Carsonified

I recently ran across Dave Seah’s Printable CEO and I love it. It gave me a great idea for my to-do list.

Instead of prioritizing my to-dos for the day, I give them a point value of ten, five or two. I do this during my 20-minute daily to-do review (where I move items from my “Week” list to my “Today” list).

• Ten points = Things that help me move towards my primary goals (for me and the company)
• Five points = Things that are important, but not vital
• Two points = Things that aren’t important, but need to be done

It’s strange, but I find myself getting excited about finishing an item and getting ten points for it. It’s like getting one of those “1-Up” mushrooms in Super Mario World.

If it was marked “High Priority”, instead of “10 Points”, there isn’t a reward for finishing it. It’s just another thing that needed to get done.

Try it and let me know if it works for you.

If you’re in the business of building or designing web sites and web apps, you need to be using my current setup. A brash thing to say? Not once you see it.

New Parallels Beta changes everything

I switched from a PC to a MacBook Pro about three months ago. One month ago I bought Parallels ($79) and last week I upgraded it to the new Beta (Parallels Desktop for Mac Build 3036 Beta).

It is freakin’ amazing. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a perfect computing experience. Seriously.

Here’s why: You can simultaneously view IE 6/7, Firefox PC, Firefox Mac and Safari (and any other browsers you want, whether they’re Mac, PC or Linux) on your OSX desktop.

No switching back and forth between virtual desktops - it’s all right there (click for larger image).

Here’s another screengrab to help you understand how it’s working (click for larger image).

In the above image, I’ve got IE7, Firefox PC, Safari and then Firefox Mac.

In addition to this amazing capability (called “Coherence Mode”), its got these great new features:

1. You can share the clipboard between OSX and XP/Vista
2. You can drag and drop files between a XP/Vista window and an OSX window
3. No need to “click into” the XP/Vista window. As soon as the mouse is over the XP/Vista window, it’s active (if you’re in Normal Mode instead of Coherence Mode).

How to set it up

Convinced? Here’s how to get rocking:

1. Buy a MacBook Pro
2. Buy and install Parallels
3. Download and install Parallels Desktop for Mac Build 3036 Beta
4. Install XP/Vista (you need to buy a legit copy)
5. Boot up XP/Vista
6. After it’s booted up, go to “Tools > Install Parallels Tools …” (click for larger image)
   
7. Once Parallels Tools in installed, open up the browsers you want to test
8. Go to “View > Coherence” (click for larger image)
   
9. You’re done! (Click for larger image)
   

Still not quite perfect

As with most things, this setup is not 100% perfect (but it’s very close). If you don’t use the XP/Vista windows for a little while, the screensaver starts up and takes over the whole screen behind the active OSX window. However, you can deal with this by turning off the screensaver in XP/Vista (click for larger image).

Time to switch

There are strong feelings on both sides of the PC/Mac debate, but this is the clearest and most compelling reason for switching to a Mac. You get all the benefits of the beautifully designed and executed OSX interface, with all the access and testing you need on XP/Vista.

I know that not everyone can afford to go out and buy a MacBook Pro, but if you can, what are you waiting for?

Now that we’ve built two web apps, we’ve got a good perspective on what it takes to make them succeed. This is my conclusion: You’ve got to be prepared to spend cash to advertise your web app.

I’ve been spending one day a week on Amigo and it’s painfully obvious that the blogosphere is only going to get us so far.

• Yes, Bare Naked App was a great guerrilla marketing activity (and a lot of fun)
• Yes, getting on TechCrunch was handy
• Yes, a lot of folks in the Web 2.0 community know about Amigo

However, none of that is yielding an increase in revenue. We’ve got a long way to go until we build a critical mass of people who use Amigo. This demonstrates the point of this post very well: Building a financially successful web app takes hard work, clever marketing and advertising dollars.

Signal Vs. Noise is not normal

I have a feeling that far too many people (including myself sometimes) think that the blogosphere is a free ticket to successful web apps. This just isn’t the truth. We all look at Signal Vs. Noise and think “All we need to do is launch a great blog like the guys at 37signals. It will create buzz around our app and then we’ll see the users flow in.”

Well, I just don’t think that’s the case. Signal Vs. Noise is an anomaly. It has a loyal readership (myself included) that is the perfect market for their apps. Jason and crew has done a fabulous job of creating passionate users. However, I don’t think their experience is easily repeatable.

Yes, the blogosphere is powerful

I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t have a great blog. It is definitely an extremely important part to any web app. However, it’s vital that you set aside money in your cash flow for advertising after you launch.

I called a friend today that runs a successful web app (the revenue from one app supports the entire company) and he said they often spend $10,000+ per month on advertising.

We were lucky with DropSend

So how did DropSend become successful with so little in advertising? There are two reasons:

1. When you need to send a file, you’re often desperate and will often pay for the ability to do so
2. It’s viral as it tells the file recipient about DropSend

Most apps (including Amigo) don’t benefit from these two vital elements. Most of them need good ol’ fashion advertising to spread the word.

Plan for the long haul

So when you’re planning your budget for your new web app, don’t forget that you’ll most likely need to spend money on advertising. Yes, there’s always a chance that your rocket to success because of some great press, but it’s far more likely that you’ll have to wage a long term marketing and advertising battle to rise to the top.

Having this long term perspective (instead of expecting to achieve success very quickly) will separate the truly successful web apps from the rest.

Today I checked our bank balance, updated our cash flow Excel sheet and had a financial meeting with Gill (my wife and the other Director of Carson Systems).

Always being pessimistic

One thing that I continually have to remind myself is that cash flow projections should always be pessimistic. There’s just no use in saying “Hot damn, we’re going to be filthy rich if we exceed our sales goals!”. In can be exciting, but it’s useless.

Here’s my tip for cashflow projections: Cut your sales by 1/2 and then a little bit more.

If you’re still comfortably in the black 3-4 months in the future, then you’re good to go. Note: This advice applies to small businesses. If your company is bigger, you’ll need to look much further into the future. Also, if your company is fairly new, you might need to check your cash flow monthly or weekly. (We did, in the beginning.)

Don’t forget the tax man

The easiest mistake to make, is to look at your bank balance and forget that a part of it belongs to the Tax Man. If you don’t account for this you could be out of business before you know what hit you.

Plan for inflation, bonuses and pay increases

When planning your 3-year cash flow projection, don’t forget that you need to give your employees pay rises and bonuses. You also need to account for 3% inflation.

Formula errors are hard to spot

It’s extremely important to double check your spreadsheet formulas. Then check them again. Go through each Sum and Total and quickly check it’s correct. A great way to do this is ask your accountant to have a quick check over the spreadsheet - they’re great at spotting these kind of things.

Share the love

If you have good cash flow planning tips, or example spreadsheets, feel free to share below.