Tom Markiewicz

The panel, building a start-up technology company, was actually a presentation by Dirk Knemeyer (Principal, Involution Studios LLC). Dirk’s session was a great summary of the nuts and bolts of building a technology business from scratch. Here are the notes:

- dream a little dream, dream a big dream

- his favorite quote: “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Confucius

- Test the business viability

• What kind of resources – people, infrastructure, money – will your business require
• Biggest mistakes – grossly overestimate revenue and grossly under estimate the costs
• For products, revenues will come much later and slower than you expect
• How much income will there be and when will it start coming
• Who will buy your product and why
• How long can you possibly go without making nay money? do you have reserves, can you change your lifestyle
• Do you have resources for more money? Can you get a loan or other cash infusion
• How much of your time are you willing to put into your company? you will have to do everything; have to throw yourself into it completely
• How comfortable are you with risk and uncertainty?

- Alone or together?

• Need to make a philosophical decision on this
• One of most important decisions
• Which is more important to you- greater ownership, greater salary, or greater control?
• What business critical skills do you lack? Do I need a partner to help with this?
• Regardless of skills, what things do you want to do and what don’t you wan to do?
• How much of a control freak are you? Very common trait among entrepreneurs
• Regardless of your need for control, how well do you collaborate with peers?
• Do you have the money to hire the employees you would need to get started?

- Set the vision

• What are you going to be selling? Don’t try to be all things to all people; What is your unique value proposition?
• How are you going to position that in the marketplace?
• How will your company be structured and run to make this happen?
• What do you dream your company will grow up to be? Someday I dream this is where my company will be
• Dream big!

- Create a powerful identity

• Must haves: logo; web site; business cards; digital letterhead / document templates; power point / keynote templates , but most specifically sales presentation
• Nice to haves: printed letterhead, return address stickers, sales/product sheets (this is more of a must-have) – mini-brochures, leave behinds
• Only for the well heeled: printed brochures, printed envelopes, logo folders

- The legal stuff

• If you can afford it, hire an attorney; Typical retainer is $1500 – $5000 to get started
• What kind of company should we be? (99% of time should be LLC) [my personal opinion on this is that I disagree; this is way too much of a blanket statement; accountants disagree with lawyers on this]
• Appoint a registered agent
• Initial forms and fees: incorporate in state your doing business in; getting a federal EIN; business license in your city; certificate of good standing from your state if you intend to also be incorporated in other states; incorporation fees in other states – if you have employees/owners in other states
• Prepare various business contracts and docs: client/customer contracts; contracts for consultants; NDAs; non-compete agreements; patent forms and filings
• Draft your formal articles of incorporation

- The financial stuff

• Begin a relationship with an accountant; better than waiting till end of year; sooner rather than later
• Open a checking an account; be sure no monthly fee and you can epay with no additional charges
• Create an invoice template
• Carefully track all your financials / buy QuickBooks (learning curve though)
• That nasty thing: payroll!

- The issue of insurance

• Begin a relationship with an insurance broker
• Get general liability insurance - should be under $1000 /yr
• If possible, get health insurance
• If you have payroll, you need workers comp insurance

- Human resources

• Write job descriptions
• Find, interview, hire employees
• Create a formal process for education new employees; biggest cost is staff turnover
• Gather and track key info on all employees
• Provide forms and paperwork to the state
• Create a policies and procedures manual; you can buy software to create this

- Setting up your space - strongly consider not getting office space (over/under = 4 people)

• Many office costs
• Transportation costs
• Telecommunications

- Hiring people

• The people will define the company
• This will shape your company
• Get employees on a contract to hire basis
• Try to work with people through recommendations / networking
• In the early days, pay more for good people with both salary and experience
• When orienting employees, document all steps processes

- Sales

• All principles must do sales well
• Lead generation: marketing (raise awareness) – more for products; networking (leveraging connections); cold calling (goin’ fishing) – more for services
• Courtship process
• Closing

- Service and management

• Do what’s right, not what’s easy or nice
• Your employees always come first (not you customers, but employees); your customers do come second
• Best customers are ones you already have
• Be proactive, not reactive
• Be organized
• Pay attention to the little things

- Get paid

- the slides from his presentation are located here

Popularity: 2% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Related Posts

• Writing again, with a new focus
• Arrived in Austin at SXSW
• SXSW: opening remarks
• SXSW: Recap
• SXSW: panels