supported, wide variety
• Secure via two factor authentication (!)

Cons

• Doesn’t provide member roles 
• Mobile version not yet available 
• Doesn’t provide advanced search for members

Busyflow: brings cloud-based productivity apps onto a single screen - for collaboration and synchronization purposes.

Pros:

• Invite colleagues to a certain workspace
• Superior dashboard for all feeds
• Distinguish between feed (read) and discussion (write)

Cons:

• Adding tasks isn't possible as a shared option (!)
• Doesn't connect Evernote
• Paid plan for more than 3 members per workspace - 5$ /month

Hojoki: Great collaboration home base with an integration of over 30 apps to manage productivity streams across platforms

Pros:

• Invite colleagues to a certain workspace
• Create / assign tasks
• Wide range of apps supported via API

Cons:

• Tasks only have 2 progress-options (open & done) and cannot be assigned to a group
• Doesn’t provide a superior feed for all workspaces
• Paid plan for more than 5 members per workspace - 5$ /month

We are now working with Meldium and Hojoki in our daily collaboration and see the added benefit of this combination to our online workspace! Do you have any further suggestions of online intranet solutions? Do you have questions about our experience with Hojoki or Meldium? We would love to hear from you in our comments below!

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Join our first "Global Crowd Network" for Lean Startup funding! Connect with facebook on www.ufostart.com and calculate your Startup Value. Interested in how you can leverage the power of the crowd for your startup? Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter!

Facebook Apps and Crowdsourcing. A Natural Fit?

Take a look at our Facebook App: http://ow.ly/lXUDl
Source:http://ow.ly/lXUjs  

Almost anyone who has a Facebook account has seen a post in which someone asks for help remembering the name of a song, asks to borrow a truck, or asks who is interested in buying a couch. Whether these posters realize it or not, they are crowdsourcing, and applying one of the most natural online platforms to do so.

Facebook’s valuation and business model are based on the fact that it draws out a user-generated web of people and their interests. It is essentially an advertisers/marketer’s dream and something that organizations spent years crudely trying to construct using surveys and expensive studies. That brings us to whether or not crowdsourcing via Facebook applications offers an ideal environment for your new product. Overall it is very well suited for this task and has been a definite game-changer, but it is not without its caveats.  

Pros

One Billion People

We probably do not need much detail here – it has the largest sustained user base of any account-based company ever. To be fair, the true figure for daily engaged users is around 600 million, but whatever. We can not ignore that there is a staggering number of users on Facebook.

Open Graph

Through Open Graph, Facebook has given developers the ability to leverage the detailed relationships that it has spent years building organically. When launching a product, the level of segmentation can be as broad or detailed as desired and in either case will likely be exactly what a startup is seeking.  

Successful Monetizing Model

Many Facebook applications have been lucrative and have demonstrated that people have a willingness to part with dollars while on the network. For a platform that combines crowdsourcing with crowdinvesting, this makes it ideal for raising capital. Though crowdinvesting obviously involves less impulse decision than crowdfunding in that it represents a true financial risk, crowdinvesting is meant to involve less deliberation than traditional investing. Any organization that raises funds online is faced with the challenge of presenting donation options when donors are most likely to give. This principle applies to Facebook monetization as well and its users have never shown themselves to be stingy.

Cons

Facebook is a Moving Platform

Any developer on Facebook must deal with the fact that platform does not belong to them – Facebook calls the shots and if it decides to change a major feature, the developer must adjust to it. While this might cause momentary disruptions on the application, developers can use Facebooks support network to quickly adapt changes and get things up and running again.

Access to High-Profile Contacts

While Facebook is the leading social network by far, if you traced through certain interpersonal networks for the average user you may find a certain social uniformity. It will include many potential users, but may not allow access to high professionals from other industries than startup tech. 

However: Through APIs of other networks, such as LinkedIn, this social uniformity can be dispersed and access to mentors and potential backers can be offered. In the case of UFOstart, such contacts can be invited without imparting personal information. By offering contributors the option of anonymity users can leverage both: the crowd of friends and family on Facebook and high-potential, selected supporters from other networks. 

If you want to find out more about how to crowdsource your business needs via a unique Facebook application named UFOstart, contact us.  What do you think are other benefits or drawbacks of building your product as a Facebook application? 

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Join our first "Global Crowd Network" for Lean Startup funding! Connect with facebook on www.ufostart.com and calculate your Startup Value. Interested in how you can leverage the power of the crowd for your startup? Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter!

UFOstart Live Community Hangout 06-10-13

It's time for another Hangout on Air! Watch our Live Community Hangout for an update on UFOstart's development. The general agenda:

1) update: Business Development:

- Corporate Product
- Marketing and Sales update
- Legal update

2) update: Product Development
- Tech - stories of the past week/updates
- Onboarding

3) Community
-Q+A





If you have questions about UFOstart, please refer to our help page or just tweet your questions to #ufostart at any time.

The live stream will be available here at the time of the event & afterwards - see you online!

--

Join our first "Global Crowd Network" for Lean Startup funding! Connect with facebook on www.ufostart.com and calculate your Startup Value. Interested in how you can leverage the power of the crowd for your startup? Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter!

Gaming + Economic Development. What's the link?

It is not surprising that the world spends a collective 3 billion hours per week playing video games. While some would complain that video games are leading to the downfall of society – violent behavior, social disconnection, rotting the brains of people who could be studying, etc. – there is one development team who has set out to use the power of games to build society both virtually and literally. 




The software platform Seeds has goals very similar to the popular microlending organization Kiva –funding entrepreneurs in developing nations which are provided by user donations. While such platforms usually depend on recurring memberships and the type of media outreach associated with traditional non-profits, Seeds went a completely different route: it recognized how much time and money goes into online, social gaming and realized it can leverage these principles to raise funds. Compared to other sites with similar objectives, Seeds chose micro loans as the most sustainable way of donating to the developing world. After successfully closing their round on Fundable, they are now building their product:

The Seeds game world is designed to reflect the real-world mission of the platform. It features players helping to build a virtual collapsed civilization. The players engage in activities such as building citadels (think somewhere between SimCity and FarmVille, but with a cause). The Seeds strategy is to “monetize impatience” by inviting the users to use virtual currency (converted from real money) to make the tasks in the game world easier; a model of paying for upgrades. 

While this may come off to some as being a little eccentric and maybe even silly, what gives it legitimacy is that the sale of online goods is an enormous business. Seeds aims to build an API for other, more established games and to add an altruistic value to the purchase of virtual goods. Downloadable content and the sale of virtual goods are lucrative cash-cows in the video game world and may actually be on their way to replacing the traditional business model of single-copy sales. 

At the other end, connected to this game world, are receivers of micro loans that are typically located in developing nations. The recipients have the ability to petition the users for micro loans, and on top of that receive funds from the sale of the virtual goods and extras in the game world.

The lesson here for startups is that it is possible to apply one lucrative model in one realm and apply its revenue-generating principles in another, even if one is held as frivolous and the other as serious.

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Join our first "Global Crowd Network" for Lean Startup funding! Connect with facebook on www.ufostart.com and calculate your Startup Value. Interested in how you can leverage the power of the crowd for your startup? Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter!

UFOstart Live Community Hangout 06-03-13

It's time for another Hangout on Air! Watch our Live Community Hangout for an update on UFOstart's development! The general agenda:

1) update: Business Development:
- Introduction of Simone Kiri (Event Manager UFOstart)
- Corporate Product
- Legal update

2) update: Product Development
- Tech - stories of the past week/updates
- Onboarding

3) Community
- Look Mommy (one of our ten seed staged start ups) will join
- Q+A




If you have questions about UFOstart, please refer to our help page or just tweet your questions to #ufostart at any time.

The live stream will be available here at the time of the event & afterwards - see you online!

--

Join our first "Global Crowd Network" for Lean Startup funding! Connect with facebook on www.ufostart.com and calculate your Startup Value. Interested in how you can leverage the power of the crowd for your startup? Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter!

4 Myths About Entrepreneurs - Do You Fit the Stereotype?

1. You have to know the industry space inside and out to be an entrepreneur in that space This is not true, being an entrepreneur actually means you can see a problem or issue that people are willing to pay for. It is seeing potential in places others have overlooked and it is about value creation. It is that simple, you do not have to super tech-savvy, or super connected, or be this super smart person to be an entrepreneur.

You do have to be creative, have very clear communication skills, and be very persistent in your vision. Sometimes being new to an industry allows you to see a solution to what was believed to be an impossible problem because your background gives you a different perspective on that issue.

2. You have to be rich or super connected to do a start-up: Maybe 20 years ago, but in this day and age anyone can start a business and be very successful. Chris Guillebeau’s book is a wonderful compilation of interesting and successful start-ups all with just $100 (it is titled the $100 startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future). That doesn’t sound like a lot now does it?

He wrote his book based on 1,500 people who started with $100 or less and were able to make successful and profitble businesses. One of his favorite stories is how an Indian man named Prina started his company by making people get the most use out of excel. That is it; a manual on using excel and he made 6 figures a year from it.

3. Entrepreneurs make a lot of money Maybe, hopefully, if you stumble upon that magic formula of finding a great idea, a great need, and a williness to pay. A lot of people underestimate how hard it is to make a business successful and how many adjustments or changes entrepreneurs might make before they hit that jackpot.

This is why a lot of people are hesitant about becoming entrepreneurs because it is risky and many will fail if their ideas are not as good as they hoped. That is not saying there are not a lot of very successful, fulfilled, and amazing entrepreneurs out there (read the above book for inspiration). Just be realistic that being an entrepreneur is a lot of work and a good idea is just the starting point, making it a reality is really the test. It also takes a lot of realistic optimism.

What do I mean by that? I mean you have to understand and talk to the market enough to see where the opportunity is and then you have to be persistent and flexible enough to fill that need. Not everyone is cut out for entrepreneurship and they can be too naïve about what they know and what they expect to happen. Do your research! That is why getting a mentor and doing a lot of research up front is so invaluable to anyone going down this road.

4. You have to revolutionize to be an entrepreneur. Actually a lot of people test products, ideas, platforms even before the product is completed. Sometimes people even fill orders first than build the product second. The most important advice is just get started; get out there, test the market, talk to people and see how your skills can serve the market.

Success will come with transparency, curiosity, a lot of hard work, experimenting and the desire to help people. All good business is value creation and getting in your potential customer’s head. A lot of entrepreneurs became successful after their second or third or even tenth attempt of marketing a new idea and learning each time. Because sometimes you just have to get something going and out there to see if you really were reading the market well. One of my favorite quotes is knowledge + preparedness+ luck + support = success. 

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Join our first "Global Crowd Network" for Lean Startup funding! Connect with facebook on www.ufostart.com and calculate your Startup Value. Interested in how you can leverage the power of the crowd for your startup? Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter

UFOstart Live Community Hangout 05-27-13

It's time for another Hangout on Air! Watch our Live Community Hangout for an update on UFOstart's development! The general agenda:


1) update: Business Development
- Sales
- Marketing
- Legal
2) update: Product Development
- Tech
- Onboarding
3) Q+A from community

If you have questions about UFOstart, please refer to our help page or just tweet your questions to #ufostart at any time.

The live stream will be available here at the time of the event & afterwards - see you online!

--

Join our first "Global Crowd Network" for Lean Startup funding! Connect with facebook on www.ufostart.com and calculate your Startup Value. Interested in how you can leverage the power of the crowd for your startup? Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter!

Love Money - a Blessing or a Curse?

Tired old adages warn us of the dangers of mixing business with pleasure and money with friends and family...but when it comes to leveraging the power of the crowd to get an innovative idea off the ground, we disagree! In fact, we encourage our entrepreneurs to recruit those closest to them as backers. 


Why is it important to have friends and family as backers? In a nutshell, when you believe in your mission, those who believe in you can make you an even more attractive for corporate lenders. This attraction happens in at least three big ways:

An endorsement from those who know you best is a powerful indicator of your potential. A friend or family member has insider knowledge into you as a person--your work ethic, your track record, your fortitude, your sensibilities, etc. These personal characteristics are vital elements in the success of a project. These are also things that a corporate lender cannot know. An investment from friends and family says, "I know this person. I believe in them, and so should you."

There is more on the line for an entrepreneur entrusted with the money of family and friends. When someone from an inner circle signs on as a backer, the assumption is that there is more to lose than just money: Relationship. When a potential corporate investor sees personal lenders in a crowd of backers, they understand the consequences of failure are greater for you. They trust you are motivated to work even harder, if for no other reason than to maintain positive relationships with loved ones (and possibly to save face at the family picnic).

Backing from family and friends ensures accountability. A distinct advantage of lending to a startup backed by personal investors is increased accountability. A corporate lender cannot follow you around, peppering you with, "Hey, how's it going?" questions. But a friend can. A family member can. You see them at parties, reunions, the grocery store, and holiday celebrations. A corporate lender may feel their investment is a little safer, knowing someone is there to keep you on your toes.

When it comes to leveraging the power of the crowd, tired old adages about mixing business and pleasure and money with family and friends are exactly that: tired and old. If you have the drive and energy behind an innovative idea, seeking backing from friends and family can attract additional investments from corporate lenders. Those in your inner circle know you best; they add fire to your motivation; and they ensure accountability.

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Join our first "Global Crowd Network" for Lean Startup funding! Connect with facebook on www.ufostart.com and calculate your Startup Value. Interested in how you can leverage the power of the crowd for your startup? Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter!