Day 12: SXSW, Angela's Sessions

March 9, 2003 11:56 PM

How to Fund a Small Internet Business.

Panelists: Judy Bitterli (Direct Impact), Rudy Rouhana (deepfile.com), Tim Ziegler (familyalbum.com). Moderator Attourney Henry W. (Hank) Jones, III of Intersect Technology Consulting & Law Office (memphishank@aol.com)

Notes from handout:

Secrets of start-up funding: You can really start with less money than you think. You can really start on a smaller scale than you think. You need a work product. You can moonlight and do it as a side-line. This is a great time to start a new business, because everything is cheap these days.

Smartest moves in start-up funding: Include someone on the team with financial background & credibility. Be able to articulate persuasively each of the problems you solve; why these problems are massive/critical, not annoyances; the size of the market; how you are going to make money; how your solution is different and gives competitive advantage; and strengths of the founding team. Make and use a detailed plan for funding sources. Have great contacts in your team's networks.

Common mistakes in start-up funding: Focusing on the idea instead of how it will make money. Not clearly understanding the concept of "pay as you go." Being blind to team's and team members' weaknesses. Unwillingness to take & process constructive criticism.

Questions a venture capitalist/investor will ask:

1. What is the business problem you're solving?
2. How are you solving it?
3. How do you expect to make money?

If you can, it's a good idea to base the business on cash flow. Dream big, start small. Do what you have to do to make it work. You may not need as much money as you think. Take a low-cash approach, using free software where available.

Marketing takes money.

Find possible investors through networking. Angel investors. Learn from past investees, people who've dealt with the investor before, to determine the dynamics of the angel group, etc.

Business types:

1. Service-oriented: linear cach flow. Your income potential is directly influenced by your number of employees/number of hours. Don't really need investors for this... mostly just some advertising money.
2. Software model: exponential cash flow. You spend time/expense developing software, then have the potential to sell it (without much further expense) to an unlimited number of users. Could consider investors for this model. Can be difficult because you often need customers in order to get funded, but you need software to get customers... and you may need money to hire people to develop the software.
3. Capital-intensive: hardware/software requiring huge up-front investment to develop. Stay away from these!

Remember investors may take over your company, take it in different direction, fire you, etc.

If product is directed to a specific company/market, try to get a job consulting for the company ahead of time. Consult for the company while developing the idea. Helps get foot in the door, get credibility, learn what users really need, and get leads for customers.

Other ways to get credibility? Work for non-profits. Be confident with your answers -- here's what I'm doing and here's what I have personally invested in it ($, sweat equity, etc)

Make connections, do your homework, and know someone who knows someone. Send email to all your contacts, asking if they know anyone at xxx. Research investors through the SEC Edgar site (shows info on prospects, history, etc).

Learn your own strengths, weaknesses, and fears. Learn how to work with a team of people who have strengths in areas you don't. Try Briggs/Meyers or another personality indicator.

Need decision-making skills. Know when to pull the trigger yourself and when to get outside advice on a decision.

Understand people's intentions. Everybody else is just out to make a buck too, so keep that in mind in your dealings with them.

Consider other options. Make a software product, make it open source to get features added, then work as a service business, customizing it for customers who need it.

Websites to look at: knowlopress.com (?)

Can Stevie Wonder Read Your Website?

Panelists: Rashmi Bhat (Prodigy/SBC), Giorgio Brajnik (UsableNet), Dr. John Slatin (UT - blind)

Slatin: Wrote book "Maximum Accessibility". I'd definitely like to read this one.

• A web resource is accessible when disabled users can use it as effectively as others.
• Good design is accessible design. Accessibility is not something you add on at the end; it's something you plan for from the beginning.
• Accessibility is good business. 54 million people with disabiblities, and incidence of disability goes up as age goes up, and there's an increasingly significant proportion of people over 50. Huge potential commercial market & potential audience for educational materials.
• Accessibility all the way down. Has to happen throughout design & development process. Takes committment & planning.
• It's about people. It's not about the technical features; it's about the users' experience. Include group of people with disabilities in your test process to identify non-obvious problems.

(All TX state agencies are required to adopt, publish & link to accessibility guidelines. Key public entry points have to have 'Accessibility' link. Must have & maintain accessible sites. What are the laws in Oklahoma?)

Bhat: From corporate standpoint, make sure accessibility is a corporate priority. The embarrassment factor can be a good way to get corporate support.

Brajnik: It's good business to be accessible. Big potential for reaching, acquiring & further involving (newsletters, etc.) users with disabilities. A non-accessible site rejects poetential customers & members. Determine policies for making accessibility, priorites for pages to make accessible first, and processes for finding & fixing problems in accessibility. Brajnik says automated tools are useful in finding problems initially & in regression testing. UsableNet has wizard that works with Dreamweaver.

Important for the site to be not just accessible but usable. Though blind users can't have the visual experience, they want a similarly pleasurable experience.

Note: Mensokie should be a priority for accessibility, as there's no other way for blind members to read the newsletter.

Considerations: link tags (click here isn't sufficient); form tags (forms need to be usable); PDFs -- accessible?

Tips for designing with accessibiliy in mind:

• To test, try turning off monitor and using Jaws, WindowEyes, etc.
• Help menu listing keyboard shortcuts & explaining other accessibility features of site.

Links: www.tsbvi.edu; NCAM.wgbh.org - National Center for Accessible Media; w3c.org; knowbility.org; section508.gov tries to point out good design; rnib.org; Bobby checks for accessibility. "Bobby approved".

Flash Enabled: Flash Design & Development for Devices

Panelists Fred Sharples fred@orangedesign.com (Orange Design), Glenn Thomas glennt@smashingideas.com (Smashing Ideas), Steve Leone leo@unplug.tv (Unplug). Wrote "Flash Enabled".

Right now there are lots of mostly-HTML pages with Flash add-ons.

Flash-capable Devices: Sony Clie (initially download, then will ship installed), Pocket PC (installed), Nokia (installed on European), iMode (currently only sold in Japan; installed.) Playstation?

Issues for designing for devices:

• Know your screen size & think through layout (ex. 200x200 pixels)
• Performance - don't expect much from these slower devices. Complex ActionScript can be slow, as can full-screen animation
• Connected/disconnected: can't assume the device is connected... may never be!
• File saving - Possible to save as workaround using IE's javascript cookie.
• Interface/button isues. Inputs such as button/keys

Possible Money-Makers:

• "Animated Today" desktops (Handango, PocketPCGear)
• In Japan & Finland, theyre already paying to download ringtones, games, images, etc.
• Entertainment (games) will be the first to make money.
• Assasin game in Scandanavia

Current Applications: Amazon, wharehouse, restaurants are using Flash apps on Pocket PCs. Also Flash training manuals.

Flash examples & Sites to look at: www.flashenabled.com; www.flash.com; www.pocketpcflash.net; www.pocketpc.com; www.antmobile.com; www.miniml.com; www.ihotelier.com one-page hotel reservation page; www.etrade.com changed Quotes add-in from java to Flash, save $.25 million in bandwidth in 1st 6 months.

  Day 12: SXSW, continued

March 9, 2003 10:01 AM

Inclusive Web Design For the Future

Steve Champeon and Nick Haskell

Steve is introducing the topic. They will be presenting a broad overview of strategies for cross-browser development. This is for sites that are delivering information to lots of people, not "eye candy" sites.

The decision for ID comes down to one of economics. He asked how many people are using table-based vs. CSS-based design. Most were using CSS.

"Ice, Jello, Liquid" designs. Pixel-perfect designs are a myth. Users with cell phone browsers, WebTV, etc. will not see the same site the same way. Keep style separated from content.

Typography is the most conservative science. They want people to not notice the book is readable. The other extreme is edgy design, "eye candy."

Some things you can't do with this approach: Flash, DHTML.

Once you start using tables, images as information, it's hard to go back. It can be very expensive to generate a separate site that works for alternate browsers.

An alternative to graceful degradation is progressive enhancement. Start with something simple that works everywhere, then add to it to make it look better for better browsers.

On a side note, I have one of only 2 or 3 PC notebooks in a sea of Macs. Interesting.

In summary: Start with a baseline and use semantic markup. Use CSS classes to differentiate between different types of the same tag. When you add features, make sure they are accessible. Add baseline CSS presentation -- fonts, colors, etc. Divide that CSS into sections based on what browser will support the CSS. Use CSS hacks to hide CSS from browsers that cannot handle it. Start testing in browsers. Then add interaction: javascript, DHTML, etc.

Someone from the audience questions using parsing hacks to hide CSS. Steve justifies it by saying we're writing according to the browsers capabilities.

Journalism: Old vs. New

Joshua Benton (Dallas Morning News), Dan Gillmor (San Jose Mercury News), Matthew Haughey (metafilter.com), JD Lasica (Online Journalism Review), Evan Smith, moderator (Texas Monthly)

Josh Benton: Thinks he is the least optimistic about what blogging can do. It's not all that different from old journalism.

Dan Gillmor: There's a lot in common between blogs and talk radio. The ability to spread the ideas from the edges out to a broader base. Transformation from lecturing people to something between a seminar and a discussion.

J.D. Lasica: Just took a picture of someone in the audience. The barrier between panalists and audience is artificial. Dan just asked how many people are bloggers, most of the audience raised their hands. Then he asked how many were live blogging, there were a hand full. J.D. calls it a random act of journalism. Not all blogs are journalism, not everything in the newspaper is journalism either.

Matth Haughey: Blogging turns readers into writers, while old journalism tends to be broadcasting.

Evan Smith: Is old journalism getting more like new journalism, or vice versa?

J.D. says both. Newsrooms are becoming more of a discussion. And bloggers are taking on more of the values of old journalism: research, integrity, etc. Matt says he's seen bloggers start picking up the phone and doing outside research about their stories.

JB: The Internet has revolutionized journalism by making it easier to do research.

ES: Asked about the conflict between their day job as a journalist and what they post on their blogs.

JB: He is always careful not to post things that could get him in trouble with his employer.

DG: Journalism does a lousy job of writing about journalism. He has a lot more freedom because he's a columnist. There are things he won't write about his company if he knows other people will write about it or if he doesn't feel like it is appropriate.

JDL: The real issue is credibility. Bloggers are establishing brands that are recognized for their integrity.

JB: People tend towards sites that agree with their own point of view. This limits the discussion. I agree. I've found myself not reading certain sites because I realize that I agree with them, so hearing things I already agree with don't help me any.

Questions from the audience:

Q: What should bloggers without journalistic training to do be more journalistic?

JB: He'd rather not see blogs trying to be newspapers.

Building a Layer of Sanity Into the World of IP

Lawrence Lessig

I really admire Lessig and the work he does. I hope I have enough battery power for this.

Larry just put a "Free the Mouse" bumper sticker on the podium. :-)

Larry is talking about how much copyrighted work should have gone into the public domain in 1998. Interesting numbers: Only 2% of works since 1923 were being commercially exploited in 1998. If all those works had gone in the public domain, others could use them for derivative works. This is what Disney has done over the years -- building on what has come before. These works didn't go into the public domain because of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension act. The promise is broken -- the public agreed to give copyright holders a temporary monopoly on the promise that work would eventually fall into the public domain.

The copyright extensions do not help the authors, but the publishers. The majority of media comes from a small group of distributors.

People are not free to build on, parody, or make political statements based on commercial works.

Lessig is an amazing speaker. There's lots I should be writing, but it's just too good to miss. Besides, I can't do him justice.

Larry is talking about the Creative Commons -- for people who only want partial and limited control of their works. Creative Commons is about to release some new versions of their license:

• sampling -- Allows people to use parts of musical works to incorporate into their own works.
• education -- Allows for use in education.
• developing nations -- Allows works to be used freely in developing nations.

There was much, much more. Once Lessig has posted this speech on his own site, I'll link to it here.

Web Publishing For the Hell of It

Todd Dominey (whatdoiknow.org), Adam Greenfield (V-2), Jeffrey Zeldman (zeldman.com)

Reasons for publishing non-commercial sites. Todd: He does it as a creative expression. Todd does both HTML & Flash. Adam: Has been in publishing since he was 12. He just wanted a place to write.

Todd: He created it solely for himself. He's amazed by the level of intelligent comments people put on his site.

Adam: Got together with some friends and told them the type of site he wanted: Flash + XML. When it was done, it was all wrong, because it was appropriate for his audience.

Discussion about the responses they get from readers. They get very nit-picky comments, which causes them to reconsider what they link to, for fear of having a bad URL on their site that people will complain about.

Z: What have you gotten out of independent publishing?

Todd: Clearing of mental cobwebs. It has also attracted clients. They find out there is an expressive person behind the design company. Because of this, he has censored his own writing. He justified it by saying he wasn't adding anything new to the conversation, so he linked to other writers rather than publish his own rant.

Adam: Everything good in his life has come about from his website, including his fiancee.

Zeldman: Would somebody be hurt. Also, if he were going to do work for a company, he would be more diplomatic when criticizing that company's products.

They talk about how to prioritize when you have an independent site. Zeldman says he trys to cut back, rather than stop writing at all, when work ties up his time. Todd makes the point that family always takes first priority.

Adam: Having an audience makes him a better writer: he does more research and fact-checking.

Q: How do you balance your work between users (usability) and readers (content)?

Zeldman: He always thinks in terms of readers.

This panel is an interesting contrast to the one on journalism. The members of that panel were doing basically the same thing, but they had a definite purpose: reporting. These people just want to express themselves.