It’s about time we got some Web apps

October 13, 2011 · 0 comments

This article originally appeared in Profit-Driven, a blog for startups and small businesses by Profitably.

For most of us in the accounting profession, Excel spreadsheets are tried and true tools of the trade. And that’s absolutely fine. They’re what we know. They’re comfortable. And for the most part, they get the job done.

But if we look at other corners of the company, we’ll see something changing. We’ll see that Web-based tools are not only transforming the way business gets done, but also taking it to the next level. Look at what Salesforce has done for the sales team. Web-based tools like HubSpot, Postling and HootSuite are changing the way the marketing team manages social media campaigns and drive inbound traffic. IT has helpful tools like Zendesk for support and droves of project management tools. HR pros have recruiting management tools like TheApplicants and Resumator. The list goes on.

Until recently, finance/accounting was missing out, destined to keep trudging along with Excel and desktop accounting software. But now there’s a wave of exciting innovation happening in our neck of the woods (clearly we’re not biased!). And it’s happening for a big reason: we are the keepers of the numbers—and numbers matter most.

Below we’ve compiled a short crash course covering all you need to know about Web-based software for the accounting team, what some of the most interesting ones are, how they can help, and much more.

To start, people throw around buzzwords like “cloud-based” as if everyone knows what they mean. We’ve learned that that’s not always the case. So when we say things like Web-based or cloud-based when referring to software, we’re talking applications that aren’t sitting on your desktop (i.e. Excel). We’re talking about apps you access online, sometimes for free and sometimes for a monthly subscription fee.

The benefits of apps like these? Well, it depends on your specific use (which we’ll get into below), but here are a few general thoughts:

•    Anywhere Access: Who loves the experience of sending an Excel attachment back and forth, over and over? Changes getting lost. Versions conflicting. Formulas getting funky. We didn’t think so. Web-based apps let anyone with permission access a project from anywhere. No more attachments. No more delays. Always up to date.
•    Ease of Use: Traditional accounting software has a reputation for being difficult to use and supremely unintuitive. Among those of us developing Web-based accounting apps, design and user experience are our guiding light. Why shouldn’t accounting apps elicit satisfaction and delight? Why shouldn’t data analysis churn out insights and reports that are not only readable but communicable in the monthly board meeting during which everyone dreads having to slog through financials?
•    Targeted use cases: You might not want to leave QuickBooks behind after all these years (you’re not alone), but you don’t need to jump into Web-based software both-feet-in. Most solutions these days offer very specific functionality like planning, inventory management, expense reporting and shipping. So you can keep QuickBooks where it is and try out a solution that will tackle one problem for you or your clients.
•    Interactivity: When you make a change in Excel it sits in Excel and that’s it. But the Web-based tools we’re talking about interact with QuickBooks or other accounting suites. So when you change something in one place, the data is reflected everywhere else. “One source of truth,” and “don’t repeat yourself” are the names of the game.

So what’s out there?

Here are a couple of the key categories we’re seeing emerge, as well as some of the top players in the marketplace today for each.

Accounting Software

There are lots of accountants who are comfortable with QuickBooks on the desktop and don’t want to see that go away. Conversely, there are others who find it pretty clunky and difficult, and they are looking for something Web-based and easier to work with. It’s that second group that is using tools like…

•    Xero: One of the strongest Web-based accounting tools for small businesses comes from—of all places—New Zealand. They have a tremendous footprint in the U.K., South Africa, Australia and N.Z., and have recently entered the U.S. market. Their solution is stable and feature-rich. You will be hearing more from these guys to be sure. ($19-39 per month)
•    NetSuite: They are the absolute No. 1 in terms of market share for Web-based ERP solutions, but they are a bit “upmarket” (read: expensive) of most small businesses. (pricing proprietary)
•    Outright: A classic venture-backed startup, sort of the mint.com for small businesses ($9.95 per month)
•    Indinero: Another venture-backed startup in the space, definitely worth checking out ($0-49 per month)

Planning and Analytics

Here’s your real opportunity to put Excel to bed (at least for some tasks…). These apps help put a plan in place and measure plan versus actual performance. Some provide easy to use reporting on existing accounting data that you and your clients can access easily from any computer.

•    Profitably*: Cutting-edge planning software that connects to QuickBooks for plan vs. actual. Our advanced analytics provide insights into cash-flow planning, customer profitability, and employee analytics. (“Planning” is free, and the advanced analytics are $49.99 per month).
•    60mo: Planning software with direct connectivity to source bank data. Rich feature set and beautiful visual design. ($29-49 per month)
•    Coreltyics: Dashboard software that plugs straight into QuickBooks and compares to industry benchmarks. ($29-59 per month)
•    Qlikview: Perhaps in a slightly different category, Qlikview is a fantastic Web-based Business Intelligence tool that many small businesses are quickly embracing. (pricing proprietary)

Billing and Invoicing

Gone are the days of manually e-mailing clients for money or writing out checks by hand. That would be like manually entering transactions from bank statements. Now it’s possible to automate these processes, not only to save a TON of time, but also to reduce the incidence of errors.

•    FreshBooks: The undisputed king of invoicing. If you or your clients submit invoices to get paid, FreshBooks is a lifesaver and a well-established company in the space (starting at $19.95 per month)
•    Bill.com: Bill.com does both bill payment (AP) and invoicing (AR) and features a well-known accountant program. ($24-29 per month)

Other apps

There are so many solutions in the marketplace, it’s impossible to put together a short list. There are industry-specific solutions and solutions that solve very specific challenges. Here are a couple examples:

•    Expensify: They claim to make expense reports that “don’t suck.” If you or your clients are tired of manually collecting expense receipts and wading through approvals, check them out. ($5 per month per submitter)
•    BeneShip: They work with Pitney Bowes and other logistics providers to leverage spend and bring killer deals to companies that ship. Oh, and they connect to QuickBooks, making the process dead simple. (now in beta—get in there for free while you can!)
•    AuditMyBooks: They pull your QuickBooks or QuickBooks online data automatically and scan for a broad range of audit flags. Every month, automatically. Need I say more? ($99 per year)

Clearly, there’s a lot going on out there. It can seem downright overwhelming in terms of how fast everything is moving forward. So as you dip your toe into Web-based finance/accounting apps, keep in mind the problems you want to solve, the objectives you are seeking to accomplish, and start by solving those. You don’t have to dump your existing processes to get started, either.

And one more thing. The CEOs of these companies are dying to help you get where you want to go. They’re in this for a reason, and you’re it. So if you’re not sure if it makes sense for you to use their tools or someone else’s, give them a ring. You might be surprised by how candid they will be. I should know—I am one of them!

Adam Neary is the CEO of Profitably (see *), a web app that helps small business owners plan, measure, and execute on what matters: their business. For more information, visit Profitably.com. And to ask Adam anything, email him at adam.neary@profitably.com.

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Warrior Fitness Phase II

October 7, 2011 · 2 comments

rock climbingI am really pleased to have lost 20 pounds over the past few months, and I look and feel a lot better than when I was trudging along at 240, but at 220 I am still a far cry from my svelte 190 from my rowing days at Oxford. Check out this skinny Adam Neary from many years ago, traversing the old rock wall:

Fact is, I may never see 190 again, but I think 215 or 210, maybe even 200 if I really push, would be fantastic. In fact, somewhere around 240 I told myself that it would be AMAZING to see a “1″ as the left-most number on the scale again if I hit 199.

Before you object, let me say that I realize weight is just a number, and there are a TON of other factors in health. I know this, and so I thought I would lay out how I am approaching fitness given my busy schedule (newborn baby at home and CEO of a technology startup).

Preview:
It all comes down to:

  • Nutrition
  • Endurance
  • Speed
  • Strength
  • Flexibility/Balance…and inward calm

Nutrition

Let’s not kid one another. If I am going to lose weight, it’s mostly going to be about calories in more than calories out. The problem is that 90% of the time, I am eating about as healthily as a human can. It’s the 10% of the time that we need to worry about, but in any case here’s what ‘good’ looks like:

Lean body mass:
– 220 pounds * (1-24% body fat) = ~167 pounds lean body mass

Protein
– 4 calories per gram
– Eat 1 gram per lb of lean body mass
– 167g protein daily

Carbs
– 4 calories per gram
– Eat 1 gram per lb of lean body mass
– 167g carbs daily

Fat
– 9 calories per gram
– Eat 1/4g – 1/3g per lb of lean body mass
– 42-56g fat daily

Scaling
The above leads to 1,786s calorie per day. For now, I am at 2,400 calories per day (realistically) of input, so on a given day, either we take in some alcohol (at 9 calories per gram) or a bit more food, but if food, we should try to keep protein/carbs/fat proportions.

At scale, this works out to:

  • 72g fat daily
  • 224g carbs and protein daily
  • As little refined sugar as possible
  • As little alcohol as possible
  • At least 25g fiber daily
  • Less than 2,000mg sodium daily
  • Less than 250mg cholesterol daily

The truth (finally)
The truth is that none of the above really matters, though it has provided a great guide as I have gone through periodic bouts with logging the food to gauge macronutrient balance. But no, what matters is that 90% of the time I stick to this sort of diet, and then 10% of the time I binge eat/drink. I just love to eat a ton of food. After a long, frustrating day, it’s possible for me to eat an entire large pepperoni pizza, an order of buffalo wings, a couple manhattans, and a 6 pack of beer. I love food and I love feeling full.

So while I would love to watch each and every calorie go down meal by meal, that’s really not going to matter. For me, it’s all about the frequency and severity of binge eating, as well as whether I am eating late at night. So that’s what I am actually tracking, and the rest of this is nutrition section is sort of kabuki to some degree. I know how important it is, I know how I am doing, and the rest–like everything in life–is execution.

Endurance: Cycling for low heart rate, long duration

Century RouteCycling is a recent obsession of mine. It’s world’s better than running, which I find miserable to do for more than 2 hours at a heart rate of 150 or more. When I cycle to work on the ferry and take the GW bridge home to Hoboken, I have a round trip of just over 26 miles (a marathon if on foot…), and it’s a lot more fun.

But more importantly, the sustained cycling tours on the weekends mean low heart rates (145-155) for 4+ hours, and that’s great for weight loss that day and weight loss the rest of the week, since it aids metabolism as well.

The goal: The marathon of cycling is the Century, a 100-mile cycle. I figure a good time goal for my first Century is 8 hours, which works out to an average cruising speed of just 12.5 mph. My usual weekend ride is 38 miles, so I’ve got some work to do, but that’s what goals are about. Oh, and there’s a beautiful 100 mile loop coursing along both sides of the Hudson if you cross the river up by Bear Mountain State Park. Can’t wait to chew through it.

Speed: Running for high heart rate, short duration

On the other end of the spectrum, I would love to always be able to run off 4 miles in 30 minutes. At various points in my life, this was achievable, and I don’t have any aspirations of pushing that farther. Keeping an 8mph clip for 4 miles is just good health, and though I despise running, there’s no other activity that keeps the heart rate up in the 180+ range for 30 minutes.

I mean, the reality is, Adam Neary is built for comfort, not built for speed. I am built to knock things over, and so speeds at which actual runners would scoff still pose a decent challenge for me. When I was younger, it was no thing, but here we are!

The goal: 4 miles in 30 minutes
I haven’t been running, and today I ran 4 miles in 34:50. I don’t have a ton of ground to regain, but I definitely need to tighten up the running and how speeds over 7mph drive up my heart rate.

Strength: Weight training for high exertion circuit training intervals

I have loved a hard workout in the gym since my football days many (many, many…) years ago. I have gone through a broad range of weight-lifting styles and approaches, but I fell in love with the 300 workout, inspired by (and rumored to be an integral part of) the movie 300 with those strapping Spartans. The workout is a circuit training series involving–what else–300 reps:

  • 25 pull-ups
  • 50 dead lifts at 135 lb
  • 50 push-ups
  • 50 box jumps at 24″
  • 50 floor wipers at 135 lb (total nightmare)
  • 50 dumbbell clean and press at 36 lb
  • 25 more pull-ups

Oh yeah, and I time it. To get the maximum workout output, I do these in heart rate internals. Basically, I push as hard as possible until my heart rate reaches 185, then I rest and stretch until it drop to 135, then I push until I get it back up to 185. I go through perhaps 12 of these cycles in the ~45 minutes it takes to get through the routine.

Right now, given my weight, the only thing I just can’t do on its own is the pull-up set. I do weight-assisted pull-ups on a machine until I can eventually get there, but I have a LONG way to go. Here is a video of the “floor wipers” I am talking about above. As I said, total nightmare.

The goal: Complete the 300 workout at full weight and no assistance…in 40 minutes.

Flexibility/Balance…and inward calm: Bikram Yoga for extreme heat, breathing control, heart rate control in 26 poses over 90 minutes

I love yoga, and if I had to limit my workout to one of the 4 above, I would probably choose yoga. I have a very intense, numbers-oriented approach to damned near everything. I have a constantly cycling inner dialog whether I am working out, working at the office, or sitting at dinner. I am…not a calm person.

But yoga is a 90-minute meditation, and it does not allow for numbers. There are no clocks, no heart rate monitors, no anything. And Adam Neary is built for knocking things over (see above), not for standing on one foot holding my other foot over my head as I lean forward…for 90 minutes…in 110 degree heat! I actually find the meditation profoundly calming, and even though I force out all active thoughts about work and home, I find a ton of clarity after these sessions.

On the physical health side, it’s just ungodly hot and difficult, and it literally took 3-4 years of yoga before I could make it through the entire session without sitting down and resting. I had to get acclimated to the heat and used to the rhythm of the process. There’s breathing to practice, and there’s the poses themselves. When you can’t breathe and you get light-headed, you sit down…sometimes you lie down. Even if you’re standing up, sometimes you have to wait out a poses or two to catch your breath.

The goal: The goal has always been to make it through an entire class without missing a pose. Good luck.

Outcomes

The biggest areas I am going to need to work on to achieve these goals is to cut down on the binge eating, work on the pull-ups, and build endurance on the cycle. If I can get those happening, I think the rest will fall into place, and clearly these all relate to both weight goals and execution against goals on the fitness side.

If I do succeed, here’s what it looks like:

Body weight
I have gotten down from 240 to 220. Now the immediate term goal is 215 (before the holidays!). Then it’s 210, 205, and finally 200 (ok, actually 199!). I don’t know if I will ever see a “1″ in the left-most digit on the scale again, particularly given my love of food and beverage, but we shall see! Maybe I will put timelines in place once we get to 215 and get through the holidays.

Body fat percentage
I am currently at 24-25% body fat, down from north of 30% (!). For me, 17% would be a killer goal. I have regressed the relationship between weight and body fat for me given my lean body mass, and it looks like this:

  • 215 lb => 22.72% body fat
  • 210 lb => 20.89% body fat
  • 205 lb => 19.06% body fat
  • 200 lb => 17.22% body fat
  • 199 lb => 16.86% body fat

So ultimately, it would be great to see 17% body and see 199 pounds. From what I can see, these two things seem to go together. And both of them are damned near unreachable!

In the meantime, I am going to keep at the fitness, which always feels a lot more achievable than weight loss for me, though clearly they go hand in hand. In the meantime, any thoughts from you guys? Things I should be thinking about?

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5 Tips to Running a Startup When Your Wife’s About to Burst

September 27, 2011 · 0 comments

Today is my wife’s due date. We have a boy on the way–our first–and he’s raring to go any day now, and I cannot wait to meet him!

My wife’s just about ready. She has been off for 2 weeks so far from her job as Principal at A.T. Kearney, a leading management consulting firm. That gives her a little time to prepare mentally.

She has the tough job coming up (no doubt), but Daddy’s got a startup to run, and you can’t just turn off the Founder/CEO role. Or can you? As I reflect on this today, 5 key themes seem to emerge for how I am enjoying the process and still getting a ton done. I hope they are helpful if you’re in the same situation.

Here they are: 5 Tips to Running a Startup When Your Wife’s About to Burst

1. Sleep. (And work out.)

It’s no secret that the first baby brings a hefty paradigm shift in the old sleeping pattern. Now, it’s no secret that you can’t really “stock up” on sleep – particularly enough to cover the next 20-25 years. But that’s not going to stop me from trying. I am enjoying that extra hour on weekend mornings, and I am even rolling into work 30 minutes later than usual these days. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and when I am changing Junior at 3am some morning before pitching a key business partnership, I am going to laugh about that Saturday in September when I did it right.

Same goes for working. I worked hard this year to lose 22 pounds (and counting), and I don’t plan on putting them back on. Time is all sorts of tight these days, but I am getting in four workouts per week, without fail. I rotate through bikram yoga, cycling, and weight-lifting, depending upon the weather and other factors.

The real key to consistency–perhaps surprisingly–is logistics around those “other factors.” I find having a gym with a shower near the office and always having workout clothes with me at all times is half the battle. If I have random hour between meetings in the day, I can run across the street to Equinox and fit in a workout, but if I don’t have clothes with me, it’s always, “Oh, when I get home I will.” But I won’t. The readiness is all. Keep clothes around to take advantage of a surprise window, and don’t hesitate to run across the street at an unexpected hour for a quick run. Those one-off lifts add up.

2. Take Care of the New Mom.

In my house growing up, the rule was if The Mom was happy, everyone was happy. It’s no different in my new household-to-be. If you think this sounds like a personal note and not a business note, we disagree.

In a startup, there is an artificial (at best) distinction between life and work. No negotiations are “business” and not “personal.” People tell me that feeling softens over time, but not yet for me or for Profitably! If my wife is not sleeping, I am not sleeping. If she’s unhappy, I am unhappy, and that means I am not delivering at work. (And more importantly, she’s not happy!).

So it starts with keeping your health and your home in order first, in my opinion. If you tend to them first, you’ll have plenty of bandwidth and the right caliber of attention for the business.

3. Delegate.

It’s a truism in large companies that competent managers can leave for 2 weeks without having to sit by their proverbial BlackBerries. Your ship should be able to sail itself for at least two weeks if you have the right people working for you and you manage them effectively.

But as a startup, we only have six people from one office wall to the other.

Nonetheless, I am taking two weeks off when the little heir to the kingdom is born…and probably a few weeks of part-time work from home after that.

Success is not panicking about being out of touch while actually being out of touch. After all, who wants to spend the first two weeks of their first born’s life dialing in to see how things are going?  I am planning to see how this ship sails without me. Graham has Customer Development under control, and Francis has Product Development under control. If we have happy customers and a product for them, we should be ok, methinks.

In the meantime, I am delegating every incoming email to someone capable that I have hired into this company, and it feels good to be able to do that.

4. Be present.

I thought about listing “work ahead” as item #4. Obviously there are some things that require my unique attention, and having them under control requires getting some things done ahead of time. But that’s pretty obvious, right? What I realized was that more importantly than working ahead is making sure you’re present wherever you are. It’s a key life lesson and an important one for a CEO in any phase.

We had an investor drop by unannounced yesterday, and I was in the middle of working through some critical things with Chad. Rather than tell Chad we could pick it back up in 30 minutes and grabbing a seat with said investor to chat, I wasn’t present. I was worried about everything I had to get done this evening. I was still thinking about a key meeting that took place in the morning. I was getting hungry and started thinking about where my next meal was coming from. (Seriously.)

The result was that I missed an opportunity to connect with our investor and maybe even give him a little homework that could take things off my plate. Instead, the three of us stood around awkwardly for 10 minutes making small talk while it was clear that (1) he wanted to talk more informally, and (2) Chad and I wanted to finish our prior meeting. That’s my fault, it’s a wasted opportunity, and it’s about not being present. At home, at work, wherever you are. Stay there. Make those moments count, and you’ll have enough time to do what you need to do.

5. Let the rest go.

The best and worst part about this is embracing the fact that it won’t work. There are going to be problems. It’s going to be stressful. I am going to be driving to the hospital while customers are going to be calling me with concerns. A password only I know will be needed to access a resource people don’t normally use. Some bill somewhere will go unpaid. It’s going to be weird. It’s going to be messy.

But when it’s over, I will be back and I will have some great stories to tell. We’re looking for a healthy wife, a healthy baby, a healthy company, and a healthy dad. Everything else we’re just going to have to let go. And that’s ok.

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Why Your Business Needs an Excel Intervention

September 8, 2011 · 0 comments

This article originally appeared in Profit-Driven, a blog for startups and small businesses by Profitably.

 

How many of you plan your business with an Excel spreadsheet? It’s OK. This is a safe place. No one’s going to judge. Truth be told, I’m actually a huge fan of Excel. I used it to plan my wedding, to track weight loss, and of course I lived and breathed Excel during my consulting years. But as a business management platform, Excel can be a real nightmare.

Yet so many folks are using it to do just that.
So I suppose if saving time, saving money, and being able to act with confidence matters to you, then you owe it to yourself and your business to have an Excel intervention and see how you can spend your time focusing on the things that really matter like, say, running your business.

But first, let’s look at a few reasons why it’s bedtime for Excel.

Your business is dynamic, and Excel is static

Among larger companies, gone are the days of the formal annual budgeting process. More and more, businesses are adopting a rolling forecast that flexes to the constantly shifting marketplace. These same large companies are swiftly shedding the giant, clunky planning tools of the ‘90s in favor of agile, web-based tools such as Adaptive Planning or Anaplan.

But for small businesses, these names typically mean very little. That’s because the planning is happening in Excel. Based on our research, a whopping 93 percent of small businesses—including those using QuickBooks as their accounting software—are planning and managing their business with a spreadsheet.

The problem, in case we haven’t noticed, is that nothing is static anymore.
Manually keying historical data into Excel is a drag, and manually plying through QuickBooks to understand where you were off target and why the numbers don’t add up is time lost that could be spent thinking about your products and services or your customers. Your business is constantly generating new information, and Excel just sits idly by, waiting for you to fill it up. Then, it provides no “so what” or sense of what’s next.

Even your business model is dynamic

Not only is your data dynamic, but your business model is too. Let’s say you read an interesting article about the emergence of Content Marketing as a fantastic channel for driving new customers your way. You are thinking about dipping your toe in with exciting new tools like Contently or Kapost to help facilitate amazing new content, to facilitate amazing new traffic, to facilitate amazing new business… you get the idea. To fit that strategy into Excel, you’re adding a row here, inserting 10 there, filling down formulas, checking the results. Pretty soon, you realize that you’re spending more time building your business model when you should be building your business.

Because the very nature of your business is unique, and because it evolves, you need tools that are flexible enough to allow you to model out a new channel, or perhaps a new customer segment you’re thinking about going after. You should be able to test out a change in pricing and see the impact to your bottom line instantly. Excel can do that, sure. But it takes so much time to grind it out that most business owners end up following gut instinct rather than owning the numbers. And that’s a missed opportunity.

Everyone else has a web app…

Seems like a silly thing to say, right? But it’s true. The VP of Sales has Salesforce.com. The CMO has Hubspot. Your customer service team has Zendesk. It seems like every area of the business has the aid of smart, fast, cloud-based tools that turn a “one person team” into a one person army.

But what does the CEO/CFO have? What does the capable business manager have for planning, measuring, and executing on the business? They go to war with accounting software from the ‘90s and a spreadsheet from earlier than that.  It just doesn’t make sense.

But those times are changing as a wave of young startups build sets of tools for the business manager that finally de-throne Excel as the go-to place to plan your business. And it’s a wave worth paying attention to.

I’m not saying you have to un-install Excel. (To many, it’s a comfort thing.) But just know that if you want to get back to building an amazing business instead of amazing spreadsheets, Excel’s days are numbered.

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Big redesign for adamrneary.com

August 21, 2011 · 0 comments

Hi everyone. I realized a week or so ago as we tightened the screws on some revisions to profitably.com that adamrneary.com had grown quite stale. In fact, we were still leading off with “Confessions of a Startup CEO” even though we had stopped making those videos many months ago.

The reason for the shift, as you can quite imagine, was that we have been producing a ton of content over at profitably.com, and I didn’t want to be building my personal brand when we could all be building Profitably’s. Now we have covered a ton of ground on that front, and it’s my site is holding back the magic.

In jazz and web design I endorse stealing liberally from people smarter and more artistic than we, particularly if you site them. So I thought I would call out a couple places from which some good ideas.

David Cancel has a great blog over at http://davidcancel.com and I think he does a killer job of striking the balance between his personal voice and the voice of Performable, which is probably a good reason why Performable is now a great part of HubSpot. Good for him, and thanks, David, for all the good advice.

Anil Dash has been blogging for more than 10 years at http://dashes.com/anil. What struck me the instant I saw his site was its brilliant simplicity. If you google “simple elegant wordpress theme” you’ll get (circa August 2011) droves on flashy themes with high-res images and “elegant” image sliders. They look like splash sites for a new BMW coming out, and while that’s great for cars and recording artists’ new albums, what I wanted out of simple, elegant, and clean I found with Anil’s site.

I borrowed liberally from Anil’s layout, style, and typography, including the 1-column framework, the simple navigation, the concept behind his About page, and many other moments of clean and elegant design. If Anil Dash is any indication, it’s that 10 years of blogging teaches you what’s important, and to leave the rest behind.

Kristarella is major contributor to the community behind the Thesis theme, which I found to be just about the best simple theme for implementing the ideas I had. While I didn’t borrow a tremendous amount of stylistic influence from her site at http://www.kristarella.com/ I did learn a ton about getting my own ideas done quickly, and her contributions to the knowledge base at http://diythemes.com/thesis were fantastic. This is pretty basic stuff for many of my readers, but it gave me a crash course in CSS and Thesis that made the redesign a short weekend project and not a monster.

Matt Dunn over at http://matthewlyle.com/ reminded me how much I love a good red. It’s that simple. Blue is my favorite color, but as Jack White will tell you, when it’s time to use red, nothing else will do. Red, White, and Black are a powerful set. Thanks, Matt!

I know it’s a throwaway for most of you, but I fell in love with rampant use of short codes while reading the Rails Guides (http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html). Long stretches of text become instantly more digestible when you’re able to block them off in helpful ways, and these guides are great at that. My posts are conspicuously short of these, but not for long…

Another great find that came out of perusing Anil Dash’s site was my discovery of Readability. I think they have the recipe down, though I am not in love with the emphasis on the Kindle, since I am a shameless and unapologetic iPad fan. Nonetheless, it’s clear that the crew at Readability is keen on getting the metadata behind posts correct so that a broad range of devices and reading mediums can consume your content. The guidelines at http://www.readability.com/publishers/guidelines/#view-exampleGuidelines are currently being integrated into posts at adamrneary.com and profitably.com alike.

Mark Suster over at http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ is another Thesis user, and while pulling together my site, I spent a decent amount of time taking some crib notes from him on how to fill the site out with a smart selection of widgets and useful information. Naturally, his two-column format allows for much readier access to his intro paragraph, social media signups, and other subscription information. It’s not too dissimilar from David Cancel’s. I am torn, because I like my new 1-column view, but you may see me biting the bullet on that shortly.

Zach Klein, who is himself a well-known designer, has an understandably more avant garde splash page at http://zachklein.com/. In a quick way, he points very casually to his other web properties in a way that’s more personal than a string of social media icons. I ended up using both on my About page, but Zach’s approach is a great reminder to be yourself.

Finally, Chris Dixon does a killer job of putting together a more curated catalog of best posts. He has them arranged by category in a digestible way, and I think this is useful to new readers who want to jump into his world view but wouldn’t otherwise know where to start. If you’re perusing TechCrunch, you just want to see the latest. But if you’re just discovering http://cdixon.org/ you probably want to get up to speed on the areas most relevant for you straight away, and Chris gives you a great way to do that.

Thanks, everyone, for the great inspiration!

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Reinventing the Campiello Salad

August 20, 2011 · 0 comments

When I was in high school I waited tables at a great little modern Italian joint named Campiello.

Juggling football, marching band, symphony, my garage band, DECA/BPA, and every other thing going on didn’t leave a lot of time for light salads, but Campiello had a namesake salad that was as hearty as it was delicious.

Today’s edition was kept the key components in place: As much red wine vinegar as you can take, sicilian olive oil, Boston lettuce, red onion, sheep’s milk feta, and tons of fresh tomato and kalamata olives…

But I left out the hard-boiled egg and cucumber, slipping in rough-chopped organic zucchini and haas avocado instead. The zucchini was a great tweak and a trick I am going to use in the future if I’m hungry. (When am I not?)

Finish the sucker with a liberal dose of cracked pepper, crack a Diet Coke, and have at it.

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TechCrunchTV: Founder Office Hours with Chris Dixon and Josh Kopelman

August 5, 2011

Today, we are trying a special edition of Founder Stories; that we are calling Founder Office Hours. Inspired by Paul Graham’s Office Hours onstage at our last Techcrunch Disrupt, we brought together a group of startup founders in our NYC studio to get feedback and advice. Joining regular host Chris Dixon is Josh Kopelman, managing [...]

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Why EVERYONE can and should have a virtual assistant

June 15, 2011

We have a virtual assistant, and she’s AMAZING. In fact, every Profitably employee (and even each contractor working with us!) has unlimited access to our VA for work-related and for personal tasks. We have had no one abuse this to date, and I am hoping we can continue the perk indefinitely. You should have one, [...]

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Sample Fundraising Deck

May 5, 2011

We have had a lot of inquires about the document we circulated during fundraising, so we thought the easiest thing might be to post a somewhat sanitized version as a Finance Tool along with some explanation. This type of Finance Tool will not apply to all companies, but for those looking to raise early stage [...]

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Too cool for timesheets?

October 8, 2010

I have heard it before. You’re a young, awesome software agency, and you’ve got nothing but the smartest coders on staff, and if you asked them to fill out timesheets, they would walk out the door. Or you yourself are a tremendously busy, dynamic leader who could never make time for timesheets. Timesheets are miserable, [...]

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