I’ve been spending much of my time reading and understanding Startups & Venture Capital, especially in the US markets (which was somewhat foreign to me, in terms of financial structuring - being South African, of course). As many of you know, Synthasite has been under development for a while now, and sits smack in the middle of that over-used catchphrase, Web 2.0. For me, it’s been a great learning curve both from a hands-on perspective (with incuBeta having just raised private equity/venture capital from Mark Shuttleworth’s HBD Fund), but also a theoretical one, where I have been trying to build the mental bridge between what an entrepreneur wants, and a venture capitalist wants.
We’re launching Synthasite Version 2.0 on 1 June 2007 and in terms of the rebuild it will have taken us a total of 6 months from concept to deployment, using a core team of 3 full time engineers, 1 QA/Server infrastructure resource & some very agile methodologies (utilizing Basebamp & Rally) to launch Version 2.0. By comparison, Version 1.0 took the inputs of over a dozen people and about 2 years of development to complete. Couple that, in addition to the fact that we were building an AJAX application way before it was even called AJAX, means that there was a large amount of R&D that went into evolving the product, none of which was wasted, and ultimately led us down the new path that we are walking.
We aim to relocate the Synthasite team (6 people in total) to Silicon Valley in the next few months and run Synthasite from there, spinning it off as a separate entity to incuBeta - which as a Group is growing quickly in many areas, hence the reason to apply a more dedicated and focused team to grow Synthasite. I will be leading the company from there and I have effectively taken over as CEO of Synthasite.
Update: Here is the video embedded for your convenience.
Why are we doing the move? Paul Graham’s article on “Why Startups Condense in America” somehow struck a chord with me. Synthasite is South African homegrown technology, but in order for us to grow the business and stay ahead, it seems like the most obvious move is to base ourselves at the center of the the tech world. That’s not to say that you can’t grow a tech business elsewhere, but for most techies & geeks, at some point in your life, you want to be in a startup in Silicon Valley! Also, I had a meeting with Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn back in January and he basically said to me that (admittedly biased), it’s no coincidence that global companies such as eBay, Yahoo, Google & YouTube are all within a few miles from each other - good point!
Why have we done the rebuild? In short, when we started building Synthasite - Internet Explorer had a 90% market share and Firefox was a 1980’s movie starring Clint Eastwood. That was then and this is now - the new version of Synthasite will be cross browser compatible and have a host of other great features. Bear in mind that we’re only going with an Alpha launch in June, with Beta expected sometime around Q3, not everything will be in the first build.
Another good reason for the relaunch was that the market has evolved considerably since the original planning and build phase, and it was good to take a step back and create a vision for Version 2.0 before jumping straight in. Much of what has been done up to now has been trial and error - with great feedback from our Version 1.0 Beta testers. We now know where we are going, and in the spirit of all things “Web 2.0″ we’ve gone back into Stealth mode until June 1st.
So, a bit of advice to other Internet startup entrepreneurs that I have either learnt the easy way, or the hard way (not going to say which!):
- Read Jason Fried’s Getting Real
- Bootstrap Version 1.0 and get it out there ASAP - user feedback is imperative
- Talk to other entrepreneurs who have been there, done that
- Don’t bother the VC’s until you’re really ready with a focused offering - you only really get one shot to do a solid pitch.
- Just do it! Stop planning and start prioritizing. It’s amazing what we can achieve when we focus and take action.
Here are some of the VC blogs that I read regularly - I don’t necessarily know these guys, but trust me, judging from their content, they know what they are talking about - and it’s worth taking a page out of their book, err… blog.
- FirstRound Capital’s Josh Kopelman - RedEye VC - Most notably, his most recent post.
- Crosslink Capital’s Peter Rip - EarlyStageVC
- Hummer Winblad’s Will Price - Particularly this slideshow/powerpoint that he produced.
- August Capital’s David Hornik - VentureBlog
- Guy Kawasaki’s - How to Change The World
- Union Square Ventures’ Fed Wilson - A VC - I particularly liked this post on widgets.
- YCombinator’s Paul Graham
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Add New Comment
Viewing 15 Comments
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Add New Comment
Trackbacks