Just got off the phone with a potential supplier who I had spoken with last week about the six-month startup. I had promised to send him some specs. Why hadn't I sent them yet?
I was surprised. I had sent the email, and was wondering why he hadn't responded. Was I being blown off because we are too small, or is he not that responsible about following through?
Turns out that there were two problems. I had mistyped his email address when he gave it to me over the phone, so he didn't receive it. But his company's email server should have immediately bounced my message as undeliverable. It didn't, so I didn't even know I had made a mistake. Frustration and impatience were the results on both sides, although the phone calls helped clear up the situation and get things back on track.
The moral of the story: If you are a small business owner with a dedicated .com domain for your email, make sure it is properly configured to handle email problems, and notifications are sent out to anyone affected by or responsible for missent emails or email outages. Really small companies may not have a dedicated IT staff, but there are consultants out there who can troubleshoot and fix problems. Many other people (myself included) have our company email hosted on Gmail through the cloud-based Google Apps.
One thing that many startups are forced to do is run on a pretty tight budget. Both of the ventures I'm involved with use free, cloud-based platforms when possible. Google Docs for spreadsheets and PDF storage, Yammer for project collaboration, Gmail for email (including the Google Apps version, which lets us easily use a .com domain within Gmail), Adium for instant messaging ... you get the picture.
But one thing that kind of scared me when I first heard about it at a small business accounting seminar was the high price of QuickBooks. This is the industry standard application for keeping track of expenses, revenue, purchase orders, and other common functions. It's not cheap: More than $200 for the Mac version. The high price is not surprising. It's an Intuit product and QuickBooks has a lock on the market -- with a lack of viable competitors, and industry standard acceptance among customers and accountants, QuickBooks can pretty much charge what they want.
What alternatives are out there? I checked the chatter on Hacker News, but nothing promising popped out. But then I noticed through Google Apps that there are a bunch of free options -- small companies and products that I had never heard of, but had offerings that could replace Quickbooks for companies on a budget. I tried myERP, based on the fact that it seemed pretty comprehensive (ERP, accounting and CRM functions) and it was free for two users, and the Google Apps user ratings were mostly positive. But after activating the app, I was very surprised to discover that there is no tutorial to use this somewhat complex product. The "How to use myERP" was literally a list of features, as this screenshot shows:
I hunted around for a video tutorial, but no dice, even though I saw that other users had asked for them on the support forum many months before. This was very surprising to me as a founder and someone who has dealt with online design and help pages many times throughout the years -- videos are extremely easy to make using QuickTime or other easily available tools, and assuming people on myERP's staff are familiar with the product, it should take more than an hour or two to create a basic "setup" video or videos showing common tasks.
But what convinced me to uninstall myERP was lack of support for a very common expense -- mileage reimbursement. The support forum suggested a workaround, but it was convoluted and not a long-term solution.
I tried Yendo next. Only one free user for the trial version, but Yendo is much better with tutorials and support, as this video shows:
I'm still working through the setup now, but if it can handle the basics I am looking for now -- expense tracking, simple entries, and basic accounting reports, I'll be happy.
I've found that when I am talking to people on the phone for the product startup, local suppliers often have local accents. It's not surprising; die-cutting shops and some printers are blue-collar places. They are usually staffed by people who grew up in eastern New England. When I hear this on the phone, I almost unconsciously shift my own accent away from standard "North American" to something that's a bit more Eastern Mass. But just a bit.
It's not hard to do. I grew up here too, and while I never had a Boston accent -- my parents were from out of state, only a few friends in high school had light accents, and I spent most of my 20s overseas -- speaking with a slight inflection feels natural. I assume it helps a little in terms of letting people on the other end feel more comfortable, but maybe I'm assuming too much.
Talking to a local die-cutting shop, as I research potential suppliers and prototype manufacturers. Found out that the creation of the die is actually done elsewhere, and that once a production run starts, "every time the press comes down it's 15 cents."
Then there was this, when I was describing the dimensions of the product we want die cut in millimeters:
"What's that? We don't do millimeters."
Chalk it up to quirks of the American manufacturing industry ...
