Nov 27

Ideal Criteria

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I know I’m already in trouble by just the title I chose for this, so I’ll just go ahead and dig myself a deeper hole.

This startup process is begining with figuring out what to do–to settle on The Big Idea. Before we dive into some of the finer points, here is what I think I consider to be baseline criteria for a “go” idea:

1. Software-driven. I’m a software guy. Enough said?
2. Web-based. I’m thinking some kind of Software as a Service (SaaS) offering.

OK, so that narrows it down to a few hundred million ideas, but it’s a start. Beyond these criteria, here are some addotional foundational priniciples:

3. Simplicity. As much as I would like to create a world-changing business or re-invent a category like Steve Jobs and crew routinely pull off, I am realistic enough to know that I don’t have the available bandwidth or desire. Creating something of lasting value is enough for now. (I’ll get to the insanely-great ideas next time.)

4. Profitability. Yeah I know: “Duuuuuh!!!” But what I mean here is that I am not about scoring a bunch of VC money so I can attact 20 million page views each month before figuring out a business model.

  • The idea getting a “Go” must lend itself to bootstrapping without external funding.

… more soon.

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Nov 26

Cash Forecasting Needed

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Now that Mint.com has eliminated the drudgery from tracking what we spend, I understand my past cash flow perfectly.

This is a huge life-enhancer, but I still need to maintain my cash flow forecasting spreadsheet to keep a handle on what little discretion I have in that budget Mint tracks for me.

If I overspend on dining out this month, what is the impact two months from now when that big tax bill is due? With the spreadsheet, I have to manually adjust the budget where I can (i.e., discretionary buckets like dining, Starbucks, lunches) until I have back-filled my overspending hole.

Guess how much I like doing this mind-numbing exercise? Guess how consistently it gets done? The result is that we make occasional brute-force adjustments like eating beans and peanut butter for a week to drastically reduce that week’s grocery tab. (One time [pre-Mint], we even had to take out a payday loan to fill the hole. Yes, that was very humbling.)

Mint is already great at nagging me when I do overspend; what I need is for it to automatically adjust my discretionary budget items when it detects overspending (and include that information in some kind of alert to remind me to go look at the modified budget so I am aware of the new targets).

Some other entity could certainly do this as a mashup to Mint, but it would be so much easier for Mint to do it. Perhaps Mint CEO Aaron Patzer can tap Intuit’s resources after the merger to build out this feature.

If not, maybe I’ll look into it. 

Has something like this already been done? Let me know. Oh, and if you pal around with Aaron or the Intuit guys, pass along my suggestion. Thanks.

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