Chad Hutchins

The Springboard Challenge was once again a success; with many student and community participants, over 50 business plans were submitted, $40,000 in prize money was handed out, an excellent array of judges, a fantastic speaker, and a large crowd for the awards dinner.

Jody Walker won first place in the student category, with Tape Trade. Jody’s idea will be a time-saver for high school coaches everywhere, allowing coaches to easily trade game footage of all sports. Today, coaches typically meet up with other coaches to trade tapes, or they use snail mail.

Melissa Richardson took home first place in the pre-revenue community category with Dating by Design. Melissa is passionate about helping those with Asperger syndrome. There are not many resources and places of community for those with Aspergers as they become adults. Melissa wants to change that.

The Big Tech Onion team took home first place in the post-revenue community category with Sheepdog. As social networks become more and more of a household name, businesses need to find way to effectively hear what their customers are saying about them and their competitors. Sheepdog allows organizations get an in-depth look at what social networks their customers are using.

Many others were awarded cash prizes. Over the next few weeks I hope to feature several of these business ideas.

Abilene Reporter also wrote-up about the event.

I’ve had a few people ask me, “How can I be informed when you post new posts on the Abilene Startups Blog?”. We all already have enough noise during the day to deal with and we don’t have time during the day to go to each individual site we want to keep up with. The tools below will help save you time, especially if you are already using Twitter, Facebook or an RSS Reader.

Below are few ways that I would recommend keeping up with this blog:

1. Follow me on Twitter (@chadhutchins) - This may seem like a shameless plug, but if you want to be the first to know when I post something new on the Abilene Startup Blog, Twitter is the first place I go.
2. Be a Fan of the Facebook Page - Most of you are already on Facebook, so if you become a fan of the Abilene Startups Facebook Page you will receive updates on your Facebook homepage as soon as I post the link to the latest article.
3. Use an RSS Reader. - RSS is yet another nerdy computer term, but is simply a feed of posts from a blog. Most every blog has an RSS feed. An RSS Reader, such as Google Reader, let you easily manage multiple blog feeds. Whenever someone writes a new post from a blog you are following in your RSS Reader, you will see it on your list of things to read.

Are there any other ways you would like to be notified of new posts?

I just received an email from the Springboard team saying the finalists have been notified. Best of luck to all of you who have made it to the final round. Finalists will be giving their verbal business pitches to the judges Saturday morning, in hopes of winning some of the $40,000 in prize money.

Whether or not you participated in the Springboard Challenge or not, you should be sure to sign-up for the awards dinner this Saturday night. Dr. Christopher Kersey is speaking on “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School About Entrepreneurship.” Tickets are $15 dollars and well worth it. You can sign-up for the dinner on Springboard’s website.

Come out for the poster session, featuring the Springboard participants and their ideas. The poster session will begin at 6:00pm and the dinner will begin at 7:00pm. The event will be held this Saturday night in the new ACU Hunter Welcome Center.

Hope to see you there.

I ran across two posts yesterday that I believe will speak to you entrepreneurs out there:

10 Entrepreneurial Concepts to Live By (thanks to Steve Collier)

It’s what’s in between that counts. (found via Twitter)

Can you relate to these? What are your thoughts?

Facebook Can Make Your Local Shop Rock!

I recently reconnected with an old friend on Facebook, like many of you have, I’m sure. As we went through the process of catching one another up on things, I learned that she had a shop in her city and was just trying to get a website up, start blogging, etc., to publicize events at her shop. Since she knew that I had just released “Digital Engagement,” she started asking me for advice.

I encouraged her to consider setting up a Facebook page using the Pages utility, and invite friends to ‘fan’ the page. My reasoning was that since what she needed was to get the word out to lots of people, and Facebook already had lots of people, she should start there. This progressed with her starting to ask about advertising on Facebook, and us jointly developing a targeting strategy using Facebook Ads. Since there is so much discussion around how small local retailers can use the web, with varying reports of its effectiveness, I thought I’d share her response with you: “Just wanted to follow up and give you an update on the success of the Third Friday event and the Facebook marketing I did. It was awesome! …had about 50 people in and sales were through the roof. Facebook got me over 78,000 impressions and 25 click throughs for $21. Wow!! I have a feeling this won’t last for long so I have placed another ad for my craft classes. I noticed an ad for American Airlines today, the secret is getting out! Thanks again for your help, I truly appreciate it. I never would have put a page together if you hadn’t suggested it. I have my networking business group meeting at the store in a couple of weeks and I am going to have a few copies of your book there for purchase. I think every one in business right now needs to use this wonderful asset!”

It’s nice to see a plan come together, to help a friend, and to see how effective social network marketing can be for a small local retailer.

Engage!

Thanks to Leland Harden, author of Digital Engagement, for writing this up for the Abilene Startups Blog. Be sure to pick up his book on Amazon, or grab a book from him personally if you can catch him at his Hardin-Simmons University office.

These are things that go through my head often:

“This is hard. Why do I have to pay the bills? eat? sleep? keep food on the table? all the other small stuff (cleaning house, washing clothes, car maintainance, etc. etc.)? have some sort of social life? maintain solid work at the day job? Why can’t things just work out on their own? On top of all of that I am trying to create a scalable, maintainable and viable business. I have to think about marketing, development, business development, networking, website, operations, accounting, raising capital… the list goes on. Why can’t I just work on the things I know will be successful? If only I had enough time and resources…”

BUT I keep telling myself this:

• If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
• Life will not pause to let me pursue a dream. It will always be a struggle. If it is getting the business off the ground today, it will be something else tomorrow. A good entrepreneur will never be satisfied with their current state of business.
• The ‘things you just have to do in life’ mentioned above will not go away, so deal with it and work smarter.
• Set yourself up for success. Don’t try to make everything perfect. Whatever your business is, create small, reachable and deliverable goals and get to work!
• Celebrate the victories, but get back to the grind ASAP. Your competitors are working harder.
• Value your time. Do not waste it. You choose your own schedule. At the same time, keep in mind what’s important (family, friends, etc.).
• Be patient. Be diligent. Keep your eyes open for opportunities.

Does this hit home for you? What are your thoughts? Now, get back to work!

Monday April 6th from 8am to 5pm at Abilene Startups will be hosting its 2nd SpringBoard Open Coffee co-working event. If you are interested in meeting other entrepreneurs, have questions about starting a business or just want a free lunch be sure to show up. Being a “co-working” event, we will be meeting up to get to know each other, but most of all, meeting up to work together at a common location for the day. Be sure to bring your laptop to hookup to the free internet at Brew.net. Abilene Christian University will be providing lunch (brew.net sandwiches) for those of you that are able to hangout from 11am to 12:30pm. Be sure to check out the event on Facebook (must be logged in to Facebook).

After the event, be sure to show up for the SpringBoard Ideas Challenge Business Plan Boot Camp to prepare for the upcoming business plan competition. This event will be hosted specifically for those competing in the community division. It will begin at 5pm at the Small Business Development Center, downtown Abilene.

Be sure to pass this around to anyone in the Abilene area interested in entrepreneurship. Leave a comment or email me (hutchins.chad@gmail.com) if you have any questions or comments.

Brew.net is located in the shopping strip in front of the WalMart on the northeast side of Abilene. Look for the blue marker on the map below.

View Larger Map

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Big Dream Gathering. Several of you have asked for a followup on the event. I wasn’t able to attend, so I asked Dr. Ron Rainwater, a professor at Hardin-Simmons University who was able to attend to give a run-down of the event.

Big Dream Gathering first came to my attention through a January article in the Abilene Reporter News. My wife and I discussed the possibility of attending a regional Big Dreamers gathering in San Angelo on March 5. It was sponsored by the Texas Midwest Community Network and took place at the McNeese Convention Center.

We registered by completing an envelope addressed to ourselves. When we turned in our envelope we were assigned a number. This part of the registration was to protect the identity of each participating dreamer.

After the simple (no charge) registration process we were handed a dreamers sheet to complete which asked for 3 specific areas of information.

• Describe one of your BIG dreams…
• List some things you already have in place for this dream.
• List some things you still need for this dream.

The final space said This space is for other BIG dreamers to leave comments.

Our completed form was posted on the Business wall. Categories of dreams were located on different walls in the room. Categories consisted of education, health and fitness, music and entertainment, and more. Those in attendance went from wall to wall recording their suggestions or offering help on individual dream forms.

We stayed for just over an hour and observed about 200 people in attendance; a diverse group of dreamers; old, young, multiple ethnic groups, various socio-economic levels, people from small town, large towns. An excellent cross-section of our population was represented, sharing a common energy and excitement in the hope of fulfilling their dream.

A few days ago, just 2 weeks after the gathering we received our Big Dream sheet in the same envelope we had addressed at the gathering. There were four helpful comments/suggestions, with a couple of phone numbers of people who might be able to help with our dream.

The BDG was informative, well organized, and impressively supported by corporate sponsors and professional groups. Before leaving we met the founder, Mitch Matthews. He left us with a positive image and encouraged us to participate in the Abilene Big Dream Gathering scheduled for October of this year. We look forward to pursuing our dream further with BDG and others who dare to follow their dreams.

Thanks again Ron for the follow up. The Big Dream Gathering will be coming to Abilene in October, more info to come in the future.

Did you attend also? What was your Big Dream Gathering experience like?

More often than not these days, entire companies are built on software written by the co-founders. The idea itself, execution and marketing of the company have major roles in determining the success of the startup, but as little as it may seem in the beginning, the development platform that you select may have a huge impact on your company down the road. Here are a few suggestions if you are looking at developing software internally, externally, on-shore or off-shore so that your company may stay agile in the fast-paced startup world.

1. Don’t try to write your own software framework! (i.e. don’t start writing from scratch) - A software framework is a re-usable design for a software system (says wikipedia). Carefully selecting and building on top of a proven framework will save you hours of work down the road. As development projects grow over time, it is a challenge to keep track of changes and flow of control throughout the application. Using an established framework keeps you from having to program common logic for each software project, so you can get to the meat of your application. There are a few projects that will require a custom development framework, but 99% of the time yours won’t. Consult your software-engineering friend if you aren’t sure.
2. What framework should you use? - Yes. Just find one that you like and use it. There are plenty to choose from. Depending on your coders’ coding expertise, be it yourself, I would suggest Ruby on Rails, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Zend and even Microsoft’s .NET framework.
3. Use open source software. - First off, just because software is open source, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be cheaper to implement. However, open source software usually comes with great crowds of followers and devout users and you are allowed to distribute and edit the software however you please, and this is what will save you money in the long term. Any framework, library or methodology of software development you jump behind, you will want to make sure there is a devout group of followers included, that they’ve been around and don’t appear to be going anywhere. During the late nights and tough development times when nothing is going right, they will be your source of inspiration and much needed help when you can’t solve a problem with their code or your own.
4. Don’t go cheap on development. - If you aren’t a coder and will have to hire outside help for development, here are a few thoughts: Look for a team with proven experience in the area of your application. Find a team that asks the right questions and aren’t afraid to tell you no about certain features. Be sure the development team you select are heavy-users of the platform (i.e. web, desktop, iPhone, etc.) you are building your app for. Most development projects will cost a significant amount of cash, especially if you are wanting to build a completely custom web application. This may vary greatly, but in general I wouldn’t look at spending less than $10k on a custom development project. That $10k can grow very easily when you include branding and graphic design into the mix. Be sure to have on paper exactly what you are expecting from the development team, at the agreed price and timeframe with both parties signatures.
5. Development cost too much? - If you can’t front the cost for a solid development team and you are boot-strapping things, you may need to look at divvying out some equity to hedge the development cost or guaranteeing X% of the first Y sales. However, be careful to who and how much equity you begin throwing around. Only reserve this option if you have found a development team you truly believe in, you are comfortable going into business with them, and simply can’t afford the cost. Also, if you are giving up equity, you will want these people to be inherently passionate about the project itself, otherwise you might might find yourself with a disinterested and unmotivated development team.

These are just a few things I’ve learned down my journey of developing software and by talking to other software developers and companies. This barely begins to scratch the surface of things to look for when developing software or hiring a development shop.

What are your thoughts? What would you add to or take away from my list?

Don’t forget to prepare your business plans for the SpringBoard Ideas Challange, a business plan competition hosted by Abilene Christian University. SpringBoard is hosting several ‘boot camp’ sessions providing free help on creating business plans. Jim Porter and other will be there to assist. From the guy who is making SpringBoard happen this year, Ryan Stephen:

The SpringBoard Ideas Challenge has announced that it will hosting a series of “Boot Camps” consisting of tutorials and Q&A sessions for those who are interested in entering this year’s competition. The first of these events will be next Monday, March 23rd at in the AT&T Wireless Theater at ACU’s Hunter Welcome Center. It will kick off at 5pm and should last no more than an hour, including a thirty minute slot for Q&A. SpringBoard Boot Camp should be a great opportunity to become familiar with the competition format and understand the best way to structure a “mini-business plan.”

The Springboard Ideas Challenge is Abilene’s community-wide business plan competition. Contestants in three categories - University Students, Community Pre-Revenue, and Community Post-Revenue - will submit 10 page business plans for a shot at $40,000 in cash prizes. For more information or to register your idea, visit http://springboardchallenge.com.

Be sure to check out SpringBoard’s Facebook group to connect with other participants.