Solo Web 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.

http://commonred.com/kevin-rose (vote up on the red arrow below my face [Aaron Longnion]. You may need to sign up for CommonRed)

Thanks so much!

Aaron Longnion
Founder & CTO
http://refynr.com

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/Jf3suGCJbyH

Chapter 2: Entrepreneurial spirit 
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/FQUJRt7dBAZ

Chapter 3: Quitting my Job and Moving in with the In-laws
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/JiCefKddqZG

Chapter 4: Deciding on a Startup Idea, and How to do it Cheaply
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/VjtpQLtL192

Chapter 5: Finding my Way with the Early Concept
https://plus.google.com/102177534078850027729/posts/3nDwyhjYfxX

About 3 months back, I really wanted more feedback about my home page and web app. I knew the home pages and app needed significant improvement in the UI and User Experience.

But I felt that I had asked too much of my 500+ Beta testers already, and needed some fresh perspectives. So, when I came across http://StartupLift.com, I gave it a try. It doesn't cost much :)

So, here's the page where new users gave public feedback via StartupLift on Refynr back in March.

It's hard to be publicly "roasted", but if you stay open minded, don't defend too much, you can learn a lot! I ended up making many of the changes suggested, and the Bounce Rate (as measured by Google Analytics) has gone from 65+% to about 45% now. That's a huge improvement, and I may do it again at some point to try to improve the Bounce Rate another 10-15 points.

(full disclosure: I'm honored to be the brother of GEO's Founder, JD Longnion)

If you're in Austin, TX get a highly discounted oil change at one of 10 Austin locations, support a local startup, and make our world a little "greener"

Green Earth Oil Groupon Deal of the Day

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!

• April 19th - Social Media Club of Austin: a panel discussion - http://socialmediaclub.org/event/april-meeting-social-mobile-go-panel

  A lot of great discussions about Social Media, present and future, from expert panelists with cool companies in Austin. Met the http://helpattack.com guy - very impressed with what they're doing for good causes with Social Networks!

• April 20th - Intro to TechRanch Austin - http://www.techranchaustin.com/stakeholder

  Austin Gunter went over TechRanch, how it helps startups in general, and how it can help me specifically. Also met another entrepreneur who has a tech and business (MBA) background. He's a great guy, and hope to keep in touch with him, because he really knows his stuff!

• April 21st - Open Coffee for Startups, Central Austin - http://blog.damonc.com/2011/01/03/open-coffee-austin-rebooted/

  Heard about this on the Austin Startups Facebook Group, and decided to check it out. At first, I couldn't tell who at the coffee shop was part of the group, and so I didn't know what to do. It would be cool if there were signs or something to help new people figure out what to do. Eventually, I figured it out, and met some great people, such as the guy who started the Open Coffee, @Damon. I also met a real veteran marketing expert; I followed up, and we have a marketing meeting over coffee next time I'm in Austin. I soooo need this type of help!

• April 21st - Met with a potential business customer - private conversations
• April 22nd - Had lunch with @jdhancock

  This was great being able to meet a fellow Austinite, who's also a coder, social media guy, Refynr user, that even worked at the same Austin company as me (we didn't realize this until our lunch). He's very active with SM, was fun to just talk with, and gave great feedback on how he uses my software to do research. There's nothing more eye-opening than talking to users in person about your startup. Invaluable!

• April 22nd - TechRanch Austin Campfire - http://www.techranchaustin.com/campfire

  This was really awesome, and was the highlight of my trip! They gave a nice intro to the various programs that TechRanch offers, and then we got in groups (there were about 30 of us) of 5 or 6 - in the groups we each had 2 minutes to give a quick pitch, and then say what we could each offer to the group, and then what help we are requesting. The offer and requests were things like technical skills, marketing, sales, business knowledge, office space, legal expertise, accounting, etc. Wow! In about 20 minutes, I met people that could offer all types of help in many areas that I suck at - web app design, video editing, marketing, accounting, veteran entrepreneurs, and more.

  After those group discussions, they had a social happy hour right in the TechRanch facilities, where I could talk in more depth with the people who had the most useful skills for me. So, that marketing guy I met back on Wednesday did me a huge favor and broke down the best way to approach a business deal with my first potential corporate customer. Some techies gave me tips on improving my software. I met a founder whose company was at a nearly-identical stage as mine. I got to talk with the leaders of TechRanch, and it leaves me hungry for more. Can't wait to get back to Austin - which I'm planning next week!

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):

1. Up to 30 custom filters to filter out the clutter from your Twitter Timeline & Facebook News Feed
2. A web client that works in all the major browsers, plus a mobile web version for iPad, iPhones, & Android devices (probably Win Mobile and BlackBerry, too)
3. Filtered Refynr Stream is saved permanently, so that you can read/search for any items later (such as after your vacation)
4. (Optional) Daily Emails, with the latest from your Refynr Stream

Here's the major features that customers/advisors have suggested for the future:

1. a Twitter-compatible API, so that feeds could be pulled into other clients/services, such as TweetDeck, HootSuite, etc
2. support for Twitter Lists
3. support for Twitter Search
4. ability to pull in RSS feeds, and add Refynr filters to them
5. sell Refynr to companies, as a way to let employees keep up with Social Networks, without the distractions. The company admin would be able to set Filters company-wide (or by department), and I could charge a premium for the service

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:

• I have about 3 more months of my own money to put into Refynr before I start running low
• Acquiring more free customers without generating revenue is burning my cash faster and faster (server costs & no income)
• I have a Minimal Viable Product (MVP), but little marketing skills myself, so need an advisor/consultant to help with sales/marketing
• If someone could concentrate on marketing, then I could focus on the next set of features: RSS, an API, improved UI, etc.
• I am a beta tester for the Twitter Promotions ad platform (one of 600), so have a huge opportunity to market, if only I was good at it! :D

What I've tried:

• LaunchRock: gets people a little more excited because they are put on a waiting list and can tweet about it, but it hasn't made it viral enough to get the thousands of users.
• Pulling hundreds of new visitors to the site via Twitter Promoted Tweets - this gives me a lot of traffic, but the bounce rate tends to be above 70%, so I spend too much for a limited number of sign-ups. This may be that I'm not promoting to the right people on Twitter with these tweets...?
• Charging a one-time $5 fee to sign up. In a week, I was only able to get 3 people to sign up for a mere $5. That was very discouraging!! I know most people don't want to spend anything for Social Network stuff, and that a Trial would be more reasonable, but I figure if more than 3 people won't even pay $5 then the perceived value is not good. Am I not thinking about this right?

My questions to you:

1. What steps would you suggest I take next?
2. Are there current features that I should enhance to make Refynr more attractive?
3. Which of future features would be best to focus on first, in order to monetize?
4. Am I at the point where I need a co-founder?
5. Or should I work on getting funding?
6. Or should I try to find sales consultants to help?
7. Other thoughs, ideas, or questions?
8. I didn't want to put ads (Google) on Refynr because I think it defeats the purpose of de-cluttering your feeds. Should I reconsider?

Answer in the comments or email me: aaron *at* refynr [dot] com

After over 7 months working on my web startup, Refynr.com, I wanted to update my list from my most popular post, Top 14 Tools list, from back in Nov. 2010.

This post is about the software, programming platforms/frameworks, operating systems, websites, and apps that I use to stay fast and productive as a solo, first-time, bootstrapped developer/jack-of-all-trades.

Local Development:

• Late 2009 MacBook Pro w/ 8Gigs of RAM
• Parallels Desktop - CentOS, Apache & ColdFusion
• ColdFusion 9.01 Enterprise, multi-server
• CFBuilder
• MySQL Community 5.1
• Windows 7 (via Parallels)

Rackspace CloudServer:

• CentOS 5.4
• ColdFusion 9.01 Enterprise, multi-server
• Apache 2.2
• MySQL Community 5.1 (separate server)

Top Tools:

1. ColdFusion 9.01 Enterprise: I explain why I switched from Railo 3.2 here. This is not set in stone; I'm evaluating uses for Railo, and may end up with a mix of Railo and Adobe CF.
2. Gmail w/ Google Apps - I set up refynr.com mail for GMail and Google apps cuz it's free and very easy to do. I created an info@ address and do all my communication and responding to feedback from there. I also use Google Docs and Spreadsheets for keeping track of competition, Refynr features, ideas, etc. This is a no-brainer.
3. Twitter Promoted Promotions: I'm one of the lucky few that were selected to participate in the early closed Beta of Twitter Promoted Promotions on my @Refynr account. My pockets are not deep enough to use Promoted Trends, but I was able to sign a 3-month contract for Promoted Accounts + Promoted Tweets. I have over 2,000 new followers in the first month, and can practicly slashdot my site with Promoted Tweets any time I want. It's very cool, but I'm not allowed to go into detail due to my agreement with Twitter.
4. Rackspace CloudServers: cost me $260 dollars last month, which included [1] bandwidth for over 600 Refynr users (which does a lot of pulling from the Twitter & Facebook APIs), [2] full snapshot image backups of the 2 servers, [3] support via email or Live Chat, and [4] engineers that monitored and automatically rebooted my server when it went down mysteriously one time. I'm happy; however, Amazon had announced cheaper pricing for lower-end cloud servers, and I'm keeping my eye on that... And Google App Engine is possible, too, because there is native Open BlueDragon integration.

5. HooteSuite - read and post with multiple accounts. I manage 2 Twitter Accounts, Facebook & FB Fan Page, and LinkedIn from it. I prefer it over TweetDeck so that I can log in from any computer any time without worrying about installing/updating. It is a bit cluttered, though, so have deprecated the Home Feed in it in favor of eating my own dogfood via the Refynr.com web app.
6. CFBuilder 1 - it has great built-in support for ColdFusion 9, and it should be much improved with the upcoming new version; I have not tested the CFBuilder 2 Beta yet.
7. MyVersionControl.com - free/cheap Subversion hosting, with more features than I need. I just need the SVN repo space (hosted and secure), and use the Subclipse Eclipse plugin with CFEclipse. Simple. Done.
8. MySQL - It's free and I already have a few years of experience with it. I did some preliminary investigation into the NoSQL options like MongoDB and CouchDB, but I don't need massive scalability (yet), so am sticking with what I know for now so that I don't get stuck to often. I'd rather just get er done at the moment. I am getting to the point, with nearly 4 million Refynr Stream records, that I need to improve the performance of mySQL or start really investigating a noSQL option.
9. Sequel Pro - easy-to-use, free, and beautiful MySQL client for Mac. It does what I need 99% of the time, but sometimes I need to use MySQLWorkbench (which I found buggy and cumbersome for everyday use) for stuff like updating certain types of indexes or constraints.
10. Posterous - this blog runs on Posterous in case you didn't notice. It's great if I need to do a quick post from email, but I like it more for posting via web, adding quick slide shows, and being able to auto-post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and FriendFeed. I get way more hits on my blog via Posterous than previous platforms I used. This is partially due to making sure it's in RSS aggregators like http://www.coldfusionbloggers.org/ and http://feeds.adobe.com/index.cfm?query=byCategory&categoryId=1&catego...
11. CyberDuck - their website says it all - "Open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Cloud Files, Google Docs & Amazon S3 Browser for Mac & Windows." (and FREE!)
12. Seashore - Photoshop cost money, and GIMP is too complicated for me. I wanted something simple for common tasks. On Windows, that was Paint.NET. On Mac, it's Seashore! (note: I clearly need some better graphics skillz)
13. jQuery Mobile (Alpha 4) - it makes the site look good on most mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, and even Windows Mobile now). Now, I'll just need to make Refynr.com look decent on IE 8+. That's pretty good cross-browser/cross-platform compatibility with relatively little effort! And since it's in Alpha, it will only getting better in the next few months when the Beta arrives. Here's my early post about implementing jQuery Mobile on Refynr.com.
14. Camtasia Mac: I really didn't want to make any videos, as it's not my strong point. But I finally bit the bullet and tried the Camtasia trial - very impressive! There are all the features I need, plus some I need to research further. I'm a total newbie at making movies/demos, but have now made some I'm pretty happy with, and have put on my home page, as well as sent to potential investors: http://www.youtube.com/user/refynr
15. GetSatisfaction.com: I handle all my feedback and support this way, via a simple little gray tab on every page of the web app. The feedback and discussions from users has been invaluable to making @Refynr what it is today.
16. IETester: to test IE 7, 8, & 9 from one interface

17. GoSquared: Live stats of users on my web site/app. It's a very slick and helpful way to visualize how users are clicking through in real-time. Highly recommended, though it can be distracting to sit and watch it all the time.
18. Pingdom: to monitor my websites from many places around the world. Very affordable, too!
19. CrowdSpring.com: This was a mixed bag, as I blogged about here. But I got a logo I like.
20. ThemeForest.net: for my website design template: CSS & cross-browser HTML
21. FuseGuard: Application firewall for ColdFusion, Railo, or Open BlueDragon. Highly recommended!
22. MailChimp: to send 2-3 newsletters, updates, polls, or requests to Refynr users (if subscribed) per month. It's a bit tedious to set up initially, but once you make a nice email template with your color scheme and logo, and some of the Social Media goodies, you're good to go, and can just worry about content. I've had very good open and click rates (always higher than my industry's average).
23. Google Analytics: another no-brainer!
24. PayPal: a super-simple basic integration to test how many people will pay a one-time $5 fee for Refynr.com
25. CFML Open Source code - First, I decided to not use a ColdFusion Framework (even though ColdBox, CFWheels, and FW/1 were VERY tempting) because I wanted to write the core of Refynr.com from scratch and to make damn sure there's no performance issues when/if I need to scale Refynr.com. In my professional career, I have never built anything very big from scratch; I have always worked on legacy ColdFusion code. Here's the open-source ColdFusion code I've used so far for Refynr:
    • MonkehTweet - http://monkehtweet.riaforge.org/ for Twitter API & oAuth integration
    • Facebook ColdFusion SDK - https://github.com/affinitiz/facebook-cf-sdk/ for FB API integration
    • ValidateThis - http://www.validatethis.org/ for form validation
    • cfUniForm - http://cfuniform.riaforge.org/ for building forms
    • Timezone.cfc - https://github.com/rip747/TimeZone-CFC for timezone management
    • MXUnit.org - for unit testing CF code

What tools do you use?

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) -

• "Useful service. I'm falling asleep watching this. This should be max 1 min. Hopefully less."
• "I really like the idea as well; but, as [Anonymous] said, it just needs to be shorter. I think I read somewhere that people have like a 3-minute attention span for videos."
• "You are coming over like you don't believe people will buy into your pitch..."
• "Recently pitching to a lot of investors, I suggest your first sentence or two just says why they should care for refynr..."
• "Your goal for the pitch is for the investor to want to know more. Let the investor download Refynr himself and discover how useful it might be. Tell them the problem, explain why it's a problem and focus on how large the market is for the opportunity... Leave the guy excited about the opportunity and wanting to know more. If you want some help let me know, I've pitched VC's before."
• "I would say that this video needs to be less than 2 minutes, preferably in the 1:30 - 1:45 minute range. People's attention spans are just about that length."
• "I know that you think that you are not a dynamic speaker, but your passion does show through..."
• "First of all - your tone is that of a monotone. That's what my husband said, listening to your presentation. Not only that, you have one expression throughout - you need to look more enthusiastic. I don't mean jumping out of the chair, but smile more, for instance."
• "Ditch the office background - it's distracting and competes with what you're demoing. Tighten up your script so you don't look like you're stumbling around. " (the clutter in the background gave me an idea for the second video)
• "You are a developer and have a great product. The presentation is nothing nice :) I would recommend getting someone else to do this for you. One of the first things we NEED to do as a start up is recognize our weakness.. You have built a great product and now it's time to pass the torch so you don't miss out. the presentation does NOT match the quality of the app."
• "...you do need to be more "alert". You want them to get your excitement over this product."
• "I think you need to start with a passionate elevator pitch for your product for maybe the first two minutes covering the points here: http://www.startupnation.c om/pages/contact/elevator_pitch.asp"
• "Aaron, ditch the disclaimers [I'm obviously a nerdy introvert, bootstrapping & solo, so this is not my strong point.], as they are a distraction from allowing us to focus on learning about you and your great contribution. Same holds true for your pitch. Break it down into 3 more succinct categories: 1. PROBLEM - Twitter Blows, Unstructured; 2. SOLUTION - Refynr Makes Twitter Your 'B+tch'... and not the other way around; 3. INSTRUCTIONS - Try to deliver your instructions within 10 seconds. This may sound daunting, but the goal is to get us to think the following -- you have created something that we want to use and it can be seamlessly integrated into our lives. Draw inspiration from the definition of refined [with impurities or unwanted elements having been removed by processing] to come up with a clever one-liner that explains Refynr."

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:

• your minimum viable product (MVP) - just put the earliest Alpha possible out there and get real feedback
• logo design
• home page design
• your tag line / catch phrase
• demo
• feature priorities
• any more?

What do you think of this compared to version 1? Less embarrassing to put this one up on my blog, or send it to potential investors?

Ok, it ain't great, so don't say it is. But is this video good enough to put on http://Refynr.com as the demo?