For the past few years my wife and I have had our email accounts on Microsoft Exchange. We’ve used 1and1 to host our Exchange accounts, and aside from a couple outages, they’ve served us well. But it costs us $160/year, and it’s hard to continue justifying that bill when Gmail can handle our needs for free. Plus, I’ve been using Gmail for Max Foundry for almost a year (with Thunderbird) and it’s been great. So the time came a few days ago to bite the bullet and migrate everything we have over to Gmail.

I was expecting some pain as part of the migration process, but it never really happened. I give a lot of credit to Google for making this a fairly smooth transition. That’s how they want it, of course, but to pull it off is something else entirely.

This is a behemoth of a post, so feel free to skim and bookmark for later. And before we get started, I’m assuming you’ve already done the following:

• Created your Google Apps account
• Created your user account within your Google Apps account
• Went through the site verification process
• Updated your DNS entries with the Gmail MX records

You *could* wait to make the changes to your DNS settings after the migration process. I’ve actually done it both before and after with the same results.

Also, this post is for those who have historically used Microsoft Outlook to manage all of their email, contacts, and calendars. I’ll show you how to get off Outlook and into Thunderbird for everything.

Enable Google Sync

First things first. Let’s turn on Google Sync so that Thunderbird and your phone can properly sync up with your Gmail account.

1. Login to Google Apps with your administrator account.

2. Go to the Settings tab and then click Mobile on the left.

3. Check the Enable Google Sync box and save.

Migrate Your Data

IMPORTANT: Assuming you currently use Outlook, make sure it has the latest data (emails, contacts, and calendar entries) and then shut it down. This will be your last known good stopping point in case something goes wrong and you need to go back to it.

ALSO: Importing all of your data could take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. It just depends on how much data you have. For reference, my wife had over 10,000 emails to import and I had over 13,000. It took a few hours to import *each account*.

1. Download and install the Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook tool.

2. When it’s done installing, you’ll see the window below. Enter your Gmail address and password and click Continue.

3. Next you’ll be asked which Outlook profile to import data from. You can import data directly from an Exchange profile, Outlook itself, or you can export your data first into a PST file and then do the import from there.

NOTE: If your DNS entries have already propagated with the Gmail MX records, you might not be able to import from your Exchange profile. In that case, importing from Outlook or a PST will do.

You also have a decision to make on how much data to import: all of it or only new data. Choose Migrate all data if this is your initial migration. The Migrate only new data option is for resuming a migration that didn’t fully complete or importing data that arrived after your first migration.

4. Next you have options for which data you want to import, as well as the option for setting a timeframe from which to import the selected data. After you’ve made your selections click Migrate.

5. If you’re importing from an Exchange profile, you might get prompted for your Exchange account credentials. Otherwise, you’ll see a progress window like the one below.

For those who enjoy some light reading, you can click the log file link to see everything that happened during the migration. My wife had 8 failed emails and I had 6. I figured 14 failures out of 23,000 was pretty good.

Now that the data migration itself is complete, let’s move on to Thunderbird.

Setup Thunderbird with Your Email

1. Download and install Thunderbird.

2. Opening Thunderbird for the first time will start a wizard to setup your email. The first screen you’ll see is for you to enter your email account info.

3. When you click Continue, Thunderbird will do some searching to see if it can find where your email account is located, and because your email is now in Gmail, it should find it pretty quick and show the window below. Make sure IMAP (remote folders) is selected and click Create Account.

4. Next you’ll be prompted for a couple system integration options, such as newsgroups and Windows Search. Make your selections and click OK.

5. That’s it. Thunderbird will open and you’ll see it start pulling in all of your emails that you migrated to your new Gmail account. Be aware that it will take Thunderbird awhile to pull everything in from Gmail. Just let it do its thing.

Add Your Contacts to Thunderbird

1. From the Thunderbird menu, go to Tools > Add-ons > Get Add-ons, then search for “google contacts”. You should see Google Contacts 0.6.36 in the list. Install it and restart Thunderbird.

2. After the restart you’ll see an Address Book button in your Thunderbird toolbar.

3. Click the Address Book button to see all of your contacts that were migrated over.

Add Your Calendar to Thunderbird

Setting up your calendar in Thunderbird requires a bit more work and two add-ons, Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar (which enables bi-directional communication between Thunderbird and Gmail).

1. From the Thunderbird menu, go to Tools > Add-ons > Get Add-ons, then search for “calendar”.

2. Look for Provider for Google Calendar 0.8 and install it first. Then find Lightning 1.0b5 and install it. Restart Thunderbird.

3. After the restart, if you go to Tools > Options you’ll notice a Lightning section. You’ll also see a new menu item named Events and Tasks.

4. Click Events and Tasks from the menu and select Calendar; a new Thunderbird tab opens with your calendar entries. Except there won’t be anything in it.

5. To pull in your calendar entries, login to your Gmail account and go to your calendar. On the left side will be the mini-calendar for the current month, and below that will be a heading titled My calendars. Click the Settings link under My calendars.

6. On the Calendars tab, look for your calendar under My Calendars and click its link.

7. This will be the Calendar Details tab. At the bottom of this page is your Calendar Address, with XML, ICAL, and HTML icons.

8. Click the XML icon so that you see a popup window as shown below. Copy the link address shown in the window. We need to give Thunderbird that link (basically, Thunderbird is going to subscribe to your calendar feed).

9. Go back to Thunderbird and bring up your calendar. On the left side, under Calendar, right-click and select New Calendar. In the window below, select On the Network and click Next.

10. Next, select Google Calendar as the format and paste your calendar link from the popup above into the Location box. Then click Next.

11. You should get prompted for your Gmail credentials. Enter them and click OK.

12. Now you’ll see a window where you can name your calendar. Give it a name and click Next.

13. Next is a confirmation box that your calendar has been created.

14. Click Finish and Thunderbird will start pulling in all of your calendar entries.

Get Calendar Notifications on Your Phone

To enable mobile notifications of events, go to your calendar settings and click the Mobile Setup tab. Enter your phone number and click the Send Verification Code button, which will send a text message to your phone with a code. Enter that code in the Verification code box, click Finish Setup, then Save.

Add Your New Gmail Account to Your iPhone

To access and sync your new Gmail account from your iPhone, follow these instructions. It’s pretty straightforward, the only thing of note is that you choose to setup a Microsoft Exchange account instead of a Gmail account. This is because iOS uses Microsoft ActiveSync to manage the bi-directional communication between your iPhone and your Gmail account.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it. A mammoth, yet hopefully extremely helpful, walkthrough for migrating off of Exchange/Outlook and onto Gmail/Thunderbird. It’s been a few days since I migrated both my account and my wife’s account, and there have been no issues to report. Smooth sailing.

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In a previous post I talked about what it means to be bootstrapped, which was written from the company point-of-view. But what about from the founders perspective, the personal side of it? These are the things rarely talked about, but are as equally or more important as any other question a bootstrapping founder must answer.

So before getting into the bootstrapped startup life, think long and hard about the questions below, and talk them over with your spouse (if you have one). This is by no means a comprehensive list, just the major ones I believe are the hardest to answer.

Are you prepared to take a pay cut?

Being part of a bootstrapped startup means that you only have just enough cash to get by, and that’s it. This is most evident when it comes to your salary.

A prime example of this is my own situation. Since 2004 I had been an independent consultant, aside from my 18 month stint with Telligent, making at or near a 3 digit hourly rate. Quick math will tell you that’s pretty damn good (I’m not telling you this out of bravado, just as a point of reference).

But I gave it up to make half that. Let me say that again. Half. Can you cut your salary in half and get by? And maybe more importantly, can your spouse?

Can you give up some of the niceties in your life?

Because you won’t be making near as much money as you did in your cushy corporate job or consulting gig, at least not for awhile, you’ll have to make some cutbacks in your life. Do you really need 4 DVRs in the house? Do you have to take a big vacation when maybe a weekend getaway will do? Are you willing to clip coupons to save on your grocery bill? Can you drop down to a smaller cell phone plan?

These are the things you (and your spouse) have to think about because if you’re not willing to make those kinds of sacrifices, you better think twice about getting into this life.

How well do you handle stress?

The startup life, bootstrapped or not, is stressful. Not only are you freaking out because you took a 50% pay cut, but now you have to worry if you can get your product out the door and if anyone will actually pay for it. You worry that people don’t know you exist. You worry that you’re never going fast enough. You worry that customers will ask for refunds. The worry list is endless.

If you’re not one who handles constant stress very well, you’ll need to learn how to adjust quickly or not get into it at all. After all, business isn’t fun.

How well does your spouse handle stress?

Once you commit to the startup life, by default so does your spouse (and kids if you have any). You can try to shield kids from the stresses of running a bootstrapped company, but your spouse is a different story. Every worry and stress, every sale and refund – every up and down – your spouse feels each of these right along with you.

At the end of the day, your spouse is your one true supporter, and if they aren’t ready for this kind of life, well, then maybe neither are you.

Can you handle the unknown?

In your corporate job, you pretty much know what the next few months will bring. You know that you’ll work around 8 hours a day. You know what project you’ll be working on. You know that you can take normal vacation time. You know that you’ll get paid.

In a startup none of those things are certain. You don’t know what tomorrow holds, much less a month from now. Adapting to the unknown, and embracing it, is one of the keys to success.

But in spite of all that…

… it can be done. You *can* make financial cutbacks in your life, you *can* adapt to handle the stress, you *can* roll with the punches, and so can your spouse.

I’m not trying to scare anyone, but these are the hard questions that nobody talks about. It’s all well and good to get excited about The-Next-Great-Product, but there are life decisions and tough choices that need to be made first.

For me personally, this is what my career has been building towards, and I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. The years of side projects, the constant talking with trusted friends about products and business ideas, it’s all lead to this point. I’ve come a long way and have a long way to go, but it’s been great.

Running a bootstrapped company is hard. It’s stressful. It’s a constant rollercoaster ride – sometimes thrilling, sometimes terrifying. But if you can handle all of the stress and worry that comes with the territory, if you can make the necessary adjustments to your lifestyle, financial and otherwise, then you’ve got a great chance of surviving.

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• Minimum Viable Funding
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A couple of posts ago in “What Are you Waiting For? Launch Already!” I mentioned the Minimum Viable Product, which is a fancy term for describing a product that has just enough features to make it attractive for someone to buy, and no more. Now apply that same concept to startup funding. Some people, including me, would say that’s what a bootstrapped startup is. But is it?

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, here’s the definition of bootstrapping for businesses:

Bootstrapping in business is to start a business without external help/capital. Startups that bootstrap their business fund development of their company through internal cash flow and are cautious with their expenses. Generally at the start of a venture a small amount of money will be set aside for the bootstrap process.

So the issue is whether or not a startup with a small outside investment is in fact bootstrapped, such as Max Foundry (knowing that “small” is relative). My perspective with Max Foundry is that it sure *feels* bootstrapped, but the words “without external help/capital” in the first sentence of the Wikipedia quote lead you to believe that Max Foundry is not a bootstrapped company.

But take a look at this year’s The Crunchies nomination categories. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see the category for “Best Bootstrapped Startup”, with the following description:

To recognize a startup’s impact that has raised less than $150k (from individuals, angels or other sources).

I admit that basing logic on an award might be a tad flawed, but I think the dollar amount has merit. Just because a startup accepts outside funding, for say less than $150k, doesn’t mean the company is not bootstrapped.

Maybe there should be a different term to describe how startups like Max Foundry are financed, which is to say, with just enough to get by. And then it hit me:

Minimum Viable Funding

Like how a Minimum Viable Product has just enough features to ship, a startup with Minimum Viable Funding has just enough of an investment to move forward:

• The investment covers just enough to launch a product.
• The investment covers just enough to pay the founders a stripped down salary, most likely barely covering their bills, and nothing more.
• The spend rate is tightly monitored, usually daily.
• All money is re-invested back into the company, even well after your monthly revenue surpasses the original monthly invested amount.

The term Minimum Viable Funding feels like a good middle ground between the exact bootstrap definition and startups with large investment capital. And to shamelessly borrow the graphic for the Minimum Viable Product, here’s the intersection:

So what do you think? Does this more accurately describe startups in these situations? Leave a comment and let’s get a conversation going.

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In the startup world, there’s really two kinds of startups. There are those you hear about in the news and on TechCrunch, essentially companies that have raised a lot of angel and/or venture capital money. And then there are those startups without the big financial backing. These companies started on the founder’s savings account, or the founder took out a second mortgage, or maybe they have an investor who put up only a few thousand dollars instead of a few million dollars. These are the bootstrappers.

I’ve launched two bootstrapped startups so far, League Galaxy and Max Foundry. League Galaxy was funded mostly on our savings account, with some serious stretching of the dollar. For Max Foundry we have an angel investor (Bob), but his investment isn’t of the million dollar variety. Make no mistake, this was intentional and our preferred way of getting Max Foundry launched.

So what does it mean to actually be bootstrapped? Well, it all comes down to money. Take a look at some of the differences in spending between million dollar funded startups and bootstrapped startups:

• Million dollar funded startups can hire and pay employees “normal” salaries. Bootstrapped startups are lucky if they are in a position to hire someone, and if they are, they need someone who will work for much less than they could make as a consultant or in a corporate job.
• Million dollar funded startups have monthly advertising budgets of several thousand dollars or more. Bootstrapped startups might have a $10 per day AdWords budget.
• Million dollar funded startups might send a few people to that really cool Web 3.0 conference in San Diego. Bootstrapped startups would love to do that, but then think “That’s 4 days of travel expenses and 4 days not working on our product. Maybe next year.”
• Million dollar companies can hire designers or contract with an expensive design firm to make their product oh-so-shiny. Bootstrapped companies need to do the design themselves or enlist the help of a designer friend who can make it look good enough and do it for maybe a couple hundred bucks.

Bootstrapped startups only have just enough cash to get by, which forces them to be really focused and really creative with how and where they spend every dollar. They can’t afford to be loose with their money because if they are, they most likely can’t recover.

Cash is king for startups, especially for bootstrapped startups simply because they don’t have much of it to begin with.

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I had lunch a couple weeks ago with a friend of mine, and in typical fashion we spent most of the time catching up with our work and family lives. Naturally part of the conversation was spent talking about Max Foundry and how it was going. My friend was particularly interested in how we developed and launched our first product so quickly. You see, he’s been working on a side project for a long time (16 months!) and would like to release it, but hasn’t pulled the trigger yet. My answer to him was simple:

Just get it out there.

That’s it. The longer you wait to get your product out the door, the greater the chance that you *never* get your product out the door. The longer you wait, the more you’ll end up goldplating and adding more features that you don’t know are even needed yet.

Each day that you wait to release is a wasted opportunity to start building a customer base and to gather feedback.

In the startup world there is the notion of a Minimum Viable Product [1], which is essentially the minimum amount of features to make your product somewhat attractive to potential customers, and once you reach that point, you launch it. As a startup, to launch a product you must live by the Minimum Viable Product.

I’m sure you’ll have a huge backlog of things you haven’t done yet, and you probably haven’t even thought about half of the things on the Launch Checklist and Questionnaire. That’s OK, you’ll get there. And while you take care of all that “other stuff”, you have a product that people are using and giving you feedback on.

It might take you another month (or two or three) to add a couple more product features and to get through the checklist. That’s fine because you’ve already launched. You might even have paying customers, or maybe your product is in a private beta. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s out there and people are using it.

So stop sitting around at night adding “just one more feature”. Launch the damn thing already!

[1] There’s also the notion of a Minimum Product. The intersection of a Minimum Product and a Viable Product is what makes a Minimum Viable Product. This post has a great graphic about the concept.

[Photo credit: Steven Depolo]

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From the very beginning of this blog, my tagline has always been “Critical thinking in software development”. It became sort of a mantra for me, and I would talk about the importance of critical thinking any chance I got. Leon Gersing and I would argue over who really owned that phrase, an argument he always lost ;-) But in the past 18 months or so things have changed, and my focus is very different now.

When I changed this blog, you may have noticed that I updated my tagline to “Always in startup mode”. When I first showed it to my wife, she chuckled and said “You got that right”. She knows firsthand the constant stream of ideas and work that I get myself into.

The startup mentality is kind of a curse. I think it’s a good curse, but it’s hard to explain sometimes. A startup’s brain never stops. It’s always thinking about what’s next, so much so that it takes a lot of discipline to focus on the current idea being worked on.

Once you’re in startup mode, you don’t ever really get out of it. That’s why the “Always in startup mode” mantra is so fitting. Those four words speak a simple truth about what it’s like to be a startup, to run a startup, and to balance the current startup with the ever-impending next one.

It is an itch that must be scratched, and once you start scratching, the itching never stops.

[Photo by dierken]

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This is a tale of two startup launches: League Galaxy and AgileZen. League Galaxy is a startup of mine that makes life easier for those who manage amateur sports teams, while AgileZen is Nate Kohari’s company that makes lean project management easier. Both were launched around the same time and in the same fashion, but the outcome has been radically different.

First Some History

Before I get into this, you need a little background. You see, Nate and I worked together for awhile at Telligent. During Nate’s interview process, I was in the loop to interview him and we hit it off right away. I knew of Nate beforehand from his work with Ninject, but didn’t know him on a personal level. Once he was hired, we worked pretty closely together on a couple product iterations and became good friends, which continues to this day.

While at Telligent, we both ended up with the itch to do our own thing, me with League Galaxy and he with AgileZen. As a completely unplanned, yet now-kind-of-funny coincidence, we each left Telligent on the same day in June 2009.

Now that you’ve had a brief history lesson, let’s continue.

The AgileZen Launch

Nate launched AgileZen in early July 2009, about a month after leaving Telligent. He had been working on it in his spare time for awhile up to that point and it was ready to go. Naturally, Nate wrote a blog post about it and made the announcement on Twitter, which at the time he had about 2,000 followers (or close to it).

Nate is pretty well-known in the development community and most of the people who followed Nate, and I assume still do, are developers. This is a critical piece of information because AgileZen is a product made for developers. It’s not just for developers of course, but developers are a primary target audience for AgileZen.

Think about that for just a minute. From the start, Nate, and therefore AgileZen, had about 2,000 potential customers. It sometimes takes companies months, if not years, to attract 2,000 potential customers, but there they were from the outset. Twitter lit up like a Christmas tree with tweets and retweets from all over the place.

And as many of you know, the rest is history. AgileZen had sales from the very first day and continued to grow at a high rate. It found success quickly and was acquired by Rally Software in March 2010, a mere 9 months after its launch.

The League Galaxy Launch

Contrast the AgileZen launch with how League Galaxy went out the door. I launched League Galaxy in mid August 2009, about a month after AgileZen launched. I did the same thing Nate did with AgileZen – I wrote a blog post and announced it on Twitter.

However, there were a couple notable differences. My follower count on Twitter wasn’t nearly as high as Nate’s was (nor continues to be), with around 600 followers at the time if I remember correctly. But the number isn’t important. What’s important is that not a single follower of mine was a potential customer for League Galaxy.

Like Nate, most of my followers are in the developer community. They care about all things software-related, not a website to manage amateur sports teams. Sure, there might be a few followers who coach their son’s baseball team and have a fleeting interest, but that’s about it.

And because of this, my announcement on Twitter largely fell on deaf ears.

Like everything else in hindsight, the obviousness of this fact didn’t hit me until a few months later. I made the mistake of thinking League Galaxy would generate a few sales based on my Twitter followers, but that was never the case. The target audience for League Galaxy does not follow me on Twitter.

Are Your Twitter Followers Your Target Customers?

Before you launch your next great startup and plan on using Twitter as an announcement platform (which you should do), think hard about your Twitter followers. If you’re in Nate’s situation, then chances are you’ll have some early success. But if you’re not, you simply can’t rely on Twitter and think that’s all there is. You’ll have to work much harder than that.

And remember, the number of followers isn’t as important as to why they follow you in the first place.

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In one of my previous posts I talked about how before we gave Max Foundry the green light for launch, we made sure we knew how we were going to sell our products; we came up with a sales and marketing plan and stuck with it. But once we had that in place, it was time to put fingers to keyboard and start building a product. After solidifying our first two to three product ideas, we settled on the one we’d build first, and then it was time to get our hands dirty.

Our goal was to have a sellable product in only 2 months. An aggressive goal to be sure, but we broke the plan down into 3 phases:

Phase 1 – The first 2 weeks of September

This initial two weeks was mostly for me to familiarize myself with the technology stack we were going to use: WordPress, PHP, and MySQL. You see, I had literally never touched either of those things. Ever. But I’ve been a developer for about 15 years so I tend to understand how these things work, and learning something new was fun. Frustrating at times, but fun nonetheless.

At the end of these two weeks I was still figuring things out, but I had a much better idea for how the products needed to be built.

Phase 2 – The next 4 weeks (mid September to mid October)

This period was spent in heads-down mode. I had a rough plan for how the product would work, and constantly iterated over it until we had a workable version. Note that I said *workable* version, not *sellable* version. There’s a big difference.

Our plan at this point was to get some beta testers and gather as much feedback as possible. We had about 10 people use the beta version, and got some really good feedback from them.

Phase 3 – The next 2 weeks (mid October to the first of November)

This time was spent trying to wrap up all product development, which meant putting all finishing touches in place as well as incorporating feedback from the beta. Some hard decisions also had to be made, which for us meant cutting a couple features from the product. We knew customers would ask for these features almost right away (and they did), but they would have to wait another revision or two.

These two weeks were a bit insane because not only did the product need to go from workable to sellable, but we had to take care of everything in The Launch Checklist and Questionnaire. It is an unbelievable amount of work, and I’m lucky to have great partners in James and Bob who can step in and help get things done.

It Worked

Fortunately for us, we executed really well. It wasn’t perfect, and there were some bumps along the way, but we did it and launched during the first week of November.

Our Answers to The Launch Checklist and Questionnaire

Like I’ve said, there is a crazy amount of work to do before you can actually launch and sell your product. So how did we do it in only 2 months? Here are the answers, with most of this stuff being done in those last two weeks before launch:

Website

We built it ourselves using WordPress. Considering that we build products specifically for WordPress, it would seem odd if our website was not built with it. We almost used a free WordPress theme for our site, but decided against it and went with our own custom theme (which helped us learn even more about WordPress). WordPress is so flexible and so easy to use, it’s simply a no-brainer.

Interestingly however, the very first revision of our site was not WordPress; it consisted of three old-school .htm files (hello 1998). Hey, sometimes you just gotta hack, move on, and come back later.

Marketing Material and Copy

We wrote it ourselves. It went through several revisions as we constantly tweaked it to focus on the main ideas potential customers would respond to. Me personally, I spent quite a bit of time looking at copy for other websites (related and non-related to our business), trying to understand why they used certain words and phrases.

If you are not a copywriter, it cannot be said enough how incredibly hard it is to write good copy.

Blog

Seeing as how our site was built on WordPress, our blog would go along with that. It gave us an opportunity to learn more about WordPress, but we didn’t put it up until the very last minute.

Logo

James has a designer friend who he’s worked with in other ventures, so James pinged him about our logo and he created it in only a couple hours. We went back and forth on a couple revisions, but ultimately decided on the very first one.

When the time came to create a logo, we had a backup plan if James’ designer friend was too busy. We were going to use either ARS Logo Design (who I’ve used before and recommend) or 99designs, both of which are affordable and produce good stuff.

Other Graphics and Icons

For everything else that wasn’t our logo, I did it all myself. I have some simple graphics design skills, but I’m also good at finding just the right free icon. I highly suggest Iconfinder; just be sure to note the license of each icon you want to use.

Billing Process and Payments

This is a biggie, and having integrated with payment processors before, I was worried this would eat away a lot of time. Luckily for us it went pretty smooth. We wanted to make it really easy for people to give us money, so PayPal was a natural fit since you can use it to not only accept PayPal payments, but credit card payments as well.

The big time saver for us was finding the WP eStore plugin for WordPress. This plugin is loaded with options and made it incredibly easy for us to integrate with our PayPal account in only a couple hours.

Webhosting

For webhosting we use Amazon EC2. I had never setup an EC2 instance, but James had done it before so I leaned on him quite a bit for this one. We only have a need for a small instance right now, so our cost is pretty low.

Having your own dedicated EC2 instance is really nice, and overall it doesn’t take very long to setup. The things that add to your setup time are the other pieces of software you need to install to run your website.

Company Email Accounts

Even though we waited until just before launch to setup company email addresses, we knew from the beginning we were going to use Google Apps. The free version of Google Apps allows you to create up to 50 user accounts, so being just the three of us it made the most sense.

Unless you’re in business as an email provider, there’s no reason to setup your own email server and have to deal with all the problems that come with it.

Customer Support

We decided that for the foreseeable future, all support requests will simply go through our support@maxfoundry.com email address (which at the moment forwards to my own Max Foundry email account).

Even though it forwards to my company email account, it’s important to have the support email address because we put it in a lot of different places, such as the website and our products. We might look at something like Tender in the future, but not yet.

Email Marketing and Lists

Part of our overall sales and marketing plan involves direct email marketing, which for internet retailers is a proven way of attracting customers and increasing conversions. On our website we make it easy for people to add themselves to our email list, which we send updates to a couple times a month.

We could’ve built something on our own to collect and manage the emails, but that would’ve taken a lot of time that we didn’t have. Plus, we know services such as Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, and Aweber exist to do just that. We settled on Campaign Monitor and have been really happy with it. Easy to setup, affordable, and they provide really good metrics.

Advertising

Being a bootstrapped company, we don’t have a huge advertising budget, so we have to advertise in the most cost-effective way possible, which is Google AdWords. All three of us have run AdWords campaigns, but both Bob and James have more experience than me in that area, and they’ve spent a lot of time setting it up and tweaking it.

For the unaware, there are a lot of things that go into an AdWords campaign. Creating the ads (which involves writing copy), creating landing pages (which involves writing copy, again), SEO, keywords, a daily budget, conversion rates, and on and on. If you’ve never done it before, be aware of how much time it actually takes.

We also bought some display ad spaces on a few sites using BuySellAds, although to date they haven’t been as effective as our AdWords campaign.

Affiliate Program

Something we identified early on in our sales and marketing plan was the use of affiliates to help drive traffic and conversions. We weren’t going to build our own affiliate management software as that would’ve taken a lot of time, and like collecting email addresses, isn’t our core business.

We spent some time researching various affiliate services and settled on ShareASale. Things are fairly simple to setup and their support has been great. While I wish their UI was given a bit more love, it’s been hard to argue with the results. Several of our early sales originated from our affiliates.

Launch Announcement

When it came time to launch and make the big announcement, we hit Twitter and blogged about it. But we also contacted numerous WordPress-specific blogs and sites, starting with sites listed on wordpress.alltop.com. We sent them an email (essentially our “press release”), along with a copy of our product, and asked them if they could possibly take a look at our product, maybe write a review, or if anything, just give us some feedback.

That worked to a certain degree, and if anything, opened doors and communication channels that previously weren’t there. Building relationships with key websites and bloggers doesn’t happen overnight.

Utilize External Services

As you can see, we rely on external services where they make the most sense, which is just about everything because almost everything is outside of our core business:

• Build our own CMS and blog software? No, we use WordPress.
• Create our own logo? No, we had a designer friend do it.
• Build our own billing and payment pipeline? No, we bought a WordPress plugin that easily integrates with PayPal.
• Setup our own web server? No, we use Amazon EC2.
• Setup our own email server? No, we use Google Apps.
• Setup a customer support phone line? No, all support requests go to our support email address.
• Build our own email list management software? No, we use Campaign Monitor.
• Build our own affiliate management software? No, we use ShareASale.

So there you have it. This was our blueprint for going from startup to launch in only 2 short months. I realize this won’t apply to everyone, but I believe most of these things hold true no matter what kind of startup you’re in. Your mileage may vary.

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• The Launch Checklist and Questionnaire
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• What Are You Waiting For? Launch Already!

When it comes to launching your startup, building your product is obviously an important piece. I mean, there’s not much reason to launch at all unless you’ve built your product and are ready for people to use it. And while having an initial version of your product is critical to the launch, I’d argue that it’s actually the easy part.

I certainly don’t want to trivialize building a product. I’ve done it myself (twice) and it’s a major accomplishment that should be celebrated with a few beers and a huge sigh of relief. But for a startup, it’s nothing more than an important milestone on the way to launch.

Just look at this list of things that need done and questions that need answered before you launch:

Do you have a website?

You’re going to need a presence on the web, so your website needs built. Who’s going to build it? Are you going to do it, or are you going to have someone else build it? Are you going to build it by hand, or are you going to use pre-made templates and/or CMS software? Have you bought the domain name? Is the domain you want available? If not, do you have alternatives?

While putting together a website is commonplace and a no-brainer, it still takes time.

What about the marketing material (copy) for the website?

Who is going to write it? Do you have a copywriter as part of your startup? Assuming not, do you actually know any copywriters who could help you out?

Do not underestimate the importance of good copy and how hard it is to write, especially if you are not a copywriter. This is much more time consuming than most people realize.

What about a blog?

Are you going to have one? If so, will it live as part of your company website or are you going to put it someplace else? Who is going to maintain the blog and publish the content? How often will you be posting? Will you be building your own custom blogging software or will you be using one of the many blogging packages already out there? Will you have to customize your blog theme to match your company website?

Setting up a blog is really easy nowadays, and because of that people underestimate the time it takes to actually do it. Don’t make that mistake.

Do you have a logo?

Assuming you don’t, who is going to create it? Can you do it? If so, do you have experience with tools like Photoshop or Illustrator? Do you have a designer friend that can help you out, or will you have to hire someone? Have you ever looked into 3rd party services such as ARS Logo or 99 Designs? Are you aware of the turnaround times designers and 3rd party services have? And not only that, but do you even have an idea of what kind of logo you want?

Getting your logo shouldn’t necessarily be the highest item on your launch priority list, but at some point it does need to be taken care of. Be aware that unless you are a graphic designer, it’s going to take longer than you think.

And what about other graphics for your website?

In addition to the logo, you’ll probably need some other graphics work for your site, such as icons. Do you need a set of custom images, or can you use many of the free ones out there?

Even if you can get away with using a lot of the free options out there, they might need tweaked or resized, and doing so adds even more time.

How are you going to take people’s money?

Are you going to accept credit card payments? What about checks, purchase orders, and pay-by-phone options? What is your billing process? Will you need to setup an SSL certificate for your site? Have you ever done that? Have you ever integrated with payment processors such as PayPal, Braintree, or Authorize.net?

If you only test one thing on your website, it should be this. Test your billing and payment process thoroughly or you’ll end up paying in the end. It takes more time than you think and isn’t a place where you can afford to take shortcuts.

Where are you going to host your website?

Are you going to host it yourself or are you going to use a hosting provider? Have you researched the many hosting provider plans? Have you looked into services like Amazon’s EC2? Have you ever setup an EC2 instance?

This goes right along with building your website, but it’s something that adds yet more time to your launch plans.

Do you have company email accounts?

Are you even going to setup company email accounts or are you just going to use your personal email address? Are you going to host your own email or are you going to use a 3rd party service like 1and1 or Gmail for Business? Have you ever setup an email account with a 3rd party service?

While it’s not anything you have to do right away, creating company email accounts should be done before you launch. Just know that it’s yet another thing that takes time.

How are you going to provide customer support?

Will you handle support only through email, or will you also have a customer service phone number? Who is going to answer the support emails and/or phone calls?

In most cases you don’t need a customer support option until you make the first sale, but what if you make the first sale on launch day? It’s best to go ahead and set it up.

Are you going to collect potential customer email addresses before the launch?

If so, how will you get people to give you their email address? Where will the email addresses go? Are you going to manage them yourself or will you use a 3rd party service such as Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, or Aweber? Have you ever integrated with those services?

Collecting potential customer email addresses is great for direct email campaigns, but how will you convince people to give you their email address in the first place? And even then, how will you manage it? Those 3rd party services are great and pretty easy to use, but it’s still another item on the list.

Are you going to advertise?

If so, how and where? Will you buy display ad spaces on various websites? Who will create the actual display ads? Can you do it or do you need a designer? What about an AdWords campaign? Have you ever set one up?

Advertising takes money, and as a startup I assume your advertising budget is limited. However, effective use of display ads and AdWords can lead to sales, so it’s worth the time and effort setting up a campaign and tweaking it as needed. But again, this takes time.

Are you going to setup an affiliate program?

Do you know what an affiliate program is and how it works? Is an affiliate program something you deem as important for your sales pipeline? If so, will you be creating your own affiliate program on your site, or will you use a 3rd party service such as ShareASale or Commission Junction? Have you ever used those kinds of services? What will your commission percentage be? How often will you pay your affiliates? Do you need to setup banner ads for your affiliates to use on their sites? If so, who is going to create them?

Affiliate programs can be great for sales, but it takes time to set them up and it takes time for them to grow.

Have are you going to tell people you exist?

Will you have a Twitter account? Are you going to have a Facebook page? Are there any bloggers in your market that can help get the word out? Do you know them or only know *of* them? Are you going to issue an official press release? If so, who is going to write it?

Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are all great ways to announce your launch, but it takes time to build an audience on the social platforms and it takes time to build a relationship with influential bloggers. Be aware of this.

How did you answer all of those questions?

Even if you answered every question with a high degree of confidence, even if you have experience with everything mentioned, it all adds time. And that’s the key takeaway. Getting your product built is a great achievement, no doubt about it. But what good is a product if nobody knows it exists and you have no way of selling it?

You might have your product built and ready to go, but unless most of those other things have been taken care of, you’re still a long way off from being able to make the first sale. Just keep that in mind.

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• From Startup to Launch in 2 Months
• What Are You Waiting For? Launch Already!
• Twitter and Your Target Customers

One of the big lessons that I’ve learned with startups is about when to determine how you are going to sell your products and actually make money. By nature, developers tend to want to start building something and then they’ll figure how to sell it once it’s built. That’s mostly because, well, they are developers and not salesmen. I’ve made that mistake myself, but have since learned from it.

I left Telligent in June 2009 to launch my first startup, League Galaxy. At the time, I was helping coach my son’s travel baseball team and was really frustrated by all of the junk websites out there to manage amateur sports teams. Seeing as how I was wanting more and more to get back out on my own, I spent a couple months doing a lot of market research before finally leaving the company.

I took the entire summer off and wrote code 12 hours a day (sometimes more) for 3 months straight. It was one of the most fun times I’ve ever had developing software. And the entire time that I was building League Galaxy I thought, “Just wait until people see this. They are going to line up to pay me for it because it’s simply so much better than what they are used to”. I was completely driven by this thought.

But it was not to be because I made a classic startup mistake. I figured that I’d build League Galaxy first and *then* figure out how to sell it. I didn’t even think about how to let people know that League Galaxy even existed. I thought some blog posts and tweets would be enough to get started, which of course is rarely the case.

I remember talking with my wife about some sales numbers I had written on my whiteboard. I explicitly remember telling her, “Don’t worry, we’ll get to 100 monthly sales in the first month”. Boy was I wrong. Looking back it was silly to think that would happen when in fact I didn’t really know how I was going to sell it much less let people know that it was there.

The Opposite Approach

Contrast that approach with how Max Foundry got started. When Bob and James contacted me about a potential startup focused on WordPress themes and plugins, we spent the first couple days figuring out how we would actually sell our products. We talked about some product concepts and ideas, but we never really discussed how we would build them.

Instead, we came up with a plan for how we would market and sell them. We went over the plan a couple times, shot holes in it, then filled those holes with better options. It wasn’t until we were satisfied with the marketing and sales plan that we gave our company the green light for launch.

There was never any talk of, “Let’s just build it and figure out the sales stuff later”. We knew building our products wasn’t the issue; we’d figure it out. But we knew that lack of sales, and therefore lack of cash, would be the major concern, so our sales plan had to be solid in order for us to move forward.

And sure enough, we released our first product, executed our sales plan, and made 10 sales within the first 2 weeks. By comparison, it took 6 months to get 10 paid monthly accounts for League Galaxy.

Lesson Learned

Having experienced both approaches firsthand, it’s clear to me that figuring out how to sell your product should be one of the first things, if not *the* first thing, you should do for your startup. If you don’t know how to sell it, hold off on building your product until you do. Your chance of success will increase.

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