Why you should apply to Startmate

Earlier this year, Noosbox was very fortunate to be one of the 5 startups selected from over 100 applications, to be part of the inaugural round of Startmate in Sydney.

If you're not familiar, Startmate is a startup incubator in the style of the famous Y-Combinator. As well as an investment to kick start your development, you enrol in an intensive 3 month 'program' where you're given office space as well as 1 on 1 time with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in Australia. And at the end of it, you're flown to Silicon Valley to pitch in front of guys like Dave McLure.

As a testament to the program's success in it's first year, all 5 companies are still very much in business, and at least 4 of them (including Noosbox) have raised further investment, 3 of them from US firms. The talented lads from Grabble have already been acquired, by Wal-Mart no less. This year the program is expanding to invest in even more Aussie companies.

Not only that, but I've no doubt the 2012 batch will have an even better experience, as the program learns from it's first-year mistakes, gains stronger media attention, and can leverage a growing network of not just mentors but the support of the first round of startups.

So, hopefully the opportunity at a shot at all of this is reason enough to apply.

But if a chance at all of that wasn't a good enough reason to apply, here's a couple more that might be less obvious.

You will start to think of your idea as a business

We all like to talk about ideas. It would be a strange Friday down at the pub when someone didn't mention some idea that they thought would make the world a better place. And if you're a coder, doubtless you've got one or two half-attempted projects sitting on a git repo somewhere.

Surprisingly few people then seem to talk about credible businesses - which are simply ideas which make money (and are thus self-sustaining, scalable, and have a chance at making a real impact).

One of the biggest advantages that Startmate provided for us when we applied, was that it taught us to think about our idea as a business. It turns out that it's a learned skill, and that learning started from the day we began working on our application.

Some of the first questions you face in your application are "How will you acquire customers", or, even more profound "So, who would actually use this".

These don't sound that hard at face value. When asked in conversation it's easy to churn out quick flippant answers like "AdWords and great SEO", or "The network effect will eventually force everyone to use us".

But when you actually have to write down the answers, knowing that some very knowledgeable peers will be scrutinizing them, you are forced to consider how you would answer them in the real world. In the real world people are time poor. Businesses have many people competing for their money. Who out there really can't live without this idea? How can we know that they need it if we haven't built it? How would we actually find someone like that without burning through a ton of money?

Once you're in this frame of thinking, you can progress to questions like - How can we exploit new technology to create a new market? And what creative marketing hacks can we find to get to find them quickly (one neat story from the Startmate program - it turns out Atlassian targeted it's early developers by handing out free beers at the JavaOne conference rather than fork out $15K to officially sponsor them).

I've since come to learn that these questions make for a great low-pass filter to find ideas which will actually succeed in market, and developing and refining that filter is what ultimately makes for a successful entrepreneur.

You'll be taught time is the enemy, and focus is the key

Startmate isn't a school, and there's no singular philosophy, but if there's one overarching theme that almost every mentor echoed, it was move fast and focus. Again this is a learned skill, and the teaching starts from the moment you begin your application.

One of my most memorable moments of the whole program was actually before we'd been accepted - it was a workshop from Mick "Mr Focus" Liubinskas during an information session on how to focus and execute tactically. I'd spent the previous couple of months working opposite Mick at Pollenizer, but I'd never heard that lecture before and it completely changed the way I view startup development. The application process was worth it for that lecture alone.

You have nothing to loose

There's a good chance you've got an idea cooking away somewhere, but maybe you haven't found a co-founder yet. Or maybe you're worried that it doesn't exactly meet the criteria for the program. Maybe you're not sure about the investment terms and if they make sense.

But I think biggest reason for putting off something like Startmate is simply fear of failure. This is also the worst reason not to apply. You might think that applying to Startmate and failing to be accepted is would be somehow squandering some social capital amongst Australia's startup community. In Australia in particular, our culture teaches us implicitly that failure like this is cause for shame, and is to be avoided at all costs.

But in fact, the reverse is true - if there's one quality investors value above all others, it's tenacity. If you apply with a bad idea one year, your chances are actually greater if you apply again (hopefully with a different idea) the next year. Quite apart from that the fact that your instincts will be better honed, the fact that you're repeatedly applying sends an enormous positive signal that you're serious about making a go if it.

So even if you like the idea of Startmate, but are holding off until next year, my 2c would be to apply now. Even if you don't get accepted, your odds of being accepted next year are much higher than if you didn't apply.

You don't actually have to accept an offer

I think many folks don't apply to Startmate because they are simply not interested in investment. I see this particularly from talented developers I know who have great skills and a great idea, but feel more comfortable building it out on their own first before taking investment, if it's even needed at all. And of course, you can avoid quitting your job.

Without starting a debate on the merits of investment or quitting, I would argue that by simply applying you will help strengthen the thinking around the idea. And you'll get great feedback that will help guide the decisions you'll need to make to help develop it over the next few months whether you actually take investment or not.

So while it sounds counter-intuitive, I'd suggest you apply even if you have no intention of accepting. Even if you apply, and are offered a place in the program, you can always turn down the offer. But I think for the investment of an afternoon filling out a form, you'll have been more than compensated from the feedback and validation you'll get on your idea.

Applications are due November 30. So get cracking, punks!

Best practices for generic e-mail addresses in Google Apps

Google Apps is a phenomenal platform for small businesses to get started on, but one thing it's missing is a good way of handling all those 'generic' e-mail addresses.  The ones like help@mycompany.com, or sales@mycompany.com where you direct your customers to so they don't have to e-mail some personal account all the time.

The official way of providing generic e-mails on Google Apps (and the way that we've seen most businesses do it) is using Groups in Google Apps. You set up a group for your 'generic' address, and select a few people to receive the messages.

For example, you might set up e-mails sent to sales@mycompany.com to go to each member of your sales team. Now when a customer e-mails your sales address, everyone in the sales team has an opportunity to respond from their own e-mail account (which is great when you want to give your customers that personal response).

This is all well and good, but now we've created some new problems. Since several people in the company receive the same e-mail from a customer...

• How do we know who is meant answering it (or responsible for it)?
• How do we know if the e-mail has been answered by anyone?
• If I wasn't the person who answered the e-mail, how can I see what was said to the customer?

So here's where you need Noosbox, which can neatly solve all three of these problems. Here's how it works for our sales example above.

First, we create a task type for a Sales Enquiry. We'll track our enquiries as being 'Open' (for new inquiries), 'Resolved' (for that have been answered to the clients' satisfaction) or 'Escalated!' (if we want our manager to step in).

Next, we'll create an auto-tag rule, so that any conversation sent to sales@mycompany.com is automatically assigned the task Sales Enquiry task. Doing this will mean that the conversation (including any replies sent to or from the customer) will be automatically captured in Noosbox and shared with your team.

So now, when anyone on the sales team receives an e-mail from sales@mycompany.com, they'll see something like this.

If someone on your team replies to the customer, Noosbox will automatically assign it to them (and if you're reading the message, it will update you in real-time to let you know).

Finally when the issue has been resolved, whoever was working on it can let the team know. Again, if anyone else is looking at the orignal message, their status will be updated immediately in real time to let them know the issue has been closed.

And when you ever want to pull up what anyone said to a particular customer, you can grab that right from Noosbox, no matter who answered the conversation.

Neato! Using Noosbox and Google Groups, you can have a world-class customer support solution on your domain in minutes. 

It's not limited to sales leads of course, you can use it for:

• Trouble tickets from support@mydomain.com
• Customer payments (and following up on folks who don't pay on time)
• Orders (like paypal orders)
• Special projects
• Managing job applications

And the list goes on. Take Noosbox out for a tour.

Moving from auto-sharing to auto-tagging

Hey folks, a quick product update.

A couple of weeks ago we announced that we were making a pretty fundamental change to Noosbox, transitioning from Sharing conversations to Tagging them.

Following on from this, we're announcing a great new feature - auto-tagging. With auto-tagging, you can automatically specify that any conversation that includes a particular contact will automatically be assigned a particular tag.

So how is this useful? Let us count the ways...

• Conversations with a generic address like sales@mycompany.com can be automatically tagged with a Lead tag. The tag carries through the entire conversation as it moves around the company - so even if you end up forwarding it or directing it to someone else to answer, the tag still says and the conversation is still shared.
  
• Conversations with important customers can be automatically tagged with an Important tag. From within the Noosbox interface you can keep track on all these conversations to make sure your team is on top of them.
  
• If you have forms on your website that turn into e-mails from an address like myforms@woofoo.com, you can automatically tag all conversations from that address in Noosbox. You and your team can stay on top of any notifications that need to
  
• Notification e-mails from key systems, like your billing or accounts systems, can be automatically tagged, shared and searched by anyone in your team from within Noosbox. With our upcoming state management tools, you'll be able to track which notifications have been dealt with and which ones haven't.
  
• And that's just the start. We'll be posting some case studies soon on how Noosbox is simplifying teams around the world and helping them work as one.

What about auto-sharing?

For users of our old auto-sharing feature, your account will be transitioned automatically over to auto-tagging.

Instead of automatically sharing messages from particular contacts, instead conversations they are participating in will automatically be tagged with the tag 'autotag' (much the same as before).

Of course you can customise all of this from within Noosbox, including which tags contacts are automatically assigned.

Moving from sharing to tagging

Hey everyone,

We've been going for a couple of months now, and collected a ton of great feedback from our reference users. Based on your feedback, we're making a pretty big change to Noosbox - moving from "Sharing" to "Tagging". We'll be rolling out this service to existing users, starting from Wednesday.

So, how does "tagging" work?

When you visit GMail, you'll see an updated gadget that looks something like this.

The tags you see can be customised by your administrator, so you may see different tags from these ones.

Tagging a conversation makes it automatically available in Noosbox, just like sharing a conversation used to do. Replies in the same conversation will be automatically shared as well, so you don't need to go in and tag them yourself. If you want to keep a message in a tagged conversation private, you can mark it as private inside either gmail or Noosbox.

So how is tagging useful? Well, here's a few examples of how we use it every day at Noosbox.

Managing leads - Sometimes people come to us, and sometimes we reach out to them. Either way, we need to know who we're having conversations with, and how they are progressing. Each conversation with a prospective customer is tagged as "lead", so we can quickly see across the team where our sales pipeline is at. We can also quickly see if there's any conversations that we're still waiting for follow up on from our customers.

Managing customer issues - Every time someone e-mails us about a support issue, we tag that conversation as "issue". This means all issues being managed across the team are immediately visible and searchable in Noosbox. Whenever any of us is dealing with a client issue, we can instantly any previous issue that was discussed with that client, even if it was managed by someone else. If we tracked them as a lead as well, then we've got that conversation in Noosbox too. Having all of this information at our fingertips means we can deal with customers much more quickly.

Job Applications - Job applications are a classic problem. You have a ton of applications, which turn into conversations with your team, which sometimes turn into interviews, which sometimes turn into offers, and hopefully turn into hires. Using tags we can keep track of where each job application is at any time.

Keeping track of interesting conversations - Sometimes we just like to share stuff for posterity. Useful comments, feedback and discussions.

In the coming weeks, we'll be rolling out some significant enhancements to tagging, including Tag States, which allows for more powerful tags. For example an issue can be "Open" or "Closed", and a lead might be "Open", "Closing", "Closed Won" or "Closed Lost". This allows you to build simple, intuitive workflow for tagged conversations.

We're pretty excited about tags - within our team, we've been able to replace our CRM, issue tracker and a ton of other tools with just Noosbox and e-mail. We'd love to hear what you think.

Noosbox on tour: Startmate vs. 500startups

Silicon Valley saw an Aussie invasion yesterday. Yours truly, along with 4 other game startups from the Startmate program, crashed Dave McClure's 500startups office in Mountain View to give our first ever pitch to a crowd of SV angels and VCs, including big Dave himself (as well as a few local Aussies cheering on).

It was an awesome experience for first timers - both having the chance to get up and pitch, and even more so for the conversations afterward. It was particularly fascinating to see the difference between on what the Sydney and the Valley looks for in entrepreneurs.


Aside from accents and extroversion, we noticed a few serious differences between early stage investors in the Valley and in Sydney - at least during the pitch stage.

The valley likes shiny. 

They really don't care too much how you're going to make your money. In Australia, investors will ask sensible, boring questions about market size, CPA, CLTR and growth. Even if you've just launched. Even if these are investors who supposedly understand internet business models, you've really got to spell out the size of the opportunity for them, and prove that it's there before you'll get a dime.

In the Valley, nobody wastes time with this, because it's usually obvious. If you're a listings property arbitraging adwords - they get the business model. If you're SaaS they get the business model. If you're location based social gaming, they get the business model. Nobody's going to waste time up-front with the market size (it's either obviously huge or it's not) or if your monthly subscription will be $5 or $7. It's assumed that you're capable enough to have already figured out and/or will rigorously test, all of that detail.

Instead, it's all about the product. What is it that's unique and interesting that you bring to the table? What's the wow factor? What is going to get people so excited they're going to drop everything else to give this a try? Tellingly: every question we received after our pitch was product related.

This was all a refreshing surprise to us. Most entrepreneurs would rather talk about how awesome their product is instead of talking through spreadsheets.

There's an exception when you're pitching a business plan that's not obvious (that is, one that doesn't fit the conventional moulds of web based businesses - a different thing to simply not having one). In which case naturally you should expect to have to explain it, at least superficially.

The valley likes ballsy. 

In Australia, investors want to see a business model they can believe in. If it's clearly outrageous, and not backed up with some rigorous modelling, you're going to be politely shown the door.

However in the Valley, it's all about big ballsy visions. What folks want to hear is a plan on you're going to conquer the world. If it's a novel business idea that might one day change the way everyone, say, drives their car - then this will get interest. It's OK that you haven't proven how to do it yet.

It's perhaps understood that you might not have every piece of the puzzle nailed yet, they just want to know that you have a reasonable shot at doing so, given time and money. The fact that you've figured out how to nail some niche market has people less excited even if it is more likely to succeed.

Of course, founders with big ballsy visions are more likely to fail (even with funding), simply because the uncertainties they face are significantly greater. But in the unlikely event they succeed the returns are likewise greater.

For US based angels with a significant funding pool looking for one startup in a hundred to knock it out of the park, it makes sense that they are going to be more attracted to big ideas than the relatively risk adverse Australian VC who's looking for one startup in 3 to simply score a home run. When your portfolio is larger and more diversified, it makes sense at an early stage to take chances on shiny ballsy startups.

So, to Aussies looking to come over here to hustle - start polishing those balls folks :)

Noosbox on tour: Web 2.0 Expo

Think for a second about where the most comprehensive, the most accurate, and most up-to date repository of knowledge about your company resides right now.

It's not in your CRM.

Or your wiki.

Or your Yammer stream, Jive feed, Basecamp account, Socialcast stream or any of these other tools.

The most comprehensive, and most up-to-date repository of knowledge is actually in the collective inboxes of you, and your colleagues.

So why is it then that we spend all of this time, and energy and money building and buying all of these other tools, only to have to recreate the information in them that we've already captured in our Inbox?

So we had a think about this, and we realised that the answer was - rather than replace email with some other tool, instead we should try and enhance it to better leverage the information contained in the conversations we're already having.

This is what Noosbox is to us. A tool to help you share, search, and discover the important conversations in your team.

We'll be giving a sneak peak at the startup showcase at the Web 2.0 summit. Come down and say hi!

Game time

Today we were one of 5 Aussie start-ups accepted into the innaugural StartMate program, Australia's mentor-driven seed fund and answer to YCombinator.

This not only gives us access to funding, but more importantly to an enormous pool of talented and experienced mentors from the Australian startup scene. From Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquar (of Atlassian) to Kim Chen of Tjoos.

It's an adventure not just for us, but also for our investors who are keen to validate seed financing in Australia. We hope to play our part in proving that it's a worthwhile place for Australians to be putting their money.

Game on.