This is a silly little thing but something I wanted to share with other entrepeneurs.

Have you ever asked someone at a cocktail party how they are? Only for them to break down in a puddle of tears and tell you how their Grandma’s wooden leg got lost, the dog got run over and they lost their job? Its kinda uncomfortable, right?

The equivalent for an entrepreneur is when someone asks us how our business is going.  Depending on the day the answer could be anything from “Brilliant” to “I’m not sure we’re going to make it, we’re gonna have to fire everyone, I’ll probably lose the house”. The truth of course, is somewhere in between. 

So here’s my tip for answering that question without hurting the feelings of the well wishing friend:

Just say “We’re on the verge of something”.

The question asker will respond ”On the verge of what?” accompanied by a quizical look on their face.

Respond by saying “Well its either complete failure or world-domination. <pause> I’m just not sure which one yet.”

Guaranteed to make everyone laugh, or your money back!

billFLO Ian

Well, whadya think? Should you stalk customers?

For many years, Intuit has had a program where they follow users home and watch them use QuickBooks and Quicken in their homes. If that’s not stalking, I dont know what is! (Ok..our lawyer says I have to clarify that Intuit actually pays their customers for their time so it’s all above board!). Our friends at Freshbooks stalk their customers in a different way – they follow them to dinner (Whats that? Oh, right. My legal eagle says I should point out the fine folks at Freshbooks actually buy their customers dinner and drinks too!).  You get the point though, customer stalking is important and worth paying for. About 3 months ago, I was reminded of the value of “customer stalking” when I spent a morning with a customer of ours.

Actually, hold on for a second.  That catholic, Irish guilt is getting to me. I have to come clean (clears throat…) The customer stalking title was just to get you to read my post. There, I said it.  The real point is a little less exciting but way more important if you want to build a succesful product. So lets get to it.

The particular customer I was visiting really feels the pain that billFLO eliminates. So I was looking forward to watching them use billFLO and compliment us on how great it is. I watched as the customer spent a couple of minutes copying 10 or so billFLO invoices to billFLO buyer from their email client. Great, I thought, now we’re ready to start the billFLO show. These folks will be blown away. A couple of questions, followed by a couple of clicks and all the billFLO invoices are imported. That was quick and easy, I’m thinking.

Me: “So, what do you think?”

Cusomer: “I like not having all the paper”

Me: Good, I think. ”Anything else”

Customer: “Well, its not that much quicker than the way I normally do it”

Me: WHOA. Hang-on. What are you talking about you fool? A couple of clicks and you were done. Pause… Mmm, lets stay calm here, and try to work this out. “Tell me some more”

Cusomer: “Well, copying the invoices from my email takes a while”

Me: WHAT? just because you use a crappy email client that doesnt copy multiple files at once, you think billFLO is slow? What are you smoking? “Oh, I see”.

I left soon after and to be honest, I was pissed-off. It wasnt quite the self-congratulary buzz I had hoped for. What I did learn though, is customers define the user-experience, not us. We’ve since launched a new version of billFLO that streamlines this process significantly for the user. 

LESSON? Deliver the best experience as defined by your customer (and stalk them ethically!)

Today marks exactly one year since we launched the very first version of billFLO.  So, its time to take stock again and see what we’ve learned.

In preparation for this post I looked back at the post I made 42 days after our first launch . Suprisingly, the 4 points I made back then are all still valid, albeit I have a much deeper understanding of each. To the original lessons, here are a couple more things I’ve learned running a startup for a year.

1. Customers don’t tell you what they want

With all the metrics, real time data and customer discussions you would think it would be easy to know what people want. Its not.  It doesnt matter if you’re talking to a supplier, an investor or a customer; people just dont say what they really want. Its mainly because they arent quite sure. I now realise the converstation is the first step in a long process of working out what people want. Step 2 is ruminating, digesting, analyzing the information I’m hearing and Step 3 is deciding what you *think* you’re being told.

I dont think there is any fix for this, other than understanding this is the way it works.

2. Remember your company values

This one really suprised me. At the very start of billFLO we sat down and spent some time discussing how we wanted to run our own business. A lot of it was around culture and treating customers right. I honestly felt it wasn’t worth starting the business if we weren’t going to do our damndest to have happy customers.

However, in the heat of the battle I’ve seen us slip, trip and stumble in this regard. It usually happens late at night around some feature and goes like this “Oh, that’ll be a pain to develop and we dont have time to test it. How many people will have this problem anyway? Lets put it in the next build”. The problem is the discussion is from our perspective rather than our customer’s.

There isn’t a quick fix for this. In the cauldron of rapid innovation some things cant be completed to the exacting standards we want.  But, I’ve resolved to make sure we get better at this.  The fix is probably somewhere inside of process and re-inforcing our customer focused culture. Stay tuned to see how we get better at this!

3. Startups are a f*cking roller coaster

I had definetly been told this and read it many times before. What I didn’t really understand is the extent to which it is an emotional, physical and mental roller-coaster. It’s compounded by the fact that you are so close to the details that its hard to get perspective.

The best way I can describe it is through my love of racing. My dad raced before me and many of my closest friends are car racers, so its something I understand intimately.   Strapped to a hulk of speeding metal and fibreglass, a single lap contains the range of emotions from real fear for your life when something goes wrong, to self-recrimination at not doing a corner well, to anger over another competitors actions, to pure joy at winning. All of this happens in a minute or two and when its over its hard to rationalize it. Startups have that same density of emotions and it’s tough to deal with.

The fix (or at least a salve) for this one is simple - have a group of peers in the same role as you. For me, I have group of CEOs I can call or meet up with at a moments notice when I need support. I think of it as my entrepreneurs anonymous group!

(P.S. for more on this topic, check out this great post by Mark Dowds, CEO of Brainpark)

4. Biases are dangerous

When you’re a small operation, you dont get the luxury of being a specialist. This means there is no chance to indulge a bias towards spreadsheets, copy-writing, usability-testing, customer visits or whatever it is you enjoy most.

The good news is that there is a long list of things to do and your favorite activity is on there. The bad news is you will gravitate to these activities and the scary stuff will get deferred. This becomes really dangerous in the context of strategic activities. As an exagerated example, not many of us like direct sales.  If your bias is to avoid having to do direct sales, you could convince yourself the business can achieve its objectives through online advertising. Its sounds silly I know, but it happens.

I’ve also seen this play out in terms of what people are comfortable with. It can play out as always wanting to do things a certain way or always leaning towards a particular technology or even favoring a particular individual.

The fix: Know your own and your team’s biases. Then watch for them showing up in the decision making process.

(P.S. Ironically I’m reading a book about this very subject right now: The E-Myth by Michael Gerber )

To wrap-up, I hope all the lessons above prove helpful to other entrepreneurs starting out. Please remember though, these are the things *I* think will ultimately drive our success. I could be very wrong.

In the meantime, I invite you to follow along with us and find out!

Your thoughts?

billFLO Ian

From Day 1 we said the aim of billFLO is to completely eliminate the paper invoice.  However, up until now we havent detailed how we are going to achieve that. Well, seeing as we launched the full version of billFLO recently, I think its time to elaborate on why we think billFLO will be world changing.

Every time two companies complete a commercial transaction, purchasing data needs to be passed from the seller’s accounting system to the buyer’s system, via an invoice. Think about this for a second, every time a company buys or sells something, an invoice is generated. Most of the time this invoice is in paper form (about 100 Billion annually). 

Here’s a couple of numbers to give you a sense of the cost of invoicing:
1. Studies show that it costs $14 to get a paper invoice through its lifecylce. At the level of the US economy, that works out as almost 2% of US GDP.
2. 40 billion pieces of paper are wasted every year in the US on paper invoices. That number suggests the world as a whole wastes 120 billion sheets of paper every year on invoices…or 13 Million Trees
3. Imagine the carbon emitted by moving 13 million trees worth of paper invoices around the world, every year.

Up until a couple of weeks back, 99% of business were limited to using a paper invoice and a human to get the data out of one accounting system and into another. Over the years, various different attempts have been made to eliminate the paper invoice from the process, including EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) and PDF invoices. All have failed for various reasons; EDI is too complex to implement for most companies and PDF invoices work for the seller but have to be manually entered into the buyer’s system.

So, rewinding to two years ago, Alec and I were looking at this problem thinking we could solve it.  Despite the fact that many had tried before us, none of the products we looked at had the potential to be ubiquitous. We figured, if we could deliver a solution that made it easy for any size of business to quickly send, receive and import electronic invoices, that product could become a de-facto standard.

billFLO achieves this quite simply by allowing users to email machine readable invoices straight to their customers who can import them straight into their accounting system. Any business can install and be using billFLO in minutes. This usability opens up machine readable, electronic invoices to every single email enabled business in the US.

Time will tell whether our vision will become reality, but by launching billFLO we know we’ve taken the first step on the road to eliminating the paper invoice.

Lets get something straight, not having a salary or income sucks. If you’re in your right mind there is no way you would wan’t to be in this position. But, when the dust settles, believe it or not, its not all bad.

Now, lest you think that this is some high-paid startup CEO spewing dribble, let me present my credentials to speak on this topic. All combined, Alec and I have worked for about 24 months without salary. We both have families, mortgages and healthcare costs to cover. And, we both live in the San Francisco Bay Area, not exactly a cheap place to live. So, sadly, mine is the voice of experience. However, through many days and (sleepless) nights I’ve come to the realisation that there are some positives:

5. Focus

Nothing helps you focus more than not having options. Its stands to reason right? You don’t have to worry about which color bmw to buy, because you’re not getting one. Seriously though, we do deal with a lot of decisions that complicate things. Not having the financial resources limits those options. I’ve found less clutter helps me focus on the things that are really important to me, and to forget the non-essentials. In a strange way that de-stresses me!

4. Liberation

Having no salary has an another benefit. When you’re job-hopping your current situation is your reference point. Would you move to another job that pays less? Probably not. The good news is that without a salary the only way is up. That gives you the freedom to make career choices based on what you want to do, not what you think you need, like a certain title or salary. You’ve been liberated! Now’s the time to make that switch. 

3. Environment

Recessions happen when we cut back on our consumption. Like it or not, we need this recession to get our consumption in line with our productivity. Put another way, we need to use only what we can pay for. I liken this to going back to my childhood days. My folks didnt but stuff on the credit card, we got one toy at christmas and my new trousers were the same ones my brother wore, except they now had a fresh patch on the knee! The point is our reduction in consumption is benefitting society, the environment and the economy (in the short term). 

2. Future

You’ve heard it said before. Its in tough times that the foundations are built for great things. Dell recently announced it is eliminating 1,900 jobs in Limerick, Ireland. To give you some context, the population of Limerick is 90,000. Assuming 60,000 are of working age, the dell job losses on their own equate to 3% increase in unemployment. Undeterred, the people of Limerick aren’t giving up, they’re re-grouping and starting again. So, while everyone around you is speaking of doom and gloom, put your head down, get yourself a plan and work your arse off to achieve it! I wish you luck.

1. Top Reason Not Having Income is good

Alright, you got me. I couldnt think of a 5th reason. A crap global economy with lots of folks without an income sucks. It sucks BAD. In the meantime, keep your chin up and when we do get back on our feet, lets appreciate it a little more!

Got other reasons not having a salary is good? Add a comment.

Ob Wan , aka Alec my co-founder, sends along a thought for the day from The Tao of Programming.

There was once a programmer who was attached to the

court of the warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer:

“Which is easier to design: an accounting package or an operating

system?”

“An operating system,” replied the programmer.

The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. “Surely an

accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an

operating system,” he said.

“Not so,” said the programmer, “when designing an accounting package,

the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different

ideas: how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must

conform to the tax laws. By contrast, an operating system is not limited by

outside appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer

seeks the simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an

operating system is easier to design.”

The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. “That is all good and well, but

which is easier to debug?”

The programmer made no reply.

We recently added a marketing guru, Cristina, to our team. Cristina is helping us out with the preparations for the next big thing coming out of billFLO (yes, that’s a hint!). It’s been really fun to add another dimension to our team (check out Cristina’s blog), and Friday team lunches are all the better for having another person to debate topics like “how to find housemates in the mission district of San Francisco” or “is it a meal if there’s no meat in it”!

So, without further-a-do, here’s Cristina’s take on her first 4 weeks at billFLO:
When starting off at any job, you never really know what to expect.  As my first week at billFLO approached, I thought that I might be getting myself into a Devil Wears Prada kind of experience because the job description said that I should be a “jack-of-all trades” and that I should like to get my “hands dirty.”

What the description was really trying to say is that I should be prepared for everything and anything. For those of you who are not familiar with Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada, it is a novel about Andrea Sachs, a young college graduate who struggles with her new job because of her boss’ eccentric and outrageous demands and how it impacts her life.

As it turns out and luckily for me, Ian, Anoowa’s CEO, is nothing like Miranda Priestly (Ian: thanks Cristina, the check is in the mail ☺), and the one thing I have in common with Andrea is that my new job as billFLO’s PR/Marketing intern, has been challenging. But at the same time it has allowed me to jump right into the action, roll up my sleeves, and really get involved.

I’m going on my fourth week at billFLO and so far I would have to say that my experience has been pretty cool. I have come at a very exciting time for Anoowa. We are currently in the midst of planning for something new and highly anticipated; so make sure to stay tuned! In the midst of all the excitement, I have been able to help launch billFLO’s social media campaign while taking part in company decisions. Working at billFLO, means more than just a typical internship; it means making a difference. This difference may be small, but how often do you get the opportunity to be part of a company and part of something that can really only do good for the world? Here at billFLO, we are supporting a bigger cause by helping out the environment and reaching people in order to find an eco-friendly solution in these hard times. You may see it as electronic billing, but I see it as saving our world one paperless invoice at a time. ☺

Last week I watched the Corporation, a movie about the evolution of the concept of the corporation. Anoowa is  structured as a corporation and even though we’re young, the film was relevant and thought provoking. Especially the interview with Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former Chairman of Shell where he remembers befriending a group of protesters in his front garden and how they ultimately shared many of the same concerns. What he didn’t say, but I inferred, is he didn’t have the freedom to act on those concerns due to the constraints on modern companies. 

Maybe its time for some tweaking of the corporation to give CEOs the freedom to inject some of societies values into business? Here’s one such idea I came across on  youtube, which proposes a code of ethics for CEOs. Interesting.

Your thoughts?

P.S. Back in billFLO world, we’re really knuckling down here and looking forward to showing you all something very exciting in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

I cant wait for 2009 to get going! It’s shaping up to be a really great year for us. We’re planning a big launch early this year that will really bring our vision from dream to reality. In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to look back at 2008, Anoowa Inc’s first year in business. 

So, I havent written a full-on annual report, its more of an executive summary … in numbers! Now, before we get started, I do have to say a quick thanks to all the great people and businesses that are using billFLO. There wouldn’t be any numbers without them. Enjoy…

1 – the number of trees billFLO users have saved by sending their invoices electronically

1 – the number of new babies added to the company!

3 - the number of products we launched in our first year

12.9 – the average number of days a billFLO seller company gets paid in (not bad, hey?)

15 - the number of countries billFLO is used in

20 – the percent of users that get billFLO through word of mouth

Thousands – the number of businesses who have downloaded billFLO

Wednesday – the day most billFLO seller invoices are sent

December – our biggest month, in terms of transactions

Your thoughts?

billFLO Ian

Running a startup is one of the best tests around for one’s decision making ability. Every decision might be your last as a business.  So, I have this theory, or maybe its a framework, for decision making that I’m putting to the test right now. (Caveat – I have no empirical proof this works, its just a pattern I’ve recognised)

While I don’t think its possible to make the right decisions all the time, I think the probability of making the right decision goes up when you know what type of decision you are making. My theory is that there are three decision types; Data, Gut and Guess. Knowing which type of decision is being made, I think, increases the chances of making the right decision and catching the wrong one as early as possible.

A Guess decision is the one you don’t want to have to make. Most entrepreneurs make a Guess decision to do a startup that is totally new, like Tivo, Skype, etc.  The entreprenuer says, “I think this will work and people will love it”. There’s no data to support the vision (that gets fabricated later when they put their pitch slides together!), there’s no history or precedence. The entrepreneur just believes, irrationally. This type of decision is highly risky. Despite that, we make Guess decisions all the time; “I think I’ll like this movie, I’ll watch it”.  We make these decisions because even though the risk of being wrong is high, the stakes are low.

A Gut Decision, is based on what often feels right (Malcolm Gladwell goes into great detail about this phenomenon in his book Blink).  For example, I don’t have any data to support my decision framework, but I recognize a pattern. While I can’t put my finger on the data or rationale to support it, my gut tells me this is true. If you’ve got kids, you experience Gut decision making when you leave the picnic right before your kids have a melt-down. If you’re a good soccer player, you experience it when you stick a foot out to block a shot before the opposing player has even hit the ball. Both are decisions based on experience we’ve gained which plays out as pattern recognition. This type of decision making is powerful because its quick and often right.

A Data Decision is self-explanatory. Given the necessary time, having the data is nearly always the best (unless you’re going to buy stock or start a business!) because they are not as subjective. In society we recognise this decision type as superior and often call it an informed decision. Of course, if we’re not careful we can manipulate the data to support a Gut or Data decision.

The trick of this framework, is recognising where on the spectrum a decision is being made… “This is really a Guess decision, I don’t have enough experience for this to be pattern recognition”. Knowing the type of decision then helps you decide what to do – “there’s too much at stake, I need more data” or “I’ve seen this before it isnt going to end well, my Gut’s telling me”.

In practice, I can already look back at one big decision I made that was wrong for us (I’m not going to dish-the-dirt on it right now though!). Looking back, a bit more rigor in applying my own rules would have yielded better results.

I suppose the ultimate test of this theory is whether we’re around this time next year…stick around and find out!

Your thoughts?

billflo Ian