Category Archives: Startups

Choose your business alliances carefully

Posted on by gianniponzi

As a lot of you will know, I recently became involved in a really exciting new Company called Ad Dynamo. My “job” is to make sure it grows in Ireland and that our clients a amazingly happy with the service.

With this in mind I’m leveraging (sorry, I have to use at least one buzzword per post ;-) ) all of my business contacts and looking for new ones.

In the best possible way for all parties, I hope!

I’ve recently been trying to decide on who I approach and with this in mind I’d like to share a thought I had.

Choose CAREFULLY. Yep, pretty obvious :-)

While a possible partner might look incredibly attractive, never forget what YOUR core values are and make sure you compare them to THEIR values and make sure they share at least some of yours.

In the end they are in business to promote THEIR services so your priorities will always be further down the list.

If you share common values, the risk of your company being incorrectly sold, should be decreased.

Lastly, if you were hoping for some scandalous accusations, sorry to disappoint you. :-)

Hope you are having fun.

Posted on by gianniponzi

You’d think they were innocent enough words.
Used in a holiday or hobby context perhaps.

No, those 5 words, written in an email by a former work colleague of mine, have finally ignited the spark to start a new project which I have been thinking about for the last few years.

Yes, you heard me correctly, YEARS.

Why has it taken so long ?  Work, family, hobbies, the excuses are endless and I’m not really going to dwell on them, because they are only excuses.

Why now? Well, back to those 5 words.

I had emailed Joe, to see how he was doing and congratulate him on his achievements.  In his reply, he casually (I think), added;  “I hope you’ are having fun”.

Without hesitation, the answer in my head was;  “No, I’m not”.

Since the 14th, I have set about putting together my new project.

I don’t for one minute expect this to be a party. I know there will be hard decisions, tough times or whatever you want to call them, but the mere fact is that this is something that has been in the back of my head for a LONG time.

Most importantly, it feels right.

I’ve done more work on this project in 9 days than anything else I’ve worked on, and it did not feel like work.  To me, that’s a good sign.

Am I having fun ?

Yes!

I’ll be launching the project soon.

If you have a few seconds, please leave your email address and when the project launches, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Automating Invoicing the FreeAgent way

Posted on by gianniponzi

While creating and sending invoices is for obvious reasons an  important part of running a business, automating the process as much as possible can certainly help to free up time for more important aspects of your daily schedule.

When I look for a new way to automate a process, I like to stick to  a (short) list of requirements

1) Ease of use and setup

2) Globally accessible – it must be web based

3) Not cost me more in time (and money)  than it would if I completed the
task manually.

To this end, I recently found FreeAgent. A web based accounts system that is actually FUN to use.

I won’t go through the whole list of features but some of the most useful are time tracking, invoicing (of course!), automated reminder and thank you emails to customers (Love this!), importing of expenses from 3rd parties like PayPal AND there’s an iPhone app I can use while on the move.

I haven’t calculated the time savings yet but needles to say, being able to send an Invoice with 3 clicks, beats my old system hands down.

If, like me, you were writing stuff down on PostIt notes, then recreating invoices, entering a reminder in a calendar to make sure invoices are paid on time, creating and sending reminder and thank you emails, FreeAgent is the tool for you.

You can try it free for 30 days and if you decide to go ahead and use it full time, I think $18 / month is worth every hour saved!

If you want to try it, here’s a referral code which give you a  (and me :-) ) 10% discount once you have completed your free trial.

Funding for startups – what’s the obsession?

Posted on by gianniponzi

Over the the last few days there has been a lot of spotlight on the tech sector. Sorry, Minister Ryan, I meant knowledge economy.

The Dublin Web Summit took place over the weekend and some of the World’s biggest names came to town. People like Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Chad Hurley (YouTube) and many more.

Naturally this caused a stir and rightly so. People attended in large numbers, hoping I’m sure for inspiration for their own ideas. The event was widely followed on Twitter (of course :-) ) and some of the speakers & organizer, Paddy Cosgrave were interviewed on the Late Late.

To cut a long story short, a recurring theme caught my attention. A lot of the talk seemed to be about how one could find funding for a startup.

Even on the Late Late, the “Founders” were asked how, in these times, people could find funding for their ideas.

Now, I might be missing something, but if you’re going to set up some sort of web service (which is what most of the Founders’ products are), we’re not talking millions.

Hardware has never been cheaper, faster and more reliable.  Powerful software packages can be purchased or event rented at  very low cost. Outsourcing is common practice and  issues with  development no longer requires trips to the library for obscure books on sorcery, erm, software.

My point is, if the idea is a good one and you REALLY believe in it, nothing should stop you from making it a reality.

I should know, I’ve had 100s of ideas an NONE of them have seen the light of day :-)