September 2009 Entrepreneur's Forum:
Ultra Light Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
One of the key tenets of starting an boot-strapped, ultralight company is to rely on third party providers -- be it software-as-a-service (SaaS) or cloud-computing companies -- to avoid large capital expenditures and "variable-ize" as much of your cost base as possible. This conserves cash and gives you the flexibility to scale up or down as needed.
But what about those SaaS and Cloud computing companies on whom our ultralight start-ups are built? How did they get started? Is it possible to launch one of those on an "ultralight" budget? How do you handle the capital costs up-front as well as the ongoing maintenance and support costs associated with providing these services to your clients?
At the September ULS New York meeting, we plan to delve into these issues with the following panel of experts. Some are in the middle of the start-up process, others have successfully scaled the business and chosen to take external capital.
Some of the questions we will ask them to address are:
- How did you cover the up-front expense associated with establishing the infrastructure/software for your clients?
- How did you win your first clients? As a startup with limited capital, how did you gain the trust of cornerstone clients and convince them to hand over data or integrate your software into their daily lives?
- How did you cover support and maintenance costs? Did you have revenue to cover this?
- How significant were outages or lapses in service compare to more established or better funded competitors? Did these hurt business? How did you regain trust?
- Were you able to scale effectively as a self-funded entity? At what point did you, or do you foresee having to take capital?
Moderator:
Panelists (alphabetic order):
Video of this Panel:
Blog Posts About This Event:
Presented at Ultra Light Startups in Under 60 Seconds (by Paint The Town Red)
Pitch Contest Winners
Most Trafficked Sites (from Compete.com):
- Jennie Baird - BabyNameWizard (Compete = 95,068)
- Anand Sanwal - Chubby Brain (Compete = 26,112) - also nominated for best pitch
- Matthew Caldecutt - NYConvergence (Compete = 7,054)
- Margot Tohn - Parkit! (Compete = 4,674)
- Seph Skerritt - Proper Cloth (Compete = 4,204) - also nominated for best pitch
Best Pitches (from Laura Allen of 15SecondPitch):
Panelist and Moderator Bios:
Jed Alpert
Jed is Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Mobile Commons, a provider of web-based applications for text messaging, voice calls, and web-based interactive components. Previously, Jed served as the President of Sunshine Amalgamedia, a film production company and as an attorney, focusing his practice on entertainment and media law. Jed serves on the boards of Riverkeeper and the Bay Area Video Coalition.
Steven Asherman
Steven is Founder and President of Base One International - a vendor of SaaS platform tools and services. Base One also helps successful SaaS startups with business and technical issues, including performance and scalability. Startup clients include DealerTrack.com, SendWordNow.com, and eLearners.com. Base One is currently developing it's own SaaS platform for monetizing online content called ContentGalaxy. The Base One Foundation Component Library extends Microsoft's Visual Studio development environment to provide ASP.NET and Windows programmers with middleware for rapidly building reliable, high-performance database applications.
Steve Greenwood
Steve is the VP of Revenue at Drop.io - a simple, private, real-time, media sharing platform. Over the past decade, Steve has gained extensive experience in strategy, new business development, and operations. Prior to drop.io, Steve worked at the consultancy McKinsey & Co. where he advised senior leaders of media corporations on issues of strategic and financial important. Steve has also spent time in venture capital, at Maveron he sourced and analyzed investment opportunities in high-growth technology businesses, and in Fortune 500 operations: at The Home Depot he reported to senior leaders and led Six Sigma efforts for multi-billion dollar new growth business
Peter Stern
Peter is founder and President of Zenbe, a startup focused on communication and collaboration services. Peter co-founded Datek Online, which quickly grew to become the fourth largest online brokerage firm and the first retail brokerage firm to provide real-time streaming quotes, decimal trading, and after-hours trading. In 2002, Datek Online merged with Ameritrade to form the second largest online brokerage firm. Prior to Datek, Peter worked in military R&D, working on interesting projects involving lasers, helicopters, and electro-optic sensors. Peter has dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon.
Ray Bernaz
Ray is the founder and CEO of Socialibrium LLC, a software company that provides relationship management tools for people who don't use traditional CRM. His background includes technology management, banking, and consulting. Ray helped launch Ultralight Startups in London, and has assisted with the New York chapter since moving back to the US in April.
|
