Refresh Denver (Web Business Startups)

Tonight’s Refresh Denver Meeting was about web businesses. Namely, startups and small businesses in general. It was panel discussion led by SuzAnn Brown and Heather Morgan from Launchpad Interactive and Alex King from Crowd Favorite. I didn’t manage to take very good notes this time around so a lot of this is from memory, my own thoughts, and discussions after the meeting had adjourned. Here are my notes and thoughts:

  • Establish a Business Plan - It is wise to have a sound business plan.
  • Create Your Company Entity - A business license is not a bad idea but, more importantly, establish your business as an Limited Liability Company (LLC). Otherwise, kiss your personal assets away when things go bad.
  • Seek Legal Council - You might be savvy or think you’re savvy, but lets face it, your not. Legal contracts, licensing, etc. is tricky and it would be wise to have someone you know and trust on your side to handle this. Take a page from Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek book and outsource this instead.
  • Fixed vs. Time and Material Payments - A fixed payment is where you perform all work for a set price regardless of the time or additional resources needed to make it happen. Tricky and sometimes costly as you might underestimate or have unforeseen issues. Being payed for time and materials allows one to scale and get payed for the work done. In either case, it would be wise to establish a clear and well document list of work items to be performed. Also, it is not a bad idea to underbid and overproduce.
  • Source Code Reuse - As you grow your business you might want to think about building a foundation of core software that you can redistribute amongst your various clients. This not only makes things easier for you but saves the client money too. However, ownership of the intellectual property can get murky and is another reason for having an lawyer on hand to ensure both parties get what they want.
  • Education - Check out the HTML Writers Guild and Lynda to get more web training under you belt.
  • Collaboration and Project Management Services - A couple online services recommended by the panel for project management were: BaseCamp and TasksPro.
  • Seek a Mentor - There are free service out there via other business groups and or educational institutions that will help provide objective feedback of how you are doing. Find one, it’ll keep you honest.
  • Remember the Dream - Keep a threshold on what it is you are doing and remember to take a step back and remember what you initial goal and mission was. As with having a mentor around, this will keep your from meandering off track.

Tags:

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 Meetups

2 Comments to Refresh Denver (Web Business Startups)

  1. Post Update: Added the “Collaboration and Project Management Services” bullet point to the post as I forgot to add this earlier.

    2. Brooke Kuhlmann on January 17th, 2008

  2. There are a lot of people like me trying to retain a new graduate to help with seo - web consruction - etc. Local business relationships are important — I am a sole attorney practicing criminal law in denver ( Google:
    h michael steinberg) — I reject the huge providers for the local new start up.. H

    3. H Michael Steinberg on December 22nd, 2008

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Search

 

Twitter

Aeonscope Tweets

Categories