Founded in 2009, Future Simple is focused on building simple software for small businesses. Its CRM product PipeJump, helps companies visualize their sales pipeline through a simple sales tracking application. PipeJump is designed for businesses with fewer than 100 employees.

The idea of PipeJump is to greatly simplify CRM usage and, in doing so, to increase the engagement that businesses have with heir CRM. Employees can change deals between stages (incoming, qualified, quote, closed) and can track the flow of those opportunities through the pipeline as well as setting reminders for ales calls and the like.

PipeJump also has an analytics angle – business owners can assess reasons for lost deals – like all these things PipeJump is only as good as the data that individual users put into it but the simplicity of the system should see a higher aggregate quality level.

Future simple is today announcing integrations with both Google Apps and Twitter that should allow users to gain tighter integration between contact, opportunity and sales close. They’re also rolling out some other extra functionality. This release includes;

• Google Apps integration – Create and manage new sales opportunities directly from your Google Applications (think contextual gadgets that allow you to assign CRM stages within emails)
• Twitter Integration – Automatic updates of prospect profiles with most recent tweets (kind of like Rapportive does for email)
• Email Dropbox – forward all your prospect email communications to PipeJump and they are tracked in each lead record (the ability to copy emails to a specific address to have a track of correspondence
• Smart tags – add keywords to easily sort through deals and contacts and produce insightful reports

None of these features are earth shattering, but they’re all useful and will help keep PipeJump at the cutting edge, while further simplifying how the app can be used. PipeJump is priced from $14 per month.

Recently there have been a few posts about growth through funding and growth through organic means. Tony Hsieh from Zappos told his tale of woe about the expectations of VC’s in terms of good exits. On the other hand, Sridhar Vembu, Founder of Zoho (disclosure – Zoho is exclusive sponsor of CloudAve) wrote an excellent counterpoint – one that spoke of freedom, sustainability, social conscience and the like.

Reflecting on all of this, Dennis Howlett looked at two companies in the SaaS accounting space, Xero and KashFlow and reflected upon their particular approaches towards funding and growth. He contrasts their two approaches thus:

Xero on the other hand has had a deliberate policy of burning its way through capital in order to achieve market position. So far, it has been careful to select investors that understand its core market and is under no pressure to return a profit. Kashflow meanwhile only took one tranche of investment from Lord Young in the early days and has worked its way towards profitability… Making profit from software isn’t hard, making sustainable profit is much tougher. Evidence to date suggests Xero’s strategy is winning. It is adding customers at a much faster rate than Kashflow. That’s because it has the money to get out and market in ways that Kashflow cannot. In turn that means Xero has a better chance to be viewed as sustainable even while it continues to burn cash. That has an invisible but braking effect on Kashflow.

Unfortunately I have to disagree with Dennis’ use of the word sustainable. The Oxford dictionary defines sustainable as:

(of industry, development, or agriculture) avoiding depletion of natural resources

Or in other words, having the ability to self-perpetuate without the input of extra resources. The problem here is that Dennis’ contention that Xero is adding users at a much faster rate than Kashflow, while true, assumes a limitless market. This is of course not the case and there is no certainty as to how big the SaaS accounting market will prove to be (at least within the timescale that a startup’s burn rate allows for). This being the case, it’s a smart move to have a cost structure that doesn’t require a massive customer base to break even. Or in other words – if company A needs (for example) 100000 paying customers to break even, that’s always going to be harder in a new market than for company B who can break even with 20000 customers.

Let’s be clear here – Kashflow is profitable – today. There’s nothing more sustainable than a company that is turning profits. The braking effects and questions around sustainability can be dismissed when seen in the light of the most important line of all – the bottom line. I talked to Duane about their profitability and his reply was:

We’ve been profitable for years. Seriously. Not huge amounts, but stilll in profit. 30k last year, 9k the year before. Less the year before that.  I thought the move to London and hiring an expensive CTO would push us into the red, so I got Lord Young to underwrite it. But in the event we managed to do it out of cashflow and didn’t need to take any more money from him for it.

Having ruminated on all of this, I put some more questions to Duane - I asked him why he started off as a bootstrapped business.

At first, bootstrapping wasn’t a choice – it was the only option. In the early days I had no chance of raising money from anywhere other than a small start-up loan from the Princes Trust. I got comfortable early on having a business that could only spend the money it made. I think this instilled good discipline and forced us to be very efficient. It’d be very easy to burn through a lot of money very quickly and get little return.

Since then, I’m sure we could have raised VC funding if we’d wanted to. We’ve had a lot of interest from VC firms from both sides of the pond. But I suspect they’d be a lot of time, effort and money spent on getting a deal done if we did want to. And once they’re on board, we’re then committed to the growth plan that we sold them. If something changes in the market, or a new and better path presents itself then it’d be difficult to change route quickly, or to change route at all without a lengthy justification. So not having external investors to answer to keeps us very flexible and agile.

Duane then reflected on something raised by Tony Hsieh from Zappos – the quality of life aspects of bootstrapping. This is an aspect that is often overlooked when determining a funding route – and the fact that it’s overlooked is a real shame. As Duane said:

One of the big reasons for us still having not taken VC money is my own personal quality of life. I really enjoy what we’re doing at KashFlow at the moment. It’s fun, it’s interesting, I have a lot of very good advisors around me that I’m learning a lot from. My chairman keeps me on a pretty long leash. Although we talk a couple of times a week and have board meetings with my other directors every month – he never throws his weight around or dictates what I should or shouldn’t be doing. Giving up a seat on the board to a VC would dramatically change the dynamic that we currently have – a dynamic that works for me personally and for the growth of the company.

I don’t doubt that with VC backing I’d make a lot more money personally and make it a lot quicker than I would with the path I’ve chosen. But I’d be miserable. I wouldn’t be enjoying what I’m doing if I’m being restricted in how I run the business. This would have a knock-on effect on the rest of the company and on my personal life and hence my wife and young daughters. Financially I do well enough from the company so that we have a comfortable life and I’m in no rush to look for an exit any time soon.
As a side note, I think it’d be short-sighted of me to give up any equity now considering the growth curve we’re on. Although that is perhaps a naive way to look at it.

Cutting to the chase, and in an attempt to answer the questions raised by Dennis, I asked Duane whether he believes it possible to scale without more external funding?

We can scale without external funding, but not as quickly as some competitors that have taken in a lot of cash. But I’d rather take a “slow and steady” approach to building the business rather than getting addicted to and reliant upon external money. No doubt this will be at the expense of being the market leader in the short term, but I think that’s a price worth paying to have a company with solid foundations that stands on its own two feet.  There wa
s a point last year when I thou
ght we might take money to take things to the next level, but it turned out we could do what we needed to just from cashflow. We’re scaling already. Customer numbers are growing quickly, the infrastructure is being grown, the size of the team is growing too. All whilst staying cash positive.

Which gives something of an answer to the “sustainability conundrum” raised by Dennis.

So what of the credibility that funding brings. I asked Duane whether he needed the credibility that high-flying, and deep pocketed investors can bring?

I think if we didn’t have a “Lord on the board” then the credibility factor could be a strong pull towards taking VC money. Credibility is very important in the market we’re in. I think that was one of the big deciding factors behind Rod Drury’s decision to have Xero as a PLC from day one. Initially we were certainly more in need of adding credibility to the company than other start-ups would have been just due to my own colourful past. But being chaired by the ex Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and ex Chairman of Cable and Wireless brings a hell of a lot of credibility in the UK market. We now also have a long and proven track record of trading and delivering on our promises. Coupled with a relatively high profile it to some degree diminishes the need to add credibility in other ways.

Which is interesting an does concur somewhat with what Dennis says. I contend however, as I pointed out in a recent post, that there are ways of building credibility cheaply. More on that later.

So where does that leave us? I spend a lot of time talking to startups and there are no hard and fast rules that apply to them all. What I would say is that if there is the opportunity to build a profitable business, while maintaining control and enjoying a reasonable quality of life and all while bootstrapping, then this is the ideal route to take. If there are market forces, competitive issues or limited lifespan pressures that mean that a funding route is the only way to go, then so be it.

 

Cross posted @ CloudAve

Zoho is hosting a free webinar on “CRM Best Practices” in a few days. Most of you know that Zoho sponsors the other place I blog, you’ll also know that I’m not scared to criticise their products when I see fit. In any case talking about this webinar can hardly be deemed to be commercial given that Zoho are actually giving away attendees a three seat Zoho CRM licence – for life!

Anyway – details below – if you take part I’d be keen to hear your thoughts – good, bad or indifferent.

When: October 24, 2008 at 1.30 pm (10.30 PST)

Topic: Leveraging Web-based CRM to Improve Customer Interactions While Building Value for your Growing Business

In this interactive webinar, we will use Zoho’s award-winning online CRM application to demonstrate how easy and affordable it is to improve your sales and marketing activities simply by leveraging the power of the web and some great features in this product.

Zoho CRM benefits for Small Business include:

♦ Most affordable web-based CRM solution on the market, only $12/user/month

♦ Flexible and easy set-up makes it a breeze and cost effective to get started

♦ Track and manage sales. marketing, inventory and support gaining 360 degree view of your business

♦ Improves control and security of company information with built-in role based access to CRM data based on user privileges

♦ Gain customers with built-in mass e-mail and marketing campaign management to generate leads and track results

♦ Improve your business efficiency with a system that is designed to scale as your business grows.

Register now to  attend this free, interactive webinar to find out how Zoho CRM can benefit your Small Business.

The difference between Zoho’s offering and those of other players, is in keeping with the differences between Zoho and its competitors in other marketplaces – and it’s a difference which has garnered them attention a little disproportionate to their size. Instead of charging users for application from the marketplace – Zoho passes them on at whatever cost the developer wants (including free if necessary). Zoho is happy with the potential of some downstream revenue created from the fact that the applications are created on their own product, Zoho Creator, and if users go over a certain level their is a charge for use of that product (bear in mind that their pricing kicks in at a pretty high level – for 10 Apps shared with less than 5 users, Zoho Creator is free.). It’s kind of like Apple not charging for downloads from iTunes – secure in the knowledge that they make coin off of selling iPods!

So far the range of applications in the marketplace is a little limited (it only launched today after all) but the different categories give you a taste of what can be done, and what’s to come. Zoho’s rationale for creating the marketplace goes like this;

There are many applications out there that are not available off the shelf, but are needed in a particular use case or situation, but there is not enough market for vendors to offer such situated software as the need could be specific to a use case or an individual/business.
Zoho Marketplace is trying to address this particular need. This market is not big enough for vendors to make a living and not small enough to ignore. With Zoho Marketplace, we hope to connect developers directly with users to create and purchase such applications providing a platform in Zoho Creator.

It’s great to see an alternative to the salesforce and Google offerings and it’ll be interesting to see how the marketplace develops over time.

Check out the video below (a little cheesy admittedly but interesting nonetheless!) and the somewhat more serious one further down.

Disclaimer – Zoho is sponsor of one of my other gigs, and I help them out on a bit of stuff. Suffice it to say if their product sucked I wouldn’t use it or promote it!

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Of course reading further, I found that Rodrigo was referring to the operating system and browser as being the only two pieces of software needing to be installed. But the sentence that resonated with me was this one;

As for me, I use Windows Vista. Certainly not because I wanted to, but because Microsoft forced me to get Vista on my new Dell machine. So I’m stuck with it. I was apprehensive about using Vista … but after a few days I got used to it. Wanna know why? No, it’s not because Vista is good – it’s because it doesn’t matter. The underlying operating system you use is irrelevant. 99% of the time I’m at a computer

Of course it’s a theme I’ve talked about often in the past – the fact that most of us spend most of our time within a browser, rendering the operating system pretty much irrelevant.

After spending time at the Office 2.0 conference, and exploring the multitude of offerings available out their on-demand for businesses, it makes me excited for the future of business and the future of the web. I’m looking forward to exploring current and future offerings, and studiously ignoring the fact that I even have an operating system!

Originally slated to launch during the recent Office 2.0 conference, lots of busy-ness, a few technical issues and a general high degree of chatter at that time made us decide to delay until next Monday. We’re posting about it now to allow people to subscribe to our feed, all ready for our content to come floating over the pipes.

Our vision with CloudAve (in fact it’s part of our manifesto) is that it should start and remain ad free – in order to pay its way then Zoho has come on board and is sponsoring the site. Have no fear though – their sponsorship is completely hands-off when it comes to editorial independence – we’ll tell it like we see it – no matter who we catch in the crossfire!

So where to for Diversity? I’ll be posting a little less often here, and my posts will probably be more around the themes of New Zealand business, economic development, manufacturing, broadband issues and the like (in fact similar themes to where my blogging started) – my co-contributors to Diversity will continue to post here as and when they see fit.

I’ve also got a few interesting projects coming up in the next few months around the New Zealand telecommunications industry, small business development in New Zealand and the like. So stay tuned – there’ll still be stuff of interest.

But also head over to CloudAve, with the talent we have on board we’ll begin to amass a pretty compelling resource.

Cheers!

It’s got all the good drag-and-drop goodness you’d expect from an explorer type product, integrates chat and also supports sharing within groups.

I’ve said it often before, and Rod also commented on how Google Chrome helps in this respect, but more and more of the core functionality of the operating system is being disintermediated by browser based offerings – I hate to foretell doom (actually I love to but you get the drift) but repent now operating system makers, for the end is nigh!

Check out the screenshot and video below

The gist of his post is that for Google, docs is a low margin offering compared to their traditional business. Therefore docs moves Google down the margin food chain and there need to be reasons for doing it other than pure profit generation. Clearly there are some strategic reasons for Google to do docs – anything that lets them eat some of Microsoft’s lunch is a good thing, and they also want to give the SaaS office productivity pace a leg-up to damage MS further.

For AdventNet however (AdventNet is the parent company of Zoho), office productivity docs are a move up the margin food ladder – as such it an especially attractive direction for a business that is purely self-funded.

I’d not be surprised (but have zero way of knowing) if there haven’t been high-level discussions between Zoho and Google – they both have distinct markets and would both benefit from tipping MS off it’s own throne.

The party will take place at;

Vitrine @ St. Regis (4th Floor)
125 3rd St
San Francisco CA

The party starts @ 6PM on Sep 4th.

If you’re planning on going, fill out the form here.

It’s been put together with a bunch of different Zoho offerings and shows some insightful stats and charts of medals for the Olympics.

Check it out – just don’t expect to see New Zealand’s name up there – we’ve not won any medals yet