Toward the Sanctuary

The architecture in Before the Law is drawn in words, not pictures.  I suppose everyone’s mental picture is different, mine reminds me of houses of worship.

Outside, grandiose and imposing, designed to inspire awe. Leave your ego at the door as you enter. You will have no use for it inside.

Inside, the drama of worship. Candles, bells, pews, hymns, words of wisdom. Distractions all, but helpful in their own way.

Go further in, until you can hear the silence. Your own silence.

What’s this? The sound of your inner wars, evocation of the grandiosity you thought you left far outside. Wars from decades ago, deeds, words and thoughts that shaped you — like chisels shape marble.

It’s dark now. The chisels have fallen silent. In the sanctuary, you can not see, only feel. There is no one here.

What you came to worship was your inner self.

Transparent Billing and Collecting

12/24/08 update: A customer-visible version of this post was posted on the Early Stage IT blog.

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It feels like the first of a series of posts as the thought process for billing and payments evolves for Early Stage IT.

There are 3 main problems to think about:

1. Different perceptions between us and the client of the value and fairness of the billing.  It’s a problem with a subset of clients. We need to have a billing system that is transparent.
   • What do clients want? Billing that they perceive as fair. They say they want billing they can understand but what they really mean is, billing they can agree with.
   • What do we want? Billing thay can’t disagree with.
2. Our clients, being start-ups, are strapped for cash.  Their cash situation can change quickly and we need to have some certainty of payment.
3. Would we work for equity instead of cash? No. We are not venture capitalists. We don’t know how to evaluate future worth of a company and invest in it.

The transparency question boils down to them knowing about work to be done and its projected cost before we start doing it. We have to be diligent about getting them to approve estimates and their revisions, incorporating these into the delivery process.

The collection question is trickier. Here is a proposal for my friends reading this post, please let me know what you think. Amazon FPS is a payment service which can be used for billing.  Most companies may already have a relationship with Amazon and we would just ride that relationship for our billing purposes. What if the process ran as follows:

• Around the 20th of the month, we provide a client our best estimate of the following month’s expenses.
• By the end of the month, the client prepays those expected expenses
• After the end of the month, we bill for work done and draw from the pre-paid account. Any discrepancies are carried forward into the following month.

The thing I don’t like about the proposal is that it is unusually distrusting. At the same time, we are not a bank and can’t afford to run on “credit”. We need to manage cash flow.

Early Stage IT

That’s the name of the new business.  The web site is up: http://www.EarlyStageIT.com.

I talked about it at the 128ICG meeting last week.  The presentation went well, I thought. 

Much to still do:

• Size the market.
• Figure out the channels.  
• The descriptions of a couple of partners are included on the web site.
• Establish rates and the economics of the business.
• Crucial question for early stage companies: will we accept equity in lieu of cash?

Reassessment

One of the first things when starting on this journey was to create a project plan. It wasn’t one of those “wishful thinking” plans. It was realistic, with plenty of buffers built in for setbacks and revisions. The expectation was that there would be a contract in hand by Thanksgiving. Until about mid-October, we were on track. Two unforeseen setbacks:

1. Collapse of the Financial Services Industry causing me to start looking at other industries.
2. About a month consumed with a personal emergency.

So let’s say that the two setbacks account for 2 months. Plus Christmas, let’s say 3. The new target should be mid-February.  Since the first deadline has been missed, without any real prospects on the horizon, even mid-February looks iffy. I went to see John Chory last week as part of a TiE Mentoring session. John does a lot of work with emerging companies.  One of his suggestions:

• Offer to be a CIO for such companies. 
• They don’t have a lot of money and they wouldn’t want to part with equity for this. 
• However, they would pay for work done and would be excellent references.
• This is how he got his start and has gone through 3 boom and bust cycles as a lawyer for emerging companies.

So here’s a few ideas:

• CIO for early stage companies. Pros and Cons:
  • I used to do this at Fido, supporting 5 start-up companies.
  • Know how to get the word out: all the local Venture Forums.
  • Know how to get the work done.
  • Position as a separate business unrelated to Quantitecture.
• Deeper dig into Quantitecture.
  • The availability paper has been sent and we should hear about acceptance.
  • Concentration into Virtualization.
  • Marketing remains a challenge.
• Possible product company with some ex-colleagues

I would like to take a week or two, possibly through year-end, to decide the next course of action.

After a hiatus

The last post was over a month ago! I was able to prepare a paper (and an accompanying application) for publication but not much else.

I needed the time for personal reasons and was glad to have had it.