Hometown News Service is a hosted content management system for small to medium local newspapers. They have an application into the Knight News Challenge as well where they want $250,000 funding to continue developing their CMS, make it easy to deploy, and then open source it. They have 75 paying clients right now and 12 employees so I’m not entirely sure how this fits into their strategic goals.
Tag Archive for 'business development'
From the persistence paid off file of start-up stories:
Our first big retail break was landing an account with Stew Leonard’s, the four-store Connecticut grocery chain. For months we bugged the buyer via phone. He ignored us. To get his attention, we decided to bring him breakfast one day.
We woke up at 6 a.m. and dressed in Bear Naked T-shirts. We borrowed china from Kelly’s mom, which we used to display fresh fruit, our granola, and Stew Leonard’s brand of yogurt. We were the first car in the lot at the chain’s headquarters. After we climbed the stairs to the office, the receptionist told us the buyer was on vacation. We were deflated!
But then, as we were walking away, we recognized Stew Leonard Jr. “Stew!” we yelled. “We brought you breakfast!”
He seemed impressed by our youth and enthusiasm and asked us into his office. He said he was used to brokers pitching 55 products at a time and that it was refreshing to meet young kids so eager to sell a bag of granola. After talking with us for two hours, he said he wanted to help us out. He decided to place our granola in his stores.
The full Bear Naked story is over at CNN Money, it’s full of great insight into the reality that sometimes pure enthusiasm and excitement can be enough.
I spent some time this afternoon researching how we should split up equity. Here’s a dump of links and notes:
Equity distribution amongst startup co-founders ? | OnStartups Answers – The options seem to be 50/50 or distribution as a function of contributed value. People answering the question lean more towards the latter and offer some suggestions as to how to do it best.
Dividing equity between founders | cdixon.org – chris dixon’s blog – Variables to potentially consider include: past and future contributions, career success, and who had the big ideas (and whether those ideas have any technology or intellectual property associated with them).
Equity-Split Results, Part 1: When Do Teams Split Equally? | Noam Wasserman’s “Founder Frustrations” blog – Interesting chart comparing different situations. An equal split is more likely amongst smaller teams coming from similar backgrounds that divide equity at the start of the project or company.
Calculating Partnership Equity Splits | Journey of a Serial Entrepreneur – Potential formula for equity distribution: break down money to be invested, time to be invested, and experience of partner into percentages, and then determine percentage contributions of each partner. This breakdown then determines overall split of shares.
Startup Equity Distribution | Force of Good – It’s all about the K.I.S.S. approach. Lance argues against equal equity distribution and for dividing it based on contributions of time and expertise. One approach is to determine the valuation of the company, and then use a function of proposed wages and time contributed to divide up ownership.
My goal is to have a draft proposal for how we’ll do this by this weekend with the process completed by the end of next weekend. We’ll do the final negotiations at the team dinner on Friday night in Austin and loop team in by conference call as we need to. If you have opinions about this process, now is a good time to start helping me with research and speaking up 
The overall intent of this document is to provide a set of goals for CoPress to steer itself towards in the last three months of 2009. These goals presented as milestones encompass the entirety of our operations, and will give us more specific criteria for determining whether we’re scaling like we’d like to. In short, benchmarks to determine whether we’re on course with where we want to be. At the beginning of 2010, we’ll be able to look back upon this, critically reflect, and define plans for the first six months of the new year.
Managed Hosting
Scaling Managed Hosting, currently our primary business and project for expanding the market, is a top priority for fall 2009. We’re shooting for 75 Managed Hosting clients launched or signed and started with sandboxes by the end of fiscal year 2009.
Getting potential clients to commit to switching during the school year might present some difficulty. One strategy will be to convince them of the merit of working on the redesign for a couple of months, and then relaunching their site over winter break 2009. Most student newspapers should be able to make the transition successfully in that period. With adequate planning, the launches will be within the scope of our abilities and we’ll be able to handle their archives as they come and as our resources allow.
Continue reading ‘Strategic goals and benchmarks for last quarter 2009′
I checked in with Susan Linch earlier today because I was in a cold sweat about what we were supposed to be doing for reincorporation (and filing our first tax return). Lucky for us, she knows the entire process. A few days back, I sent her the signed paperwork for dissolving our non-profit status and reincorporating as a C corporation. I had actually tried to send it to her before that, but accidentally addressed it to myself. Whoops
The paperwork for reincorporating is going back in the mail in the next day, and we should hear from the State of Florida within the next week or so about the update. This is where the really cool part comes into play: we don’t have to file a tax return yet. Because we’re re-filing, and reporting our new year end as the of December, we don’t actually have to file a tax return until the beginning of next year. That fact alone removes a lot of stress about the current moment because, previously, I thought we had to file for a tax extension by September 15th.
Once we get confirmation from the State of Florida about the reincorporation, we’ll have to apply for a new Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS. On that form, we include our old EIN so that they know to expect a cancelation number shortly after that. All of this work happens as we make it happen and there isn’t really a specific deadline other than being on top of our game.
Later: I remember that the last thing we talked about is that we’ll need a really good accounting system in place by the end of the year with software and all that jazz.
Interesting would probably be the word I would use to describe this week’s team call.
Organization & Operations
Daniel has created a document outlining our strategic goals in each area, which builds on the first version we created. It’s fairly preliminary at the moment, but we will soon hash out goals for the next six months. Look out for more details.
We also discussed Ryan Sholin’s question on Inside CoPress about what is a student and what is college media. We concluded our definition for student would be an undergraduate, at least part-time, who is in good academic standing.
Also in this arena, we’ll be finishing up some Web site changes, starting a document for drafting our bylaws and sending thank you cards to donors.
Continue reading ‘March 29 2009: Starting to Detail Strategic Goals’
This week’s call was an efficient discussion that touched on a number of important points.
Organization
We will have our first board of directors meeting on March 8 to establish goals for the next six month and work on creating bylaws, which we hope to ratify at the second board meeting. The board and bylaws are two key step to eventually becoming an IRS-recognized non-profit under section 501(c)(3). Continue reading ‘March 1, 2009: New management structure and editorial excitement’
I’m a big fan of the ‘reality check.’ Which is why the entire CoPress team, and anyone who’s about to take on a venture similar to ours, oughta read the following article.
http://calacanis.com/2009/02/27/what-to-do-if-your-startup-is-about-fail-or-dont-stop-believing/
Yes, I’m putting in the full URL so you can’t possibly miss it because this is what failure looks like.
CoPress has customers. We have a vendor (more soon likely). We have a reputation to uphold. We are all intimately invested in see that this project takes over the world. (or at least, saves journalism) (or at least helps a few newsorgs out) (or, ____insert lofty goal here_____).
But, we can fail. It could happen. It would suck.
Read that article . You need to know what we could go through. We need to be able to recognize what failure looks like. In part so we can avoid it, and in part so that if it gets down to that, we know what to do.
Just to prove that I’m doing my job: Check out some ideas to get donations.
Recent Comments