DISQUS

I have just shut down my Amex Platinum charge card after eight years of use. As a result Amex loses a £300 per annum annual fee.

Similar reasons... unexpected payment failures and a curtailing of what was an "unlimited" spending limit when I took out the card. Amex was unable to look at my credit history or use of my other Amex card to set an appropriate limit. They actually wanted me to send them payslips and copies of bank statements - at which point I cut the card in half and sent it back.

Amex need to understand that there are lots of card companies out there that now provide premium services (travel, concierge, travel insurance, etc).

Bootstrapping at the lower levels is possible.

We got ProofHQ to Beta for about $15,000, including graphic design, coding, hosting and hardware. We did core coding ourselves - the secret sauce (source?!!) inside the app, and outsourced everything else. We eventually hired the coders in Poland full time.

We wouldn't compromise on quality or cost, so it did take longer than we would have liked, but we were aware of that trade off and maanged through it.

Involving private equity in that way is a great solution, but is restricted to including professional investors and institutions in the solution.

Why not let the man on the street get involved as well? If the security backed by their mortgage or credit card debt is trading at x cents on the $ why not let them buy the security and retire their own debt?

Roger. Great post.

What do you mean by "A business that has an inherent call option, that could boost its base-line exit value by at least 10x"?

Zoli

We mulled over these same issues at ProofHQ (ProofHQ is a collaborative review and approval app for documents, design and artwork). How do we let people distribute proofs to their reviewers without having to recreate groups from other apps all over again?

We have developed the following layers:
1. Private, not distributed. Only available to people in the creator's organisation with appropriate security rights.
2. Distribution based on email ID. Only named recipients can access the files. we will be adding a Groups feature to this shortly.
3. Controlled distribution by embedding the proof in private wikis, web pages, intranets, etc.
4. Public distribution in public web pages, blogs, etc.

We are seeing a lot of take up with the third option, which lets people embed their proofs into existing "private" web pages. By default the proof is only available to people with permission to see those web pages. This brings ProofHQ into their existing process rather than forcing the creation of yet another set of permissions.

For collaborating on designs, artwork and documents you could also try ProofHQ (www.proofhq.com).

It provides rich collaboration, mark-up and commenting for teams of reviewers.

It also manages proofing on files that would be too big to send by email.

Finally, it tracks versions so you can see comments from the first version to the final one.

Fred

I think that the fundamental difference between social applications and enterprise application is that social applications are, at their core, about self expression, whereas enterprise applications are about process automation.

Enterprise applications may borrow elements of social apps to facilitate collaboration (still a big enterprise opportunity) and ease of use (always a winner), but fundamentally self-expression is not a goal for the enterprise.

We're going through some of these issues at ProofHQ now.

We threw away the first couple of prototypes, but from the point we created a fully working application we have only refactored. New API, new permissions engine, etc. The temptation is to go for the big rebuild, and that pressure is ground-up from the development team.

Nick

Thanks for the mention.

Paul is right pointing out that more mature businesses needing capital for customer acquisition may struggle to raise that capital. They would then be at a disadvantage against better capitalised competitors (time to focus on winnable niches?).

Recessions are painful and will affect most sectors. All companies: new, old, SaaS, CPC will have to work harder and be more astute to succeed. However, those that do can take advantage with the right strategy.

As I mentioned in Fred's post, I think that a recession is a chance for web-based businesses to thrive.

For consumer oriented apps with an add revenue model CPA and CPC advertising revenue will hold up best.

For business oriented apps with a SaaS subscription model, the pay-as-you-go, nothing upfront, rapid deployment, rapid ROI model has huge appeal to businesses needing to tighten their belts.

If a company has bootstrapped (like we have done at ProofHQ.com) then a recession could be a great opportunity.

I think that a recession is a chance for web-based businesses to thrive.

For consumer oriented apps with an add revenue model, Fred is spot on saying that CPA and CPC advertising revenue will hold up best.

For business oriented apps with a SaaS subscription model, the pay-as-you-go, nothing upfront, rapid deployment, rapid ROI model has huge appeal to businesses needing to tighten their belts.

If a company has bootstrapped (like we have done at ProofHQ.com) then a recession could be a great opportunity.

Pitcher & Piano is marginally better and will probably deal better with a burst of activity when everyone shows up, but don't get hung up on it. Both are OK.

I need to keep this secret from my wife though. She went nuts when she saw me reading a book about "getting away with only working four hours a week". She brought it up with friends and family for months and is writing a response called "How to get a proper job". I'm not sure it'll be a bestseller though.

See you Thursday.

Coloured pencils sound like a quaint solution, but they do have an advantage for editors in that they maintain control over the original text as reviewers make comments "in the margin". Still, what a pain to use hard copies and old fashioned post.

Proofing and approval of documents is one of the natural fits for web-based applications. Reviewing a document in "the cloud" makes much more sense than sending multiple copies by email or snail mail.

Wiki based proofing solutions can work, but they can also have limitation as multiple reviewers start commenting and editing the same areas of text. To a certain extent they can also lead to loss of document "ownership" for the author or editor.

[Apologies for the following self-promotion...]

At ProofHQ we have created a proofing and approval system that gives document owners control over the original, whilst letting reviewers add AND DISCUSS comments "in the margin". Introducing discussion threads around comments makes it easier for all reviewers to contribute to the debate without losing the context of the original content. All of this takes place "in the cloud" so only one copy of the document exits for all reviewers to work on.