Taking time off

When you are running a start-up, holidays are the last thing on your mind. With so many things on your plate every day, and having to wear so many hats, you end up running out of the number of hours you can afford to work on a day, to get the things you want to get done, done. And unlike some founders, who are single, I have a family, and a very young one at that, who constantly fight for their share of attention from their father. And the thing with kids is, they get what they want. If asking nicely doesn’t work, they will bring the roof down.

The last month was their school holidays. It also happened to be one of the busiest months for me work-wise. We had the biggest project we’ve undertaken coming to an end (well, it’s still not done and its not a fault of ours!) and a couple of very aggressive small projects falling on our plate (we were not in a position to refuse any work, due to the cash flow issues we were facing). This resulted in me not being able to take the kids out on a vacation during their school holidays.

I think they saw less of me than they did when school was on. Because on school days I usually drop them every morning and at least a couple of days pick them after school. But, during their holidays, I was sometimes out of the door while they were still in bed and on a few occasions turned in after they'd fallen asleep. Now their schools have started, but they didn’t have much of a vacation, other than doing nothing and playing all day, at home.

Upon spotting a deal on a groupon clone in SL, for a hotel stay in Eastern Sri Lanka, my wife, bless her soul, bought into a two night vacation. So I am taking a day off, I don’t remember since when, to go on a vacation!

I am determined to make the best of this vacation. My work has kept me working most of my waking hours, My time with my family has been about 2-3 hours on a weekday. And probably about 8-10 hours on weekends. And on this vacation, I am going to be with them for 72 hours, at a stretch. Leaving aside the activities, I am determined to make the most of the journey (travelling time), take the drive leisurely and enjoy the company.

Secondly, I’ve never been to the East of Sri Lanka. Even after the war ceased, I never got around to going to the North and the East of the country. So this is my first venture out to that region. And I am looking forward to seeing that part of the country, which I haven’t been to during the 35 years of my life! And I hear the beaches in that region are pretty awesome.

Hopefully, I will get to spend quality time with my family, visit a part of the country that I’ve never been to, and recharge my batteries for more hectic times ahead!

Are you a pig or a chicken

An interesting article at onStartups.com called Why Venture Capitalists Invest In Pigs, Not Chickens. Although I am not interested in raising venture capitol for my startup projects, it made me analyze my approach.

And the result, well I ‘m a chicken. My startup web project has been, is still, and likely remain for sometime, a side project. And by being a side project, it is not getting the attention, energy and marketing push it deserves.

I am pretty proud of the solution, the features and functionality we built into it. And I honestly believe there is a pretty good market out there for it. Similar solutions ideas were tossed around in a few forums that I’ve been to when people were discussing web start-up ideas.

But my outsourcing operation has been my primary focus always. And I’ve only been able to work on my side project, when I have downtime. And sadly, the last couple of months had been hectic beyond description. To make matters worse, what’s left now to do, is not my forte either, which is giving it a marketing push.

Getting back to the topic of chicken and pigs, right now, I am not in a position to become a pig on my start-up application. I cannot afford to waver my concentration from my outsourcing business. It is exactly not sailing on smooth seas. We’ve just passed a pretty rough patch, and the path ahead is not clear either. It’s a bit foggy right now and I, being the optimist, am hoping for some bright blue skies ahead.

Come to think of it, I am a pig on my outsourcing business, and a chicken on my start-up project.

Misguided online banking by Sampath Bank

I have been a customer of Sampath Bank for over 20 years. I’ve used them almost exclusively when it comes to personal banking. And I’ve been a using their online banking application ‘SampathNet’ since its inception.

Following this preference when I started my business, I opened up my accounts with Sampath Bank and immediately applied for online banking facilities. This is when I started to realize the short-comings of their online banking solution. Now some of these restrictions, as they say, are due to regulations.

Since I we are in the out sourcing business, which gets categorized as an export business, when I wanted to open a USD denominated account, I was asked to open an export account. This was seamless. All they wanted was the standard documentation and a declaration. Then I wanted to have the ability to transfer funds between this account our LKR account. For some weird reason which is beyond my comprehension, I cannot do this online. I need to always either send a physically signed letter, or make a request through the SampathNet’s mail facility, after which they make this transfer manually.

What I cannot comprehend in this whole scenario is, when I am the authorized signatory for both the accounts, why I am not allowed to do this transfer through the online banking portal. What ever transfer I enact is a legally binding transfer. Adding further to this confusion is the fact that in my personal accounts, I am able to transfer funds, through the online portal, from a USD account to a LKR account!

Secondly, I do not have an online feature to transfer funds to third party accounts, even from my LKR account. This prevents me from enacting the salary transfers online for my staff. I have to revert to the old school method of sending instructions in a letter, either physically or through the SampathNet mails.

All these would have been less painless, if the SampathNet mails happened in real time. They have a funny way of handling these instructions. When ever I send a mail, it goes to a Relationship Manager who is assigned to my account. The funny part of this RM is they only check these mails ONCE a day, in the morning. And that too pretty early in the day. So if I send some instructions, say around 9.00 AM, this reaches my bank branch, only the next day!

When I think of online banking, I think of real-time. Not with one day’s delay. And to make matters worse, the last set of instructions I sent to them on Monday afternoon, only got executed today, which is Thursday, because my RM didn’t turn up for work on Tuesday and Wednesday was a bank holiday. If you ask me, that I pretty crappy online banking.

SampathNet in fact was probably one of the pioneers in online banking in Sri Lanka. When they launched, they were unrivaled and they were above the rest for sometime. But their problem was, they are resting on their laurels. They are still on the platform that they launched probably 10 years ago. They need to upgrade their technology, have smarter security (I read someone speaking about their password change procedure and the password recovery procedure), and off load as many services as self services so they do not have to spend man hours doing mediocre things.

Sampath Bank, over to you!

August: turnaround month!

I wrote previously about the cash flow issues my business was facing. And this resulted in me having to delay the salary payments for my staff by 2 WEEKS in the short history of my company. And it was funny in a way that it happened at the same time my first employee was completing his first year with the company.

But August was a turn around compared to the previous months in the sense, I didn’t get stuck in paying the salaries. Having the previous salary delaying by two weeks only left me two weeks to get the cash flow going to meet August salaries. And it is such a relief to be able to pay my guys on time.

Also, we have managed to land some more deals, ending the drought we were facing. Up until two weeks ago, I had at least one guy idling, because there simply wasn’t enough work to for everyone. And this was the time which made me seriously question my decision of hiring full time employees. Had I hired people on freelance basis it would have lessened the pressure on me to find work above all the pressure of the obligation of paying the salary!

But now, I have people swamped with work. I knew there were some projects that were waiting to start, but somehow they kept getting delayed. And this week, three of them started. So now we’re swamped. I’m back to 12-14 hour work days! And hopefully, pretty soon these hours will turn to $$$ and we would have enough money on the bank without having to exist hand to mouth.

Oh, and we did launch our online product. But we’ve got no users so far. It’s free, but still we’ve got no one signing in. Its time that I brush up my SEO and marketing skills.

Launching a new online solution

I am gearing up to launch our first own web solution into the world. And it is opening my eyes to a whole new world of promoting a web site. This is going to be a rocky ride simply because I am new to this whole thing. All this time I’ve left this aspect of running a web site to the clients. Once we deliver a web application it was upto the clients to promote them, gain traction and stand out. I just had to worry about delivering a slick, bug free and fast web application.

Now reading up on promoting a new web site, I am learning new things. I am not talking about things like SEO alone. I think SEO is just a part of the solution. SEO would only bring the customer to the front door. It takes a whole different ball game to entice a user to sign up to your application and in the long run, to convert them to paying customers (hopefully)!

I am reading up on things like Minimum viable product (MVP), and lean start ups, customer development process. I am also planning to pick up my copy of ‘Rework’ by Jason Fried and DHH soon and skim through that again. I will also need to use all my social media connections and networks. And hopefully drive some traffic into the site.

One of the factors that will make me work hard promoting the application is the fact that it is not a general purpose application that everyone will find a use for. It is geared towards a niche market and hopefully if I can find ways to reach these niches, the site will enjoy success.

One of the things that made me ready before I hoped I would be is getting exposed to the MVP concept. I had tons of features that I wanted to build before I launched. But getting exposed to MVP made me realize that there is no guarantee that those features will find adoption. More and more features were going to complicate the product as well as the development effort, but I had never tried them in the real world. So I ended up cutting down my feature list and ended up with a feature list which I think is what is needed at a minimum. Well a little bit more than the minimum because by the time I came across MVP, I had developed a few more features beyond the MVP. But instead of working on more and more features and complicating my product I concentrated on finishing up the nearly finished features, testing and fixing issues and slight improvements to workflows. And fix the holes around the system.

Earlier I was concentrating a lot on building subscription plans to the system. But it was one of the first things that I decided to scrap. I had some functionality that was built in. But instead of concentrating on payment gateway integrations, little nitty grities on the subscription plans, I just concentrated on the features.

So I am looking forward to launching this product and developing it along with the people who will use it. Rather than conjure up features my self, develop features that users will ask for (I think that is a bit against Rework lessons).

Cash flow can kill a business

The cash flow woes of my sole client seems to be continuing. More than that, he is now running out of projects. So we are heading towards a permanent death of cash flow and it seems that with that my business might also wind up! My client hasn’t landed any new projects and the ones we are working on are coming to an end. This puts him in a position of no work in a couple of months and even now I have only a 50% utilization of my resources.

I’ve spent a significant time this month going through the accounts and figuring out where I stand. My main worry is I have some outstanding statutory payments pending which may put me in a legal quandary. And I don’t have enough cash in the bank to meet them. I’ve been pestering my client for the payment at least to cover these statutory payments but that payment also keeps getting postponed. As of now, I have two and half months full operating expense invoices pending for the company and three and a half months worth of my salary pending.

Thankfully I received a partial payment a week ago that enabled me to pay my staff’s salaries. Maybe I am being a bit unrealistic by not sharing the actual financial situation of the company with them. I’ve thought long and hard about being frank with them, but being the optimist I am, I am hoping for some good luck that will keep us going and at the same time I have started my search for other clients and projects. I do not wish to see my enterprise fail. If only I had some cash in the bank, I would have used this as an opportunity to build some of the application ideas I’ve been toying with. But due to the cash flow situation, I am forced to sell the services of my team.

On a personal front I was also asked to cut down the hours I was billing him. It was imperative but hearing it was hard. Less hours means less pay for me so I had to find a way to supplement my income. Luckily I managed to find a short term gig that I can do on the side. Hopefully it will last a couple of months.

I have also been actively bidding on work for the team as well. The rate I am bidding for is a very competitive rate for the clients and at the same time a more profitable rate for the company than the fixed rates that my developers are being paid for currently. It’s just that on the risk vs. profit equation I preferred to take less risk and less profit at that time. When I agreed for the terms with my current client, I declined the option of working on project basis as I feared that in such an arrangement he would simply have to pay us only if there is work. My assumption that he will take on the burden of paying the team when the work becomes low, was simply an incorrect assumption.

Because lately, we’ve had discussions about preparing for the worst, which means that when the projects run out, we are simply going to get cut out. So in this light, had I opted to work on project basis I would have earned better margins and would even be in a position today to sustain the team for a while.

So now, if I do manage to find work on better terms, I am simply going to give priority to such projects. That should increase the profitability of the company. I can simply pull the people from the payroll of the my current client and place them on more profitable projects. But I will have to manage this pretty openly and diplomatically as it was he (my client) who paid for them all this time including the infrastructure costs. But I don’t see an issue in doing what I am hoping to be doing as it was made pretty clear to me that it is me who is responsible for the staff and will have to face the consequences of letting them go (in the view of outstanding statutory payments). And it is my company and as the director, I , will be left to sort them up. So I will have to look after the interest of the company and my self personally, before I look after the interest of the client.

I am pretty emotionally charged and tensed right now as I write this. It is hard to watch your dream and desires (in this case my company) going down. So I am not going to watch idling. I am going to do whatever it takes, to survive this storm. This storm of cash flow woes. And the risk I knew I was running all along. Being dependent on a single client. So these woes should result in my business becoming more robust and vibrant.

A customer report on the Kia Sportage 2011

I've been driving my Kia Sportage 2011 for about two weeks now. I thought o recording my first impressions of the vehicle before it grows on me and I take the new features for granted.

Amazingly I put my money down without test driving. So you can say it was a love at first sight over it's looks. Peter Schreyer's new design had won a customer who didn't bother to see how the vehicle drives before ordering it. But I did do my research and while I was not expecting a sports car, I expected it to drive well.

And I am happy to say that the Sportage didn't dissapoint me. It packs a nifty 2.0l engine (yes this part of the world gets a 2l instead of the 2.4l that America gets) under the hood which gives enough punch for driving and overtaking in the city. Most of my travels are within the city and they tend to be pretty short ones averaging around 4-5 kms per trip. The in-city performance of the sportage is satisfying and stress free. It didn't appear underpowered to face any condition that I faced so far. Even with a load of 5 adults it performed effortlessly on the city roads.

One of the things that attracted me to the Sportage were the amount of features that it offered as standard. Even though I went for the lower spec edition with FWD it packs all the creature comforts that are required. And I am in love with the Blake interior and am happy that I held my ground when the agent tried his best to push a gray interior. Black with the red interior lighting is a nice combination.

The other thing that I am really happy about is the roominess of the interior. Even with the front seats pushed fully back, there is plenty I leg room fo the rear passengers. In fact at times there appears to be too much of room at the back as therenks room or the kids to stand at the back even when someone is sitting.

The only thing that was a surprise in a negative manner was the fuel consumption on my first tank full. My calculation tell me it has done abou 4.2 km's per litre which works upto about 19 MPG. But I was expecting it to doaround 7km's per litre. But I guess all the traffic during the wesak on the road was probably the culprit. In my second tankfull, it seems to be doing better having done over a 100km's with the meter still above the FULL mark. (I think this time the pump attendant pumped atleast 15 litres after the indicator reached the FULL mark and the pump lock automatically disengaged. If it does anywhere around 7kms or above for a litre would make me a happy driver.

Oh and I live the fact that it is a triptronic and a 6 speed one at that. One of the reasons that I was forced to sell my previous car was the fact that it was a manual and my wife cannot drive a stick shift. But I personally live the stick shift. With this we both get our own preferences. Of course a triptronic is not a pure stick shift. It still doesnt shift up when I want to. But at least it gives some control over the shifting.

It suffices to say that I am happy with my choice. I am glad I went for the Sportage instead of a car. Only thing I would like to have in it are the rear spoiler and a reverse camera. Other than that and a tint I would keep the rest stock.

Next is to see how it ages and how reliable it is over time. In Sri Lanka we dont get the legendary 7 year Kia warranty. Instead we get a 3 year/60000km warranty. But I am planning to stuck with the vehicle for a minimum of 5 years as my lease runs that long. So the reliability is to be seen.

PS: if anyone wants to get a sportage in Sri Lanka and doesn't want to wait for 4 months as the agents suggest drop me a line. I will let you in on a secret to get your hands on one within 4-5 weeks. I only waited 5 weeks from ordering to delivery.