Other People’s Money (OPM) – The Hunt Begins
Jan 4 2008

If you are a regular reader of my blog you have no doubt caught on to the fact that I have begun the fundraising effort for Babble Soft.  If you are new you might want to check out The Entrepreneurial 7 Year Itch to get some background.

I’m currently working on creating a business plan comprehensive executive summary (who has time to write read a 30-50 page business plan?!?), the financial assumptions and projections (with assistance from an MBA student), creating screen mock-ups of our new applications (with Projekt202, a fabulous local design company), and setting up meetings with potential angel investors.  This process is an ongoing, reiterative process that can sometimes make you want to pull your hair out.  As soon as you type the last character on your plan, it is outdated because something has changed somewhere that you may or may not know about.  Strange but true.

While doing all that, I also need to finish software testing of our new Baby Insights mobile application, learn more social media, make SEO changes, make sales, establish partnerships, and make progress toward meeting my 2008 New Year’s Goals!  Hmmm something might have to give here…

Stay tuned for more about my journey to persuade people to part with their money in exchange for hopefully a lot more money at some time in the future…

One Entrepreneur’s 2008 Goals
Jan 1 2008

I don’t really like making New Year’s resolutions.  However, I’m making an exception this year because I figure I’ll try something new.  Maybe I’ll even make quarterly resolutions!  This is the first year I’ve had a blog which means I can now write them down and let my readers hold me accountable.  So here it goes. 

Business Goals

Raise funds for Babble Soft.  I will finish the business plan, refine the pitch, and set up meetings with angel investors.

Establish additional nanny partnerships and other corporate partnerships that lead to increased revenue and revenue opportunities.  I have to make hundreds of calls, send hundreds of emails, set up meetings, and close deals.

Identify and become a member of at least 2 organizations that will help build my network to reach our customers.  If you have any suggestions on what organizations to join I would love to hear them!

Convince some great companies to advertise with us.  If I can demonstrate a significant increase in users (SEO please work!) of our applications, I believe those advertisers who want to reach new parents and caregivers that are breastfeeding, bottle feeding, changing diapers, taking medicine, pumping, and trying to get some priceless, precious sleep would be *extremely* interested.  Plus with our planned new applications that audience widens and deepens.

Find great people to help make it happen!  Must find great people.  Must find great people!  Key team additions needed are 1) Experienced Senior Product Manager with strong technical skills to manage products from design to implementation to market and 2) Experienced Internet Partnership, Social Media & Ad Sales Manager (does such a person even exist?).  Must find great people!

Personal Goals

Lose 5 pounds.  I will eat less and exercise more.

Take Yoga classes.  I will locate, sign up, and attend classes.  Anyone have any recommendations for instructors in the Austin, Texas area?

Laugh more.  I will find more funny and fun people to hang out with. 🙂

Be less concerned with what other people think.  This will probably be the hardest one for me to accomplish and the hardest to measure.  Worrying about what people think of me, my decisions, my company, my appearance, my parenting, my words, etc. sometimes unduly stresses me out and takes up way too much energy that should be devoted elsewhere.  I’m not alone in this issue.  I’ve seen many bloggers write about it but more women than men which may be a result of our society or more likely Oprah.  I will work to drastically reduce the negative self talk in my head.  I think Yoga will help me with this goal.

My Personal Goals are mostly in my control.  I decide what to eat.  I decide when/how to exercise, etc.  I decide when to pick up the phone and sign up for a Yoga class.  

Achieving the Business Goals, on the other hand, are less in my control.  I can do everything right but if the angel investors don’t understand or care for the market or market need I’m addressing then funding sources might not be available.  If the stock market crashes and everyone quits investing then, c’est la vie.  If the funding doesn’t come through then I won’t be able to hire great people, etc., etc.  I believe I have the most control over establishing additional partnerships and joining organizations but that’s what I believe right now on January 1, 2008.  As the Internet has proven, things change at the speed of each new thought!

What are your goals?  Feel free to leave a comment here and/or leave a link back to your blog to where you posted your 2008 thoughts.

If you’d like to see if I meet my goals (or even heckle me – I don’t mind as long as its funny and helps me with my Laugh More goal 🙂 ) subscribe to this blog’s feed and share your wonderful thoughts with me.

Happy New Year Blogosphere!

Twittering About Frozen Peas
Dec 30 2007

A fascinating thing happened to me and many a folk on Twitter last week.  I went from 30 followers to over 175 followers worldwide in just over 24 hours all because of a woman known as @SusanReynolds.  Susan blogs at Artsy Asylum and started a new blog called Boobs on Ice to document her journey fighting breast cancer.  A woman who I have mentioned frequently on my blog, Connie Reece, helped start a campaign called the Frozen Pea Fund.  You can see a great interview of Connie on this particular topic called PEAS and Passion on Thom Singer’s blog.  Connie also helped start Frozen Pea Friday where people change their twitter avatars to “peavatars” in support of Susan Reynolds and to build awareness of the Frozen Pea Fund.

As I mentioned in my Social Media Mania – What’s A Gal to Do? post I joined Twitter on December 13, 2007.  Near the end of last week, I saw @lizstrauss, @princess-belle and others making challenges that they will donate money to the Frozen Pea Fund if twitterdom would help them get to X number of followers within a certain time period.   I decided to join in late on December 27 and put forth the challenge of 175 to donate $50.  I had 30 followers at the time.  It was down to the wire but just as midnight was closing here in US CST on December 28 a tweet went out to some Aussie twitter folk and I ended up with close to 180!

I would have donated even if I didn’t make it to 175.  I was having so much FUN seeing people take action based on 140 character or less tweets to help fight cancer, a worthy cause.  Talk about instant gratification for almost all parties involved!  I donated my $50 right then and there.  To me, the Frozen Pea Fund endeavor has been the best example of a social media campaign I have seen or been a part of.  Kudos to people like @conniereece for taking the time to show us how social media can be used to make a difference!

Now I’m going to see if twitter can help me find a good reference for a beginner yoga class to take in 2008.  I’ve got a lot to do in 2008 and Yoga will be a big part of it.  I even saw that they are offering a Deepak Chopra Center Yoga Retreat at the Crossings in March.

If you’d like to follow me on twitter, you can find me @aruni.   If you’d like to see how I figure out how attempt to use social media to help build awareness of my company, Babble Soft, you might want to subscribe to this blog’s feed.   If you have any suggestions on how to reach our target market, please don’t hesitate to send me your ideas…they are always welcome!

Happy New Year!  Oh and don’t forget to donate to the Frozen Pea Fund…

2007 Sweet Blogging Candy Connections
Dec 27 2007

Picture by my friend Sandy Blanchard

Liz Strauss did a post asking us how we thank our blog friends and it got me thinking as Liz’s posts often do.  As 2007 comes to a close, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank and recognize all the amazing connections with amazing people I’ve made as a result of starting this blog this year.  Your posts and comments have made me laugh, shed tears, smile, raise my eyebrows, share, grow as a person, and most importantly LEARN.  Thank you!  In no particular order (except for the first one), they are:

Connie Reece of Every Dot Connects – She is the one who got me started with blogging!

Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home.  She gave me the honor of guest posting on her blog with a post called Entrepreneurship: A Blessing or a Curse?

Liz Strauss of Successful Blog – she called me an SOB (Successful and Oustanding Blogger)

Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz – check out her mini case study on Babble Soft

Pearl at Interesting Observations

Neena of A Mom’s Life at Neenmachine – check out her guest baby tip on keeping a baby food journal

Carole Hayes of Alias Tex – check out her guest baby tip post on increasing your milk supply

Bryan Mennell of Austin Startup – check out my guest post called Parenting a Startup and Kids.

Carleen Hawn of Found|Read – check out her post about one of my posts called Sometimes, You Gotta Ignore the Experts

Nataly Kagan of Work It, Mom – she mentioned me in one of her posts on her personal blog Learning Optimism that she later posted on Huffington Post.

Thom Singer of Some Assembly Required – He recently did a post on passion and mentioned me.

Lee Aase from Lines from Lee – he helped me with setting up the Babble Soft facebook page.

Robb at the Robblog – long time friend.  I think I forced him into blogging or something like that.

Clay Nichols of DadLabs – fellow Austin entrepreneur in the parenting area.  If you haven’t seen it (and aren’t easily offended) check out their Manly Breastfeeding Video.

Eric Doggett of DogBlog – a fellow Austin entreprenuer/photographer

Shane & Peter of Shane & Peter – because of Shane’s post requesting us to interview ourselves I wrote a post called An Entrepreneurial Self Portrait.

Maryam Scoble of Maryamie – don’t be surprised if you see me on the Scobleshow in 2008!

Char at Casual Keystrokes

Randa Clay of Randa Clay Design

Jennifer Laycock of The Lactivist– nursing out loud

Karen Rani and Vicki Maxel of Swank Webstyle – they did my entrepreMusings blog design and implementation as well as our current corporate site.

We have exchanged meaningful (at least to me!) emails/blog comments, spoken on the phone, or met in person this past year.  They have helped me in my journey and I hope that I’ve been able to help them too!  I apologize if I’ve forgotten someone as I’m typing this up before we head out for the holidays.  If I have, let me know and I’ll add you to the list. 

Thank you all for enriching my life in 2007!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Dec 25 2007

Happy Holidays & Happy New Year to all of my friends and readers.  May 2008 bring smiles, successful projects, fun stuff, and much laughter to your life.  May we all become a little less afraid of following our dreams each and every day!

This year was our very first year to get a Christmas tree.  We’ve always been traveling or the kids have been too young to really notice or we have been too lazy to set one up.  Our son helped me pick this perfect sized, pre-lit one from Target (note to self: buy Target stock), and it looks so cool when it’s plugged in.  Erin is grooming our son to be an avid UT Austin Longhorn sports fan (in case you didn’t notice).

Is Software Hard or Soft? Please Tell Me.
Dec 21 2007

I’ve seen companies doing soft launches of software products which makes me wonder what a hard launch is.  So far the main difference I’ve noticed is that the official press release about the new application or new feature doesn’t go out until after the ‘hard’ launch.  My guess is that a lot of bug fixing is going on between soft and hard launch.

So, I’m happy/thrilled/ecstatic to report that we just soft launched our new sleep and immunization recording features of Baby Insights Web!  We are still working on some development issues on Baby Insights Mobile and plan to hard launch that app in January 2008.  The mobile app is not web-based (yet) so we don’t have the luxury of a soft launch.

Babble Soft is offering FREE 3 month gift subscriptions valued at $19.95 until March 15, 2007 to anyone who discovers a software bug in our NEW Baby Sleep and Immunization features of Baby Insights Web. Gifts are transferrable!  Sign up for your FREE account today. Happy hunting!

So far the soft launch has been uneventful (i.e., no major bugs), which is nice.  Thanks go out to our development team Cressanda and especially our project manager.  I recommend them highly.  The smoothness of the soft launch is also because we don’t have thousands upon thousands hundreds upon hundreds of users yet.  I’m banking on our foray into SEO to help get us there.  I mean if the “right people” (a.k.a. target market) don’t know we exist; it’s not surprising that we don’t have thousands of users yet.  Even viral marketing takes a bunch of upfront work because you have to get to the right early adopters who have major Internet influence.  I need to figure out how to do a video and get it in YouTube.

Given the fact that over 4 million babies are born in the US each year then include Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan and other Internet savvy countries, I’m anticipating that once those new parents and nannies find out about us, the floodgates will open.  Babies and floodgates…not sure if the analogy works but I think you get the point. 🙂

I’ve been spending my time the last couple of days doing website updates to reflect the new features. And I’m working on pulling the pieces together of a business plan for some potential angel investor meetings that I have scheduled for early next year.  If you know an angel investor (or you happen to be one) who likes the baby/new parent/web application/social networking space, please send them my way!  The applications we have now are only the tip of the colossal iceberg.

Now for a short SEO break:

Whether you need breastfeeding support, are excitedly following your pregnancy week by week,  are experiencing baby sleep issues, or are already under way creating your baby’s first year album, Babble Soft offers unique, easy-to-use Web and Mobile software solutions that improve communication between caregivers about baby’s and mom’s schedules.

Baby Insights helps caregivers keep track of baby’s breast & bottle feeding, sleep periods, diaper changes, medicine doses, and immunization records, as well as mom’s breastfeeding, pumping and medicine intake. Having important information stored in one location makes communication between parents, their nanny, babysitters, grandparents, or doctors seamless and reliable and gives new parents insight into their baby’s patterns to help with crucial baby care decisions. Baby Say Cheese lets you create a wonderful online baby’s first year photo album with milestones and family tree that you can share with friends and family. 

If you are interested in reading about how I cope with manage software launches, fundraising, and SEO consider subscribing to this blog’s feed.  If you are an entrepreneur, it will be worth your while…even if I crash and burn….which I won’t…because I said so, that’s why.   Now go play with your Power Rangers.  Sigh.

Guest Baby Tip: Keeping a Baby Food Journal
Dec 19 2007

I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley.  If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! 🙂

The last baby tip was by Carole Hayes on wonderful, well-researched ways to increase milk supply and now we bring you…

Keeping a Baby Food Journal
by Neena of A Mom’s Life at NeenMachine.com

I am honored that Aruni has asked me to do a guest post here on entrepreMusings.  As a “seasoned” mother of four the Baby Tips category is right up my alley and a hard one to pare down (I have accumulated a lot of advice over the years – 11 to be exact!).  In later years, when our other children were ready to start solid foods, we were much better prepared. By being slow and meticulous we were finally able to have fun with the introduction of solid foods.The key to our success is what we called a Baby Food Journal. 

When our babies were around six months of age, and we made the decision to start the solid food phase, the journaling would begin.

Everyday, I would record the time of feeding, the amount, and the babies reaction to the taste (this one was for fun).

After the feeding, I would make notes of any unusual observations and the time they occurred. These would include skin rashes, health issues, upset stomach, gassiness, or general fussiness. 

The next day the process would be repeated. If the food seemed to agree with the baby then it was time to increase the amount and again record my observations. If I saw an unusual reaction a call the pediatrician would be in order. And if I was unsure whether the reaction was indeed caused by the food, something like fussiness for example, then I would feed the baby a small quantity of the same food and watch for a repeat reaction.

Only introducing one new food per week in the first few months of starting solids was my rule. If things were going well I would reduce the time between new foods to three or four days.

Keeping a Baby Food Journal took a lot of stress and uncertainty out of the feeding process. And it was good documentation to give the pediatrician if things weren’t going well.

*photos used in this post by belgianchocolate and joeltelling, respectively

______

Check out Neena’s blog.  She has a lot of great things to share…with 4 kids she knows more than most of us about raising kids! 🙂  Since her kids are older she never had the opportunity to use Babble Soft applications and she told me that when she was writing this guest tip, it crossed her mind that Baby Insights might help people keep track of solid feeding.  We will be adding that feature in the future but  interestingly our families often use the Medicine Dose pages to keep track of baby’s and/or mom’s food intake to discern patterns in baby’s reaction to foods or breast milk.  Go figure.  Our families are so awesome and so creative!

Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to blogger at babblesoft dot com for possible inclusion.  Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!

The Entrepreneurial 7 Year Itch
Dec 16 2007

Picture by Sandy Blanchard

As I contemplate a plan to raise angel financing for Babble Soft in 2008, I have begun mentally preparing myself for the inevitable ups and downs of the process.  I have raised funds to the tune of $15 million as founding CEO of my first start-up, Isochron, back before the first Internet bubble burst, so I have that experience to leverage.  But that was just over 7 years ago and a lot has changed since then. 

Isochron, which we started as part of a business plan competition back in 1997, was sold in 2002 after the bubble burst.  I had already left in 2001, but Erin stayed on for two more years until 2003.  The Founders/employees were washed out (i.e., got nothing) and the Investors got only a small fraction of their invested capital back.  At that time many companies were just disappearing all together.  When it was sold, Isochron was on its 4^th CEO with me being the first.   Now it’s on its 5^th, is still operating and as I understand it doing reasonably well, but not the high growth trajectory we had hoped for back when we started.  Looking back, if we (and our investors) had truly understood Porter’s 5 Forces we would have approached the business differently or maybe even run the other way because with a customer like Coca-Cola you don’t have much negotiating power!  But hey, we were young entrepreneurs (I was 27 – what did I know? ) who felt we could conquer the world of distribution to and maintenance of vending machines and other equipment after that.  Mostly because we were tired of going to school vending machines and them being out of stock of what we wanted so we figured we could help sove that problem with creative technology.

Since then, I have taken time to decompress, teach entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Austin business school, have two amazing kids, consult, and dabble with the notion of Babble Soft.  Erin and I did some development and had a beta product ready in 2005 to use when our daughter was born, but it really wasn’t until 2007 when we launched our Web application and she started full time care, that I became serious about committing to the bigger vision of Babble Soft.  I quit straddling the mental fence probably around October of 2007 and jumped squarely onto the side of the fence that has a vast open field with mountains, land mines, cool rivers, placid lakes, tornados, sunny skies, rainy days, ego bruises, good decisions, bad decisions, no money, fun, and most importantly a yet to be discovered journey!

After Isochron, I didn’t think I’d ever want to do a tech startup again.  It was hard.  It was tiring.  I aged.  It was stressful.  I was disillusioned.  It didn’t end like I had hoped/planned it would.  But if you read my Entrepreneurial Self Portrait, you’ll see that I since discovered that it is in my blood.  Looking back, I wouldn’t trade the experience and lessons learned for anything!

Do I wish I had made the decision earlier to dive head first into Babble Soft or another tech company?  Sometimes, because I spent money on the wrong things due to not being focused/committed, which leaves us less money to spend now and means I have to raise funds sooner than  I might have had to.  But I know deep down I will not regret the decision I made to stay home with my kids when they were babies, work from home, and maintain a fairly flexible schedule for them.   So maybe now’s the right time to really scratch my 7 year entrepreneurial itch! 🙂  This time I want to make sure I laugh a lot more…which is not hard to do with little kids around.

Stay tuned for more stories about my start-up journey.  Next up in this series will be a subjective post on the pros and cons of raising outside capital.

If you are interested in reading ‘the rest of the story,’ you might consider subscribing to this blog’s feed (tell your friends too) so you won’t miss a thing!  Even if you just can’t bring yourself to subscribe right now because you have a boulder on your head, would you mind helping me increase my chances at winning $50K from Intuit in their Just Start competition by clicking on the Quickbooks widget on the top right hand side of my blog or clicking here.  Thank you!

Social Media Mania – What’s A Gal To Do?
Dec 13 2007

Wendy at eMoms at Home did a post recently where she asked her readers “How do you Use Social Media to Promote Your Business?”  I didn’t have time to answer then and I’m sure I missed out on the free books, which is OK because I never seem to have time to read any books these days.  I’ve had a few days off from software testing, so I figured I’d do a post about it.

There are so many aspects to social media that it’s tough for an entrepreneur to keep up.  I mean we still have to sleep!  Fortunately, I’m fairly social.  I mentioned on a post that Liz Strauss did recently called Business and Life: Are You Making the Most of the Conversation? that “I am a Participant, rarely a Lurker, and often a Listener.”

It is fun making friends all over the world and it’s easy to be social from behind your computer when it fits with your schedule.  In the past I resisted joining sites like facebook because of the time commitment. 

To do a social network right, I figure it means committing significant time to it.  When you are launching a start-up, planning to raise funds, taking care of kids, maintaining a house, etc., it’s not easy to be as active as one should be in these networks over time.  But so far it’s been fascinating to see how other people interact with the networks.  I mean can you believe that facebook has over 55 million users all over the world?  That is amazing!  So here’s what I’ve done and what I’ve observed:

I started this blog (it had a different name before) with the help of Connie Reece. She gave me the kick start I needed! I think I did my first post back in May 2007. The blog has been fun and I know it has driven some additional traffic to my company site, Babble Soft, but to date I haven’t seen that it’s resulted in more than just a few additional sales. As a result of having a blog, I joined MyBlogLog, FeedBurner, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Digg, and BlogHer. Wendy was also kind enough to invite me to join the Home Business & Entrepreneur FeedBurner Ad Network. I haven’t made much money from these particular ad networks (maybe in total $100) but it has given me exposure to other bloggers and made me aware of other businesses.

I entered some competitions to hopefully win prizes and get additional exposure. I can’t remember all of them but I know I did one at Alpha Moms and I just entered Intuit’s Just Start challenge where I have the potential to win $50K for my business! The ‘vote for me’ widget will be on the right hand side of my blog until shortly after their voting deadline of December 16. After I sent an email to some friends asking if they would vote for me, I found out that people had to log in to do so. Knowing how much I hate to create unnecessary logins, my guess is that I won’t win on votes, but I might win in the unique idea category and because we have jokingly referred to our Baby Insights application as “Quicken for Baby.” 🙂

I have participated in some blog memes: 8 Random Things About Me and Blogging Tip Meme. Neena just tagged me again for a My Favorite Words theme. Memes give you exposure but they are time consuming so I think after doing this last meme, I will have to put a notice somewhere to let people know not to tag me unless they let me know first because I would hate to leave a meme go unanswered. I’m answering the Favorite Word meme by bolding my favorite words in this post (in case you were wondering why some of the words are in bold text). Isabella at Change Therapy I hope that’s OK with you! What do these words say about me? I guess that I’m a driven, committed, somewhat zany, looking to learn, searching for connection/peace, sleep deprived, mom-ified, and sometimes creative.

I joined LinkedIn. I’ve found LinkedIn to be useful for business related networking…for answers to specific questions. I haven’t yet established a deal or attempted to look for employees there which I hear is what it’s meant for. I’ve been able to answer a few questions on LinkedIn but I don’t think I’ve contributed to the increase of anyone’s business yet.

I joined facebook. Mostly to learn from the king of social networking sites. I may do some targeted ads there some day when time and money permit.  I also set up a company page on facebook for Babble Soft.

I engaged a full service SEO/SEM firm.

I just joined twitter. I even added the little widget to my sidebar, and I integrated it with facebook. I really resisted joining twitter. I had no idea why anyone would be interested in my day to day activities. More importantly I didn’t think I would be interested in anyone else’s day to day activities! I already have about 20 followers. You may be wondering what pushed me over the edge and made me join twitter…well it was the Duran Duran concert I attended earlier this week. I was there and I suddenly thought ‘wouldn’t it be great if I could tell my friends and random strangers about the fact I’m at this cool concert?’ and then all of a sudden I “got” twitter! Will it result in additional business? I’m not sure. Time will tell.

I have not yet joined MySpace or YouTube (but I’ve been to the site many times).  If I had to guess, I will probably join YouTube before MySpace, but first I need to create some videos!

Overall, I think I’m still at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to building a powerful online network and I’m a little bit afraid of getting in too deep and getting stuck in a networking hole somewhere.  I’m not sure if that makes sense to anyone, but it’s a fear I face nonetheless.  Maybe I’ll find peace there instead.

Duran Duran – Red Carpet Massacre Concert
Dec 12 2007

Erin, my husband, and I went to the Duran Duran concert at the Austin Music Hall last night.  It was fabulous!  They played just a few songs off of their new CD but spent most of the time on their classics like Rio, Save A Prayer, Girls on Film, Wild Boys (one of our son’s favorite songs), etc., etc.   They didn’t play Hungry Like the Wolf (which is our son’s other favorite DD song).

Picture from michaelbrown’s flickr account

We didn’t have MTV growing up so I didn’t get to see their videos very often.   I’ve seen more of them now because Erin bought their video collection a while back.  I always thought it was cool that a few of Duran Duran’s videos were filmed in Sri Lanka, which is where I’m from.

Erin said one of his entire room wall’s was filled with Duran Duran posters back in the day.  He was a huge fan.  I think he said he even had some jacket that looked like the one Simon LeBon used to wear.  After seeing the videos again, I finally understood why Erin dances the way he does…which is almost exactly like Simon.  My sister had posters of them on her wall too.  I am embarrassed to admit now that I had a poster of Michael Jackson on my wall.  I know.  I know.  Don’t tell anyone.

Sara Bareillis was the opening act and she has a great voice!  The Austin Music Hall is still under construction and we were fortunate to get there early enough that parking was not a problem and since it’s first come first serve seating we got front row balcony seats!  The only drawback about being in the front row section of the balcony was that we were not supposed to stand.  There were a few times we just had to stand and clap because Duran Duran entered the stage or began playing one of their songs and the security guys didn’t seem to mind.  Overall I don’t think they were worried about this crowd because my guess is that over 90% of the people there were over the age of 25…maybe even 30.  And of course us old folks don’t get too rowdy!

There were several nearby bars so we had easy access to reasonably priced mixed drinks.  Plus the bathrooms didn’t get too crowded which is a bonus.  We got stuck in the parking trying to get out so we got home a bit later than we thought, and fortunately our babysitter for the night didn’t have any curfew restrictions so she didn’t turn into a pumpkin after 11:00 p.m. 🙂

SEO Here I Come!
Dec 11 2007

After doing some research on hiring an SEO firm, I decided to go with the full service firm option.  It wasn’t an easy decision and I was concerned about spending the money, but now it’s done.  I just signed the paperwork with SpryDev for our search engine optimization internet marketing campaign!

SpryDev is based in Austin, Texas and I found out about them from a reply their founder, Ben Finklea, left on the Bootstrap Austin email list.  I had been thinking that I needed to find someone to help me with SEO and there was his email with his guarantee:

By the end of your contract you will have at least as much additional business from your Web site as you spend on our services…  or we’ll work for FREE until you do.

I took it as a sign.  Of course I checked out a few others but given that time is of the essence (I will start fundraising in 1Q 2008), he is based in Austin (I can meet with him face to face if any issues arise), and I didn’t have to get anyone else’s approval (I’m still bootstrapping) except for Erin’s (my husband), I made the decision to go with them fairly soon after our initial conversation. 

Ben must be pretty darn confident about his services, and based on our few discussions he seems like an honest guy.  I have heard stories about bad SEO experiences so I was paying particular attention to what he was saying and how he was saying it.  He didn’t act like he knew everything and seemed interested in learning about new things.   He said they haven’t worked with a company in the parenting space before, but he did some preliminary research and felt like he and his team would be able to increase our web profits and that he would be able to cover his guarantee.

He was proud of the fact that his firm has never engaged in paid link campaigns to increase their clients’ rankings…especially since Google recently updated PageRanks of several sites.  He was also proud of the fact that they didn’t follow a practice of internal linking between different pages within a domain to increase rankings.  I didn’t know this but apparently Google announced they would only count links to one domain so if people were linking between “www.companyname.com” to “products.companyname.com” those internal links will no longer be counted when determining search results.  Honestly, I don’t know why people would have thought that would work or why Google’s algorithms wouldn’t have already taken that into consideration.

Rose Holston is the project manager for Babble Soft.  I’ve already filled out a fairly extensive questionnaire about our market that she will use to help create the internet marketing/SEO plan.  I mentioned some of the target markets that Naomi mentioned on her post about ‘monsters and pants.’  Thanks Naomi!  Rose has two kids and she could instantly relate to the need for Baby Insights.  She is a self-professed anal retentive Excel spreadsheet mama.  I wonder what kind of keywords she will come up with to reach that audience.  🙂

I told them I would be blogging about my SEO/SEM full service firm experience in order to help other entrepreneurs with their SEO decisions.   So check back often and feel free to share your SEO thoughts so others can learn as well.  I am looking forward to working with SpryDev and to making significantly more money than what I end up paying them!

Jacob’s Family and Baby Insights
Dec 11 2007

To help illustrate how different people use Babble Soft web and mobile applications, we have created family user stories.   I am grateful to the families who are willing to share their time, pictures, and energy to write/edit these case studies with us! To see our other user stories please check out our Testimonial page or click on the user stories tag.

Jacob’s Family: (pdf)

Mother:   Lea (Financial Reporting Manager)
Father:    Chris (Partner/Marketing Consultant)

Baby:   Jacob
Born:    September 2007
Place:   Newport Beach, CA

Browser Used: Mozilla Firefox v2.0.0.11
Website:  http://www.fullmixmarketing.com/



Situation

Jacob, Lea and Chris’s first child, was born via unplanned C-section after a long and arduous labor.  While in the hospital, Lea was asked to keep track of Jacob’s feeding and diaper activities using generic paper hospital forms.  She had planned on entering the information into Baby Insights, which she had already set-up prior to Jacob’s arrival.  Unfortunately the papers were lost in the shuffle between the hospital and home, so she started entering information into Baby Insights four days after Jacob was born.

Prior to leaving the hospital, Jacob’s pediatrician recommended formula supplementation as Lea was concerned about breastfeeding following the c-section.  Lea’s milk did not fully come in for over a week, and with breastfeeding, pumping and formula feeding, using Baby Insights was tremendously helpful in keeping track of Jacob’s feeding schedule and intake.  Baby Insights was also very helpful in tracking Jacob’s diaper activities.  A feature of Baby Insights that Lea wasn’t initially aware of, but came to use extensively, was medicine dose recording.  She was taking three separate pain medications to aid in her recovery from the C-section.

Lea’s Experience

The information I got from using Baby Insights was so helpful!  I really liked the fact that I could go to one place and see all of Jacob’s information at a glance. In hindsight, I wish I had bought a PDA or smart phone before Jacob was born to make entering the information easier!  Some of the benefits I gained from using Baby Insights are:

• Since we were supplementing with formula, it helped to see how much formula versus breastfeeding time he was receiving.  It’s been fascinating to see how the two amounts have changed over time.  The Daily Summary report was beneficial as it calculated the total amount of milk we gave to Jacob.
• It was great to see how much I was pumping to get an idea of how much he was getting at each feeding.  Knowing this helped me make decisions about how often and how much to supplement.
• As a first time mom, managing my time throughout the day can be quite challenging.  Baby Insights helped me see how much time I was spending breastfeeding and pumping so I could better plan my day.
• Tracking my pain medication using Baby Insights was particularly helpful during my recovery from the C-section. I was taking 3 different pain medications at varying times and being able to view my medication schedules became one of my favorite Baby Insights tools!

—End—

If you are interested in participating in your very own user story, please activate a FREE Babble Soft Account. If you find that Babble Soft applications work for you, you want to tell the world about your great experience, and you are interested in being a part of our media campaign, please email us at info at babblesoft dot com for more information and a hook-up!  🙂  We plan to do a family story every one to two months so please let us know as soon as possible if you are interested.

An Entrepreneurial Self Portrait
Dec 9 2007

Picture by my friend Sandy Blanchard
Shane and Peter issued a challenge on their blog (which I first read about on Naomi’s IttyBiz blog) where he asked their entrepreneur readers to answer questions he came up with (i.e., interview themselves).   It’s his way of interviewing people by getting the interviewee to do all the hard work!   Great idea by the way.

Since I just finished a post called Why I Don’t Want a Monster In My Pants, I said to myself “what the heck, let me see what I can make up come up with.”  I was just helping my son with his Transformer puzzle that he’s putting together here next to me, and I have some time before the rest of the house wakes up so here it goes…

What’s your personal mission statement?  To make a difference and change the world for the better (not for the worse).

What’s the biggest mess you’ve dealt with this year?  Depends on what you mean by mess.  On the parenting front, I would have to say potty training messes.  On the business front, I would have to say spending more money than I had hoped to.  I probably should have invested in Google stock or figured out how to invest in facebook instead.

What current entrepreneurial efforts consume your time?  Product management, product development oversight, software testing, user story generation, press release writing, assembling (with help) gift cards and mailing them out, thinking, blogging, dealing with &#$#% Microsoft’s Vista OS which results in IE crashing every 30 minutes!  All that fun stuff.

Why do you do what you do? What inspires you? When do you get most excited?  It’s in my blood.  My grandfather was an entrepreneur.  He actually made baby powder back in Sri Lanka and sold it door to door.  Plus, I’m not sure what else I would do.  I like creating things that didn’t exist before.  I like bringing to market products that make life easier for people.   Now if people actually use them and want them, that’s a bonus!

I am inspired by my children’s smiles and laughter.  I’m inspired by blue skies and majestic trees.  I’m inspired by people who overcome great odds and challenges and are still great people/parents.  I’m inspired when people make sparkling connections with other people and the world around them.

I get most excited when I get a good night’s sleep.

Boxers or Briefs? or as Naomi says, Bikini or Thong, duh?!?  No comment.

What do you do when you’re not [designing | programming | managing | writing | toiling for the wo/man]?  Sleep.  Tickle my kids.  Negotiate with my kids.  Hang out with my husband.  Argue with my husband.  Watch TV.  Chat with my family.  Hang out with friends.  Walk.  Think.

What one thing made the biggest difference when getting started?  Lack of sleep.  Our son didn’t sleep through the night (and he still wakes up) until he was 4 years old.  I can’t be held responsible for any of my decisions between the years of 2001 to mid 2006.  He is the reason we started Babble Soft and we even had another little one in the middle of the non-sleeping chaos.

What’s your exit strategy?  Happiness or Acquisition by a Happy company that has a lot of money.  If a Happy company does not exist or does not want to acquire us then I guess we’ll grow big enough to continue to stay private.  Get it?  Me either.

What is the last thing that made you belly laugh? My kids laughing together (i.e., making each other laugh).  Kids can make you cry, whine, scream, yell but the greatest thing they can do is make you laugh like crazy at the silliest things.  Oh and I laughed pretty hard when I saw There’s Something About Mary and the Austin Powers movies.  I almost forgot about the DadLabs manly breastfeeding video.  My gosh it is so hilarious that I had tears in my eyes!

Have you ever been in business before? Yes.  I’ve also been in a swimming pool before.

At what point do you consider yourself successful?  I don’t believe one ever attains success.  It is an ongoing, evolving learning process.  Check out all of the cool people I have interviewed on the topic of success right here.  I think the closer one gets to feeling at peace with oneself and the world around them and can complement that feeling with a very comfortable financial position, the closer they are to success.

Oh, who am I kidding it’s when I can get 6+ months of uninterrupted nights of sleep…now that’s success!

What was your first experience with a computer?  I think it was at computer summer camp and we were working on Atari’s or maybe it was an Apple.  I remember learning some BASIC coding.  Of course I can’t code anything to save my life now. 

My first memorable experience was on a Macintosh.   I happened to be fairly good at typing and in my junior high typing class I was second only to a girl who was also an expert pianist.  She typed 90 words per minute and I typed 70 and that was on a typewriter not a computer.  Because of my typing speed and accuracy, my mother asked me to help her type up her exams and some other documents she needed for her medical students on her Mac.  I remember feeling so happy and proud that she trusted me to help her with such important tasks!  My very first computer was a Mac Classic that my mom got for me during my 2nd year in college and it cost something crazy like $1,100.

Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates in a jello wrestling match, where’s your money?  No comment.

Where do you do your best thinking?  Everywhere and nowhere.  I’m a non-stop thinker.  I even think in my sleep.  Some people think that’s odd.  I am told my grandfather (who was also an entrepreneur) was like that.  It’s genetic.  I know this because my son does not stop talking.  He has not learned that he can keep thoughts in his head and that he doesn’t have to tell everyone everything that runs through his mind. 

Writing this post has taken me 20x longer than it normally would because my son (who finished his Transfomer puzzle) has asked me a million questions and reported to me everything that was going on with his puzzle, his friend who is coming to visit, his friend who is not coming to visit, the basketball game he is going to see with his dad, and marshmallows.  Now he is here trying to read this post and asking me why I’m writing about kids and work.  He is just so darn adorable, amazing, wonderful, and he wants to sit on my lap. 🙂

What does your average daily work / life balance look like? How much time do you work, play and sleep?  Let’s see.  I pretend try to sleep 7 to 8 hours per night.  I check email constantly sporadically throughout the day.  Depending on who drops the kids off at school, I usually start working between 8:30 to 9:00 a.m. each day.  If I don’t have a lunch meeting I watch CNN for 15 minutes while I eat leftovers or a PB&J sandwich.  I then wrap up around 4:30 or 5:00 in order to pick up the kids.  If I can, I’ll fit in a 30 to 45 min walk (which is rare) around the neighborhood if the weather is good.  Then I do some more work and blogging between 8:30 and 10:00 pm (unless we’re watching one of our favorite TV shows after the kids go to sleep) and on weekends (like I’m doing now).

I think it also depends on how you define work and play.  Some of my work is play (like blogging and setting up partnership deals and meeting cool people) and some of my play (hanging with the kids) is work.

If I could introduce you to anyone, who would it be?  Oprah Winfrey.

What stops you from giving up when you are frustrated?  I don’t know.  Probably the fear of what I would have to do instead of doing this.  Plus the fear that if I stop now, all the time and money I’ve invested would have been for naught and people will make fun of me.  I’m hoping for another tech bubble so I can be a part of it before it bursts!

If Chuck Norris and Steven Hawking had a baby (hey it’s my damn interview), would you vote for her for president?  It all depends on her IQ, parenting style, athletic ability, knowledge of world affairs, ability to persuade huge groups of people to do great things, and her knowledge of universal physics.   It would also depend on who she is running against.

By the way, I saw Steven Hawking once at a restaurant in California.  He was with his assistant (I think) and I remember wondering if he felt lonely.

My question:  What is something you do (or have done) that makes your kid(s) genuinely laugh?  If you don’t have kids then your spouse, your friend, or your family member.  Tickling does not count as an answer.  There was no requirement that I answer this question so I’m just not gonna do it, but I look forward to Shane’s response.

Thanks Shane for these interesting and bizarre questions and for motivating me to do your work for you. 🙂  I have a hard time refusing any challenge!   I started this post yesterday and am finally getting around to posting it today because we just got back from the Austin Zoo.  The Austin zoo houses endangered and abused animals and it’s the perfect size for kids.  They have lions, tigers, and bears oh my!

Since I don’t think Shane is going to pay me for this interview, if you like this Entrepreneurial Self Portrait, won’t you give it a Stumble please? 😀

Why I Don’t Want A Monster In My Pants – Target Marketing
Dec 8 2007

Yes, I know it’s a great post title but sadly I did not come up with it.  Naomi at IttyBiz did and I’m borrowing it because in that post she did a mini ‘who is your customer’ marketing case study on Babble Soft called Identifying Your Target Market, Or Why I Don’t Want A Monster In My Pants. 

Since I have been overcome with software testing, deciding on a full-service SEO firm, addressing Holiday cards, doing the company books, staring into space, and looking for other people who will help me for free, for reduced fees, for a free lunch, with all of the other stuff I need help with, I did not notice until a few days later when I checked her blog that she mentioned Babble Soft.  Oh and yeah, she didn’t link to my blog so I didn’t realize she was writing about me.  🙂

Here is her off-the-cuff list of potential markets for Babble Soft:

Babble Soft has two groups of people to which they can market, parents and non-parents. To save space, we’ll just talk about parents here. In the parent category, we have:

– Mothers who are anal retentive.

– Fathers who dig all the latest technology.

– Parents who live in the US and are subject to the BULLSHIT PARENTAL LEAVE laws, forcing them to go back to work too early.

– Parents of multiples.

– Parents who work opposite shifts.

– Parents with older kids, especially those with high needs.

– Mothers with post-partum depression. (When you’re depressed, you need someone to think for you.)

That’s off the top of my head. If Babble Soft were to specifically target any one of these groups and market to them appropriately, she’d have more customers than she’d know what to do with. That’s not even getting into potential baby shower gifts, gifts from distant grandparents, gifts from nagging grandparents, gifts from over involved grandparents, etc.

Nothing surprising there and they all make sense to me.  I made the comment on her blog that even if you aren’t depressed but you are sleep deprived (probably the same thing) and you can’t stand your spouse, you need someone to think for you. 😉

The challenge as an entrepreneur is how to do that with extremely limited resources and no budget.  Anybody invented effective cloning technology yet? 

I haven’t done any formal Internet marketing to date, but I’m biting a big financial bullet next week and that will soon be changing.  We’ve done some PR (press releases, traditional media stories) but no one at the big publications like Parenting, Pregnancy Magazine, Parents, etc. will give us the time of day because [fill in the blank.].  I can’t afford to pay $15K+ to advertise on sites like that or on the granddaddymammy of baby sites babycenter.

Since this dilemma is just one of the reasons why entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart or the sane, I guess I’ll go see about answering Shane and Peter’s Interviewing You: The Entrepreneur post this pleasant, unusually warm December Saturday afternoon while my daughter and husband nap and my son works on a Transformer puzzle on the floor next to me…

Do you VUDU?
Dec 6 2007

A couple of weeks ago I was having coffee with a friend of mine that used to work in the digital media division(s) at Microsoft and we started discussing the topic of set top boxes and PVRs. During the conversation he suggested that I try out something called the VUDU box which is a set top box that connects over the Internet to a proprietary movie-on-demand service that has over 5,000 titles available that you can either rent and/or buy depending on the title and have them displayed on your TV. Movie prices are about the same as what you would pay at your local BlockBuster store but with VUDU you don’t have to deal with the trip to the store and the return.

The box uses a proprietary video codec implementation and some nifty BitTorrent-like download technology that allows you to select a movie and start watching it almost instantaneously. The box is expensive ($399) for something that only does movies (unlike a TiVo, for example, that can handle Amazon Unbox movie downloads in addition to being a PVR) but my friend let me in on a program that makes me one of VUDU’s “Evangelists” and get the box for $99 plus get $99 in free movie downloads. I should also note that there are no ongoing membership fees once you buy the box, unlike Netflix or BlockBuster’s equivalent DVD-by-mail program.

One of my responsibilities as an Evangelist is to tell everyone about VUDU (hence this blog post!) and to host a “VUDU Party” where I show off the gear to others that might be interested. I’m actually having my first VUDU Party at work tomorrow! We normally hold a Holiday Party (a lunch really) every year and watch a movie. Well, instead of bringing in the DVD player and a movie this year I’ll be bringing in my VUDU box and showing it off to everyone. I work in a place with quite a few techies so I think that the VUDU Party will be fun. One thing worries me though: I have not yet used the VUDU box so the party tomorrow will be my first real experience with it. I hope it all goes well!

Erin (the entrepreMuse’s husband)