Whoa. They want a LOT of information about my company, just to register their software.Name and address is mandatory – everything from size of business and number of employees is mandatory. Not even WINDOWS made me give this information as mandatory, and people complain about it all the time (and yes, I’m an MSFT stockholder in my retirement accounts).

I frankly don’t want to give them that information, as they’re just going to use it to market to me, and frankly, if I want their extra services such as Payroll, I’ll click the button and ask for it.

I go to the Amazon.com Reviews for Quickbooks 2010 and wow, I’m not the only person who thinks this is the case. Reviewer “R. Pink Floyd” said “Intuit has their head up their bank account” and “my biggest problem with it is that the entire program just seems highly focused on sucking money out of the customer.” P. Rudy “Adventure Traveler” asks ” Does Intuit Work Day and Night to dream up new ways for customers to hate it?” and “They must. Decent accounting program that everyone knows about, yet each year, they work harder and harder to get more of your money and to piss you off.  Intuit has one plus — I will NEVER complain about Microsoft. Could you image using Windows where there was a pop up every 15 mintues to sell you an add on service?”Stephen J. Fotos “Stephen” says “Quickbooks is a marketing machine, more than a functional program.”

So I’m wondering how I can skip this registration process. And then I read the End User License Agreement {emphasis is mine}:

Intuit Legal Statement

You hereby grant Intuit permission to use information about your business and usage experience to enable us to provide the Intuit Services to you, including updating and maintaining your data, addressing errors or service interruptions, and to enhance the types of data and services Intuit may provide to you in the future. You also grant Intuit permission to combine your business data, if any, with that of others in a way that does not identify you or any individual personally to improve services and to compare business practices with other company standards. We may use your data to create, market or promote new Intuit offerings to you and others.

So, in order to have the privilege of paying to use their program, I have to bend over and let them send me marketing information. And, I have to deal with pop-ups every time I log in. The program has a 60 day money back guarantee. I’d immediately try Freshbooks but it doesn’t seem to have a full Bills and Expenses system – I could be wrong – let me know.

How does this tie into VRM? Well, my understanding from speaking to Doc Searls many times, including in this interview at Supernova, is that VRM is the way I give my data to companies I want to have it, so they can sell me more services I want, and not the other way around.

Frankly, this entire experience with the new Quickbooks just makes me feel icky. And that’s not what you want your customers to feel like.

I’ve Tweeted Intuit http://twitter.com/howardgr/status/6836077895 and asked “Hey @Intuit, how do I opt out of giving you all my registration data for Quickbooks 2010. You are asking for too much private biz info.” I’ll publish any replies I get here.

UPDATE: Scott Gregory of Better Bottom Line Blog Tweeted me about his post on Quickbooks 2010 Registration Hassles. Thanks for letting me know others are having problem with this, Scott.

I ran into Lauren Solomon of LS Image Associates, whom I worked with several years ago, and haven’t seen in good while. She introduce me to Elyissia Wassung of 2 Chicks with Chocolate.

We went inside, and here are my live blogging notes (excuse typos and partial sentences – this is raw note-taking).

Street Smarts Live – an Inc. Magazine Event:
The Knack, How Street Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up, by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham.

How Street Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up.

Norm: 1st Business  asked How were our sales yesterday didn’t understand that there were more than sales gross margin, profits, etc are important
Cash is the hardest commodity to get, and easiest to spend. Lots of first time entrepreneurs think image type things like stationery is important, decorations, etc. They’ll need to have cash later on, don’t waste on fancy stuff. He always bought furniture at bankruptcy or close-outs.
Logo design did within company  – never outsourced to designers.

Sold recent business for much more than last one because it had better gross margins important to understand.

Norm always learns from mistakes.
Biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is in planning  don’t just start business do free market research also, other executives in business  not in  your exact field or territory may answer questions for you. Go to sector groups.
Make sure business you are starting fits in with your life/life plan. For example, if you only want to work 3 days a week, don’t start a 24/7 store. His long range plan was to take off 16 weeks a year. It took him 15 years to set the business up that way, but he worked to it.
Make sure you’re capitalized sufficiently to get to level that you don’t need to be borrowing. If business will cost 200k, put 50k in reserve (25%).
Most people are overly optimistic in projections.
Most common problem in running, on going business: people don’t understand gross margins. They’re not making enough in sales. Sell service for 10$, your direct cost is $6, 4$ is your gross profit. $4is used for overhead,   If we hire and pay salesperson 40k a year, we need 100k to hire him or her.

Accounting is Quickbooks good? QB or any accounting system crap in, crap out. If you do it by hand you may understand relationship between numbers more directly.
If you follow numbers by hand, it may show you trends that you might not notice on computer.
Accountants are great historians, but when you get year end or quarterly statements it may be too late. You need understanding quickly.
Q: as business starts, most people micromanage everthing. As business grows, you have to hire others. How to do this best.
A: Important to set culture of the business. Learned he’s a terrible manager liked to be involved in everything. It is hard for entrepreneur to let go and let others do their jobs. Also promote people to peter principle to too high a position. Learned also to hired people for attitude, and can teach them abilities. Try to promote from within. If you hire good in the beginning, you’ll be better later on.
Let people make some of own mistakes.
Eventually let staff lock him out of staff meetings.
Q: When’s the right time to step out of the business?
A: business must be running on own cash flow, and you know that people there can do the job.
Q: Bo there are different stages to this at one time, you backed off from meetings, but you were still involved.
A: He was also making decisions that were in best interest of him, not of the company. He stayed on for a few years when he sold company, and there were challenges.
Q: What happens when you have been running business for years, economy changes, and you have to grow it. The employees aren’t of the ability to grow it?
A: You have to take emotion out of business decisions people work with him or for him but they are not friends, because sometimes you have to make decisions that affect them in a mental or monetary way. If you make decisions about what’s best for company, you may hurt people along the way but the company, if it gets bigger, may be better for everyone. The business comes first.
Q: Did you have investors invest in  your companies?
A: First business funded by lawyers and accountants that financed him. He eventually bought them out (didn’t have a buy out agreement, so there was a dutch auction). He had customers fund cash to fund his buyout. 95% of all companies do <$1M a year in business.
Only 5000 companies do 30m a year or more. Microsofts and HPs are the rarities in business.
Q: How to get away from staff and day-to-day to create systems and processes
A: Believes in critical numbers simple reports, weekly: Sales, margins, new boxes in, etc. and a few more, and via that he can tell how business is going. In fact, staff will tell him how things are going put in notes when things change.
Also, surround yourself with someone who’s great with numbers, and other weak points, but learn to understand it.
Bringing up 2 entrepreneurs now, Brian Kelly, City Beans, and Mike ? West End ? Express
Mike: Wanted to get from $1MM to 10MM a year, Norm told him he couldn’t do it in way he was talking about got him to $3MM, then eventually. They allowed him to do it while taking off weekends, having a life plan. If he had done sales sales sales, he never would have been able to enjoy life.
Brian: Went to Norm, article about shredding business, had a coffee business and was working as fireman, Norm helped him get business started.
Business nightmare starbucks was moving in next door to his store. He had been competing with Dunkin, business was cash-flow positive. He was worried that they’d cluster around him and drive him out of business. Norm helped him look at it a different way – $bucks is big company, what can I do that they do, and how can I make up for the loss of business they’re going to have  what’s the plan? The answer was he had done catering for years they did soup, salad, sandwiches, and did corp catering. Lost 11% but gained it back in catering business.
The important thing is you’re going to have competition, you have to figure out why you’re better than everyone else.
Norm: Dad was door-to-door peddler bought dresses for $4, sold for $8. There are opportunities everywhere.
Customer asked box storage question he did research, found industry prices, and realized he had opportunity to outsell them. Put boxes in his office to start, eventually became largest archival storage company in the country.

Q: New entrepreneurs most difficult part is finding sufficient capital. Where is capital most easy to access?
A: Norm: it is A difficult part, always an issue. Most people start with their own, bank accounts, 2nd mortgage on house, go to family and friends or rolodex for money. Some unconventional avenues  – going to potential customers  get them to invest in your company if you’re going to produce service for them. You may have big idea, but start at a smaller level. Get investor to help you do small part, before you go to larger idea.
Brian financed first Coffee business by working 2 or 3 jobs, took money from tax returns, credit cards, built coffee bar himself as carpenter.
Q: You spend time finding the Niche you have to continue to look for ways.
A: Perfect Courier  the only computer you could buy was an IBM32  a big box that could take customer addresses and total a bill. Was trying to get Scalia, McCabe, Slobes as a client. Problem they had was a chargeback to clients they were not getting the data in way that accounting department could use it. He took 1500 tickets, had 20 typists type the bills perfectly  the agency’s accounting department wanted the program he said it was proprietary. He had to have 60 typists until he got the thing programmed 4 months later.
He went from courier to a billing service.
Niche he discovered with storage service he was closer into town than big companies like Iron Mountain he could do faster delivery.
Q: Focus on making sale, getting customer and develop a relationship What’s value of capital vs getting customers?
A: You’re either an onsite or offsite shredder offsite was 750K, onsite cost 250k.  Partnered with someone outside of town. Eventually he doesn’t own a shredder he basically owns customer relationships and partners with everyone.
Q: You’re making money – how to expand correctly
A: Before you start business, you don’t know opportunities stick to One. Once you’re running business you see many opportunities. Once you have cash flow sufficient, you can expand, but also do them one idea/expansion at a time.
Be careful you don’t kill golden goose.
Q: Debt vs equity financing? Challenge of getting rid of equity
A: doesn’t like to give away equity. In beginning, you may not be able to get rid of debts quickly enough.
Q: Finding partners and structure
A: His 2 partners were sweat equity partners, took >20 years for them to get it, with right to buy it out.
Q; In book you talk about compensation of sales people no commission  how do you keep them motivated?
A: Doesn’t believe that only commission motivates people. If you’re not feeling fairly paid, or happy with job, they can find other jobs. They have a culture, and pay sales people fairly, and prosper for bonus, and how company does. Sales people also want consistency  it can be positive for them. Sales people can cover for each other.
Q: Have run by KASS rules up to now, has challenge finding a good lawyer.
A: Rarely gets involved with lawyers both sides walk away a little unhappy is a good settlement. Lawyers shouldn’t make business decisions for you  they’ll tell you about the law.

Chances are, if you’re not an early adopter type, you may not have heard of Twitter, the online community that is a kind of instant-messaging social network. Users send updates of up to 140 character (about 2 sentences) out to their followers–people who choose to receive their messages–and read the messages of those they follow.

Read the rest at INC’s Startup Blog.

Martijn Roordink took Bill Sobel, Roeland Reinders, and me around on a tour of the
beautiful new space,which is taking final form over the next 6 weeks. The concept combines elements of shared space like Regus clubs (printing, coffee bar, and other services on site) with concepts of co-working (with an entire area for soloists who will share space).

From this new glass top to the building, making the entire inside an open court, to board rooms and common areas designed to get the companies and workers interacting, there’s a lot that’s well-thought out about this place.

Flickr is giving me a hard time about photo uploads this morning, so I will update with more photos later. Additionally Bill Sobel and I took some video and when we upload that later, you’ll get a much better sense of the place, and I’ll expand this entry.

The hotel room is designed for comfort, but is small, with a tube shower and tube toilet to save space. A futuristic Phillips controller manages lights, TV, mood music, and probably some other things I haven’t figured out yet.

The concept here is not to stay in your room, but to come down to the common areas and interact with fellow “Citizens.” Everyone in the lobby seems to have a laptop or a smartphone (ok, to be fair, this is opening week, with mostly journalists, critics and bloggers, but I expect this won’t change much when the press is gone.

Elaine Ching, Citizen M’s PR and Marketing exec told me that the starting price is $69 Euro per night, which includes wifi, movies, lobby books (clarification: for you to read not to take . The cafe prices are reasonable based on the airport or other hotel food. The big concept here is a space for travelers to gather and work together, and for people to meet each other. The space invites interaction, as many people are just casually saying “hi” and the tables are such that you can’t help but join a group in progress in the cafe.

More updates as I find them, and I’ll give a review of sleeping off of the runway tomorrow. Now, it’s off to see Amsterdam and then Eindhoven for the talk tonight.

Bonus links: UK Guardian Review of Citizen M.

Happy Hotelier Blog review.

Update: I realized I didn’t tie this concept in with Co-Working, but it has a simliar feeling. I had this discussion with Tara Hunt and Tony from New Work City. It also ties in with the EFactor plans to open business lounges in several cities.

2nd Update: MegaWhat.TV reviewed the concept room in late 2007. See it here from YouTube:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=KnwxFOm1AeU[/youtube]

UPDATED 8/14 – Thanks to Happy Hotelier for pointing out how you’re supposed to spell “Schiphol.” Sorry, Dutch friends.

This separation exists today. Many brands still allocate budget for commercial buys for cable and broadcast separately, due to the different characteristics of each. Broadcast cuts a wider path, where as cable networks tend to be much more niche targets. In today’s world though, where one can find much better stats about who is watching what, when, and where many brands are better of just being on specific shows, regardless of where they run, the distinction between cable and broadcast budgets seems quaint.

Not as quaint, however, as the distinction between the advertising or marketing budget and the ‘interactive’ budget. Today, interactive is a part of how a huge percentage of people are exposed to products, brands, recommendations, and especially content. Comscore says that almost 85 million viewers watched over 4.3 billion videos on YouTube in March 2008. That’s over 50 videos per viewer.Quite an audience for your ads. And they can be even more finely targeted than on TV. (Wait, you say, “I don’t see ads on YouTube!” I beg to differ.)

Sometimes the content is the ad, like “Will it Blend.” But, in a recent chat with a marketing firm executive, he told me how he has to beg clients to carve out ten or fifteen percent of their buget for “experiments” in “new media,” whether those experiments are streaming video, blogging, Facebook, Twitter or the like. There’s one strategy for marketing and another for interactive. To me, this means that companies are missing out on coordinated strategies and short changing some potential innovations.

A great example of a company that did a great, integrated job in the past few years was Nissan, when they integrated their product into the TV show Heroes. That previous like to the “heroespedia” (wikipedia for the show Heroes) shows how the car was in the show, integrated in the plotline. They also bought a lot of ads on the Heroes website. Whereever Heroes fans turned they saw Nissan. This isn’t a ‘conversation’ strategy, and it is not rocket science either. But it is an opportunity that required Nissan and their agency to work across what are often silos – the creative group and the interactive group and the media buying group.

There are opportunities for integrating the feedback and ideas already online back into company websites, and for providing an outlet for customers to communicate directly with product teams (as GM did when they invited bloggers to see the Volt at the NY Auto Show). But these opportunities may pass companies by if they continue to think of their interactive and their marketing budgets as separate.

I’m moderating a panel on Marketing Innovation at Supernova 2008 on Wed., June 18th (at 8:30am, try not to be late), on just this subject. Hope you’ll come and share your insights.

Guest: Mark Grossman – Attorney and “TechLaw” Columnist

The industry should be embarrased – contracts are horrible, not so much one-sided as incompetently drawn, fail to address basic questions. VERY often, the contract delivered is not the deal the parties wanted to do. Most business litigation is honest business people, honestly disagreeing about their items that are unclear.
You have to be on the same page – legal review helps you – lack of attention to details will bite you later – it is a safety net. But sometimes people agree to agree later.

Sellers are in the best position to put out the first draft for a deal. Good form documents are helpful for you to close and seal a deal.

Assumption: assume that no one at the table will be involved after the parties sign, the doc stands on its own, and its well written and could be understood by people not familiar with the details. Who do you write for- the judge, the (high school and college educated) jury, who? – Work with assumption that everyone who negotiated will not be there but have the same skill set – and they could read the document and understand it.

Mark now shows 6 basic questions for a software dev contract – responsibilities, procedures for feedback, corrections and changes; procedures for final acceptance; price and when it’s paid; who owns the copyright and ip rights; remedies for delay or failure.
Who’s responsible for: text, graphics, look and feel, layout. Is it defined?

Licensing – who licences 3rd party software? Who does due dilligence on underlying licenses now?

What’s the procedure for change orders? – must create procedures for collaboration

Changes require approval of both parties, needs to deal with timelines, mechanisms for adjusting price, do not get sloppy with procedure – creates litigation.

Procedure for final acceptance – including functions, speed, and response time. Have to think about failed tests – procedures, time for fixing, etc. What happens if parties never agree it works.

What’s the price for the work when it is paid? – flat fees – more work up front to clearly delinate the scope.
Is it based on time? What’s hourly rate? Time to completion? Require regular updates on time to date.

When is payment due? Dates vs milestones.

Who owns the copyrights and other IP rights in a website?
buyer – “I paid for it – how come I don’t own it?” vs developer – “losing rights to my own programming library.”
Work made for hire – unless agreement says the buyer owns it, the seller owns it.
If doing outsourced work, even if venue for law is New York, always check with foreign lawyer.

Remedies for delay or failure – careful balance needed. If customer doesn’t provide what’s needed on time, like logos, graphics, etc. developer can’t deliver on time.

Whose law should apply? NY can be a compromise state.

Magic language- time is of the essence – - Courts don’t like to enforce time limits, but putting this in can make court put higher priority on timeline. (Shouldn’t be acceptable to a seller).

Where and how to battle – Lawsuit, arbitration, attorney fees to the victor?

Norms on limitation of liability – no matter what we do and how bad it is, we owe you little, and you owe us first born.

Limits on liability – from seller – it’s a price issue, its an industry standard, we’ve never done it any other way, we can’t be possibly responsibile for all the harm our software would do if it failed. You have to have backups in place.

Buyer’s perspective – full amount of contract or more, exclude 3rd party property damage and bodily injury, exclude liability for infringement of IP, exclude NDA liability, reciprocal.

In general, great presentation, very informative, I learned a lot.

Space scientist says texting is four times more expensive than receiving scientific data from space

The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that’s 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that’s £374.49 per MB – or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.”

Email Insanity & the 0.001 Challenge | 43 Folders

The 0.001 Challenge

Imagine that the person receiving the email you’re composing receives 1,000 other message each day more or less identical to yours. What would you do to distinguish yours from the others? What change would make your email amazingly easy to deal with and not insane? Does the content of your email belong someplace else? Like an SMS, a face-to-face meeting, or maybe even in an angry, venting screed that you never send.

What can you do to improve communication with your customers, partners, or constituents?

Key ideas: 600K companies start every year. Only 50k are funded by angels. Rest are funded by the founders, or by friends/family.

VC: Professional investors.
Angels: Rich-ish people investing own money and their mentoring time for a good economic and personal returns. – Early Stage Deals.
Profile of Angels – 57 yrs old, masters degree, 15 year entreprenur, 2.7 ventures founded. Has to be an accredited investor (1MM in assets,or 200k/yr income for 2 years or more). Invest for 9 years, in avg of 10 companies, have had 2 exits/closures, and 10% of their wealth is in angel investments.

Startup food chain is: You! first. You fund your own business. But, if you’re at a University or can create an app, you can go for an SBIR/STTR grant – phase I is up to 100k, phase II is up to 700k. Or, Bootstraping – get your own contracts/sales, and start up yourself.

Banks don’t like to invest – they rent money.

When you sell shares of your company, your first stage is usually sold to friends and family. This is a first test – if you believe you have a business that can scale, if you can’t convince friends or family to invest, there’s probably a problem.
Next stage – Angels – 25k – 250k.
In the middle -the gap – between 250k and 2MM. – Angel Groups – group of angels who share deal flow, pool capital, shared expenses (via dues), variety of experience, standardized terms, and lets them be smarter investors and enjoy social experience.

Later on stages – Venture Capital Firms, 200k and up.

Over time, there have developed over 300 groups. Typical groups do 7.3 deals, 4.5 are new, rest are follow-on, 1.9 mm (NY angels did 5-6MM), do aprox 250MM per round, on average. Typical angels are investing around 33K. NY Angels do 25k minimum per investment.

VCs invest in less than 1% of deals. Angels, about the same.

NY Angels get 30-40 plans/month. What do they look for?

• Great Entrepreneurs – integrity, passion, skills, expertise in the domain, business management skill, leadership, commitment, vision, ability to listen and be coachable
• Scalable business model – something that will get big, fast. Which is why web businesses can get funded.
• Unfair advantage – something special that’s important to the angels , ex patents
• External Validation – ex. sales, beta tests with known companies, great advisors,
• Low investment required -
• Reasonable Valuation – in case of angels, that often has to be low valuation – 1MM to 2-3MM

Secret economics of Angels -

1. $1MM for angel investment from a person’s portfolio. Must diversity portfolio so
2. Distribute it across 10 deals
3. 1.25(to the 6th) = 3.8x ROI – it’s as risky as it gets, wants 25% annualized return, this is a long term hold 5-7 years (6 yrs).
4. However, not every investment returns that amount.

• 5 return 0. 0
• 2 return 1x. 0.2 return
• 2=3x return. 0.6 return
• 3.8-.8 – last deal has to return 3x money. You have to make 30x to help the angel make their return.

So, if your deal isn’t in the position of returning 30x, they won’t invest.

How do you find an angel? Network and tell everyone. Get introductions. Lawyers, accountants, etc. LinkedIn could be good for it.

Angel groups have two parts of a process.
Part 1.

1. Have a detailed business plan. They may not read the whole plan, but you must know the answers to the questions they’ll ask
2. Research the groups to find a good fit.

Application to the group – including a video.
You get a one pager back, and gives to the angels, all the salient features of your business.

Angels get this – and try to figure out which are appropriate for them.

Part 2 – if your submission is accepted, (30 submit, 15 go forward)

1. You’ll meet a screening committee – 3 deals per month are recommended forward to present
2. You’re coached by angels to improve your presentation
3. You’re then able to present to whole group
4. Exec committee meets – once they find good company – will present to other groups in a network
5. Attend a Due Dilligence meeting (2 hours) – meeting with those who are interested, go through financials, meet with mgmt team
6. Negotiate terms sheet

From the angels’ point of view – showing dashboard that’s the backend for over 400 angel groups.
Your submission creates a secure deal room, where angels can collaborate, links to your documents, your video, your one line pitch and your summary, your referrals. System also tracks the updates, the notes, etc.
This also lets other angels see who’s investing and their commitment.

For entrepreneurs, your one upload can be shared with all angels via “Open deals.”

UPDATE: Apparently the final few lines of what I wrote last night didn’t post – I had some trouble with the WIFI (Free wifi appreciated, 92nd St Y, but it was having some issues).

So, I thought David did an excellent job laying out the Angel landscape and helping entrepreneurs see it both from their side and from the Angel’s side. The networking both before and after the event was pretty high quality. I spent some time with Hank Williams and Jason Olim, both of whom will be on my panel at NYSIA this coming Monday the 14th. Also got a chance to catch up with Franklin Madison from ITAC and Sanford Dickert. I also caught up briefly with Karen Kline from Softbank, who always has something going on.