The only thing I have to say about the new FriendFeed hype is that I’m kicking myself for not taking action on the good ideas I have. I basically threw this idea past a few friends over a year ago and I never pursued it. Live and learn.
Hopefully they’ll be able to monetize it some how. I see way too many sites that have neat ideas but don’t make a cent. *cough* YouTube *cough*
This last week I spent a good portion of my free time deliberating over new designs for my business cards and flyers.
The biggest complaint my customers have had is finding the cafe! Visibility is pretty limited so I chose to include a map on both the business cards and the flyers. I originally had a Google map pasted in there but it wouldn’t scaled properly so I ended up tracing it with the pen tool in Illustrator. The Starbuck’s and Wee Book Inn logos are popular landmarks here on Whyte Ave. A friend suggested I should have added the Princess Theatre as well but unfortunately they aren’t organized enough to even have a website, nevermind a logo.
The green is a major change! The cards used to have a bright red text on them (against the better wishes of my designer friends). Months ago I painted one wall of the cafe green and I want to continue to white/wood/green colour scheme.
Another major change in both flyers and cards is the amount of information. I had previously thought a minimalist look was pretty snazzy, and while it might look neat it’s essentially useless to anyone who picks up the card. So I included a long list of service we have and I highlighted the two I felt people use the most: “download anything”, and “type your resume”.
Download anything
I pride myself on having the best and most unrestricted computers on Whyte Ave. Other cafes or libraries really crack down how well you can use the computer and what you can do. I let my customers install whatever they want and look at whatever they want. This means someone can download all the file sharing software or porn (yes porn) they wish.
On the topic of porn: a great deal of my regular customers like to use dating and otherwise “private” websites. I have a very strict “I don’t care” rule as long as nobody else is being bothered, including staff, and most people are pretty modest anyway. The set up in the cafe is great for this. The computers aren’t super secluded so it’s not just a bunch of creepy people sitting in the back of the room. Instead each monitor is separated by the box and a good deal of desk space. This provides some good respect for the individual while leaving the cafe friendly and open.
Type your resume
Most of my customers don’t own computers, hence their visiting an internet cafe. There are a fair number of younger patrons who stop by the type up or print off a resume. With the number of (assumed) low-income young people living around Whyte Avenue and in the university area I want to encourage the continued use of the cafe as a cheap place to come in and type up your resume.
Along the resume tangent I have been considering offering a resume “doctoring” service where a customer drops off a rough version of their resume and I can take a look at it and spruce things up for them. Any pricing suggestions are welcome.
All that is left with the re-branding is to change the website and ordering a new sandwich board.
Several months ago the U of A bought an on-demand printing press that can churn out books at almost 2 per minute.
Now I’m reading in Wired that Archive.org has over 350,000 books which have been scanned! They will soon be offering the printing of books for $10 plus $0.01 per page. Not too shabby for a hard to find edition.
I can’t wait until my textbooks cost $15 each.
Over a TechCrunch, Michael Arrington wrote a post agreeing with some parts of Jason Calcanis’s post on how to save money running a startup. The two great points Arrington brings up strike a cord with my small startup experience with Nexopia here in Edmonton.
Arrington says that startups must:
I’d like to share a few of my experiences with these two points.
On watching your pennies
My first experiences with social networking, doing business online, web 2.0, etc. were both young and brash. I was 18 and I loved working with computers and Nexopia and I was full of huge dreams and couldn’t wait to make a million bucks. I was one of the original employees for Nexopia and in the early days we worked out of Timo Ewald’s kitchen! I thought it was pretty cool that we were so small that we didn’t need an office, yet we daily effected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadian youth.
The first half a year I was with the company I would come up with grand, money wasting, ideas. Of course the brilliance that was actually in charge shot down each one. It took me a while to realize that money wasn’t just sitting in a big vault that we could draw from. Sure the company was making lots of money, but it also needed it for future expansion, not for iMac’s or to send me to some stupid conference in Fiji! Yes.. I literally pitched that…
So Michael is right, startups need to pinch pennies. Timo and his personal advisor’s were very smart to be frugal in the early days. Now that the company is self supporting and doing well there is room for more extravegance. Heck, last year we moved into a nice loft office that houses almost 30 employees. I’m relearning this with my own business. I shouldn’t be buying things I can make myself, for example: a sandwich board or assembling a computer. It boils down to laziness and sometimes I’ve kicked myself for it. Live and learn.
On the flip side you need to spend money to make money. However, this is often misconstrued by us young brash entrepreneurs. What is really means is spend only what you need to make money. So if you’re trying to get your own business off the ground don’t go blowing a thousand dollars on classy fancy business cards or buying top of the line desks for every employee; you should order the cheaper regular cards and use your (free) personality to generate a relationship when you hand a card over. If you need a fancy desk or card to make up for your lack of sincerity and leadership you probably shouldn’t be in business anyway.
On hiring the right people
From personal experience, both in working for other companies and myself, hiring the right staff is like paying yourself more. Again with Nexopia, one of the first things I realized when I was working there is that we made some bad hires. Some people are just hired to plow through data, some as developers, and some as marketing or sales. Regardless of the position, someone who works for such a user driven site like Nexopia should be in love with their job and most importantly the website itself. This is especially true for small companies where everyone’s opinion actually matters.
Now obviously you don’t want to only hire employees who were members of your service. It’s important to draw from your outside resources and grab the best hires you can. However, being the best means willing to adapt to what your customers know, want, and love. In our case this was Nexopia, a Canadian social network mostly dominated by youth.
I realize that I’m not always right, but I firmly believe that if an employee is simply working to make the company as much money as possible then you have a problem. That’s the role management should play, to manage your employees so they work for the right reasons which then bring in the most money for the corporation. Yes, of course the sales team needs to try to make money, but never at the expense of the customer. There were many frustrating times when we would try to do things that were in our best interest, and not that of our young customers who have many social networks to choose from.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Nexopia and the people working there are great. It’s a good company that I hope finds it way through the maze of competition down south.
Today my new signs arrived! After much shopping around I decided to order a sign from EdgeLitSigns.com a branch of Carmanah. They do all sorts of neat LED and solar panel stuff, check them out.
The signs ended up costing me exactly $1,267.72 including shipping from Calgary. They took about four weeks to make which I thought was long but I’m happy in the end. Apparently Carmanah has a $1000 minimum for any work they do, so I assume my signs would have been cheaper if not for that.
The edge lit LEDs are pretty unique and not as bright as neon, but that’s fine because it cost approximately 1/3 what I would have paid for a channel letter sign with neon inside. Plus you can see through these when they’re mounted.
Initially there was supposed to be one bank of LEDs but it wasn’t bright enough for the order had to be change, again no big deal.
Now I need to mount them higher up on the windows, I still haven’t decided how to do this yet.
More pictures:
Visibility has been a huge problem I’ve faced since purchasing the cafe. Being located on the second floor is a real drag even though the rent it cheaper. At night the place is very hard to recognize without some illuminated signs. Really I should have boughten these babies six months ago, they’re worth it.
Entrepreneur tip: If you ever start or buy a business make sure you analyze how visible you are to your target market. For me, half my market is people passing by on foot or car.