Innovation in Software

Some time ago I setup an online bookshop with Amazon.co.uk and their aStore tool. It’s not had much love for the last six months, but I’m going to be putting a fair bit more time into it in the next couple of weeks. If you have any suggestions for products or books that should be featured, please let me know in the comments.

The observant will also notice that as of today, at the bottom of each post above the comments is a little ‘tag cloud’ of relevant Amazon products. Amazon’s algorithms are a little whacky at times, so it might take a while for genuinely useful products to show up. I’m tempted to change this into something more traditional, but I want to see how this new kind of advertising might work.

I also intend in the next few weeks to introduce a very small Google AdSense block onto individual story pages placed between the headline and the article body. If you’re reading this site through the feed – and if you can’t or don’t want to use a feed reader, you can now subscribe to feed updates via email using the form in the sidebar – you won’t see any adverts, ever.

These moves are just meant for the 11,000+ people who pass by here every year without ever stopping by again: they obviously didn’t get any value out of what I wrote, so perhaps somebody else can help them.

If people find these moves really intrusive, I’ll obviously reconsider them.

Manoj points me this morning to SeedCamp an almost-clone of Y-Combinator. If you’re a technology start-up the deal is this:

• You apply online with your idea for a technology start-up
• 20 teams get picked to spend a week in London where “there will be a diverse mentor network of serial entrepreneurs, corporates, product designers, venture capitalists, recruiters, marketing specialists, lawyers and accountants that will help the selected teams put together the foundations of a viable business”
• At the end of the week up to 5 ‘winners’ are picked. They’re each given €50,000 for a 10% stake in their businesses
• Those 5 teams move to London for 3 months and burn the €50,000 working on the business.
• 10 weeks in, you’re sat down with investors looking to get to the next level

Sound good? This is a disaster waiting to happen.

The Y-Combinator model which SeedCamp seeks to “be close to” is flawed on many levels. Mike Taber discusses this around Y-Combinator better than I could but all his points apply to SeedCamp, with just a few extra flaws in this model:

• The week-long programme at the start with all the experts almost sounds like a Hack Day format. It’s not. Those experts are not there to help you with your business – they’re there to help SeedCamp’s. It will be a grueling week, and the whole purpose is getting you used to toning down the passion and framing things in a way that makes accountants and lawyers happy. I’m not convinced that’s a good thing.
• Whilst Y-Combinator want 6%, SeedCamp want 10%. It doesn’t matter that before you apply it means you think your idea is worth exactly €500k and not a penny more (or that SeedCamp think it’s worth not a penny less), you’re already in a weak position. Be aware right now, the moment you go into this and you take the money, it’s not your idea any more. It’s the same with any investor, but you’re jumping in with these guys pretty quick: they grill you for a week, but there’s no clue about what they’re going to do for you other than give you €50k. Trust me on this if you never trust me on anything else: your smallest worry as a start up is going to be money. Your biggest problems are going to be around how to do things you’ve never done before – you need to be sure when you take investment, the guys with the cash actually know what they’re doing with start-ups and are going to give you dedicated support beyond bank transfers.
• I can’t imagine any EU-based investor getting into a technology start-up after 10 weeks of solid development. I have no idea what happens on the tail end of this, but the SeedCamp model seems to be thinking that their investment is going to make you fly quickly, and if it doesn’t… well… hmmmm…

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: you can start a business with a few hundred quid. You need a computer, you need to know how to code, you need to know how to sell, you need to be dedicated and you need to be able to listen. That’s it.

You don’t need: business cards; investors; €50k; marketing experts; product designers; lawyers; accountants; printed letter heads; offices; a secretary; a phone system; or in fact, any of the things people who take funding spend the money on. You need a big pile of cash like you need a bullet in your head.

One of the few books I’ve read with this as its message that really made sense for me was Bootstrapping your Business by Greg Gianforte and Marcus Gibson. I saw Gianforte speak at MMU Business School once, and his message that you just get started with selling and deal with the rest later was blunt, fresh and quite reassuring. He started several businesses with nothing and built them up to 9-figure businesses before exiting, so he clearly knows what he’s talking about. That’s my preferred route – it seems simpler.

The only real advantage I’ve seen to taking investment is that you can buy in expertise you wouldn’t get otherwise, but you run the risk of becoming nothing more than a talking shop – the SeedCamp route is the worst of all worlds: the talking shop with money to burn, but not quite enough to buy in quality expertise or time enough to absorb it.

SeedCamp might sound interesting, but I remain to be convinced we need it. If you’re going to take investment, take it properly. Otherwise my ethos is quite simple:

You just need a bit of soul and dedication.

The very careful reader may have noticed a little link sneaking in last week to the bottom of the front page. It’s The Vagueware Shop run by Amazon. I just thought I’d throw together a few books I think developers reading this blog might like – I’ll be reviewing all of the featured books on the front over the coming months, because whilst some books are decades old they are classics all programmers should be familiar with.

Some however are very shiny new and are changing the way we think about web development. I’m particularly looking forward to the 2nd edition of Agile Web Development with Rails – the PDF version got updated the other day, and I will be checking it out over the weekend.

Right now, the store is a bit sparse and needs some love and tweaking, but the limitations of the amazon store builder are preventing me from building what I really want. If anybody has suggestions for better affiliate/associate store builders, let me know. Or perhaps I should just build my own using the Amazon API, eh? Now there’s an idea… :-)

Suggestions for books I should feature/review much appreciated.