Results tagged “Entrepreneurship” from Cordinc Blog

Having just completed the process of forming a new limited company under UK law, I found myself frustrated by the number of steps required. In case I ever need to do it again, or a reader does, I thought it might be useful to set out the steps I took - hopefully I haven't missed any! If it seems overwhelming, various accountancy or specialist firms can do most of it for a fee. Note, I am not an expert in this area, just someone who has done it once and recorded the steps - there is no guarantee this is completely correct.

• First get the company formed. This will require a unique company name, a business address, and directors' details. Forming the company can be done through Companies House, but I used Companies Made Simple to get things moving quickly. I recommend getting a Printed Certificate of Incorporation - it is needed in later steps.
• In my business, clients require invoices to have a VAT number so registering for VAT was my next step. If you don't need a VAT number straight away, you may wish to get a bank account first. Also, if the firm's turnover is less than £68,000, registration is not required. There are a few other exemptions too, see more at the Business Link VAT guide. I applied for registration online through the HMRC Online website (click register) - the details required should be the same as for company formation. HMRC also runs a Flat Rate VAT scheme that is worth investigating. If it turns out to be useful then applying to join the scheme can be done at the same time as registering for VAT.
• Get a bank account. This is quite important as many of the other steps need either bank details or a good reason why there are none (eg VAT registration). Most banks will require a Printed Certificate of Incorporation. I can't recommend any good banks, and you should be aware that it can take longer than you think to open a business account.
• Sign up to file company documents online at Companies House (click on File documents online). Even if the information given during formation never change, the company will still need to submit at least two forms a year to Companies House to stay registered (annual return and annual accounts). This is easy to do online. At the same time you can sign up for the PROOF system to make it harder for fraudsters to take control of the company by filing paper forms. However, be aware that once you have applied for online access, Companies House will (physically) mail some activation forms before you can file online.
• If the company will be paying anyone a salary or expenses (directors' expenses count) then you will need to sign up to PAYE. This can be done up to a month before payment. Again this can be done through the HMRC website (click register). From the employer's perspective, I find PAYE a bit complicated. You should learn about it yourself - HMRC and Business Link are good places to start.
• In the weeks after forming the company, HMRC should send you some forms to register for Corporate Tax. These need to be filled in and returned within 3 months of business activity starting. Filling in the forms will require the firm's PAYE, VAT details, and the Memorandum of Incorporation (this should have been included as part of the formation process).
• Insurance may be required and is probably a good idea anyway. My business area requires Professional Indemnity Insurance, so I organised this before beginning trading. There are many other forms of insurance which may be useful - my firm also has Employers' Insurance and Public Liability Insurance. Business Link have a guide to help determine which forms of insurance may be required. I used an industry specialist insurer, which wouldn't be useful to most readers, but I have learnt to shop around as different firms can quote vastly different rates (often the most expensive is multiples of the cheapest).
• I recommend signing up to submit VAT, PAYE and Corporate Tax forms through the HMRC website. It is quite good and normally guides you through the process of completing a form; facing a long paper form fills me with fear. Also, if VAT is paid by direct debit (which can be set up online) HMRC will give you an extra week to pay (this can be done for PAYE too). After initially applying online HMRC will send activation codes through the mail to complete the process.
• Profit!

After that I advise you quickly sort out your accounts and construct a calendar of regulatory/tax events. Remember, every 3 months a VAT form will need to be submitted. Depending on payroll size, PAYE will need to be paid monthly or once a year in addition to an annual PAYE form (P35) and expenses form (P11D). Corporate Tax forms need to be submitted annually, as do Companies House returns and accounts. Staying organised and being able to quickly determine the financial position of the firm is very useful. Since my business is fairly simple and having completed a course on accounting at uni, I created a double entry book-keeping system in Excel. If you don't feel you have the knowledge to do this (or the firm's accounts are too complicated) there are various software packages and accountants that can help - I can't recommend any.

In general, the HMRC and Business Link websites are very useful and well worth a look.

Good luck!

Last Friday I went to the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) London 2008 conference. As I only had the single day off work I decided to get the expo only entrance (£5) rather than a two-day full pass for nearly £400. Thus I didn't get to see any of the proper talks, instead I just walked around the floor to see the booths and one "FOWA university" talk.

The talk was by Yuuguu on how to run a company when all employees telecommute. Apparently, the FOWA conference is the first time all the Yuuguu employees have met at the same time. Most of the talk was fairly bland and many in the audience were head down on their laptops or iPhones. However, there were a few interesting points. Yuuguu people don't work if they meet in person, they consider the time too important to waste on work and they bond instead. Also, every Friday they get together online for virtual "beers".

There were a couple dozen companies with booths. A few big names like Microsoft, Sun and Myspace were there, but most were firms I had never heard mentioned before. This caused some awkward experiences, as their names normally give no hint as to their business areas. I would squint at their posters trying to work out what they did (which often didn't help much either). Meanwhile some marketing person would creep up on me, start talking and give me their Moo mini business card (these were literally everywhere). I left the conference knowing what every exhibiting business did, but only about half of them were marginally relevant to me.

The Microsoft booth was by far the best. Among the computers they had a couple of Xboxs and a Surface box - the Xboxs were empty while it was hard to see the Surface through the crowd. Rightly so, it was an impressive machine. All that made me want to code rather than talk and I left after an hour, skipping the Diggnation filming - I saw it last year. Anyway if want you can see the FOWA talks here.

This blog article argues that current online todo list and project management tools don't meet people's needs and are too complex. Judging by the comments of some people at the London Hackers Meetup, this is not an uncommon view. I agree too. This is why I'm trying to steer a user-friendly middle-path between Queuesarus' competitors - a group it seems Ativiti intends to join (yeah, bring it on!).

So how is it going? Well the Beta testing suggests that the functionality is nearly good enough, but that it is still not user-friendly. I'm not sure what to do. While I knew some parts of the system were difficult to understand, I had a plan for them. However, there are problems with areas I thought were fine. As the blog says, it is a hard problem and I haven't seen it done well. More thought is required, and advice is welcome.

Last Thursday I went to the "London Hacker Meetup #6". These events are organised as a London analogue to the dinners held for Y Combinator" startups in the US, although anyone could go along. Never having been to an Y Combinator dinner, I can't compare to the original, but I definitely found it an interesting evening and more welcoming than the Techcrunch Pitch event. It was held in the Songkick offices in Spitalfields (actually over the market) and drew a crowd of around 30, mainly youngish guys in very casual clothing (there were I think 3 women). I felt quite old and conspicuous in my work shirt and trousers. Luckily everyone was polite and friendly even after I told them I worked at a bank.

There were four quick talks. ConnectiveLogic demonstrated their product to easily create concurrent programs without writing any concurent code - interesting, but I'd have to have a play before saying more. Fuzzwich showed their online product to easily create simple flash animations. It looked fun and having tried it out since I can say it definitely works as advertised - give it a try. Mary (can't remember the rest of her name) spoke about her music recommendation project, The Perceptron. Finally, a guy presented his idea for a startup, then asked if anyone was interested in joining him and applying to Y Combinator. I was tempted, but thought it would be hard to commit to a company with someone I didn't know at all. Also, I'm more invested in Queuesaurus and would need a good offer to move right now.

After the talks we decamped to the local pub. I spoke to a couple of the Fuzzwich people for a while. They moved from San Francisico to London to be near their customers. We discussed how to pay employers (not so little they aren't committed but not too much, they also said an options "cliff" was standard - that is if you are sacked within the "cliff" period, usually a year, then your options are cancelled). We also spoke about motivation and starting a company, their advice was "do it!" They seem like nice people. Later I spoke to a person who had an idea for a startup; but not the technical knowhow to implement it. This seems like a common problem, there seemed to be a few such people around. My last conversation was with a guy I met at the Pitch event. He said that the company that pitched had since shutdown - we talked a bit about founder commitment and how important it is. He didn't seem discouraged at all; he is now interviewing other startups founders to see if they suit him (definitely the right way round!).

I certainly left with the impression that there is still a great deal of activity in the London startup scene, even as the financial IT world significantly slows.

It is done, or at least, the beginning is done. I have put the current version of my program on the web, proceed directly to Queuesaurus and tame the work beast! Please note, it should still be considered beta software.

So, what next? Well, I have a massive feature todo list for Queuesaurus (soon to be transcribed to the web version of Queuesaurus in a valiant attempt at dogfooding) and no doubt bugs will be discovered (if you find a bug or have a feature request, add it to the "Queuesaurus Issues" queue). However, that is not a proper answer to the question, I could keep improving Queuesaurus nearly forever. Instead I need to know how far to pursue this or whether to move onto other things.

During the last few months I have had numerous other project ideas, some that could be a business and others that are little more than side distractions. So far, only one has been pursued beyond thought (I'll blog about that later). A few times it has passed my mind to start something new.

The original aims of Queuesaurus were to, at a minimum, keep working until I had something usable and learn about setting up a web business. I think I can just claim to have achieved the first goal, but not the second. There is still a great deal to learn beyond the technical side. I'm not going to leave my consulting contract just yet, nor am I ready to advertise or properly release it, but I think it's worth giving Queuesaurus a bit of time to see how it goes. After that, who knows. I also think I should head out to the occasional local tech event and get the word out. The more people who try out Queuesaurus, the better it will become and I'll get a better idea of its potential.

Anyway give it a try!

A few people have asked me if I have given up on the project and startup idea that was the original motivation for this blog. No, I have not. A large rewrite and a lack of testing has slowed me down. There is a very large list of new functionality and I could of course keep working on it nearly forever before it is "finished". However, my experience has suggested it is best to release early and often after a minimum level has been reached. My project has now reached that minimum level. There is the occasional bug, new functionality to write and the GUI is still awkward - but what needs to be done will be clearer with people (hopefully) using it, or at least commenting on it.

So this would normally be where I put a link...

Unfortunately/fortunately, I am on holiday the next fortnight and to announce it seems like tempting fate a little too much. Instead I will just describe my idea, and in mid-September give the web address. I keep a great number of todo lists around for work and most software development workplaces have bug tracking or project management software. It seems to me there is a middle ground between a simple online todo list (of which there are many) and a complex project management system (again, there are many of these). My goal is something that can be easily used by one person or can handle groups of people working together. Another goal is to make it easy to use for non-IT people as long as they are familiar with the web (thus usable by a wider audience than many of the issue tracking systems that focus on IT people). So there's the plan, soon you can compare theory to reality.

On Thursday I went to the London Techcrunch Pitch! Event. Not as a competitor - I just wanted to get an idea of the standard of technology startups in London. I now know the standard is surprisingly high and I have a lot of work to do if I decide to try joining them.

The format was first a series of 30 second pitches by firms that didn't quite make the grade for the later 5 minute talks - about eight of each. Afterwards there was a vote by the audience for who was the best. My vote went to TIOTI who were probably the only one who had a product I would consider using. Although it was very close with a few others including the winner WatZatSong who had a good idea and a very slick presentation. Only one of the talks I would consider bad (poor idea and poor presentation), everyone else was good and some were very impressive. In general the 5 minute talks were a lot better than the 30 second ones, perhaps because the longer talks were given to the more promising firms, or perhaps because 30 seconds is a very short time to get a point across.

The competition seemed to be open to firms looking for funding, from £150K up to a few million. None required seed funding. Many were up to their second round of proper funding. I think all had launched and some had significant revenues. In short they all seemed at the mature end of the startup range. Indeed there was a high incidence of grey hairs among the presenters.

Many of the people there seemed to know each other (or at least they went with friends). Before, after and sometimes during the talks, groups were talking to each other. At times I felt like a tourist, which strictly speaking I suppose I was. If I decide to become serious about this startup thing then I have a lot further to go, both on the networking side and the actual project side.

Alpha testing has not gone as well as I hoped. Over the last few weeks I have been adding functionality and I thought the system was quite usable. So as a final step before expanding testing, I sat down with my first alpha tester to watch them use it. I expected them to suggest extra features. I had a long list of extra things I could do, but wasn't sure which were important. The good news was that they only suggested a couple of small things that I already had on my list. The bad news is just watching them use the site made me wince and clearly wasn't the best experience for them either. Over the 10 minutes of the test I quickly filled a couple of pages with issues: what does this mean, what does that do, why is that there, how do I do that?

I can heartily recommend watching someone removed from development trying to use your system. After a couple of months I am too close to the program. I no longer see what is displayed, I just know what needs to be done. I also know how to move around the site. Seeing the site through someone else's eyes was illuminating. Watching them have to move the mouse all the way across the screen to do two related actions made me realise I focus exclusively on one bit of functionality at a time. Seeing them wonder if two similar but unfamiliar terms referred to the same concept made me realise I don't read the text. When they suggested that grey buttons made it look like they we deactivated, I remembered that I meant to spend some time on the design instead of just working on functionality. I have decided that I will not add any new functionality for the next couple of weeks, instead I will focus on fixing up what is already there.

I read this blog entry on common distractions that will delay a startup launch date. Sad to say I have previously done all these on previous projects before ultimately abandoning them. Happy to say that so far on my current project I have avoided all of them.

The last month has been quite a busy one; I went on holiday and work is keeping me busy. However, I need to keep things going and not let large time gaps discourage me, so here is an update.

• Alpha testing going slowly. There are a number of regression bugs from my occasionally drastic functionality changes and these tend to stop things for a day or so (I find heroku is too slow to edit online, so I have to fix it at home and upload). At this point the Test Driven Development people are probably having a laugh at me and rightly so. In my defence I am still deciding how various features should work so there is a great deal of change occurring.
• My design skills are as bad as I thought according to the alpha tester - this will definitely become a problem later.
• I have taken up golf and poker in the last few weeks and I'm spending time learning. It's a great deal of fun, as I seem to have picked up the basics of both fairly quickly. I aim to write more on these in future.
• I must find more time to work on my project! I'm also setting a goal of at least one blog post per week.

I've also learnt a bit about web advertising and SEO through this blog. Up until the Ultrasphinx post very few people visited this blog. Since that post I get around 5 people a day, with a couple of spikes to 10 in one day. Most of these people come from google searches (check it out), only read the ultrasphinx page, and tend not to stay long. However, a surprising number of them visit again. I have to admit to a little fear and trepidation when I first saw the explosion (albeit highly targeted) in readership. I wasn't sure what to write. Should I write more technical articles, as that is what drives people to this blog, or just continue as before. The lack of technical things to write about made the decision for me, although I do double-check my spelling now.

In any case the extra readership hasn't made any difference to my ad clicks or google page rank. Google still classifies cordinc.com as low popularity. No one has clicked an ad since the first week of the blog, earning me a grand total of US14cents. I had originally thought that my project could be funded by ads, but I'm not so sure now. I don't think there is as much money in it as before so I may need to rethink the business model. Perhaps it's best just to get the system finished first.

I reached a milestone in my project progress yesterday. I have just put a very crude version of my app out for alpha testing. Unfortunately this is three weeks later than I had originally planned back in January. At that time I was hoping to do an alpha release over the Easter holiday. About half the delay is due to problems with the place I decided to host the app, Heroku. My app seemed to screw up their import system and for days I could do nothing. It also seems a bit slow - noticeably slower in production mode than my old laptop in development mode. When I get to beta testing I'll probably move to a different host. I can't complain too much, as their service is free and in beta. They are definitely worth checking out for small developments or hosting.

The other half of the delay is caused by the time taken for my expectations to return to their original level. Over the last three months my ideas on what the app should do have expanded greatly, and that week of delay was me trying to add some last minute features. I could have kept going forever before releasing anything. Ultimately I decided it would be best to get something out even if I knew it was a crappy bare minimum. I hope my alpha tester will persist through some trying times, but right now I need a little direction. The app is definitely not as easy to use as it needs to be and I suspect the design is atrocious. The plan is my alpha tester will help direct me to the areas that need most attention, and guide me away from those that are less important.

I have decided that my next milestone will be the end of May for expanded alpha testing. By then I hope to have something that I can show to a small, but slightly larger group of people. Anyone interested?

I was hoping to have a minor status update to announce by now. However, over the last fortnight there have been a few issues with an external supplier - I will detail then when they are resolved one way or the other. In the meantime, this caused me to stop breathing today, at least until I read this.

After having the simple idea (see here) over the New Year holiday, I next needed to decide how to implement it. Many people would say I needed to write design/spec/use case documents first, but for this project I think best to start working and see what happens. It would be easy to draw diagrams and think about problems with nifty solutions. However, the main goal is to DELIVER. I want to get something up and running quickly, get some people to use it and then improve it. I believe the longer it takes to get something up in front of people, the more likely I never will reach that point or go further. Having people use the system (even as testers) is a form of commitment.

As a result I chose to use Ruby on Rails for development - something many people who know me may find surprising. I have never programmed in Ruby before, so I'm learning it at the same time as trying to quickly develop a new system with fuzzy requirements. What happened to avoiding development risks and not trying to do too much at once? If I did a project risk assessment like most of my previous employers this would raise some serious red flags - the project would not be allowed to go ahead. Although, no previous employer would allow my idea to go ahead anyway, they would see it as too small. So why did I make the Ruby decision?

For the last 6 years I have almost entirely developed in Java (and before that a mix of Java, C++ and other languages that will never appear on my resume). I have worked on developing a wide range of systems from the large (over 100 people for a few years) to the very small (just me for a couple of weeks), although mainly for large financial firms. However, I specifically did not want to develop in Java. I may be faster in Java, but there are a number of reasons I thought it best not use it this time. People say it can be heavier to develop, with more boilerplate code, and I can certainly understand that. There are also less decent internet hosting options for Java, nearly every hosting firm provides PHP or Ruby options, but finding a good Java host is harder. However, the main reason for me was that with Java I was liable to get bogged down in the intricacies of the language and various libraries or third party tools. With a new language I wouldn't have time to think further than the next problem I was facing and finding a solution for it - there would be fewer distractions simply because there wouldn't be time to lose focus or investigate interesting side issues.

Choosing the language was difficult. There were so many I wanted to try as I haven't properly taught myself new language since C# some years ago. I have been reading (with interest) blog posts arguing (flaming?) the pros and cons of various web development languages and frameworks. Ruby on Rails seems to have a large following and been around for a while. The basic idea has been copied so many times by other languages (Groovy on Rails, Rhino on Rails, ...) that I felt there must be something useful in there. I rejected all the derivatives because I didn't think they would be mature enough yet and didn't have a large enough community behind them. After all a framework with a backlash must have reached a certain level of maturity! The speed issue was my main concern. At work code execution speed is extremely important and has a direct affect on the bottom line (I work on financial trading systems). However, the performance requirements for my system are far less than at work. Ruby will probably be fast enough - or at least fast enough at the start to see if the idea is worth pursuing. So I decided to just give Ruby a try. If it didn't work out I could quickly move onto something else.

Anyway, I've been writing Ruby on Rails code for nearly the last two months in my spare time - probably only the equivalent of only a handful of workdays in total. Yet I am quite impressed by how much functionality I have implemented. I am probably only a couple of weeks away from being ready for alpha testing on the functionality (the website design is still a mess). So far I have to say that Ruby on Rails has been a positive experience, although I am yet to properly test its performance.

Since being at uni and becoming properly aware of the working world, I have wanted to start a company. It has often seemed to me that the cutting edge interesting paid work in my field is happening in startups (by stating paid work I'm excluding open source and academia). Perhaps that is a naïve view and all jobs involve shovelling large amounts of crap, still I believe shovelling your own is preferable to someone else's. I've tried the more traditional career route. For a few years I even considered climbing the corporate ladder. I got an MBA and poked my head into the bottom level of middle management at a large firm and quickly scurried back down again - it is definitely not for me.

I've come close'ish to a few startups. During the MBA I talked about starting a company with another student, but our investigation suggested it would never be more than a hobby company (I still believe correctly). Later, while working at a small consultancy I tried to persuade the directors to become a product company, but they considered the risk too great for the returns compared to their current business. Before coming to London I actually pitched an idea to a few friends who had talked about starting and they pitched an idea back. It went nowhere, they said my idea was too big (an open platform for online worlds) and I thought their idea too small (casual games for ebook readers). Also, it was just after the dotcom crash was beginning to bite and everyone was extremely aware of that risk/reward payoff. Two of the people who pitched those casual games actually started a company, dogMelon, although I don't believe they ever quit their day jobs.

Since moving to London the startup goal has receded. I haven't met anyone here who is seriously interested despite exploring a few ideas over beers. I used to be of the belief that if you could not convince at least one other person your idea was good enough to join you, then the idea probably wasn't very good. Now, I'm not sure I care. After many years contracting in London I've built up a bit of a financial cushion, I'm comfortable and have no dependents. I still want to try creating something and this is about as good as its going to get. I feel its worth starting by myself (perhaps something small) and just seeing what happens. I should at least learn more about what it involves and whether I want to continue.