[ General ]
by Dorian Selz
@ 02.09.2010 00:00 CEST
I am reluctant to work together with headhunters or personnel service agencies. Why?
In the first case it is simply extremely expensive for a startup to mandate a headhunter. In our stage of company development the need for discretion is a little less than may be in the case of a high-profile CEO search for a large publicly traded company. Plus cash is scarce. No way you are going to a pay up to 30% success fee (of the total compensation).
As for the personnel service agencies my experience so far was say "inconsistent". You receive a ton of applications from some unknown agency all still with the claim of up to 20% of the first year's salary for basically sending you an email with an (CV) attachment. Most of the CVs I normally receive through such channels are surely of likable and hard working folks. Yet their skills and our required skill seldom match. It ends to be a huge clear-my-email-box-from-unwanted-applications exercise.
Then I got approached in early summer by Sara Moss of Pleinert & Partner. At first I was reluctant to agree to a meeting for reasons just outlined. But still, the approach was nice, and one of our ground rules here at Memonic says "Be nice". So we set up a meeting with low expectations on my side.
But now and again you can be wrong. Sara - thoroughly prepared - understood the specifics of our startup situation also in terms of conditions, payment terms and recruitment process. I agreed for a search mandate for once easily.
Over the next weeks we received each week a number of quality applications from Switzerland and around Europe. (We were actually looking for an additional Python expert, and are still looking for great people wanting to join Memonic).
And indeed just a few weeks later we found our new colleague through Sara: Welcome Aengus!
Learning: Thorough selection of your external partners pays.
[ General ]
by Dorian Selz
@ 29.07.2010 00:00 CEST
In the popular summer series on how to save big time with those exorbitant roaming charges abroad (Swisscom for example wants to charge up to 10.- CHF per MB in for data roaming in Germany) here a travel tip for Germany.
We recently had a few appointements in Germany. First in Karlsruhe, a sophisticated evening indeed, later in Bonn. For demo purposes we needed an Internet connection.
A little research later we found this: Congstar Prepaid Internet Stick. Costs 39.99€ incl. currently 10€ connection credit. Each day costs flat 2.49€.
Where to buy: Online (takes a few days) or pay a visit to any of the following shops: Real, Kaufland, Müller, Kaufhof (full list here.)
There is just one snag: You need to register the stick. Either by phone or over the Internet. Well the latter you want but don't have yet and the phone simple is a complete fail. After 10 minutes (again at the high roaming rates) I complete the menus, but no activation. I finally logged into a local WLAN at the station for 3 minutes to complete the registration. 10 Minutes later al set.
Test result on the ICE routes Karlsruhe - Bonn Siegburg - Basel: Works fine on the up train, fine too on the downtrain to Karlsruhe. On the train Karlsruhe - Basel it lost connection south of Offenburg. But then we are in the south...
In our series on startup hints & tricks here the final to hints 21 & 22:
21 – Learn to live with the ups and downs of every startup
During the last weeks Memonic received a number of awards, closed a financing round, got a lot of new users, all in all a very successful period with positive energies flowing freely. A few weeks before it was all different: A few rejects at startup competitions, no-I-not-in from potential investors, user feedback they like the competition more, a negative commotion.
As a start-up team it is important to be able to deal with both moods. After a lean time follows with hard work and a bit of luck a winning streak. And even the boldest winning streak will end some time.
As a founding team it is important to celebrate success yet not loose contact with reality and deal with setbacks without giving in and giving up.
22 – Use memonic.com - Summary
May be some of these hints are useful for some of you. Pulled together as one set you may find them here. Exactly this is what Memonic is all about: Collect snippets of information, pull them together and share them with others. Try it out yourself!
Here a brief summary of the topics covered:
- Start with a simple plan: A (business) plan summary requiring more than one (1) A4 page is probably too complex to understand.
- A few commonly shared rules: A set of collective values is as important for success as your product
- Get a businessperson into your team (and vice versa): Techies don’t sell…
- Get a professional bookkeeper: (financial) numbers matter.
- Time tracking pays: You need to know for what tasks need what time.
- Start with a good founding contract: If divorce looms, you’ll not fix terms and conditions à l’amicable; better fix them at start.
- The best 10$ you’ll ever spend: All the tools you ever need to start.
- Use cloud computing: Don’t buy infrastructure, rent it on pay-as-you go.
- Never buy hardware at list prices – Never: To pull someone’s heart strings helps – You know, we’re a poor cash strapped startup.
- It’s a virtual world: Virtualization of computers saves you even more cost.
- Bend the rules: No cheating, but drive a hard bargain and watch for offers.
- Forget tapes, do online backups: “Yesterday all my backups seemed so far away,” is no backup strategy for valuable customer data.
- Don’t waste time that others do better: Use those online apps out there for mail, wiki, task tracking and more (plus it’s free or almost free).
- Get early agreement – do mockups: Nothing is worse than this comment on launch day: “Oh, this isn’t what we wanted.”
- Do usability testing: Your team is clever, the crowd is smarter.
- Consider using agile development methods (such as scrum): Because six month release cycles or a no-go for any startup nowadays.
- Use puppet: No we don’t talk about a doll, but about automated server setup and configuration.
- Automated testing: You have to break an egg to make an omelette. So better fix your errors early one. Automated error recognition helps.
- Catch those warnings – Use Splunk: Your own log files are true gold mines. So mine them – Splunk is your shovel.
- 80% of success is showing up. The Olympic motto pays for startups, too.
- Learn to live with the ups and downs of every startup: Each high is followed by a low, followed by a high.
- Use memonic.com – There is no simpler way to keep the essential snippets of information.
In our series on startup hints & tricks here tips 19 & 20:
19 – Catch those warnings – Use Splunk
As soon as your website is live a ton of data is silently gatherd in countless log files across your application’s systems. Most often nobody ever pays those log files tribute, i.e. reads them. Normally the sys admin will delete the older files once disk space becomes scarce. We think this is a bad approach.
A smarter method is to use tools such as Splunk. Splunk at its core is nothing more than a full text search index built from multiple and disparate log files. You can search for specific patterns, and Splunk will create on event an automated notification. You also can search the log files for error codes. And best: This works real time, too. A coder can watch what happens at creation of that server exception.
I haven’t seen a more clever usage of log files.
20 – 80% of success is showing up
How to advertise your application? A national ad campaign is probably over your budget, so is the TV. Yet there many alternative and very cost effective methods.
One of the best possibilities to promote your product (and yourself) are the manifold events taking place. Just to name a few here in Zurich an vicinity: StartupCamp, Barcamp, WebMonday, WebTuesday, Chuchis, Venturelab Events, etc. etc. The Olympic slogan pays: Participation is everything.
In our series on startup hints & tricks here hints 17 & 18:
17 – Use puppet
No, this blog post is not about a child’s doll. They’re lovely and my daughter loves them very much. This post is about a software tool – better a framework – with the name Puppet.
After months of development you application is ready for deployment. Quickly install the application on the live servers and then off to the release party. Quite often the next day brings a hangover – not because of the party.
Software development and software updates are often underestimated in their complexity. Starting with the third live server things get more complicated still.
How to deal with this? Use Puppet!
Puppet is a software framework that enables automated deployment scripts and helps you control their execution. We employ Puppet to deploy entire batteries of servers and the applications than atop.
You may be need a little help to get into Puppet. But once up and running it’s well worth it.
18 – Automated testing
Wit the launch days away most startups focus on getting it done. If achieving this goal requires a compromise quality is often the accidental victim.
Goal achieved, successful launch past you, the ensuing spaghetti code may accompany you for a while. And as always, errors strike in the most unexpected and most unwanted moments. A simple yet powerful remedy is automated software testing.
Tools such as Selenium help you to set these tests up, run the tests and control its’ outcomes.
In our series on startup hints & tricks here tips 15 & 16:
15 – Do usability testing
All your mockups (previous post) will not protect you from completely and utterly misrepresent what users really want the application to behave.
There is only one way to get to the point here: Do usability tests. You will have a very bad day that day. Your testers will not find that button you specially designed and argued so much about, they will be utterly lost in the application although you thought that the information architecture is so simple an clean.
Yet that is the way an application is perceived. Better listen early and often and adapt your approach.
Even if it requires a dose of masochism Usability Tests help!
16 – Consider using agile development methods (such as scrum)
The traditional waterfall methods for project management have much for them: Tested for centuries. That’s how big engineering feats have been delivered, or so they make us believe.
The other day the 40th birthday of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission was commemorated.The mission nearly ended in catastrophe after an explosion cut oxygen supply. Up there and down at mission control in Houston they had to come up with solutions fast. Improvisation was l’ordre du jour.
Both methods have something for them. For any startup it’s probably okay to apply a bit of both. You don’t want to get bogged down with development cycles that last months, neither with the improvisation à la Apollo 13.
In our case we employ Scrum as an agile development method. Other such methods are around. The basic thing it does: It forces you to be honest in short cycles (two weeks in our case). After each two week segment we know where we stand.
Today and tomorrow we're in Walenstadt next the Walensee. A beautiful spot.
We're here doing a Nektoominar. It's our internal get-together to review what we've did in the last months (a lot) and what we are about to do in the upcoming months (a lot). Plus it's fun to spend some time together outside the office walls.
(Our Microsoft Picture)
During the next couple of weeks we're quite busy travelling and presenting Memonic at a number of places. We'd love to hear from you about your use of Memonic, your praise and critique. Get in touch with us.
Here' a quick overview:
[ General ]
by Dorian Selz
@ 01.04.2010 06:00 CEST
There it is – that expressive painting of this famous artist. The highlight of your living room!
Imagine something happens to that wonderful work of art. A kid playing and accidentally maul it off the wall. Or some unwanted guests robbing your most cherished treasure.
Or, you simply want to take your painting along wherever your go.
As of today Memonic offers you a ingenious solution: Our brand new PaintingScan ® service.
Send us your painting and we send you your scan!
Here’s how it works:
Barbara sits at home and enjoys a coffee moment beneath the superb painting by Swiss artist Pat Noser.
She likes the intensive colors so much she would like to let them accompany her all through the day. Nothing simpler than that! She wraps the painting in thick layers of packaging paper, and sends it off to Memonic (Address here). Handled with care, the work of art arrives in perfect shape at Memonic offices in downtown Zurich.
Unwrapped quickly, we prepare the painting in a meticulous process for the scanning.
Our high quality wide-angle scanner is able to capture-scan the entire picture at once.
The gentle scan beam ensures that any sensitive paint (oil-based, water color, etc.) is preserved completely. We send you back a high quality scan of your work of art.
Just check a few examples we could complete for an alpha customer.
We offer an attractive introductory pricing starting as low as $9.99 per sqm. Test it today! Send us your painting now!
Today I am attending the Google Travel Summit here at Google Zurich. An interesting mix of Google folks and startups like RouteRank, TouristWay, TripSay, Gekko, YourTour, HouseTrip, TripWolf, GetYouGuide and ourselves.
Funny question of the day: What do you do different than Google Notebook? Answer: Google Notebook is no longer. ;-)
