Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Foreword
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Introduction
What we want you to get out of it
When myself and John started Bullet, we wanted to share
our experiences from the outset, warts and all. We launched
Bullet with a total spend of about 1,400 and about a year and a
halfs hard work, really hard work. Some of the new skills we
learnt in that year were: regulatory tax, UI & UX, design, PR &
marketing, not improved them, learned them from scratch.
From the outset we wanted to bootstrap the business. It
made us focus a lot on the customer, and wed also learned how
constraints make for a smarter startup. In that time weve
managed to automate accounts, something people have tried to
do since the abacus. We created an application that thumps
Sages 50 million Sage One, and easily out-dances Xeros 100
million bookkeeping tool.
The key constraint we encountered in the early days was
time. Even in leanest bootstrapped companies you need money
to keep the lights on and the credit card companies at bay and
ideally that money has to come from a source that wont distract
you too much. Without the money from the government would
we be here? Of course, were determined to take on one of the
biggest industry incumbents in Europe. Would it have been more
stressful? Certainly. That being said, we think the whole funding
process could be executed in a simpler way, and the purpose of
this e-book is to fix its biggest problem: fragmentation.
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About Bullet
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Funding Checklist
Here are some of the things you need in place to before you
can apply for some/all of the grants. Set aside about a month or
month and a half to look after the 4 points below (Were in the
top 5 easiest countries to set up a company - so stop cribbing).
Do in this order
1) Registered as a limited company. You can get your free
company formation documents here.
2) Be registered for all taxes - Heres simple guide to that. Yep, I
said simple.
3) Have tax clearance certs for all founders getting a grant. See
link point 2.
4) Have a corporate bank account setup. Give this 1-7 weeks.
Youre getting money for free, dont ever forget that. If you think
dealing with agencies is hard, wait till you have to deal with VCs
(who are gambling their careers on you). If you hit a wall with
someone or have a personality clash, just look for someone else
in the organisation.
They dont like you pivoting mid programme, so if your business
pivots dont tell them unless youve got traction in that new pivot.
Crazy I know; the beginning of your journey into business should
be 100% focused on product market fit. Ive yet to meet anyone
that has hit that nail on the first go. If you dont get your fit right,
no amount of funding or marketing is going to help you. So stick
to the original business plan that they like, and dont budge. As
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you get higher up the ranks this will change. Think of it as a good
thing, you can keep the same business plan and pitch.
Focus on job creation, youll get asked a lot about this.
Remember this is so the politicians can defend the spend, so its
just part of the agencies reps job. Sure its a ridiculous question
to ask a startup, so answer it with great plans for hiring 20 people
from the Gaeltacht (joke).
Dont piss people off. A lot of the grants are connected to each
other. If you have a go or annoy someone, youre closing the
door on everything else. So bitch at your co-founder, not at your
co-funder. 95% of our experiences have been good ones. As
always, if you keep hitting a wall then the problem is you.
Youre not meant to be working while you're claiming grant
money, but seeing as we dont live in Poundland and your
customers dont work to EIs timeframe you might have to do a
bit of consulting. Keep it to yourself.
I cant believe they wont let me spend 20k on marketing. Good,
you're a muppet if you think thats a good idea. If you cant learn
to build traffic then youre never going to succeed. And if you
think some marketeer can, then remortgage your house and pay
for it yourself. Marketing is hard to learn and youll fail a lot, but it
can be learned. Well be writing a lot about early stage growth
and demystifying some of the nonsense out there on the web
(like these posts on How Lockitron made millions with their own
crowdfunding platform, or DropBox: the viral lie sold to every
startup.
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Innovation voucher
Funding Source: Enterprise Ireland
Link: http://ow.ly/iUS6M
Total amount receivable: 5,000
Timeline & Key dates: applications from March to September
2013 (maybe again). Decision process usually 4-5 weeks. 50-50
co-funded Fast Track applications: may be submitted anytime.
Decision process 10 days.
Bullets Tip: We love these guys, a quick two pages
application and you get 5k to spend with a 3rd level uni.
Weve had (and heard of) some terrible experiences with lazy
colleges. The best two in our experience are DCU
(http://www.dcu.ie/) and Dun Laoghaire (http://www.iadt.ie/en/).
You can get about 3 innovation vouchers, we used all of ours. I
cant speak highly enough of the DCU crew, you should also
check
out
their
seminars.
Top
class.
http://techspectations.org/.
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Michael Birch
@mickbirch
Bio: Computer programmer
and entrepreneur. Co-founder
of Bebo and Birthday Alarm.
Cash strapped startups often use equity as a means to get
other people on board. This can lead to terrible problems
when you realise the person is the wrong fit. What would
be your advice to get around this?
Getting the right investors is critical. Do everything you
can to get to know investors before agreeing to investment,
ideally they should add value in addition to the capital, but at
the very least they should not prove difficult. Ask about other
investments they've made and reach out to the CEO's /
founders of those companies yourself to understand what role
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Sean BlanchField
@seanblanchfield
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Mike Butcher
@mikebutcher
Bio: European Editor for
TechCrunch. Co-founder and
shareholder of TechHub.
With up to 100,000 available from enterprise boards,
should you go with Angels after obtaining this funding or
wait until you need more money?
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Eoghan McCabe
@eoghanmccabe
Bio: First and foremost, an
aspiring inventor. CEO at
@intercom.
Cash strapped startups often use equity as a means to get
other people on board. This can lead to terrible problems
when you realise the person is the wrong fit. What would
be your advice to get around this?
All smart startups share ownership with staff, not just
cash-strapped ones. And this is very much a solved problem:
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Bill Liao
@liaonet
Bio: Entrepreneur, mentor,
investor. Co-founder of XING
and CoderDojo, CEO of
Finaxis AG, Partner in SOS
ventures
With up to 100,000 available from enterprise boards,
should you go with Angels after obtaining this funding or
wait until you need more money?
Simply put, if you are spending more than 100k on your
tech startup you are probably doing it wrong. I recommend 50k
to start and try to get cash flow and traction as soon as
possible. If you run into an actual constraint that requires more
cash then try to find the money you need from the fewest
sources you can. More investors is not better.
Gone are the days when it really mattered that you had a
big name angel on your board. People only really care about
traction and real traction is expressed in cash from happy
customers and so real traction is accretive investment is always
dilutive.
Also, many Angels and other bodies do not follow on their
investments if you need to raise growth capital at a later stage
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Harry Largey
Bio: Startup mentor. Cofounder of CloudMover.
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Dylan Collins
@MrDylanCollins
Bio: Irish Governments
Startup Ambassador. Founder
of DemonWare, Jolt Online
Chairman of Fight My Monster
With up to 100,000 available from enterprise boards,
should you go with Angels investors after obtaining this
funding or wait until you need more money?
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John Egan
@iamjohnegan
Bio: Irish Governments Startup
Future of Banking expert. CEO
at Archipelago. Irish
Ambassador at Sandbox,
World Economic Forum and
ICUE.
Cash strapped startups often use equity as a means to get
other people on board. This can lead to terrible problems
when you realise the person is the wrong fit. What would
be your advice to get around this?
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