A solo entrepreneur's 1st startup
Hey ColdFusion friends,
Please help me out and vote for me to meet Kevin Rose (Digg, Milk, Oink, etc.), who can help tremendously in my quest to build a successful ColdFusion-powered startup - Refynr.[UPDATE]
Note that the top 5 vote-getters win the meeting with Kevin, so I don't have to be #1 to win this amazing chance of a lifetime.
It's on Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/JxuP7PVYSyi
What do you think about this serialized book being written on Google+?
We decided on this name for this book:
"From 9-to-5 Peon to Living the Dream, A Solo Entrepreneur's Journey"Chapter 1: Can't get no...
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/Jf3suGCJbyHChapter 2: Entrepreneurial spirit
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/FQUJRt7dBAZChapter 3: Quitting my Job and Moving in with the In-laws
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/JiCefKddqZGChapter 4: Deciding on a Startup Idea, and How to do it Cheaply
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/VjtpQLtL192Chapter 5: Finding my Way with the Early Concept
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/3nDwyhjYfxX
A week and a half ago, I finally got out there and met some non-programmers with startups. In Austin.
For the first 8 months of creating my first startup, I've been working out of my inlaws house, practically hiding from the outside world, near Flower Mound, TX.
Hiding was great for keeping focus, but horrible for making *real* contacts - I've made a ton of "friends" on Twitter, Facebook, and via my blog, but it's not the same when you don't talk to them in person.
What did I do, and how did it go?
I was in Austin for 4 days, but found plenty to do!
Anyone else loving the Austin startup scene as much as me? ;-)
Whether real or just my own perception, I feel it's time to monetize my startup. There are nearly 700 users, and another 40 on the LaunchRock waiting list, but Refynr needs to make revenue, or I'm afraid it will whither and die...
Here's the current features (see http://Refynr.com):
Here's the major features that customers/advisors have suggested for the future:
I'm reaching out to any of you to ask if you can help point me in the right direction. As you may know, I'm a solo founder, first-timer, and bootstrapping Refynr. Getting free customers has gone pretty well, and the technology is solid, but soon I feel I need to move to the next step. The next step could mean getting investments or finding a way to monetize relatively quickly (or other?). I feel it's time for a next major step because:
What I've tried:
My questions to you:
Answer in the comments or email me: aaron *at* refynr [dot] com
This is actually the way I've been improving the quickest with everything related to my startup: fail fast, and let embarrassment drive improvement. More on that later.
First, the bad pitch video:
The feedback I got via my blog, Twitter, and 2 Startup Groups on Facebook told me how bad it was, even though I worked 5 hours on it and thought it showed off Refynr.com pretty well (shows what I know) -
Now, the much improved video:
The new video could still be more polished and professional, could be shorter, etc. But it's way better than the first one, and I'm quitting while I'm ahead for now. It wasn't scripted because I tried that and it always came off as *fake*. It's my best foot forward for now, but I'll revise it if I get inspired again.But the main point here is that when you have a challenge in your start-up that you don't know how to solve yourself, just do something the best you know how, put it out there and get honest feedback. Tell people you want to the brutal truth, and they will give it to you. Check your ego at the door, which is hard to do 100%, but mainly just really listen, respond, and make the effort to improve. There's no point defending yourself, because you wouldn't be asking if you knew the best way in the first place, right? This doesn't just work for videos and your pitch, but also:
Interview Series Ep1 – Aaron Longnion of refynr.com
Episode 1
Interview with Aaron Longnion about his social network feed filter startup refynr.com. We speak about his technology, how refynr.com came about, some of the tools used in the creation of the site, and how the cloud enabled Aaron to support his solo startup.
Links mentioned in the podcast:http://hashtags.org/
http://www.crowdspring.com/
http://www.gosquared.com/livestats/
http://getsatisfaction.com/
http://www.mailchimp.com/
http://www.rackspace.com/
Podcast: Download
Tags: startup podcast
About the Author
Patrick Pushor
Patrick is a critical thinker based out of Western Canada with deep experience in virtualization and cloud computing.
Thank you very much, Patrick, for the interview! Excellent questions, and I had a lot of fun!
Here's the short preso I did at Open CF Summit. It isn't really instructions on how _anyone_ can build a startup in CF; it's just a taste of how I did it so far with Refynr.com.
I'm an inexperienced public speaker, so I didn't actually say much more than is on this powerpoint. :)
Over the past few days, I had an email conversation with another bootstrapped entrepreneur who works from home and has 2 young kids, like me.
Like many early-stage entrepreneurs, he's working his butt off and getting things done... often at 80+ hours/week. I never work more than 50 hours per week on my startup. My priorities are different (and that's okay). He isn't a solopreneur like me, so he probably feels like he'd be letting his team down if he didn't work as hard as they do.
Anyhow, here's the response I sent via email:
I'm different than most, I'm finding out. For the past 6 years or so, I actually mention in my various job interviews that I'm a committed family man (i.e. "whipped" ;-), and prefer to work 40-45 hours per week, with 50+ hour weeks being the exception rather than the norm. It hasn't deterred people from hiring me, but I do think that I'm not viewed as the hardest working or "career" employee that they want, and partially explains why my average salaried job each lasted about 1.5 years recently. On the other hand, I get much more time with my family than the average employee in similar positions.
With my startup, I made a similar commitment to my family, and work 40-50 hours per week, even though I'd love to spend more time to get things rolling. Any time I've pushed for more time (a week, alone, coding binge), I could see it would put too much stress on our family. I have a good friend (he used to be a family-man and devout Christian), and mentor, who moved his young family to the Bay Area to do a startup. He bootstrapped alone for about 9 months, spent all his money, went into huge debt, even though his wife didn't agree. He dropped that startup completely, moved to a new one, barely hanging on to his marriage and livelihood, and the new venture started taking off. He worked 90+ hours a week, stayed out all nights socializing in bars with his "colleagues", and eventually got outside funding and some big sales. He says he has 1/4 ownership of the company worth $32 million now. But his wife repeatedly threatens divorce, he missed many baseball games and weekends with his 10 year old son, and when I asked him for advice he didn't offer support, but rather said I was doing everything wrong and had no chance of success unless I did my startup more the way he did. I guess I define success much differently. I choose my family over millions any day. When we're on our death beds, what will we be thinking as the end comes near: "I wish I had made more money and bought more stuff", or "I wish I had spend more quality time with the people I love..."?
What is your priority, and how does it contribute to your overall well-being?
This is a list compiled from the CFML Entrepreneur Group on Facebook. Join here if you're interested. Then, send me your startup info, and I'll add you (I will do a dedicated page when the list gets longer)
DISCLAIMER: I will only add sites to the list if the owner explicitly asks me to from within the CFML Entrepreneur Group on Facebook or via email, so I'm sorry but I won't be adding sites if you suggest one, but are not the owner.
The List -
CodeBass
http://codebass.net/ - highlights Adobe community folks and their music/sound/broadcasting related efforts.
http://www.codebassradio.com/ - anything goes. A platform for community folks to try their hand at DJing / hosting / broadcasting both music & tech talk as well as internet radio related development & collaboration.
Tech: Promotes Adobe tech and especially loves platform crossover.
Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/CodeBass/134071299972313
FunMappr - In startup/development phase. Service that provides local entertainment event listings that breaks the paradigm of the industry standard.
Great Dental Websites - Service offering websites that Dentists can create & update themselves. http://www.greatdentalwebsites.com/
Tech: Tomcat, Railo, Model-glue
Homegrown News - Homegrown News (HGN) is a community-driven news platform aimed at small communities and towns. It replaces the dated model of weekly, or no, newspapers in said communities with an up-to-date, always-on news and information service.
Domain - coming soon
Tech: Tomcat 7, 'nginx, Railo 3.2, CFWheels 1.1.1, CouchDB
MediaSlurp - A compact AIR-based desktop player bundled with community-driven content including live internet radio streams and well known community podcasts.
Tech: AIR/Flex/BlazeDS/ColdFusion 9/CF9ORM - Name it. If it's part of the Adobe stack, chances are.. it's in there!
Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/MediaSlurp/140423246011237
Mileage Pad - Mobile / Web App for keeping track of, and reimbursing business mileage
Tech: Adobe ColdFusion, FW/1, MySQL, jQuery, jQueryUI, jQuery
Mobile, PhoneGap
Railo - Railo Open Source CFML engine. A very fast LGPL open source CFML engine.
Refynr.com - Refynr filters your Twitter & Facebook feeds by keywords that you choose, and saves the feeds for you to read later.
Tech: ColdFusion 9 Enterprise, MySQL 5.1, jQuery Mobile, CentOS, Rackspace Cloud Servers, ValidateThis, cfUniforms, & various open-source CF libraries/code: Tomcat 7, 'nginx, Railo 3.2, CFWheels 1.1.1, CouchDB
Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/refynr
