This presentation was based on information given at FOWA workshop by Mike McDerment, creator of Freshbooks. This was not meant to cover anywhere near the level Mike did, but simply some highlights and tips.

1. Building Web Apps From A To Z David Bisset's (@dimensionmedia) Rehash of Presentation By: Mike McDerment @MikeMcDerment February 24th, 2009 Future Of Web Apps WorkShop

3. Building

4. Marketing

5. Product Management

6. Some Metrics

7. Financing

8. General Questions

10. Venture $$$

11. Deep Financing

12. How Brian Talked Me Into Doing This v

14. Mike is a founder of the mesh conference, lecturer at Humber College and a frequent speaker at Internet conferences.

16. Desktops & Mobiles

17. Usually give you the ability to create a personal account and personlize.

19. Pandora / Last.fm

20. Online Banking

21. Twitter / Facebook / 4square

22. GET IT YET? WELL?!?!?

23. Part One: Building Getting a Launch Ready Product

25. FACT: You don't know what to launch with... get people using your service as fast as you can. Figure out where you are, building least number of features, and put the thing out there.

26. Launching and marketing are two different things. Get something up. Actually “launch” in the future.

27. Don't Build Billing – Don't waste time on this. Get people to use the service first, deploy billing later.

28. Set a deadline for launch.

29. GET TO LAUNCH AS FAST AS YOU CAN.

30. Part One: Building Building The Founding Team

32. Equity = ownership = bigger pie. How much equity do you give your team?

33. Human qualities: PASSION. If there's no passion...

34. Trust, honesty, loyalty, openness – otherwise it will suck the life of you

35. Not in it for the money.

36. It's a marriage. Do the 3am Test.

37. Founders should find people that compliment themselves. Find people that have skills that you don't have.

38. Key roles in a startup: Entrepreneur, Manager, Technician

39. Design, Development, Operations, Sales/Marketing

40. Part One: Building Mo Money, Mo Problems

42. Don't use shared hosting.

43. Don't need an office.

44. Advisors are nice, but probably not needed.

45. Business plan – exercise going through it is good

46. Part Two: Marketing Categories

48. Can you create a new category?

49. http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Mind-Anniversary/dp/0071359168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267024471&sr=8-1

50. Creating a new category is as easy sometimes as adding “online”. Before there was online banking, there was “banking”. Hotel reservations is now “online hotel reservations” today.

51. Part Two: Marketing Choosing A Name

53. Easy to spell without explanation

54. Get a name that describes the category

55. Get a name that describes the benefit

56. Get a name that describes the difference between you and everything else

57. Fun. Harsh. Consonants.

58. Get the .com... it's just another constraint

59. If you are serious, you might need to pay up – Freshbooks costs $2k.

60. Part Two: Marketing Knowing Your Story

62. Stories give your history and will be remembered.

63. Different versions for different people (short, long).

64. Develop an “Elevator pitch” – quick way to tell what you do in less then 30 seconds.

65. Stories do evolve, so make sure you refine the story online and offline.

66. venturehacks.com

67. Part Two: Marketing Building Your Website

69. Startup needs homepage, signup page, tour page.

70. Blog possible fourth, in that order.

71. Home page must explain: What it is? Who it's for? Why it matters?

72. http://www.amazon.com/Call-Action-Formulas-Improve-Results/dp/078521965X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267027862&sr=8-1

73. Part Two: Marketing Spending Wisely

75. Invest your time to teach others, talk at conferences, write books, write blogs, etc.

76. First step – go to a conference.

77. Banners in your community. Marketing to your fellow community makes sense. At least it gives you brand recognization.

78. Google PPC (Outsource If You Can)

79. Community Emails

80. PR = renting relationships. Not exactly great.

81. Blogging – tell your story, why you are doing it, stories of customers, etc. You are more interesting than you think. Have each member of your team blog (Freshbooks does this).

82. Part Three: Product Management Do Support

84. At Freshbooks, new employees ALWAYS start off in customer service no matter what their job (to know what matters/what's broken).

85. Post your phone number on your website – do everything you can to communicate your customers

86. Use a forum

87. Hit Twitter, Facebook. “Be Everywhere”.

88. As your organization scales, create a system for most asked features.

89. Usability Tests – just sit down next to someone, give them a direction, don't say anything and see what they do

91. Decisions = dope. Decisions are part art, part science.

92. You are the editor / curator of the web app.

93. Can't please all the people all the time.

94. If you aren't sure if you need to add a feature, don't do it.

95. If you do support, you'll know what to add.

96. Wait, wait, wait. Don't jump into building a feature right away.

97. Remove the pain, stay true to the vision. (Does this feature fit with my plan and dream?)

98. Part Four: Metrics Hope You Are Comfortable With Math

100. Hosting ~10% revenue.

101. Acquisition: CPA < 10 * ARPU

102. Burn Rate: Monthly exp – monthly rev = Burn

103. Run Rate: Monthly Revenue * 12 = Run rate

104. VC asks you burn rate

105. What % of emails are “glowing”, what % of people who would refer you to friends and family.

106. Job satisfaction

107. Days you did not want to work

108. Part Five: Funding When To Raise Some Dead Presidents (Money)

110. Ask When you Don't Need It, Aren't Begging For It

111. When you know your users better than anybody

112. When you have a formula for the $$$

113. When you've got traction

114. Web apps are so cheap to build, there's no excuse to building one before asking for venture dollars.

115. When You Know Your Market Size

116. Part Five: Funding Where To Find Money

118. Personal Savings

119. Love Money (From Family/Friends who don't expect to get it back)

120. Angels and Advisors

121. Your Mortgage

122. The Bank?

123. Venture Capital / PE

124. Capital Markets (When Going Public)

125. Part Five: Funding What To Look For In Investors

127. Conviction

128. Trust, honesty

129. Operational experience

130. Domain expertise

131. 3am test

132. it's a marriage

134. Twitter: @dimensionmedia

135. www.davidbisset.com

136. http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbisset

137. Frontend Development, Wordpress

138. Just Offer Free Pizza, And I'm There