This is the final post in the Founder Centric Startups series, for 2011 at least.

I’ve been really encouraged by the response to these interviews. Thanks to everybody who has taken the time to follow-up via email or with a comment. If there is demand I will look to post some more next year, and perhaps follow-up with a few of these to see how they are progressing.

No doubt some of the stories will not have happy endings – such is life for founders. But, hopefully they have highlighted that there are many ways to skin a start-up cat. As I said in the post that kicked off this series ”You don’t qualify your start-up by winning a competition or getting a sucker to invest or being accepted into an incubator program. You qualify by building something customers want and win by selling it repeatedly to them at a price that is greater than your costs.”

But, for now, I wanted to finish the series with a bang. So, I’m stoked that Rich from Litmos, one of the big NZ start-up success stories of recent time, has agreed to answer some questions I put to him about the choices they made in taking their venture from launch to exit over the last few years…

What’s the purpose of your company?

To make people smarter

What does your company do?

Litmos enables companies of all shapes and sizes to easily create web based training courses, deliver them to people all over the world and then track the results.

What is the business model?

Litmos is a pure play SaaS business with monthly and annual subscription plans. Our pricing is essentially based on the number of people that are actively taking online courses each month and is also skewed by certain features like API access or custom branding.

How do potential customers learn about you?

We had limited funds in the early days so we designed and successfully executed an effective blog and social media strategy to generate traffic to our website and brand awareness in the industry. Today this is still the largest contributor to our sales funnel but we also augment it with various pay-per-click campaigns. We’re also now getting involved in enterprise deals but selling those is a whole different ball game so we’re leveraging our parent company’s enterprise sales team for that.

How many customers do you have?

More than 250 customers and more than 100,000 learners. In about 20 countries but mostly in USA, Australia, UK, Canada & New Zealand.

Who are the people working with you on this?

It’s funny that when you read about success stories it always comes back to the people and for Litmos that was certainly the case.

With fewer than 20 customers, no money but big dreams, I was fortunate enough to convince Dan Allen (Developer) and Nicole Fougere (Marketing) to join me on a sweat equity basis. I picked Dan because I’d worked with him before so I knew he was super skilled, dedicated to the mission and would be on call 24/7 to support this project getting on it’s feet. After a few months and many iterations of Litmos we had started to pick up a few more customers but we needed a voice, someone with awesome written and verbal communication skills and that same gritty passion that it takes to get the job done. Nicole was the obvious choice and once we had her on board our trial and acquisition rates rapidly increased. Last but not least I had my dad John Chetwynd keeping an eye on the accounts and also leveraged his financial expertise to create our financial models.

How did the business get started?

Litmos was born from the needs of an Auckland-based contact center to rapidly create online training courses on a daily basis. Most of the tools on the market were either too complicated or tailored for the enterprise, and way too expensive to train their 200ish employees.

How did you fund your growth in the beginning?

It’s possibly not the fastest way to grow but we bootstrapped Litmos for 4 years from start to acquisition. All subscriptions were pumped back into marketing and for the first year we didn’t pay salaries.

In the early days cashflow was super important so we did a few elearning consulting contracts to pump up the revenue but we dropped that pretty quickly as it distracts from the main goal of building a strong subscription base. The other thing we did was to offer a discount for annual subscriptions which proved to be pretty popular and gave us some breathing space.

What are the mistakes you’ve made?

Sounds kind of strange to say this now but the biggest mistake we made was to start building a business in an industry that we had no idea about. Prior to starting Litmos I had never worked in the elearning industry and I didn’t know anyone else that had either. The upshot of this is that for the first year or two we made a lot of uneducated guesses as to what we should be doing on the product development and marketing front. It literally took a couple of years of reading and studying the industry to work out exactly what we needed to do to make a killer product and how to communicate that message effectively to our target market. If we had of started out with more domain expertise, I’m sure we would have cracked it a lot faster.

Another mistake at the beginning was pricing too low. We thought that more people would buy if the price was low but really all this is saying to the market is that we don’t value this product and neither should you.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?

Building authority, respect and being known as innovators in our field.

You looked beyond New Zealand early on in the development of the business. What prompted that?

Once we had our pilot customer in NZ up and running we immediately looked to the US as the size of the market was far bigger and elearning was common place. NZ was a challenge as we often found ourselves educating people on the merits of moving to elearning which increased the sales cycle and drew out all sorts of random feature requests. In contrast the US sales cycle was considerably shorter as people knew what to expect in elearning software and when they saw Litmos they could instantly see the benefits over other systems.

Was being a New Zealand company an advantage or disadvantage when you landed overseas?

An advantage. Being the new kiwis on the block at various industry events opened doors to hang out with many of the well known and well connected people on the elearning circuit.

Tell us your acquisition story! :-)

This is what it’s all about right? Build up a company with a great business model that adds value to a industry and then exit.. I’ve wanted to do that since I was a kid, so in a nutshell the acquisition was a blast and a great learning experience to boot!

I spoke with our team early in 2011 and said we’re going to exit within the next 2 years; we’re in a bubble and we’re growing fast so the timing is right. By April 2011 we were starting to feel the strain of growing too quickly and not having enough resource to cope. I was concerned that we would start to throttle the growth and while we could afford to hire a couple more people we really needed to go bigger than that by seeking outside investment.

We used to get regular calls from US based VC firms just trying to scope out our growth numbers etc and our default response was always we’re not interested, we don’t need your money, goodbye. In May 2011 we received another one of these calls but this time around I was open to the idea so entertained the conversation. As it turned out it wasn’t a VC this time but in fact the M&A guy from Callidus (now Litmos’ new owner) and he wanted to get me up to San Francisco for a chat about Litmos. At this point I’m thinking cool experience, free trip and a chance to make a few new contacts. See you in three days.

I was in a great position because I really didn’t have any intention to sell Litmos, things were going great and we were going fast so why would I? On the flip side I was about to head off and start talking about something that I had no experience in so I reached out to a couple of really helpful and knowledgable guys (Lance Wiggs & Andy Hamilton) for a few tips. Lance gave me some great advice on different ways to structure a deal and Andy suggested a great book called Early Exits by Basil Peters that I read on the plane over.

Without going too far into our exit strategy, while in San Francisco I got a good feel for Callidus and where they’re heading, saw a great opportunity and two months later we had signed the deal. The only painful part was the due diligence, which in our case was fairly easy as we run a pretty tight ship…but it still sucked.

Since the acquisition some people have asked if we exited too early or made comments about keeping it kiwi owned. Personally I think this decision comes down to what the deal looks like, what the founders want and how the future looks. For us the deal looked great, it was a really high multiple and we were all really excited about the massive opportunities to leverage the Callidus sales machine and take Litmos to the next level. We were also very exited about moving to San Francisco, increasing our networks and learning more about doing business in the US.

In terms of keeping it kiwi owned, I’m not so sure that this really matters as New Zealand now has three more people with an exit under their belt who are super keen to share their experiences, make investments and ultimately come back and do it all over again. For example, all of our trips to the US over the years really helped us understand the US market and what we have to do to sell to these people. So shortly after our exit we set up an opportunity for 2 people to take their business to San Francisco for a month. I truly believe that in our case we can do more to help the NZ entrepreneurial scene by taking the early exit rather than just growing the business and hiring a bunch of employees.

What’s your ambition for the company?

To grow past 1 million learners and shake up the big dogs in the elearning industry.

What advice do you have for other founders?

Don’t give up. Always be strategic in everything you do. Measure measure measure then tweak things accordingly.

Will you do it again?

Hell yeah! The thrill of building a business, getting customers and exiting is way too addictive. Stay tuned :-)

Awesome! Congrats to you, your co-founders and the rest of the team. A fantastic success story and a great way to end the series. Thanks.

—

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December

This is the next post in the Founder Centric Startups series.

Tarik Mallett is the co-founder and CEO of Third Screen Interactive, the company behind Mobi2Go which powers the online and mobile ordering platforms for companies such as Hell Pizza, Habitual Fix and The Pita Pit.

Over to Tarik to tell you more about the company…

Third Screen Interactive was started by myself and my brother, with the dream of bringing the Dodgeball (precursor to Foursquare) experience to Kiwis. Several ‘pivots’ later, and a strong dose of reality, we have focused over the past 18 months on developing, and bringing to market, the Mobi2Go Platform.

The creation of Mobi2Go came about from talking to customers in the hospitality sector and identifying a core problem – they wanted to provide online ordering to customers but the options available were too expensive and too complicated (or, more often than not, simply lacked adequate functionality). Mobi2Go was created to take the pain, effort and related cost out of offering branded online and mobile ordering to businesses. While its application is universal, Mobi2Go is currently focussed on dominating the hospitality sector. The Mobi2Go platform is a Software as a Service offering, ensuring that our customers always have access to the latest developments and functionality. They can focus on their business rather than technology – it removes the considerable (and often prohibitive) upfront capital cost of developing their own bespoke solution which then necessarily requires ongoing investment each and every time a new feature or change is required. Our vision for Mobi2Go is simple – to be the Shopify of hospitality.

We’ve spent considerable time and effort over the past twelve months identifying the most appropriate revenue model, one which is equally attractive to single location businesses and multi-store franchises. Pricing is determined by reference to the combination of Mobi2Go modules utilized by a customer and, at a high-level, consists of an activation and monthly license fee. We experimented with a per transaction fee, but, after consultation with customers identified this was creating a barrier to entry and that they preferred a fixed monthly fee (which also assists us with cash flow certainty).

Customers learn about Mobi2Go currently from two key areas:

1. Word of mouth
2. Our partner network

When determining the appropriate sales strategy for Mobi2Go, one of the key considerations was how could we create a partner network that would help drive sales without the need for us to employ a large sales staff. This requirement was driven from experience with a previous Third Screen product where we did employ a team of sales people and consequently wasted a significant amount of financial and human resource for little to no return. We were determined not to make the same mistake twice. We’ve really only just started driving the creation of our partner network over the past three months through actively developing relationships with POS providers, resellers and creative agencies. Partners are incentivised financially, but, more often than not the value to them comes from being able to offer an innovative, added-value service to their existing offerings – this has become a powerful driver for our early adopters. Given the rapidly developing opportunities in Australia, we have also just taken on our first relationship manager in Australia to work with and support our network partners in that country. We are excited to see if we’ve cracked the model this time around. It’s early days but the indications so far are very promising.

Mobi2Go was developed with the global market in mind from the outset and we have customers across the globe (including in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK and China). We have recently signed an interconnection agreement with a global provider of technology solutions to the hospitality and retail industries headquartered in America, and are encouraged by the number of international enquiries we now receive on a weekly basis.

One area of further development is providing the true Software as a Service experience whereby customers can sign-up directly online through the Mobi2Go website thereby minimizing the touch-points from us. This will be a key area of focus for Mobi2Go in 2012 as we further grow our development team.

To date, Third Screen has been funded privately by the founders and through positive cash flow. While  there has been no shortage of offers of capital, we have been keen to stay lean until such time as we had a proven, well developed product. However, as we now look to to grow our development team from 6 to 12 in order to support our international growth opportunities and to take Mobi2Go from flying under the radar to full throttle we are in the process of implementing our first capital raising round.

One of the tough decisions we’ve had to make over the last 18 months has been drawing a line in the sand and saying no to services work. Although a great source of cash-flow for many small businesses whilst developing a product, we discovered that it was taking time and energy away from our core focus.

The key advice I have for those looking to get into business is just do it. Focus on your goals, talk to (and understand) your customers, ignore the nay-sayers and don’t get caught-up in the Silicon Valley / Welly hype of “I’m an entrepreneur”. Attending lots of events and talking a lot does not of itself make you an entrepreneur. Get stuck-in and execute a successful business then you can do all the talking you like – that’s the plan for Third Screen anyway.

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December

This is the next post in the Founder Centric Startups series.

Jon Thompson is the co-founder of Productspec. They first crossed my path in 2008 when they were the winners of the inaugural Cable Car Challenge (a business plan competition), although at that point they were already beyond business planning and well into the execution of their plan.

Like all good Irishman he’s never short of a word, and is no doubt keen to tell you more about what they are up to, so let me not stand in his way…

What’s the purpose of your company?

We produce information technology designed to make the building industry more productive.

What does your company do?

Our business is split into two areas:

Productspec – The National Building Product Database – 60,000+ architecture, design, and building products online (launched Oct 2006)

Smartspec – Specification Writing Made Simple – Software as a Service (SaaS) tool used by Architects and Designers to easily create Project Specifications (launched Oct 2011)

What is the business model?

Product Manufacturers pay an annual subscription to list in Productspec and Smartspec.

Productspec is free for the public to access, although predominantly used by architects and designers.

Smartspec is a ‘freemium’ model – the free plan is suitable for 2/3rds of the industry (sole practitioners), the paid component offers access to New Zealand Standards and additional functionality, multi-user accounts, etc.

How do potential customers learn about you?

To promote Smartspec we’re leveraging Productspec’s extensive user database (direct marketing). Additionally, one of our shareholders, Construction Marketing Services (CMS) is actively promoting Productspec/Smartspec to their national specifier network via their 1:1 specifier meetings.

We’re also running regional ‘Smartspec Workshops’ (10-20 users/prospects per session) to share knowledge and engage directly with our user-base.

How many customers do you have?

280 Product Manufacturers, 60,000+ site visitors per month to Productspec, 100 new specifiers per month joining Smartspec.

Who are the people working with you on this?

My (now) wife, Este, and I founded Productspec and initially contracted a dev shop to build the site. We quickly realised that we needed in-house permanent technical staff so soon after launch we asked Chad (the guy that built the site) to join our team (after all, he knew the infrastructure better that anyone else). Five years down the line he’s still with us and is complemented by our all-important Auckland-based Sales Team, plus technical, financial, design, and support staff in the Wellington office.

How did the business get started?

Este was working in Architectural practice, I was teaching Architecture at Vic Uni. We both wanted to work on a project that lasted longer than a few weeks or months so the world of business where we could grow, steer, and govern our ideas and energy was highly attractive. The business concept came from recognising the existing (and highly manual) traditional industry practices and understanding that there should be a better way.

How have you funded your growth so far?

Family and savings funded our initial growth and we’re proud that we were in a position to repay family within 3 years of launch.

Our primary growth strategy has always been to rely on our customers’ investment (i.e. sales!) so we’ve always had a huge focus on clear value proposition and effective selling.

What are the mistakes you’ve made?

We’ve gone off on a few ‘related’ tangents which were not financially astute though seemed good ideas at the time. With hindsight we can attribute any failures to a lack of market validation.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?

As founders, learning to recognise our skills has been fun. Both Este and I are ‘from the industry’ and whilst this is a great base, it’s not necessarily best for business – i.e., we’re not accountants, sales people, or overly IT literate. Interestingly, Este naturally took on all the back-end responsibility (accounting, project management, analytics, etc.) and I happily took on the front-end activity (client liaison, sales, marketing, business development, etc).

What’s your ambition for the company?

For our system to work harder than us..!

What advice do you have for other founders?

Build a well-rounded team (and/or Advisory Board) with complementary skills.

Understand your client: If someone’s not paying then they’re the product, not the customer.

It’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow – so rapidly build products/systems, get market validation, then tweak, tweak, tweak till perfect. And if you’re going to make mistakes, make them quickly!

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December

This is the next post in the Founder Centric Startups series.

Scott Ryburn is the co-founder of Sharesight, an online tool to help share market investors manage their portfolio.

Many great ventures get started when a founder scratches their own itch. This is a good example.

I asked Scott to tell us a little more …

What’s the purpose of your company?

Sharesight’s purpose is to make managing a portfolio an efficient, enjoyable, insightful and rewarding experience for self directed share market investors.

What does your company do?

Sharesight provides portfolio management software for share market investors. Sharesight’s provides a range of tools and reports to give investors insight into the true performance of their portfolios and take the cost and hassle out of tax and compliance reporting. Sharesight automates most of the routine data entry required to maintain a portfolio. For example as well as updating share prices, dividends, bonus issues and share splits are recorded automatically. Sharesight can automatically import trading data from a variety of online brokers. Online portfolio sharing functionality and a connection to Xero enables a more efficient and meaningful relationship between individuals and their accountant or tax advisers.

What is the business model?

Sharesight is a subscription based software as a service product. Our ‘Investor’ package is the most popular subscription and is priced at $19/month for the NZ version or $25/month for the Australian version. Our top tier ‘Expert’ subscription is $39/month. We have just (as of this week!) moved to a freemium strategy by replacing our low end $5/month ‘Starter’ subscription with a free plan. Our previous Starter plan was our least popular plan with feedback indicating that customers thought it was too expensive and too restrictive (we receive virtually no complaints about the pricing of our other subscriptions). The new free version offers substantially improved functionality over the previous Starter plan. We believe that with the introduction of the new free plan, Sharesight will be accessible to all levels of investors. We do not derive revenue from any other sources, for example there is no advertising on Sharesight.

How do potential customers learn about you?

Initially we focused purely on marketing the service directly to individual investors. Customers learn about us through search, online advertising (primarily Google adwords), or via articles written in the media (an early feature article in the Dompost Business Day being one of the most successful). Google adwords has been the most consistent and reliable form of advertising we have done to date. We did all our own PR initially with moderate success. More recently we have engaged an Australian PR firm to assist with PR Activity in Australia. We have also been reviewed and promoted (free of charge) by a couple of subscription newsletters which offer advice and recommendations to share investors.

More recently we have additionally been exploring partnership opportunities with related organisations, in particular online brokers (who are keen to enhance and differentiate their service by partnering to provide better online software to their clients) and accountants (who traditionally struggle to get accurate client portfolio data in a useful format).

Who are the people working with you on this?

There are now eight people involved in the business. My father Tony and I founded the business along with local software developers Nigel Ramsay and Marcus Baguley. We also have an additional full time developer as well as Marketing and board level input from Terry Allen who represents our NZ investors, and two staff in our Sydney office (investor and Executive Director Andrew Bird, and a business development manager). We also have a summer of tech design intern working with us over summer.

How did the business get started?

The idea came from my father, as keen share market investor he couldn’t find any decent software to help him manage his portfolio and comply with NZ tax reporting requirements. I also began searching for a solution for him but couldn’t find anything. This left him doing what everyone else we knew seemed to be doing – recording everything manually in a spreadsheet.

Eventually we decided there must be a better way and set out to investigate building a commercially viable solution. Step one was to approach someone in the industry for advice, in our case this was Rod Drury who was generous enough to invite us to his house one evening after work for a crash course in founding a software business. On Rod’s recommendation, step two was to approach local designer Hayden Vink who collaborated with us to design a series of wireframes and screen mockups. We considered engaging in some more formal market research but were not convinced that we could get meaningful results without spending a lot of money so we opted instead to build a lean mean prototype, get it out there and see what happened. We approached a number of developers (both independent contractors and small firms) but recognised that ideally we needed developers to be co-fouders in the business rather than contractors. Hayden introduced us to Michael Koziarski, who introduced us to Nigel and Marcus. They were keen to develop v1 of Sharesight on a sweat equity basis, so with a modest amount of start-up funding from my father we spent six months or so building Sharesight to a point where we could begin acquiring our first customers.

How have you funded your growth so far?

We were self funded initially but quickly realised that we were going to need more cash to accelerate the business to reach it’s full potential. We also recognised that a significant opportunity was present in the Australian market but Sharesight required more development to capitalise on this. We approached a number of investors and eventually received seed funding through Sparkbox and NZVIF.

The funding allowed us to build out the Australian version of Sharesight and brought Sharesight to the attention of Australian investor (and ex-Morningstart CEO) Andrew Bird. We completed a second investment round through Andrew and his business partner at the start of this year.

How did you solve the problem of starting a venture and having a job?

For me this was a combination of living off savings, delaying ambitions to buy first house and financial support from family. I’d already bitten the bullet and given up my day job to work on another venture that ultimately didn’t take off.

What are the mistakes you’ve made?

I think generally we managed to make the right decisions when it counted. Although it worked out well for us in the end, I think we should have planned further in advance around getting our first round of investment, which was a more lengthy and distracting process than we imagined.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?

Marketing the product has definitely been the biggest challenge. We found it very hard to get traction in Australia until this year when we were able to get staff on the ground over there. As a small, newly established company we’ve also had to work hard at building credibility our in the market.

What’s your ambition for the company?

We want to change the industry so that investors have a real, credible, and dramatically cheaper alternative to costly managed services such as wrap platforms. Our focus is in Australasia at present, but ultimately we think the same sorts of opportunities exist further afield.

What advice do you have for other founders?

Make sure your company addresses a problem or need that really exists.

Build a team that believes in the what you are doing and is prepared to take on some risk in order to share in the rewards (at least in the early stages).

Be prepared to be in it for the long haul and stick it out during tough times. Very few companies are overnight successes, they take hard work and dedication.

Know your weaknesses and try to build a team with a range of relevant skills

Put some hard work on the line to build a product and demonstrate potential before seeking funding.

Don’t waste too much time or make too many sacrifices chasing business grants etc, focus on your core business first and foremost.

Take advice from others, but ultimately do what you feel is right. There is no secret formula and every business is different, what works for someone may not work for you. You know your business better than anyone, so back yourself to make the right decisions.

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December

This is the next post in the Founder Centric Startups series.

For the end of the week, here is a special TGIF/YWSN edition, featuring … a start-up brewery!

Jos Ruffell is one of the co-founders of Garage Project, who have their global HQ in Aro Valley in Wellington.

In his previous life he was Head of Business Development at Sidhe Interactive, where amongst many other things he helped setup Pik Pok, their hugely successful iPhone games division (you may have spotted their Flick Kick app amongst those featured in the latest Apple TV commercial).

Earlier this year he left all of that behind to pursue a couple of other exciting opportunities.

Over to Jos to tell you more about his fast growing beer empire …

What’s the purpose of your company?

Garage Project’s mission is to be recognised globally as one of the world’s finest craft breweries. We achieve this by bringing a relentlessly experimental, artisanal approach to brewing.

What does your company do?

We are a craft brewery, and produce exciting and memorable beers targeted primarily at discerning beer drinkers.

What is the business model?

Our business model is quite traditional. We sell our product wholesale to bars and they retail to the public. By brewing special and unique beers we are able to command premium pricing. We will eventually offer direct ‘cellar door’ sales within our urban Wellington brewery, as well as online sales of select products.

How do potential customers learn about you?

We are very selective of the outlets that stock our products. We focus on specialist beer bars and work closely with them to promote and display our products. The company you keep speaks volumes about your brand, and we are conscious to only have Garage Project be available in like minded venues and outlets.

We are also very transparent and open through blog posts and social media to engage with our core customers. Fortunately, craft beer aficionados are very wired, and like to chat about the beers they are enjoying through Twitter, so we can engage directly with our fans.

How many customers do you have?

It’s hard to say exactly how many direct customers we have at the moment. We view Garage Project like a movement that has a core group of fans at the heart, and is expanding out from there. Each week when we release a new beer, we have a dedicated following who line up to ensure they get a pint. A constant thought in the back of our minds is the adage of ‘crossing the chasm’ – how can we move from one bar to many (scale) while remaining true to the spirit and qualities that have proven successful already.

Who are the people working with you on this?

The core team of Garage Project is me and Pete Gillespie, my partner and brewer in the business. On top of this we have a network of supports who work directly and indirectly in the business, helping with our planning, strategy, design and brand work.

We’ve found the business to be very magnetic, and have been fortunate to drawn in some very talented people around the table. Despite being a small business we have a strong team helping push it forward outside of just the cores strengths of Pete and myself. Having beer as an end product certainly helps with this, but it’s been a good litmus test along the way that our approach was unique and interesting enough to garner support around it.

How did the business get started?

I’d known Pete all my life as a family friend, and knew that he attempting to launch his own brewery in Australia, but was facing tough regulatory issues. In my previous career in the Videogames Industry, I had travelled fairly extensively through North America and Europe, and developed a taste for Craft Beer. It was clear that the general drinking trends were changing, and when I returned to New Zealand, despite there being generally good craft beer available, there was nothing like the beers I had grown accustomed to in my travels. At the same time, Wellington was developing a strong craft beer bar scene, yet had no brewery operating in the City. Pete was excited by the prospect of returning to New Zealand with his family, and it seemed like a real opportunity to develop a great brewery within Wellington.

We worked for many months remotely outside of our existing jobs. We used this time to consider different approaches, and really for myself, to be learn the brewing industry and become familiar with the production process, international and local markets.

When Lion Nathan pulled the Mac’s brewery out of the Wellington Waterfront, we saw this is a catalyst for action. It seemed crazy to us that there was no longer any functional brewery in Wellington, yet demand for local craft beer was clearly growing rapidly.

How have you funded your growth so far?

We have bootstrapped the growth of the business so far. We spent time carefully considering the possible roll out of the business, and decided that a bootstrapped approach would suit us best. Brewing is a very capital intensive exercise, requiring significant fixed asset investment.

Although we were confident we could raise the money to start a ‘big brewery’ from day one, we felt that it would limit our ability to create unique and interesting beers, and that there would be a pressure to launch with a more safe range of beers, and use traditional marketing to convince people to try our products. Our gut reaction to that approach would be that we could launch eventually after months or even years or working to write business plans and raise capital, and potential debut with beers that nobody would care about. It wasn’t a unique or different approach and the beer would ultimately suffer if we didn’t allow ourselves time to get stuck in and rapidly iterate and prototype beers.

The alternative to this was to start with an impractically small brew kit that we could fund ourselves, and launch with incredibly small brews that would be unique, risky and open to consumer feedback. The rapid develop and release model software model applied to brewing. We did this 50L at a time and launched under a programme called 24/24 – making and releasing 24 different beer styles in 24 weeks. We’re currently up to #21.

This was the only approach in our minds that would give us the freedom to develop and test beers that could potentially be truly great, or sometimes, complete failures. In any case, it would be exciting and memorable for our core target customers, and way to develop the brand in a genuine way.

Alongside this, it would allow us to identify and attract partners and investors that believe in what we are doing, and help take us to the next stage with the purchase of a larger brew kit. We have achieved this now, and have a core group of investors behind Garage Project. We worked hard to attract people that would bring much more than just money to the table and each investor has a clear area of expertise that they bring to the table beyond just money. I think they are attracted to the investment by a combination of the existing momentum behind the business, the passion and energy that has gone into it to date, and the opportunities that the craft beer market present at the moment.

We found these investors by working personal networks and being very open about what we were planning with the brewery. By talking to as many people about the business early on, it really forced action and put us on a critical path to keep going. We were determined not to be another guy in the bar who talked about ‘maybe starting a brewery one day’, and would rather get stuck in and make it happen.

We knew that the launch phase would not be economically sustainable other than covering direct overheads. Both Pete and I worked for as long as we could before taking the plunge and leaving our safety net behind. It really has been all or nothing to develop the business – the chicken or the pig so to speak and in our minds there was no way around this.

What are the mistakes you’ve made?

We’ve made many mistakes along the way, but by launching early, and at a small scale we’ve been able to mitigate them and take key lessons without jeopardising the whole venture. We have made classic mistakes like underestimating the cost of certain parts of the start-up, and the time things will take.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?

Maintaining the aggressive brewing and release schedule of a new beer a week has been challenging. Each release has typically been brewed for the very first time, which makes for an exciting and nervous moment as it goes on tap that week, but it condenses down our learning and discovery curve enormously, and has been worth the risk.

We’ve also found it challenging to continue to develop and build our brand when our product is only available for a couple hours each week. One week we sold out within 70 minutes of going on tap!

What’s your ambition for the company?

Our ambition is to be recognised globally as one of the world’s finest craft breweries. We have started with a very experimental and challenging mentality, and we want to continue developing and releasing new beers made with passion and an artisanal approach.

We want Garage Project to be served on tap in the world’s greatest beer bars and be seen as part of the vanguard in the movement of craft beer.

What advice do you have for other founders?

Share your idea early with people that you respect. It’s the quickest and fastest way to see if there is something unique and worthwhile to pursue. For someone like me who is susceptible to procrastination, it’s a great way to build momentum and put you on a critical path of action. Do your homework but know when it’s time to act. Build and release early. Identify and focus on your core customers and look for early sales. Paying customers is the best validation for your business.

Thanks Jos!

I should also mention, it’s our last 24/24 beer next Tuesday 20th at Hashigo Zake at 5pm. We have three new beers going on, and should be a fun night!

Excellent, cheers! :-)

Here are some of the fantastic posters the guys have put together to promote some of the different brews released so far (click to view full size):

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December

This is the next post in the Founder Centric Startups series.

Dan Lee (@youdodan) is the founder and CEO of YouDo, a software services business based in Wellington. They are the development company behind many successful websites, including Powershop and NZ On Screen.

But, today I’ve asked him to tell us a bit more about their spin-off start-up, called Beetil…

What’s the purpose of your company?

Our purpose is to build the world’s easiest service management system, to help small to medium IT companies manage their technology more effectively.

What does your company do?

Beetil is a software-as-a-service based service management tool that helps small to medium (and the odd large) IT organisation manage the services they provide to their customers more effectively.

What is the business model?

Nice and simple. We charge on a per user per month basis. The service management tool market is very large, and pretty crowded, but our relentless focus on “making things easier” for the user means we have carved out a nice little niche.

How do potential customers learn about you?

We rely on word of mouth, some good Google juice, and a healthy sprinkling of Adwords. I’ll be honest though, we’ve done bugger all marketing really. But that’s changing.

How many customers do you have?

We have over 80 companies around the world using our product. Approximately a third are based in North America, a third in the EU, and the other third in NZ and Australia.

Who are the people working with you on this?

Beetil keeps three people employed full time, but often draws upon the skills and expertise from YouDo, which is our specialist Ruby on Rails development shop.

How did the business get started?

It all started with the frustration of not being able to find a service management tool that was suited to small to medium companies. Having been a CIO and IT manager in my previous lives, I’d never come across any service management tool that I thought suited an SME. The cheap ones were just too simple and amateurish. The expensive ones did everything including making you a cup of tea, but came with hefty price tags. All of them were ugly, unusable, and made peoples’ lives a misery. Sensing an opportunity, we researched the market a little more and confirmed our suspicions.  There were lots of other SMEs who agreed with us, and none could offer up a solution that suited them. YouDo was going great guns at the time, and we always wanted to move into product. And so Beetil was born.

How have you funded your growth so far?

We’re the classic bootstrappers. We’ve funded the development of Beetil through the profits we’ve made from YouDo. Not a single drop of investment from outside. It’s worked well but, particularly in the early days, it was pretty hard juggling the priorities of product development vs services you had to deliver to bring in the dollars. Now that we have a good customer base and some good steady income it’s far less of an issue. That said, as CEO of YouDo and CEO of Beetil, I know that one day soon I won’t be able to do both justice.

What are the mistakes you’ve made?

We’ve made plenty of them, that’s for sure. When you’re building product, it’s easy to get carried away with all of the sexy stuff, and take your eyes away from the more (seemingly) mundane tasks such as finance and planning. Set yourself up as a company from the outset, and even if you’re bootstrapping the business, run it like you’re running a proper company and treat the bootstrapped cash as “funding”. It sounds so obvious, but we didn’t do this, and there’s no doubt we wasted a good chunk of money as a result. Whilst product development is fun, you’re dealing with (often your own) money, so you need to be disciplined.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?

Selling. We initially took the approach that if build a good enough product then the product would sell itself. There’s no doubt that this still makes a lot of sense, but you still have to get the right people coming to your front door, and you still need to help a lot of them “over the line”. It’s really important to know who your target market actually is. Beetil has been live for over two years now and it’s only in the last few months that we have really confirmed exactly who our target market is. We always had a “sense”, but it was still too wide – and we probably wasted a lot of cash going to the wrong conferences, or sales pitches to the “wrong customers”.

What’s your ambition for the company?

We’d love to see Beetil become one of the “de-facto” IT service management tools. Much like when you think of cloud based project management tools you think of Basecamp, we’d like people to think Beetil when talking cloud based service management tools. We’ve got a good steady growth rate and are already turning a small profit so have a stable base to build a profitable business in it’s own right. If we keep on going at the rate we are we’ll be doing very well thank you sir.

What advice do you have for other founders?

It’s all common sense really. Common. Sense. Everyone’s read the books, people will offer you plenty of (the same) advice, but it boils down to the fact that you are building a business here, not just a product. If you’re a geek like me, you’ll find that hard. We’ve found that having an independent voice we can trust has been a massive help. And it stops us from sticking heads too far up our own backsides.

I think the other piece of advice I’d have is to stick it out when the times get tough. You’ll experience a roller coaster of emotions with your new baby, but when the times get tough you need to get tough yourself and stick it out. It’s really sad to see the number of potentially promising ventures just pack up and go home at the first sign of trouble. A good dose of common sense and good bit of planning (see first point of advice!) should see you through. I subscribe to the “fail early, fail often” mantra – I’m just saying that life ain’t always a bed of roses. So harden up.

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December

This is the next post in the Founder Centric Startups series.

Layton Duncan is the co-founder of Polar Bear Farm, based in Christchurch. 

Through good timing and amazing foresight he managed to position himself in front of a massive emerging wave, as the developer of the very first paid native iPhone app, even before Apple officially allowed apps like this to be developed.

However it hasn’t been all smooth sailing.

A successful company with a single founder is rare, so usually the advice for founders is to find other like minded people to work with you on your venture. However, this doesn’t always work out the way that you’d hope, and unless it’s managed carefully the relationship between founders can end up tearing a company apart.

This is something that Layton has had to deal with, and I appreciate his honesty in describing the effect this has had on the venture. 

I’ll let him take up the story right from the beginning…

What’s the purpose of your company?

To create mobile software to help people to get their job done efficiently.

What does your company do?

We create productivity software for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, enabling business to exploit the massive productivity benefits brought by the mobile revolution. Our core product is a rapid application development platform called Air Forms. It allows business to create native looking and feeling iPad and iPhone interfaces into their existing database systems, without having to worry about custom app development, or coding. Interfaces are created and wired to databases through a GUI based builder tool, and can be distributed across a large number of iOS devices, all without writing a line of code.

What is the business model?

Primarily licenses from software sales, with a minor recurring subscription fees on some services which require hosted backend services.

How do potential customers learn about you?

Primarily through the iTunes App Store, although some products via Business Managers at Apple Retail Stores, external consultancy companies who create and sell solutions based on our platform, and finally cross promotion of products through existing customer contact, and occasional online advertising.

How many customers do you have?

Several million combined across free and paid versions of our products.

Who are the people working with you on this?

I founded the company, and got a long time friend on as co-founder shortly after, but parted ways around a year in. The company has been up and down over the past four years up to five employees now down to two, constrained mainly by the ability to find quality employees.

How did the business get started?

From the announcement of the first iPhone at the beginning of 2007, it seemed immediately obvious to me that there would be huge potential for 3rd party software for the iPhone. It was so radically different, the interface so rich, the device so powerful that it seemed inevitable. Apple wasn’t at all interested in real 3rd party apps initially. Their ‘sweet solution’ for developers, announced just before the device was to ship, was a ‘nice’ but ultimately limiting web application solution. As soon as the iPhone was released in the US, I got one shipped over, unlocked it and got it running on a cell network here. Around that time, there were a handful of people working on creating the tool-chains (cross compiler, and associated tools) so that they could start coding and building native applications for this device, given Apple were not providing any official native development tools. Pretty soon the app which Apple’s App Store was later to be modelled off, called “Installer”, was released. This offered a central repository for all the unofficial native iPhone apps that were starting to pop up, there were no payment mechanisms and it was primarily filled with experimental apps from hackers, trying to reverse engineer the frameworks.

Frustrated with the total lack of search functionality on the original iPhone, over the space of a weekend I wrote a utility called ‘Search’ which let users search contacts, calendar events, emails, SMS etc, and posted it on a forum, with a $10 license fee. Within hours the money started rolling in. It was the very first paid native iPhone app in the world, and it took off fast! We decided to fly to San Francisco to exhibit what I was building at Macworld Expo.

It was almost a year after we started that Apple open the iTunes App Store, opening up the iPhone for official 3rd party development. Looking back, it seemed kind of crazy starting a company creating software for a device that pundits said was far too expensive and would be a flop, which you couldn’t even officially build software for, then selling that software to people who couldn’t officially install it on their iPhones, and had to jump through ridiculous hoops to then pay for it.

How have you funded your growth so far?

Totally bootstrapped. The company was profitable virtually immediately after a weekends worth of development. I had a software consultancy business through university, and Polar Bear Farm was founded a year after I had graduated.

What are the mistakes you’ve made?

The most significant mistake was very early on, before the company was incorporated.

Shortly after releasing our first app, and seeing the immediate and accelerating success, I had asked a friend to come on board to help try and build a real company. I had been through school with him since the age of 7, and he was one of those people with the gift of the gab, a person who’d be great in sales and promotion. Being an engineer, but with a business bent, I was interested in branding and promotion to some extent, but I was far more interesting in building products. However, I failed to be rational in valuing what I was bringing to the newly formed company, (an existing product with real cash flow, unique development knowledge etc) vs what he was bringing in skills. So the company was formed with 50:50 shareholding.

Less than a year down the track, after some pretty frank discussions on the reason I brought him on board in the first place, and the direction of the company, he decided he wanted to do other things. We had a shareholders agreement from the outset, which made clear what was to happen in this situation. That made things easier in that everyone knew how it was to work. But it was then that I realised I’d really made a serious mistake initially in valuing contributions as 50:50. I think I justified it to myself at the time as ‘in the scheme of things, the future potential is so huge that the extra value I was bringing initially would be insignificant in the long run’. That was totally wrong, it’s the here and now that matters, not speculation on what might be.

When the split happened, it almost destroyed the company.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?

First dealing with the aftermath of the split. Financially it basically reset the company to square one, which was tough. It also destroyed a long standing friendship - I don’t think we’ve spoken since the day I handed him the bank cheque to buy him out three years ago.

Then of course mother nature has smacked us all around here in Christchurch. It’s still hard to believe it even happened, still living with the realities of unsettled insurance claims, a make shift office, and the city that I had built a working environment that I loved, totally destroyed, and most tragically of all, a long time business friend killed in the CTV building collapse. It all tends to put other things on hold, or at least into slow motion.

Right now, the biggest challenge is finding quality employees who don’t necessarily have direct experience in iOS development, but who have ‘Apple DNA’ (for lack of a better description). Then, once I find them, convincing them Christchurch is the place to be!

What’s your ambition for the company?

To create products of significant value to people that are the highest quality and totally ubiquitous in their class world over.

What advice do you have for other founders?

If you’re considering bringing co-founder(s) on board, read this:
http://www.64notes.com/dear-co-founder-open-letter-to-your-co-founder/

If you don’t feel exactly that way about those people you’re considering, don’t do it. Got even the slightest hesitation? Don’t go there.

If you don’t have the right people in the team that can cripple your company. As painful as it may be, as soon as you realise it’s not working you need to cut them out and move on as fast as possible.

Intuition is important, don’t suppress it. If you feel something’s not right, tackle it head on. If you feel something is right, pursue it. I think intuition is the brain’s subconscious pattern matcher at play, pulling on all your past experience to trying to answer questions your conscious struggles with. Well that’s my theory anyway. Just roll with it, if it turns out you’re wrong, then you’ll learn something, which just improves your intuition.

Like all work, make sure you enjoy the ride. The final destination in start-up life is an ever moving target, the highs are high, the lows can be low, just try to create more highs than lows.

Hunt out diversity. Great engineers are creative, and have diverse interests.

Always be honest, both to yourself, and others.

Play nice. Karma’s a bitch.

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December

This is the next post in the Founder Centric Startups series.

John-Daniel (JD) is one of the co-founders at Mindscape.

They have taken a classic bootstrap approach to building this business, and I’ve enjoyed following their progress. I remember their original office, and it wasn’t salubrious, but given where they have gotten to now this only makes the story better!

If you’d like to know more, you can follow JD on Twitter (@traskjd) or on his personal blog.

In the meantime I’ll leave it to him to tell you the story so far, and share some of the mistakes they have made and lessons learned…

I have always wanted to run my own business.

I had run a PC repair business and set up an online technology retailing business while at university, and even sold software at high school to help my friends hide their internet ‘adventures’. So business was always in my blood.

Out of university I only applied for one job, at Intergen, on the premise that if they hired me I would learn what a ‘real company’ was like and, if they didn’t, I would just go full time on my own ventures. Thankfully they did hire me and it was an amazing place to work – I tried very hard to appreciate how the business operated and enjoyed the brief moments talking about the business specifics with the company directors. I might have been the only person other than the directors that thought the financial reporting at the Friday drinks was the best part!

I met some great people at Intergen and never made any secret of my desire to one day leave and do my own thing. After three years, aged 23, two colleagues at Intergen, Jeremy Boyd and Andrew Peters, joined me in starting Mindscape. We split the company evenly and rented one of the cheapest office spaces in Wellington, above a drug and alcohol rehab clinic and got to work. It is probably bad taste, but I always joked that if we failed in the software game we could always start selling glue outside the clinic. Thankfully it never came to that.

Our ambition was to build a globally recognised developer tools company from New Zealand. We were all pretty sick and tired of the poor quality tools we were used to working with and felt we could do better. Developers were losing a lot of time to unproductive tools that always needed workarounds or hacks to make them work and we wanted to change that.

Building a smart team was critical and although Andrew left the company shortly after it started, we bought him out of his part of the business and started getting employees onboard. I work on the approach of surrounding yourself with people smarter than yourself, and we have been very fortunate to find some all star developers to join our product team.

In terms of investment, Mindscape is entirely self funded. When we started the company we each chipped in $10k and have never needed to put in additional capital. We backed ourselves that we could make some money so while it was scary stepping out we had enough confidence that it did not cause too many sleepless nights. We seemed to be practicing the Lean Startup mentality before it became popular. I’m personally of the belief that until somebody has a few business wins under their belt that starting with a lot of money is a hindrance to creating a profitable business – not having a lot of money makes you hungry.

We kept costs super low when we started as you can probably tell from the initial office location (we now have a nice quiet space at the top of a building on The Terrace in Wellington :-). We put together the most pessimistic financial projections for the first 12 months and when we were comfortable we could all survive with that we knew we would be alright.

Our focus was on cracking the product market rather than services market so we planned to undertake ad-hoc services work as we developed and then grew the product side of the business. Thankfully, due to the reputations of the founders, and in particular Jeremy Boyd, we obtained lucrative services opportunities without ever needing to actively shop our service capability. This provided much needed cashflow, particularly in the early days.

We also have had amazing assistance from our own networks – far too many to name, but it’s one of the major benefits to the ‘New Zealand is a village’ aspect to doing business here.

Since then we have focused hard on growing the product part of the business while tapering off the services side as it becomes less core to the business. While it has felt like a mountain at times we have seen incredibly strong growth for our products, particularly as the effects of the organic growth for obtaining new customers have really kicked in.

These days Mindscape primarily delivers tools and frameworks for .NET developers. The products range from frameworks that assist in efficiently working with data, UI controls for applications, to editing tools for cutting edge web development. The ultimate aim of every product is to save the customer a lot of time while delivering more robust solutions.

Our products are priced per developer with a 12 month subscription for new releases. Because we offer new releases of the software every night and provide support which exceeds everyone’s expectations this means our customers get a connection to the software unlike they get from any of our competitors. The products range in price from $29 USD to $1199 USD per developer and are sold directly to customers through our website.

Today we have thousands of customers. A customer could be a lone wolf developer or it could be the Los Angeles County Health Department (who are a customer of ours!). The variance is significant in how much revenue a customer generates for our business.

People are often surprised about our customers though — we have some profile in New Zealand but nearly all our customers are overseas. We have been exporting since the second sale of our first product and are super proud of the fact that we’re just quietly kicking ass on behalf of New Zealand. Some of the organisations that rely on our software include Microsoft, Intel, Electronic Arts, Xero, The US Strategic Defence Agency, NATO, Dell and thousands more. It gives a real buzz knowing these organisations chose our products.

We invest in marketing but the biggest way we get new customers is by word of mouth. There’s a very organic process that works well with our target audience – software developers get religious about tools and they also seem to like switching jobs or they are highly mobile because they are work contract for their customers. Once we have a customer loving a Mindscape product, they get a whole team of people working with it. After a while folks on that team start to move off to other companies and they in turn introduce these wonderful Mindscape products to other developers and then that organisation becomes a new customer. It’s a very nice cycle.

Today the ambition for Mindscape is to be a globally recognised name in quality software development tools. We’re doing well with that as our products and delivery model frequently are head and shoulders above many of our competitors.

Longer term, for myself personally, I want to help in building a stable of strong global businesses based in New Zealand. Mindscape is the first and I hope to have it provide returns in the future that help me personally deliver on my vision for making New Zealand known for an amazing technology sector. The internet kills the tyranny of distance and we need to take advantage of that.

What are the mistakes you’ve made?

Where do I start! I’ve always liked the saying that making mistakes is fine as long as they’re not fatal.

1) Getting comfortable.

I’ve blogged about this.

Year three of Mindscape could have been better – we had managed to break through to being quite comfortable as we were making good money, life seemed good and in turn I felt I personally took my foot off the pedal after two years of trying to outrun failure. I think it’s normal to take a breather, and I probably needed it, but retrospect it was a mistake – we could be futher ahead now than we are if we’d stayed pedal to the metal.

2) Outsourcing marketing

We tried using an agency in the US assist us with online advertising and marketing. They cost us a significant sum of money and did such a poor job that it was costing us more time just chasing them and fixing their mistakes than doing it ourselves. While costly both in terms of time and money, it was a well learned lesson and we’re doing better keeping that focus internal to the business.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?

1) Marketing costs

I remember thinking how clever it is to sell on the internet – you can reach the WHOLE WORLD! You know what costs an absolute fortune? Marketing to the whole freakin’ world! You have to pick your battles, know which tiny niche to start focusing on and be really clever at how to build your audience. We are not marketers, and we have spent significant money experimenting and learning what works well for us.

2) Staff costs

Every business typically has staff costs as their largest expense – I’m not complaining. Unlike in a services company where you want a diverse spread of pay rates to ensure you can maximise returns on the cheaper staff, we have no such benefit in a product company. We need to deliver amazing products, we need to ensure the quality is sky high and that means paying for top notch development capability and that’s not cheap.

3) Having a founder leave

It cut both Jeremy and I deeply when Andrew announced his intention to leave. It really put us in a spin for a while. Looking back, it was the best thing for us. I’m thankful he left so soon after forming rather than years later when the company was 1. worth a lot more 2. more established and his leaving could have done more damage to company morale.

4) Not charging enough

New Zealanders have such a small view of the world that we always price things based on our appreciation of value. We were charging $200 for products that competitors were charging over $1000 for. The business version of ‘judging a book by its cover’ is ‘judging quality by price’ — we had far superior products but customers were not buying because they would assume that if a competitor priced at 5X the price, they must be 5X better. If you’re an NZ based technology exporter I would place money on the fact you’re charging too little. We increased prices substantially and volume rose.

Any specific advice for other founders?

1) Be friends with lawyers

We started off working with two law firms relatively early on. This more recently has increased to working with four. Sounds expensive but it’s not — we have saved ourselves from being ripped off and had expert legal advice that has also saved us precious time. Do not skimp on legal.

2) Hire the absolute best you can

We always get asked ‘how many people are in your company?’. For some reason, the conventional thinking is stuck in the industrial age where bigger is better. Bigger is worse in my opinion when it comes to software product focused companies. We have a lean team, but also an insanely great team.

I recently discovered that a competitor of ours has over 500 staff members! My jaw was on the floor. Theirs was also on the floor when they discovered how small we were in terms of staff despite our product lines being very comparable.

3) Have a co-founder

If I had a billion dollars I would still get a co-founder. I feel so sorry for folks that do not have a co-founder. Jeremy has been an amazing person to work with — he and I are very complementary. He sees things I do not, and vice versa. Every founder should be so lucky as to have a co-founder as good as Jeremy has been for me.

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December

This is the next post in the Founder Centric Startups series.

Richard Humphries is the founder of Trade Tested, an online retailer selling the sort of things that many people probably assume are not ideally suited to selling online – generators, garden sheds, and the like.

I was lucky to work with Richard at Trade Me – his job in those days was to try and sift through the mountain of metrics and numbers and identify possible improvements or optimisations. He has a great analytical mind as well as a nose for a business opportunity – before we hired him he was a big seller on the site and it’s great to see him attempting to take this to the next level with his new business.

Over to Richard to tell you more about what he’s working on…

What’s the purpose of your company?

To deliver great deals from manufacturer to consumer.

What does your company do?

We sell a range of quality own-brand utility goods in home, outdoor/garden and semi-industrial/farming.

What is the business model?

It’s a modern mail-order business. So we run a highly efficient sales, marketing and logistics operation to get the best everyday prices to consumers.

How do potential customers learn about you?

We market online and in print. We’re also the 2nd biggest seller on Trade Me.

Who are the people working with you on this?

There are currently three of us. I worked at Trade Me as an analyst and on marketplace improvements from 2004 to 2011 with a break in the middle when I spent time in roles at Yahoo! and Fatso. Terry Metcalfe (also ex Trade Me) runs sales, operations and Zoe looks after our customer service. Terry was my account manager at Trade Me so had a pretty good head start when he came on board six months ago.

How did the business get started?

Very humbly. I’ve been selling on Trade Me for many years on the side for pocket money. In the early days I sold mobile phones and last season watches and later I switched to selling returned Dell laptops.

How have you funded your growth so far?

It’s entirely self funded. I started in April 2010 and kept my full time job at Trade Me until August 2011. The balance was hard and soaked up all my time outside work. I was lucky to have an extremely supportive employer.

What are the mistakes you’ve made?

In my determination to run this as lean as possible I didn’t commit realistic resource in the first year, especially with customer support. I ended up pissing some customers off which just ends up in more work and no chance of repeat business. I may have a fairly wide skill set, but I’m a disaster when it comes to customer support so I should have handed that to someone else early on.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?

Trying to run a low overhead retail business is fine when you sell easy products like books and CDs, but we’re dealing with some pretty support heavy products. Things go wrong and we need to be there to help people out. It’s a balance of keeping the model efficient while satisfying customers.

What’s your ambition for the company?

Make customers happy and continue to build repeat and word of mouth business.

Be trusted.

Hit sales targets.

We’re looking forward to launching Shed Master garden sheds in Australia in January.

What advice do you have for other founders?

Always keep trying new things.

Do more of what works and stop doing what doesn’t.

Other guest posts in this series:

• Dr Sam Hazledine, MedRecruit, 5th December
• Dave ten Have, Ponoko, 6th December
• Marie-Claire Andrews, SmartShow, 7th December
• Nik Wakelin, MinuteDock, 8th December
• Vaughan Rowsell, Vend, 9th December
• Andrew Mayfield, Optimal Workshop, 10th December
• Richard Humphries, Trade Tested, 11th December
• John-Daniel Trask, Mindscape, 12th December
• Layton Duncan, Polar Bear Farm, 13th December
• Dan Lee, Beetil, 15th December
• Jos Ruffell, Garage Project, 16th December
• Scott Ryburn, Sharesight, 18th December
• Michael Dowse, Go Vocab, 19th December
• Jon Thompson, Productspec, 20th December
• Tarik Mallett, Third Screen Interactive, 21st December
• Rich Chetwynd, Litmos, 23rd December