Lets get together in one place and get focused

4 companies are going to open the kimono and share the real numbers, mistakes, and learnings on everything from raising money to online marketing, building the team closing deals, including Sonar6, Starnow, Torpedo7 and PlanHQ. This will be really focused on getting everyone on the same wavelength so we’re all better prepared to make our online businesses kick ass. There’s a big drive right now ro get everyone in NZ building online businesses together so we all raise the bar, learn from each other, build better businesses and come up with the next generation online businesses. Come to this, get on the StartUp Business Directory, and register for StartUpTV, its our industry, lets make something big of it.

Consulting and Side Product Development

My first business was profitable from day one, consulting. I saved plenty from this and in parallel quietly started self funding a product development, hired a couple of people part time and after a while of getting somewhere but seemlingly not far enough, put the consulting on hold and made a good go of it together full-time.

Back to Services

When that didn’t get profitable on the money I had (made mistakes, learning experiences…), instead of raising money from others, I went back into services mode, used some of the experience and talent I’d built up from this investment and built a web design business, didn’t take too long to get this profitable.

Then back into product again

Then right at that point decided again to have a crack at a new product, except this time would keep the services company ticking away in the background to prevent the risk of hitting rock bottom on cash, which while fine is just hard and you don’t want to do too many times. While just profitable again, with no cash reserves and a desire to both build a cool product and the rails and interaction design community around NZ, I had to raise some money. Almost 5 years on in business now, I’ve raised as much money from others as I’ve invested myself, which is around $300k from each side.

Profitable Product Company coming very soon…

Through all this, the risk of trying to build a cool product, learning whats needed to get this right on the way, providing an environment where people can skill up and build experience, one aim for the busienss is always clear. You’re not a start-up to stay a startup, you’re a startup because you’re on the road to being a profitable company.

I know what numbers this means for PlanHQ, and stay pretty focused on them and what makes them move. But while most do, and I have, not everyone has to go through failure to get there, and here’s a great video from the Startup 08 gathering in San Fran David Heinemeier Hansson one of the 37signals guys who managed to get it right on the first hit.

These guys have been lead investors in high profile companies like Del.icio.us Netvibes Mint Riya and heaps of others, so not to turn your nose up at.

My apologies if you’ve already seen these over at Make it Happen, but I’m not sure who’s reading both.

Using PlanHQ as an example:

• We get a certain number of visitors
• A percentage who sign-up for a trial
• A percentage who become paying customers and
• A percentage who churn after a period of time.
• This gives us our current paying customers, and we’re growing and getting there

Getting more in the top of the funnel

But now its time to get more people in the top of the funnel! We have plenty of product and marketing initiatives in place or in progress to get people to become paying customers and stay on as customers, but we now want to focus on simply getting more coming in the top of the funnel. To date we have built up traffic through word of mouth, people reviewing and blogging about us and now the majority of our traffic comes from referrals, which is cool and often very qualified (high conversion to paid), but now we want more search engine traffic and we want more visibility in general, its time to throw some traffic at this machine!

Is this you?

If you get where I’m coming from with all this, then you’re who we want to be talking to. I have some people in Silicon Valley who are pretty switched on this space and may well have to use them, but every web company needs this capability, and we need to build it up here in NZ, so if you’re in this space, and or moving in this direction drop me a line at tim at planhq.com – the need for this isn’t going to stop at PlanHQ, so we should at least know each other and you need to be known in the community.

Stand up and be counted

Along with a bunch of other articles it covers what have been picked as NZ’s top 10 online startups in an article by Peter Griffin. If you’re surprised not to see yourself in there, then email Patrick  founder of Startup Media at patrick at start-up.co.nz, he wants to know who you are, and so do the rest of us!

Using the power of media

I’ve been chatting to Patrick for quite a few months as StartUp are also filming a TV series which will air this year, and PlanHQ have been getting followed around a bit and getting some of us making it happen captured on film. With nothing staged, just raw as it happens action, this is the sort of video footage I like to see and be part of, you learn a lot watching others… and even yourself.

I had the pleasure of launching PlanHQ at the DEMO conference and watching Ponoko doing the same at Techcrunch40, and really look forward to seeing this happen next year at least 5 times across the various conferences, which we’ll start discussing in the new year. Silver Stripe have been doing work with Google, and there’s been heaps of other outcomes across the industry and another year of making it happen for the entreprenurs and teams building their businesses. I’ve only mentioned a few stories that are extra close to me because I’m tired and need a break too, but you know who you are and what you’ve done.

Lets make 08 the year of raising the bar, we’ve got the energy, lets be really smart about how we operate this coming year, and get some big results.

Enjoy a holiday, recharge, have some space from your businesses and let your position roll back into your mind in a new light… Who knows just what we can all pull off in the next 12 months.

• The video: PlanHQ DEMO in 6 minutes on stage in San Diego.
• Photos: of PlanHQ working it @ DEMO

The Office 2.0 conference attracted around 700 web office / software as a service (saas) thought leaders and investors from around the globe last year and is set to do the same again this year. With some 50+ tech/saas sponsors I would have liked PlanHQ to be a sponsor, but we’re still running a pretty focused and tight marketing budget so I’ve arranged to speak there instead which gives us some good exposure and free admission which includes a free iphone which will be used over the course of the conference.

If you’re going to be in the US over the coming 6 weeks I’m keen to connect (tim at planhq.com), I know our friends from over at Ponoko will be touring at the same time and have some news as to their plans coming shortly.

Hope to see some of you there!