Bodega Sale Blog

Expectations vs. Reality

There is really something wrong about my logic lately. I have been doing product development and yet I expect traffic to pour.

My twitter product has been growing in features. First is the quick add button where you can now schedule tweets in just one click. Then I wrote a firefox addon which I’m still waiting for addons.mozilla.org to get it approved.

Actually, I already realized one year ago that building features won’t result in traffic. And yet now, I’m expecting my first paying customer.

When should I realize that marketing efforts only will result to traffic? I guess that add-on I submitted will bring traffic from mozilla.org soon. So it’s in some way a marketing effort.

About that first customer, I just realized that it will be very very difficult in my niche. First competition is very tight. TweetDeck, HootSuite and Buffer are the champions and these are free to use. Plus, they were VC funded. Second, there are more than 1,900 twitter apps and who in the world would want another twitter client?

But I think there are a group of people that will prefer TweetCaddy. These users just want to get things done. They want to work with a software on a clean simple interface and with a relaxing user experience. So, every time I see “via TweetCaddy” on twitter it just gives me energy to keep going.

On the subject of expectations vs. reality, I felt down, burned out because 8 months of work and I still don’t have revenue. Someone told me that twitter apps are selling quite good on Flippa. So I looked into that “other option.” How I was surprised that a twitter app is for sale on Flippa and that the highest bid was $25,000. Though it’s really tempting. I am still undecided on that idea.

People have been giving me advice to look for a co-founder because that raises the “chances of success.” And because Paul Graham said so. Hmmm, but well he also said (#2 on that list) re-locate to Silicon Valley. With the strict US immigration laws and by my own choice to stay, re-locating is not an option for me. By the way, he also said that you use lisp.

In the startup world, single founders are rarely mentioned in the media and rarely funded by VCs. But to think of it, for every successful companies, ex. Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, there is this one guy that makes the company. So I think, I realized that I want to stay as a single founder with a small company but with a lot of freedom.

So, are you a single founder? What suggestions do you have for me?

Tech guide in the Philippines

Webgeek Philippines just posted a very useful guide on how to go about the tech industry in the Philippines. If you’re looking for a designer, web developer or android developer visit the link below:

http://webgeek.ph/resources/tech-user-groups-in-the-philippines/

Why Do Rich People Get Even More Rich?

Opportunity, I think is the best word to describe it. While most people consider getting a job in a fortune 500 company as a rare opportunity. Rich people who were born with rich parents don’t event need to apply for a job their entire lives.

Let me first say this, I am not born rich nor wealthy. I consider myself in the middle class in Pampanga. I worked as an employee almost my entire life. Working for somebody else is certainly not glorious but it pays the rent and it supports my family. There must be a little glory in there somewhere.

The topic is why do the rich gets even more richer? and why do the rest of us need to struggle our entire lives in order to survive? I want to discuss about this topic so we can somehow emulate the rich in small ways that we can afford. What kinds of opportunities do the rich have so they can accumulate more wealth than ever before? Is it possible to emulate them so we can become one someday? Just a warning though, below are just my observations so please take it with a pinch of salt.

1. Time - Being an employee is basically bartering your time and energy in exchange for money. As you gain more experience and skill your rates will eventually go higher. But as you sell more of your time you eventually close the opportunities that rich people have. The wealthy do work hard either but they focus their time on finding and accumulating passive income. Eventually, investments such as stocks, real estate, and other passive income can be passed on to the next generations. Like employees, they too gain more experience and skill so they will eventually accumulate more wealth.

2. Risk Tolerance - The rich can afford to lose money. If the wealthy lost money from an investment he will still have enough to recover. That is where the Filipino OFWs (immigrant workers) get a huge disadvantage here. A Father comes home from the Middle East he and his wife opens a small business — let’s say an internet cafe — but disappointingly they had to close it down because it’s not making money. The reason might be financially. e.g they ran out of cash or because of mismanagement due to them being inexperienced at running the business. So the father needs to find another job abroad again for the next 5 years. Rinse and repeat afterwards.

3. Family Culture - People who were born wealthy were brought up in a rich state of mind. They knew from the beginning that they are rich and they knew how their parents became rich. If you’re from the middle class you don’t have this knowledge and so you go to the local bookstore and buy a book like Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Eventually those book will make you delusional and you think you’ll make it in the next 2 years. Then real world will hit you like a brick.
   
   But rich people educate their children through real life experiences in business i.e. They let the business ran by their children and they let their children find investment opportunities and so on. Most of us, on the other hand tell our children to get good grades so they can work for that rich man who was lucky enough to have rich parents.

What do you think, in your opinion,why rich people get even more rich?

The Rise of the Creative Teams

I remember then when our art teacher asked us to draw something about the Philippines on an illustration board as our home work. I drew a similar mini comic of the late Larry Alcala. While most of my classmates obviously asked their parents to draw for them, or drew all the same things like mountains, rice fields and farmers.

I got the best flattery a young artist would have; my teacher took home my artwork. Then in high school I played the bass guitar. Yes, I was a young creative person back then.

Fast forward into the present, I am now a computer programmer but this industry drained out the creative juice out of me. Bug fixing, Databases and API libraries, frameworks all made me now a complete nerd.

And I know I am not the only one. I know programmers who are good at playing the guitar,some are good in art and some are good in photography.

But generally, companies wants us to be geeks. That’s the reason why they hired us anyway. So eventually that creative urge on us will die. Our taste for beauty will vanish.

But let’s say there are companies out there that let creativity flow around the office culture and what benefits will you get? What will be the end product you have with a highly creative programming team? Creative solutions, clever product names, original UI, wonderful user experience. Overall you’ll get a software product that will stand out, remarkable and viral worthy.

This problem is prevalent in the industry, just look how nerdy Google+ is compared to Facebook and Twitter. Google spells nerd. While even older, Facebook looks cool and fresh. Even naming a product with a plus sign is totally nerdy. For business softwares, a good example would be Mint.

Creative teams will win, hire the artists and cultivate their creativity.

Tweet Caddy

Today, I have finally shipped my side project TweetCaddy.com in a single sentence; it’s the most advanced tweet scheduler. And I believe it’s going to send you new customers from Twitter.

This idea came from my past failed project Bodega Sale. I noticed some of the Bodega Sale users are very active on Twitter. These “users” are all Shopify store owners which by the way, they signed up but they did not actually use the app. So I observed, and one store in particular was handling customer service, sales inquiry and lead generation all through Twitter.

The store is in the beauty product niche and it was doing pretty good for an online store at that time. I realized then, that social networks are already playing an important role in internet marketing. Its already 2011 after all. Here are some of the techniques that I noticed they did:

1. They consistently made friends to their niche market.
2. They retweeted and mentioned interesting tweets from their community.
3. They handled customer support pretty well.

And so the next day, I tried to copy the marketing technique on what the online store was doing. But then I just got frustrated with the web interface. I tried the Mac Twitter app but it’s not very efficient marketing tool especially for finding potential customers.

The result, I got struck on this idea to make a simple, easy to use twitter marketing tool for not so techie users. And to enable them to sell easily their products through twitter.

So, I sat down a few days after work, and began experimenting with an RSS feed reader. I went and searched Filipino developers who blog and I put them together so their articles will be announced through the @FilipinoDevs twitter account.

That worked nicely at first, but finding more developers was a bit tricky. So I wrote a Twitter search function which you can search keywords based on tweets and a search function which shows all followers of a user. I named these Keyword and People Search.

For an example of People search: You’r selling shoes. Your customers would be all of the followers of @zappos.

An example of Keyword search: You’re selling slimming products, Search for people who tweeted “I want to diet.”

Did you get the idea?

Now why should you sell to twitter users? Because they are sneezers. They are young risk takers and willing to try and click on anything. They are very social and their profiles and tweets are mostly public.

A lot of things are planned in the future for Twitter Caddy so please stay in touch.

Thanks for reading, I hope you check out the app and I hope it brings you more customers.

Why Startup Weekends Don’t Work

Last Friday, Oct 21 2011 The first Startup Weekend Manila was held in MINT College. This event gives an opportunity to entrepreneurs to bring their startup ideas to reality. You first pitch your idea then they’ll vote. The ones who get enough votes will get a change to “work” on their project for two consecutive days.

This is the first I’ve seen in the Philippines. I’m sure there are smart young developers out there who had organized their private hackathons but this one is really a big event for the Filipino developers. Over 200 people have attended the event with a registration fee of P1,000. (23~ USD)

My love for my country is back once more. We have a brain drain happening in the Philippines — our intelligent and hardworking people are leaving and are working abroad and few of us remaining don’t have our visas yet. :) Kidding aside, I’m very proud of my fellow Filipino entrepreneurs for pursuing their dreams no matter what it takes.

I feel jealous as I look through the pictures in twitter. Saying to myself I wish I was 21 again with a Mac Book Pro and learning from these brilliant mentors and fellow entrepreneurs. But I had to focus on my tweet scheduler app because I have been in an out of focus for the past 3 years. And I swore to myself that I shall build only one thing and get my ROI as soon as possible.

In addition, I don’t believe that startup weekends will help if your goal is to make profit. You can come there for networking and getting education from mentors but if your goal is eventually make something profitable then you don’t need to participate. Below are the reasons why I think the startup weekend will not work.

1. They Promote Instant Gratification - Perseverance and hard work can’t be taught in schools, by ebooks and by mentors. Sure you can inspire them and tell them to take action on their ideas. But it’s when after you finish version 1.0 and that all your energy will go all the way down to the bottom is what will break you.
   
   What is tricky here is that you’ll never going to experience the bottom during the weekend development phase. This will happen after you get all features completed and all your energy exhausted — burn out is common in the startup world and no mentor can help you there.

2. Profitable ideas won’t win votes - Who would vote for the boring B2B app and the greedy business man? Winning ideas are usually the ones that would cure problems of society and changes the world. Would you vote for a appointment scheduler and invoicing for dentists that charges $50/month or would you rather vote a crowd sourcing app for giving orphans a decent birthday party? Unless the panel of judges are all dentists the second idea would win by a mile.
   
   See my point? The first idea sounds boring and greedy but the second one is exciting, touches the heart and a would-be crowd favorite. Media would write about it i’m sure. I don’t want to sound mean here (I’m very sorry for the orphan example) but if the core of your idea is not to make money then sorry, it’s just a side project or a hobby.
   
   All I know in the history of mankind is that wealth is the greatest motivator. Not material things, but wealth. Example, travel the world, best education for your children, freedom from debt, freedom on doing what you like and etc..
   
   This is why believe in ideas like Finishweekend.com and Ludum Dare’s October challenge are good ideas. Finding and getting customers to use your app and charge them monthly is terribly difficult.

3. Cash Prize - Startup manila has a cash prize of 15k SGD (P511k~ or 11k in USD) What if you won? Would you hire a developer and setup an office? That money will burn in just 2 months, so in my opinion, that is not seed money, it’s a prize. Like a cash prize from a singing contest.
   
   Actually, I’ve told my friends that startup weekend is sounding like the American Idol for the developers where the winner will have to work for continuos hours. Anyway, You’ll not create any buzz without it, the prize is for marketing the event.

Having said those reasons I still believe that one of these participants would make it on top. I am still proud that we have these young passionate entrepreneurs that would someday build the next killer app. And thanks for the organizers and sponsors for making it happen.

As for myself, I’ll need to finish my own bootstrapped app which is now on it’s 3rd month in development. I’ll blog how it goes in the future.