Great observational comedy by Louis CK.

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• The company you work for still uses an internal postal system.
• Your bug-tracking software maintenance licence expired two years ago.
• Your account managers say “yes” to every client request.
• To book resources, you need to fill in a spreadsheet with six worksheets.
• Four colleagues in a meeting can’t tell you what an internally used acronym means.

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A piece of advice and “wisdom” I received from a certain nameless Director of Major Players in 2000 (now departed).

“Go back to college. Learn (formerly Macromedia, now Adobe) Lingo. Learn how to create CD-ROMs in Director.”

Fortunately, I didn’t take heed of this, was aware of an upcoming language called PHP and the CD-ROM has gone the way of the dinosaur.

I hate to quote Fleetwood Mac but sometimes it pays to “go your own way”.

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• Use the free version of everything, and when you run into the limitations tell the company you are working with that you are a startup – they will likely make an exception for you, small businesses hold a place is many people’s hearts.
• Barter your time (instead of money) for things you really need, such as trading blog posts with a company you want to get free services from.
• Become a customer of your customers – make non-monetary trades while you’re both growing, because you have being cash-strapped in common (only do this within reason).
• DO NOT pay for a PR agency or do trade shows, find ways to hack these traditional promotional tactics (contact me if you want ideas, or check out constraintmarketing.com).
• Use GetSatisfaction for your online forums, the free version is pretty awesome. +1 Zendesk comment someone mentioned already.
• Use Expensify for expense reporting (you’ll need this as soon as you have your first sales/marketing type).
• If you have investors (even angels), try to get your investors to let you work out of their office space. Chances are they are on the road a ton and won’t care.
• When you’re too big to borrow space, try a coffee shop that is dead during the day and make friends with the owner. They’ll appreciate the regular business.
• Coworking sounds expensive at “$500 a desk” but do it Hong Kong style, 2 or 3 people to a desk or coming in at different times during the day.
• When you rent a space, try to get the previous tenants to throw in the furniture they’re going to have to pay to dispose of anyway.
• Don’t do company credit-cards until you absolutely have to, the founding team should be willing to take the personal risk and be responsible for late fees (heaven forbid).
• Order promotional materials from Fedex or Office depot – a business account gets you 20% of everything. A single good-looking retractable standup banner looks professional, travels well, and lasted me over a year at our startup before we had more swag.
• Pick ONE promotional giveaway item, make it awesome, and order in bulk. This will save you money long term, while still building brand, but don’t both having pens, keychains, dongles, widgets, gadgets, etc. try just a t-shirt.
• Set a travel policy about the cost of flights, and take public transportation instead of cabs. Remember, you are cash poor and time rich (sort of). Look for deals like the JetBlue all-you-can-eat or Virgin America $39 flights, snag them, and figure out who to visit at those destinations.
• Buy a coffee maker and those little K-cups from Bed, Bath, and Beyond — you’ll save a TON on going for Starbucks, both in time and money. In SF a latte costs $4!
• Strike up a regular “rate” with a single restaurant where you take all your clients, potential investors, etc. so that you can still treat them well but save 20-30%.
• Use OpenVBX to set up a business phone line with a simple menu that forwards to various cell phones “press 1 for support, 2 for sales, etc.” and only pay for what you use.

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1. Statement of work (SOW)
2. Project plan (start/end dates, milestones, etc.)
3. Briefs or briefing documents
4. Cost estimates or budget sheets
5. Purchase order(s) (PO)
6. Invoices
7. Agendas (for meetings)
8. Status reports (weekly)
9. Issues/risks
10. Financial reconciliations
11. Receipts
12. Invoices
13. Functional specification
14. Technical specification
15. Site map
16. Wireframe schematics
17. Testing or quality assurance plans

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Deactivate your Facebook account

I will be deleting my account on 01 June 2010 – unless I get a change of heart.

You can read more about the reasons behind this here and here.

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JIM: I want to talk to you about appearance. Most of you dress like shit. I don’t know what your financial situation is like right now but you need to buy at least one decent suit. There is a minimum level of aesthetic professionalism that we have here. In a couple of months you’ll be able to outfit your whole closet, but for now just get something to hold you over. There’s an important phrase that we use here and I think it’s time you all learned it. “Act as if”. Do you understand what that means? Act as if you are the fucking president of this firm. Act as if you have a nine inch cock. Act as if. To do this properly you need to at least look the part. So go get dressed.

- Jim Young (Ben Affleck), Boiler Room, 2000.

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