So I thought I’d take a few minutes out to introduce our new baby. It took months of part-time working, late nights, traveling (why oh why does Benjie have to live about 200 miles away by train), pizzas, takeaways, blagging, sleeping on floors, cats, getting flu… but it’s all been worth it. It’s the first thing Benjie and I have done together completely on our own and we are so happy with it.

So here it is finally: our new iPhone application PushupFu (part of the GymFu stable).

Those of you who’ve met me have probably seen me touting the app, if not PushupFu is kinda like “hundredpushups.com” meets “Wii Fit” meets “MMOGs” (where the G is for Gym). It’s perfect for your New Years Fitness resolutions as not only does it train you but it keeps you motivated by reporting your progress and enabling you to challenge people across the network.

After a highly unexpected release by Apple’s App Store Approval Process at 2am on New Years Day, it’s been doing well – even landing an article at Techcrunch.com. Most importantly, the users seem to be really happy with it.

Of equal importance is that Benjie and I have finally been getting some serious exercise; unfortunately I started on the leaderboard with quite a substantial lead and for some reason that means every man + dog is challenging me! Hopefully I’ll get beaten a few more times and slip down the leagues.

Of course, we’re not resting and in the past couple of days we’ve released big changes to the website… but all this is just a small taster of what we’ve got lined up for you for 2009

Ok, now that you’ve read all that here’s the links:

• Site: www.GymFu.com
• App store link: www.GymFu.com/buy/pushupfu/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/GymFu

Enjoy!

First, let me open as I often do, with a disclaimer. Whilst I believe the iPhone is the best consumer device ever invented, and I have a lot of respect for Jobs/Apple, I’m not OSX’s biggest fan. It’s very fast, but I find the user interface to be very cumbersome compared to Ubuntu and XP… the subject of another post some day.

Now that Benjie and I have become iPhone devs 100%, I think a lot about Apple’s future. I want to think they are invulnerable, but it’s dawned on me lately they’ve a serious Achilles Heel and that’s OSX (the desktop version at least).

If I were in Cupertino, I’d be mulling over these following trends;

• The general public are more aware than ever of non-MS operating systems.
• Much of Apple’s defensibility is based around perceived leads in UX and quality…
• … the rest is based on lockdown and halo-effect.
• Market penetration of advanced mobile phones.
• Apple’s transition from high-end geek niche to mass-market may mean leaving the fanatics behind.
• Commodisation of computing hardware through netbooks.
• Google’s increasing influence with OEMS – eg Chrome.
• OSX10.6 is looking like a difficult transition for Apple; OpenCL + legacy hardware + 32/64bit + new hardware innovations = trouble.
• Ubuntu/Canonical.
• The economy.

Why do I think this means trouble for OSX? Well the key issue is that I don’t feel OSX is defensible any more. On the one hand its drive to becoming a consumer OS makes it less and less attractive to geeks, and on the other its consumer features are both trivial to copy and – let’s face it – a step too far from Windows for some people. What made me realize this is that my granny is happy with Windows and Linux, but struggles with the outcast UX paradigms of OSX. Worst still for Apple, much of the prettiness of OSX is trivial to copy in other ‘nixs or – especially in the case of KDE 4.2 – substantially improve upon.
Now I know what you are thinking – “but linux looks crap”. My answer to you is; “do you really think there are only one/two good OS designers/illustrators in the world”? Not only are OpenSuse and Ubuntu already great user experiences, but with Shuttleworth’s design fund it won’t take long until these free operating systems overtake OSX in the looks front.
Of course, I’m not seriously considering Linux will beat OSX any time soon – that’s crazy talk – but it’s an important piece of the jigsaw and it’s critical in eroding OSX’s perceived value. “But this free operating system looks WAY better”. Ie in consumer eyes “looking good” no longer equals “premium” for OS’s.

No, the real trouble for OSX/Apple is Google – particularly Android.
Google’s business plan is the antithesis of Apple’s. Google is indifferent as to the money OEM’s make on hardware and software – it simply wants to be totally pervasive. Android is an incredible Trojan horse for Google, and one that will see Android as one of the widest-installed operating systems in the next few years. In itself, I don’t see Android harming iPhone sales but it does pose a huge risk to OSX; if Google were to leverage its growing influence with OEMS and the growing ecosystem surrounding Android it could – in principal – turn to netbooks [Edit: And the community have done it for them!]. In the process of doing so it could seriously undermine any attempts Apple may make in this market and thus any opportunity for releasing a profitable netbook (cos you don’t seriously think these netbooks are making their makers serious money, right?). Sure, it won’t be attached to fancy hardware, but when times are hard people will perceive Apple to be well out of their price range. What makes it worse for Apple still is that Android/Linux will be a smaller learning curve, act like the users’ phone, and be attached to such low-price hardware that people will be less scare of change. “But I’m really not sure about paying $2000 to learn this new operating system that really looks no better than the others and all I want is email anyway”.

At the moment Apple has none of these problems, but this is just current circumstance. Apple is in a position where its customer service is sufficiently scaled to make up for the poor quality of its hardware (you heard me! Find me a Macbook Pro that hasn’t broken down within 6 months). Crappy headphones broke again? Don’t worry, Apple will replace them. GPU broke again? Don’t worry, Apple will replace it. The reason I see this as a problem is that Apple is such a premium brand that if/when some serious quality issues crop up (*cough* Nvidia *cough*), their fanatical customers will use their fanaticism in less positive ways.
Why would Apple’s customers turn on them? They haven’t yet. No, they haven’t, and this is because Apple can handle them. But what if OSX 10.6 goes horribly wrong like Vista did? For me, there’s every reason to believe this could happen – even small updates cause consternation in the blogger community and OSX10.6 is a big transition. 10.6 features a huge amount of new code and needs to straddle 32 and 64bit operation. This has never in the history of an operating systems gone well.

So my predictions for this year?

• iPhone will drive Apple’s sales
• OSX10.6 will be Apple’s Vista.
• Their netbook either won’t be released or it will be and it won’t fly off the shelves

[Edit 2: VC = Venture Capital or Venture Capitalist in this context.]

[Edit 3: This post is in response to this Techcrunch article]

First though, let me open by mentioning a few things which are important background information to this post (and will help you decide if you want to read it further):

• My degree was in mechanical engineering, not economics.
• I’ve only been in the web industry since July 2007.
• I’ve tried, and failed, to raise VC money for a startup.
• I had a startup until recently.
• 99% of all the people I know, and drink with, are in startups.

The only reason I think I’m qualified to write this post is that I count amongst my good friends a number of VCs who’ve taken time to explain the industry to me over numerous beers/breakfasts. [Eternally grateful, btw; you know who you are ]

So, on to the opinions:

Successful web companies are expensive (features aren’t)

Bedroom successes like HotOrNOt – and TC.com for that matter – tend to give the impression that anyone with wordpress and EC2 can make a multi-million dollar web company in minutes. There are some occasions where this can happen, but as witnessed by the endless stream of tiny web companies that come and go, this is a rarity and not the norm. The key reason is that margins in web apps tend to be quite small (eg ads), so to start making serious cash you need scale.

Unfortunately, scaling isn’t just about having the latest elastic-cloud infrastructure; it’s much more about brand, design, advertising and marketing… and that is where things start to get seriously expensive. For example, Netflix is reputed to spend >$1m pcm on marketing alone!

A web app is not a company. It’s a feature. Don’t forget that.

“But I’ll grow it organically”. WRONG. WRONG WRONG!!!

Or rather “Perhaps, but unlikely”. But I understand where you got that notion from and I admit I was duped at first also; it’s all this talk about things “going viral” isn’t it? Well, sorry to disappoint but it just isn’t true for most people. Build it and they probably won’t come.

Let’s suppose you build a really awesome web service/app that could appeal to 1 in 100 people in the entire world – a huge potential market of 70m users. That means you need to speak to 100 people before you stand a chance of even one of them telling someone else about it. And they will have to tell another 100 and so on. The problem is, most people outside of the web community communicate with <50 people on a regular basis so the maths are against you.

All the while you are doing this slow ramp-up, someone else is going to borrow $Xm VC money, get a serious campaign together and obliterate you by seeding their brand in front of millions of individuals.  They’ll also have the money to hire the staff necessary to support such success.

And let’s not even consider the notion that by the time you’ve organically grown your startup to the point you can start making money, the world will have moved on.

Other fish

Sometimes I wonder if web tech people bury their heads in the sand a little too much when it comes to things outside their industry. If that’s you then I have a newsflash: early stage web tech is not – and hasn’t been for a long time – the pillar of many VC portfolios. I know the tech industry think it’s the be-all and end-all because they always seem surprised when big firms like 3i pull out of early-stage.

VC is all about investing large sums of money at high risk (which means new markets usually) for ridiculously high returns.  The fact that the technology side of web tech has been commoditised and ubiquitous means that in the most part the web is no long as hot as it was 5-10 years ago. What’s hot now is greentech – and there VCs are like pigs in shit; high startup costs, high risk, massive returns.  VCs haven’t died – they’ve just moved on to pastures new.

Ok, so I’ll build my startup without VCs

Most people (I can list the exceptions – there aren’t many) shouldn’t build a business on the assumption of funding ANYWAY – in any market conditions. I admit I’ve made this mistake and it was the reason why we closed our first startup this year; the business wasn’t predicted to breakeven for a long time and required two rounds of VC money to be interesting. And let’s face it, how many VCs in the UK were going to fund something that risky when they didn’t understand the business and we were a bunch of first-timers.

But never mind the scarcity of money – you all know you are going to be shafted if you get funding early-stage, right? Simple rule: don’t take money when you need it. If VCs are approaching YOU for a slice of the action, then it might be worth considering what they have to offer because you know you can refuse any bum deals.

Sour grapes

I lept from my previous job into the tech industry because I saw a lot of incredible startup exits and wanted a piece of the action. It helps to be honest about these things. I wanted to be rich. But right from the start I knew my experience, knowledge and plain odds were against me so I spent a long time getting to know the market and the people. I also joined/founded a startup fairly early in my web career so as to see what it was like on the frontline.

As I see it, the audiences of many tech blogs consist of a lot of people like me, but where I think many of them differ is in the sour grapes department. I get the impression that many people feel it’s some sort of RIGHT that they sell their niche app to Google for billions. By virtue of being denied success they have an in-built desire to dismiss the opportunies/success of others… and what better symbol of success in the web industry is there – second to an exit – than raising VC money.

By dissing VC’s, they are secretly saying “fuck you for not making me successful”. And probably a little bit of “but I’ll take your money if you have some, please”

Finally, it’s entrepreneurship!

Most of what’s above is my naive interpretation of the world around me. But there’s a powerful force behind all this which guarantees there will always be VC – and that, dear reader, is entrepreneurship… or perhaps it’s capitalism, to be more brutal about it.

If I’ve branded and targetted this blog well enough you are probably a founder of a startup – or at least involved in one. So you’ll know all about how you saw an opportunity and invested in it with your intellectual (and possibly financial) capital. When dissing the VC model, consider: Why didn’t anyone else do it? Why did you choose that particular thing? Would you choose something else if only you had more money or more skills?

The fact you are able to start a startup is because you have something that someone else doesn’t – and you are leveraging that gap. Angel investors work on a similar principle, only they also bring lots of money; they use the fact that they have money, when others don’t, to take opportunities that might not be available to them otherwise. They are, in effect, also entrepreneurs in the same way entrepreneurs are investors.

But what of people or organizations with vast amounts of money? Well, they have another layer of resource; people. These groups/individuals split their large sums of money amongst smaller groups who can invest it for them – which in a crude sense is how VCs work.

So as for VCs dying, I think that’s highly unlikely. Provided there are people with large sums of money to invest, there will also be experts who will step in and help them. What do you think? Comment me!

[Edit: in case you skipped to the end, I do indirectly make the point that I don't expect web startups to find raising VC easy. The writing has been on the wall for early-stage VC for a long time]

Well, actually here’s just a few tantalizing bullet points which hopefully answers a few of the regular questions we’ve been asked.

• It’s true – the new company will be developing apps purely on a revenue-sharing basis (and not just app store sales either; subscriptions, advertising – it all counts)
• The new company will be called HasFu.com ™. Great domain, huh?
• Our moto is “We + You = Fu” ™
• No, we don’t have a website yet. Yes it is just a holding page. But “doing” usually trumps “boasting”, so we’re spending most of our time doing right now.
• We’re aiming to release between 6 and 7 apps between now and January. We’re able to do this so fast because we have some very funky tech.
• Yes we can do OpenGL
• We’re already booked out until February. Sweet!
• If you can bring something to the party (marketing, PR, design, distribution) then we’ll share our profits with you.  Interested? There’s a contact button at the top…

By now you are probably wondering what this has to do with the title of the post.  Well, when we first launched the project we did so with the intention of collaborating only with people/companies who could bring in some Yang to compliment our Yin.  The problem is, iPhone app ideas are extremely easy to come up with (”Let’s all do another frickin todo list” or some other project that just skins an iPhoneSDK example) but as with any other business it’s not the ideas that matter – it’s the ability to execute.  And that doesn’t just mean coding either which is why “We + You = Fu” makes so much sense.

And this also is why I’m happy to risk so much on this gamble: our strong-ish personal network means that so far we’ve been approached by marketing companies, several startup CEOs, some very well-known bloggers, mainsteam media and a powerful social-media agency.  Which isn’t all bad considering until yesterday I’d only told 22 people (I counted. How anal is that?)

Of course from a business point of view, despite the optimism this is still like jumping off a cliff with a bag full of canvas, thread and a needle; whilst everyone else flies their new iPhone-dev-funded private jets, we’re learning how to sew parachutes whilst free-falling.  But you know what, I don’t care.  So far this project is without doubt the most exciting thing I’ve ever been involved with… Benjie and I are extremely lucky! And hopefully we’ll make you lucky too.

So here’s the scene – you’re at a networking event and someone asks you “what great projects have you done?”  If you’re lucky, you might be able to blurt out something the other person will already know… but it’s more likely they’ll just draw a blank.  At this point you’ll probably start explaining your work, but we all know that it’s rare for potential clients to talk nerd and in any case a picture speaks a thousand words…. so…

… you boot up the laptop or iPhone to show them a demo, but by the time you’ve connected to the WiFi/3G they are gone.  So why not have a summary of your portfolio on your iPhone? That way you can also impress them with your iPhone fu.

It’s simple.  Really really simple.  Just take screengrabs of your work, size them to an iPhone-friendly 480×320 (or the other way round if you wish) then shove them in a folder and sync with your phone!  Best of all, if they would like a copy it’s an ideal opportunity to cement the introduction via email.

To add an arbitrarily-named folder within the iPhone’s Photos widget, Windows users need only add a sub-directory to “My Pictures” (or wherever you’ve setup the photos folder in iTunes) and then sync the phone. OSX users already know how to do it

[Edit: I thought I should make it clear to new visitors that i'm a non-designer. I'll explain this next week when I've finished documenting the extreme mental anguish that is the design process for me. The examples in the image above were projects my company(ies) has(have) coded. I designed this site and the company's site though.]

[Edit 2: TinyURL for your sharing pleasure: http://tinyurl.com/iPhonePortfolio]

I’m amazed!  Check out these results (Settings: w500; h500; Best quality (1×1); Diffuse; Shadows; Highlights; Reflections):

Same thing on Flickr

That’s nearly a 20x improvement against Firefox 2.  Wow.  Nice!

When you consider the FF3 result was NATIVE under Linux, you’ll see why I’m a bit impressed.  Note that all browsers except FF3 required me to press the “don’t worry, the browser hasn’t really died” button a fair bit.  Got really bored of doing that with Firefox 2 after about 10 mins.

The testing was done under VirtualBox because I couldn’t be arsed to reboot my computer into windows.  Sorry – as much as I value you, dear reader, it’s the end of a long day and my battery is running out.

Tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/ChromeBench

[Edit: yes, I know the others will catch up. Just humour me for now]
[Edit 2: Whatever you do, don't actually use it for work though: ]

My blogging track-record is lame…

I’ve had a blog at wordpress.com for a little while, but I’ve not really used it. On reflection, this is partly due to it not having any cool features (Digg buttons, decent plugins, etc etc), but mostly because it’s not really a place I can call my own.Oh, and partly due to the fact that about 200,000 of my potential-blog-post words have been spilled on the alter of Twitter – as my poor followers will attest to!

Another reason for not moving to something a bit more “dedicated” is that blogs really need an audience – and let’s face it, no one’s going to read long posts about what I had for breakfast [actually, they might - had a great breakfast this morning].As in life, it’s difficult for me to focus on one tiny vertical when I love talking crap about so much stuff!

So what’s it about?

Obviously it’s going to have to be about startups, web design, web tech and so forth because basically that’s what I do an awful lot of.But also, having only been in the web world for 14 months, I really know sweet FA about the industry and have an awful lot to then.

So, after much though this blog is about two things:

• My rants/opinions about stuff I see on the internet
• Tips I’ve picked up along the way to make your web life a little bit easier

Well, actually it’s three things:

• Me learning loads from the people I meet and the stuff I read

Oh, sorry Sir. The system says its been fixed.

“The system says”? How about what I say? How about keeping some transparency and actually phoning me up to ask if it’s working okay?

Last week you were very helpful. This week you are seriously pissing me off. Some of the sales/help people I’ve spoken to (Nicola, Shaz, Kirstie…) have been great, but the company itself!?! Nrgh! Serious, guys, what the f@#% are you playing at?

Definitely over-due a very long post about the simple art keeping your customers happy. Watch this space.

• With large complex systems, there will almost always be problems in launch
• First batches of mass-produced hardware involve lots of manual hand-holding throughout the supply chain.
• Early adopters are often techie
• Early adopters go to extremes to get their taste first
• Early adopters are vocal
• The rest of the population couldn’t give a shit what the techie early adopters say
• The rest of the population will wait to get the iPhone

Apple knows this, which is one of the many reasons they (like any other manufacturing company) limit initial stock during ramp-up;

• Damage limitation
• Third rule of Arnold (a wry observational poem from my manufacturing days): “Perfect the design; debug with some tests; launch the product; let the customers find the rest”

Yup… we are Apple’s extended test team. Tis the price of early-adopter kudos, has and always will be; get over it. Thanks to us, Joe Public will no doubt be happy with his iPhone.

However, every example I’ve seen so far proves to me the opposite; that a business plan is in fact an essential ingredient in the success of a business.

Take the example of Edison from Marc Andreessen’s blog – by the end of the article you see clear examples that Edison’s got a handle on:

• building a team: he might have started on his own, but eventually had a number of people working with him (one of which is named in the article).
• building a business: his company appears to have an income from the telegraph industry.
• appreciation of resource planning: he does not divert all resources to the phonograph the moment he comes up with it because at first it is not clear to him if it is worth it.
• cash flow planning: he understands when money is coming in, and when he needs to save

Now I doubt for one minute that Edison actually wrote his plan down – and if he did it was probably on the back of a napkin (the equivalent of the 10 PowerPoint plan) – but it sounds to me like he did in fact have some sort of plan.

What all these entrepreneurs have done (Edison, Ellison, Gates) is build strong teams that enable them to react to forced/serendipitous changes. Once they reacted, the “business plan” is adjusted and off they go on the new path. As many people have said, the reason investors are so interested in the “team” is that a good team is capable of reacting to such opportunities.
So in the end I’m with Tim Berry and Guy Kawasaki and others on this one: writing a business plan is a good thing to engage the team and enable transparency and clarity in the figures/assumptions. However, for a startup that probably ought not to be much more than can be written on a napkin – after all it’s much more useful (not to mention more fun) actually getting the customers now rather than spending time and money trying to estimate exactly how many you might get at Year 3.