Podcasts about so colin

Drink of the day: Seltzer water for Candice! Wine for Colin!  Colin Anderson and Candice Chetta are doing some serious self care. We're all reeling from the loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in one way or another. So Colin and Candice are going to do A LOT of reality tv news, fast … Continue reading "199: A Little Mourning, And A Lot Of Self Care. We're talking Our 200th Episode, And LOTS Of Bravo Mindlessness"

We're 2 years old (not literally, please don't close our Twitter account...) so in a break from our usual programming this month we have a VERY SPECIAL EPISODE for you all. It's a bit like our christmas/end of year episodes, but rather than being our favourite songs of the last year, this time we're going back in time for two full decades to the year 1999! To explain how the voting works, we each picked our 10 favourite songs of the year, then for each list we each ranked them 1-10 giving 10 points to our favourite and 1 to the one we liked least on each list. we also had a bonus point we could assign to one song on either of the other people's lists (So Colin could only assign the bonus point to a song on either Tracey or Ian's list). Colin's wife then added all the points up and we didn't find out the order until we were recording, so all the reactions you'll hear are genuine. Now admittedly, we are a little bit brutal to some of the songs on the list, but please remember that to be in the episode they have to have been in one of our top tens of the year! Bands featured in this episode include American Football, Tori Amos, Aphex Twin, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, The Chemical Brothers, Ani DiFranco, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Dr Dre Ft, Snoop Dogg, Filter, The Flaming Lips, Ben Folds Five, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Grant Hart, The Herbaliser, Jimmy Eat World, Marduk, Mindless Self Indulgence, Mint Royale Ft. Lauren Laverne, Mogwai, Neurosis, Nine Inch Nails, Pavement, Porcupine Tree, Sigur Ros, Slipknot, Songs: Ohia, Therapy?, Tom Waits & Wilco. You can find all the songs in alphabetical order here - https://open.spotify.com/user/newpathstohelicon/playlist/1o4JFcX2m2vLU3NXMWJQhd?si=Te2tYfodQ7uXtKfxdzxUGw As always, we'd love to hear what you think so talk to us on facebook at www.facebook.com/wedigmusicpcast or on Twitter @wedigmusicpcast Find our other episodes & podcasts/articles at www.wedigmusic.com

We're 2 years old (not literally, please don't close our Twitter account...) so in a break from our usual programming this month we have a VERY SPECIAL EPISODE for you all. It's a bit like our christmas/end of year episodes, but rather than being our favourite songs of the last year, this time we're going back in time for two full decades to the year 1999! To explain how the voting works, we each picked our 10 favourite songs of the year, then for each list we each ranked them 1-10 giving 10 points to our favourite and 1 to the one we liked least on each list. we also had a bonus point we could assign to one song on either of the other people's lists (So Colin could only assign the bonus point to a song on either Tracey or Ian's list). Colin's wife then added all the points up and we didn't find out the order until we were recording, so all the reactions you'll hear are genuine.Now admittedly, we are a little bit brutal to some of the songs on the list, but please remember that to be in the episode they have to have been in one of our top tens of the year!Bands featured in this episode include American Football, Tori Amos, Aphex Twin, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, The Chemical Brothers, Ani DiFranco, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Dr Dre Ft, Snoop Dogg, Filter, The Flaming Lips, Ben Folds Five, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Grant Hart, The Herbaliser, Jimmy Eat World, Marduk, Mindless Self Indulgence, Mint Royale Ft. Lauren Laverne, Mogwai, Neurosis, Nine Inch Nails, Pavement, Porcupine Tree, Sigur Ros, Slipknot, Songs: Ohia, Therapy?, Tom Waits & Wilco.You can find all the songs in alphabetical order here - https://open.spotify.com/user/newpathstohelicon/playlist/1o4JFcX2m2vLU3NXMWJQhd?si=Te2tYfodQ7uXtKfxdzxUGwAs always, we'd love to hear what you think so talk to us on facebook at www.facebook.com/wedigmusicpcast or on Twitter @wedigmusicpcastFind our other episodes & podcasts/articles at www.wedigmusic.com

Everybody knows that a writer should spend just as much time on the "about the author" page as they do on the novel itself. So Colin & Michael teach listeners why the "about the author" page is so important and in process, expose a few unknown facts about themselves. Later, Code Lord Mark Vigeant, the #1 engineer of all time, stops by to read some of his really cool fiction.---PLEASE SUBSCRIBE/RATE US on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.LITERATI is a Forever Dog Podcast.http://foreverdogproductions.com/fdpn/podcasts/literati/

It's Christmas! so, this time, we're irking the Daily Mail readers by actually not doing much to do with Christmas at all (Let's call it a Winterval special just to annoy them even more!). It's our end of the year best of 2018 spectacular!We'll be counting down our favourite 30 songs of the year, plus discussing our favourite gigs of the year and also music we've discovered this year which didn't come out in 2018.To explain how the voting works, we each picked our 10 favourite songs of the year, then for each list we each ranked them 1-10 giving 10 points to our favourite and 1 to the one we liked least on each list. we also had a bonus point we could assign to one song on either of the other people's lists (So Colin could only assign the bonus point to a song on either Tracey or Ian's list). Colin's wife then added all the points up and we didn't find out the order until we were recording, so all the reactions you'll hear are genuine.Now admittedly, we are a little bit brutal to some of the songs on the list, but please remember that to be in the episode they have to have been in one of our top tens of the year!Bands featured in this episode include Anaal Nathrakh, АИГЕЛ, The Atlas Moth, Author & Punisher, Big Russian Boss, Brooke Bentham, Church Of The Cosmic Skull, Clever Girl, The Common Cold, Corrosion Of Conformity, Dresden Dolls, Eels, Brian Eno/Kevin Shields, Epic45, Failure, Forest Swords, Four Stroke Baron, Gene, Ghost, Grouper, Half Man Half Biscuit, Ho99o9, Khruangbin, Laibach, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Metric, Malcolm Middleton, Mogwai, Neurosis, Pale Waves, Peaness, Josh T. Pearson, The Prodigy, Nathan Salsburg, Soccer Mommy, Stars Of The Lid, Superorganism, These Are End Times, Tropical Fuck Storm, Ulrika Spacek, Young Scum, and Kamasi Washington.Our best of the 2018 playlist is in alphabetical order here - https://open.spotify.com/user/newpathstohelicon/playlist/4lViEhQts56qhKxRsCIyxt?si=0GSt2FKfRdSxqE-8NQc99Qand our songs we discovered in 2018 playlist is here - https://open.spotify.com/user/newpathstohelicon/playlist/4DCW3ivdah5zAkolCHkfXB?si=rtpmEoabRh6vrFS7EAcKpwAs always we'd love to hear what you think, you can talk to us at http://www.facebook.com/wedigmusicpcast or on twitter @wedigmusicpcastFind our other episodes, writings and soon other podcasts at www.wedigpodcasts.comOh and there's a fairly important announcement at the end of the episode so make sure you listen all the way through.Merry Christmas, and thanks so much to everyone who's listened and argued or agreed with us in 2018, see you next year!

It's Christmas! so, this time, we're irking the Daily Mail readers by actually not doing much to do with Christmas at all (Let's call it a Winterval special just to annoy them even more!). It's our end of the year best of 2018 spectacular! We'll be counting down our favourite 30 songs of the year, plus discussing our favourite gigs of the year and also music we've discovered this year which didn't come out in 2018. To explain how the voting works, we each picked our 10 favourite songs of the year, then for each list we each ranked them 1-10 giving 10 points to our favourite and 1 to the one we liked least on each list. we also had a bonus point we could assign to one song on either of the other people's lists (So Colin could only assign the bonus point to a song on either Tracey or Ian's list). Colin's wife then added all the points up and we didn't find out the order until we were recording, so all the reactions you'll hear are genuine. Now admittedly, we are a little bit brutal to some of the songs on the list, but please remember that to be in the episode they have to have been in one of our top tens of the year! Bands featured in this episode include Anaal Nathrakh, АИГЕЛ, The Atlas Moth, Author & Punisher, Big Russian Boss, Brooke Bentham, Church Of The Cosmic Skull, Clever Girl, The Common Cold, Corrosion Of Conformity, Dresden Dolls, Eels, Brian Eno/Kevin Shields, Epic45, Failure, Forest Swords, Four Stroke Baron, Gene, Ghost, Grouper, Half Man Half Biscuit, Ho99o9, Khruangbin, Laibach, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Metric, Malcolm Middleton, Mogwai, Neurosis, Pale Waves, Peaness, Josh T. Pearson, The Prodigy, Nathan Salsburg, Soccer Mommy, Stars Of The Lid, Superorganism, These Are End Times, Tropical Fuck Storm, Ulrika Spacek, Young Scum, and Kamasi Washington. Our best of the 2018 playlist is in alphabetical order here - https://open.spotify.com/user/newpathstohelicon/playlist/4lViEhQts56qhKxRsCIyxt?si=0GSt2FKfRdSxqE-8NQc99Q and our songs we discovered in 2018 playlist is here - https://open.spotify.com/user/newpathstohelicon/playlist/4DCW3ivdah5zAkolCHkfXB?si=rtpmEoabRh6vrFS7EAcKpw As always we'd love to hear what you think, you can talk to us at http://www.facebook.com/wedigmusicpcast or on twitter @wedigmusicpcast Find our other episodes, writings and soon other podcasts at www.wedigpodcasts.com Oh and there's a fairly important announcement at the end of the episode so make sure you listen all the way through. Merry Christmas, and thanks so much to everyone who's listened and argued or agreed with us in 2018, see you next year!

Copywriter Colin Theriot joins Rob and Kira for the 104th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Colin is well known as the leader of the Cult of Copy (as well as four or five other related Facebook groups). He often jumps into the club to answer questions or comment on something, and we thought it was about time to talk shop with him. In our discussion, we covered: •  how Colin became a copywriter •  why he started The Cult of Copy •  the short cut to getting people to know who you are •  how beginning copywriters can create a copy learning experience •  the most important thing for beginners to learn (this skill is portable) •  his philosophy for running more than one Facebook group •  why he offers a “jobs” group and why you probably shouldn’t use it •  the five Vs of the Viking Velociraptor Formula

So Colin comes back for this last chat of the year and we talk about Mr Freeze Raspberry Meth before diving in to what we have been playing and what we are planning to play for the next show. We also give big shout outs to all the guys at DWARF and answer some questions from you lovely people.   Got these to the table Taj Mahal - Rio Grande Games.  http://www.riograndegames.com Galaxy Defenders  - http://www.galaxy-defenders.com/index-ok.php   Ares / Gremlin Project.  Get this off the Shelf Scythe http://stonemaiergames.com/games/scythe/ Give it a Kickhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/334979400/package-an-abstract-tabletop-game https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/921886974/dystopian-world-expansion?ref=nav_search   Like what you hear? Then please support us. Facebook -     http://www.facebook.com/werenotwizards Twitter.com -  http://www.twitter.com/werenotwizards     If you like what you have heard, please take some time to Rate, Subscribe and Review us on iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/were-not-wizards/id1084198405    Get us on Stitcher -    http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/were-not-wizards   Get us through acast - http://www.acast.com/werenotwizards Check out our pictures -www.instagram.com/werenotwizards   Music is owned entirely by We're Not Wizards and thanks to DouglasVB Email us    magic@werenotwizards.com     Remember, we are many things but We're Not Wizards.

Host Lisa Kiefer interviews Colin Pape, CEO and Co-Founder of ShopCity.com. Located in Berkeley and Canada, ShopCity.com helps local businesses leverage the Internet to compete against online retailers like Amazon.com and other global chains. Its mission is to create thriving local communities with strong, prosperous economies - places where bustling local shops and vibrant downtowns are filled with proud local shoppers happy to support their friends and neighbors as they shop locally first!TRANSCRIPT Speaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You are listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on k a l ex Berkeley celebrating the bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Kiefer and today I'm interviewing Collin Pape, the Co founder and CEO of Shop city.com. [00:00:30] Welcome to the program, Collin. Thanks Lisa. So what is shop city? Speaker 2:A shop city. It's basically a platform that enables communities to build a stronger, more sustainable local economy with a platform that's similar to amazon.com. Okay, so you're located in Berkeley and also in Canada. You just opened in Berkeley? That's correct. Oh, we're in the, we work a coworking facility corner of Shattuck and university. Okay. So I want to understand this better. What is the problem you're [00:01:00] trying to solve with Shoppe city.com? Yeah, so, uh, the Internet, uh, to date has really been a tool to drive globalization, global commerce. It's kind of been breaking down and geographic and boundaries and unfortunately that's really been to the detriment of local economies. But we really see a huge opportunity to enable local businesses to use the internet to reach local customers. And to decrease their marketing costs and to make it easier to shop locally first. And so [00:01:30] that's the platform that we've built. Speaker 2:Okay. So tell me about how you're doing this. Sure. So, uh, basically each community gets its own local site, so there's a URL for each community. So, and how did you get those? It's been a long process. We've been at this for about 15 years and so we secured a about 8,000 domains starting in 2000. Okay. And so once you got those domains, what happened? Yeah, so, so there's a URL for just about every community, about 85% of the ones across [00:02:00] the u s so we have big ones like shop New york.com, shop boston.com down to a smaller shop, sf.com we effectively provide at, at Turnkey model to a local entrepreneur. Could be a municipal government, could be a local business group. And, uh, so we provide them with the URL and then a, a platform that enables them to do the marketing out in the community and then, uh, to use the internet to basically drive local commerce. Speaker 2:Can you give me, walk me through an example from [00:02:30] the point of view of a small business or medium sized business? Sure. Yeah. So, so there's, yeah, really a, a multiple stakeholders that we serve. So, so the top is the partners, but uh, effectively it's about the businesses and so we provide them with the ability to create an online storefront. They can do email marketing and they can update their social media accounts and they can have their content published on a trusted local domain like shop SF dot conference. Who manages that shop domain? Is it the city of San Francisco? [00:03:00] It could be a city. We've got a couple of city governments that are running the platform, but generally it's a local entrepreneur, somebody who's got a, an interest in the local business community. And what has been the reaction of cities to this sort of chamber of commerce like, right. Speaker 2:Well it's a, it's something, especially here in California because there is a sales tax that's, that's fed into the city coffers. We don't really have that up in Canada. So they've got a pretty strong interest in ensuring [00:03:30] that purchases happen within their borders. And so they're very supportive. A lot of them are already running shop, local campaigns, shop city campaigns and a, so this is a way to really activate those campaigns and enable people to take action online. Uh, we give them a, a brand that they can market all through the community, drive people to a destination where they can find all the products, services and business available locally. So you're trying to create strong economies, it sounds like local economies. That's right, yeah. Using the Internet. [00:04:00] What was your inspiration to do this in the first place? Yeah, so it started in my hometown, which is a Midland, Ontario. Speaker 2:It's a recreational community, about 20,000 people. My parents had a retail paint store for 28 years and a around the turn of the Millennium, uh, home depot came to town. Walmart came to town and, uh, I'd started building small business websites. A lot of the local merchants were really fearful that they were going to be forgotten as these flashy new stores came into the community. And so [00:04:30] a thought that there had to be an opportunity to use the internet to provide the community with information about what was available locally. And then it was really just about marketing and getting it out into the community so we could hit home your own family. Big Time, big time. Definitely they were concerned. I mean paint is a competitive industry. There were probably six, seven places where you could buy paint already in the small town. And then yeah, you've got the Walmart and home depot during the outcome of you creating this local platform there. Speaker 2:It [00:05:00] was really well received. So, so it was really about the marketing. Uh, we, we did a bit of a grill and marketing campaign. We, we went out to, we put core plus signs all over the community. Two foot by one foot shot, midland.com support your community signs and a did it on a Sunday night. Everybody came into work on Monday and all the street posts had signs. And, uh, so that then we started getting businesses really getting behind us, uh, wanting to put signs in their windows. A Chamber of Commerce wanted to get involved. The, the town of Midland asked us to do a deputation. [00:05:30] And so, uh, everybody really, uh, just saw the value in, uh, supporting local. And what is the cost to a local business to become part of this local community? Or is there a, yeah, there's a, a range of different, uh, uh, opportunities. Speaker 2:Uh, everybody has the ability to create a profile page. They can tell their story. Uh, but if they wanted to use some of the more advanced features, the shopping carts, uh, the ability to send email newsletters, uh, they would pay. It's anywhere from 30 to $400 per month. At the high [00:06:00] end, they're getting a dedicated account manager. So if somebody, uh, if they don't really have the time or the technical capabilities, they can hire somebody to do it. It's your background in technology, is that how you yeah, exactly. I started building small business websites and then develop the platform and now we've got a team. But, uh, yeah, yeah. A lot of people have written about the value monetary economic value of small communities versus the big box stores like Michael Schumann. Had you been reading some of these books in college or I mean like when did you [00:06:30] I get inspired about this. Speaker 2:I just intrinsically understood it growing up in a, a small business environment. My parents, they'd come home and we'd have dinner every night and we talk about just the trials and tribulations of running a local business. We really understood intimately the need to have reciprocal relationships. So you're spending money with somebody, they're spending money back with you and just that, that every dollar that you spend is really a vote for what you want to see more of in the community. And [00:07:00] uh, it's, it's a way to support the people who are doing good things in the community but also creates a lot of intangible benefits. You know, like you can see in the u s especially in the Midwestern areas, the small cities, there's nothing there. They're just a shell of their former self. Yeah. And they have a lot of problems. They have a lot of problems with young people and people leaving and Yep. Speaker 2:Yeah, they, they, they've really been gutted. And it is an unfortunate because I think the, the small community model is actually one that's a [00:07:30] little bit more sustainable and a little bit more connected. You're, you're closer to your local food producers. Uh, you end up having stronger relationships. You have less of the financial nightmares created by Wall Street. And uh, it is unfortunate that things have not gone in their favor over the past, uh, 30, 40 years. But I, I think you're going to see, uh, the tide turning and we're certainly hoping to be a part of that. Speaker 1:If you're just tuning in, you're listening [00:08:00] to method to the madness on k a l x Berkeley. Today I'm interviewing Collin Pape, the CEO and founder of Shop city.com. Where are you now in the process here in the u s I know that you, you started in Canada, you were successful with shopping and this is your next forum. So where are you in that process? Speaker 3:Yeah, it started in Canada with shop midland.com. We've got about 25 markets up there that [00:08:30] are currently in operation, but one of our founding partners, Speaker 2:he is from the bay area, born and raised in San Jose. What's his name? His name's Jim Terry. Great Guy. And uh, so now, uh, what we're doing is a kind of a, a master franchise if you will, and we've kind of, uh, sectioned off the 430 California communities. So we, we've got a new company called Shop california.com. Uh, it has the rights to all those different territories. We're doing a direct public offering through a company cutting edge capital [00:09:00] and we're, we're now actively, uh, working with people who are interested in bringing the model to their community. And we're going to do the expected, it's going to be up and running. Uh, so we're, we're launching a pilot project in September, so, uh, we've got a couple of different communities that are on the shortlist, right? We're right now down to three. Uh, so, uh, it's going to depend on the order, but a shop, sonoma.com shop, alameda.com shop pleasanton.com. Speaker 2:So as a consumer I [00:09:30] can instead of local can mean many different things. Let's say I, I'm loyal to a town in New York, maybe out in upstate New York, so I could search online potentially someday in the future and shop locally and in that small town versus going to Amazon for a product that, that maybe previously carried it. Yeah. Ultimately the model is actually going to funnel up to shop locally.com. So it's basically going to be an aggregator so that, uh, for instance, if you wanted to buy Michael Schumann's new book, uh, you could go onto [00:10:00] a single page that has that a book and then you could buy it from wherever is closest to you. And what are the statistics about local? If I buy a book in my local bookstore versus on Amazon, do you know the statistics on the benefits? Yeah, and there's a, a lot of different ones out there. Speaker 2:Uh, but one that we, uh, have have found to be fairly valid is a 45 cents return to your local community with an independent store versus 15 with a local chain store. If you're shopping on Amazon, odds are there's zero [00:10:30] return to your local community. Where's that money going? Yeah, it's uh, it's going, going to corporate headquarters in somewhere. You interface to city government if they want to. That's right. What do they get from it? Do they get anything? Uh, yeah, so, so for instance, we're working with, uh, the city of Corona in southern California Shop corona.com and uh, for, for them it's really just the kind of more intangible longterm benefit of enabling their local merchants to be more competitive online. Uh, they're trying to, again, keep the tax dollars local and they're trying [00:11:00] to ensure that they don't have vacancies and they're just trying to build a more vibrant economy. Speaker 2:Uh, so we're kind of helping them do that. It seems like you could disrupt Yelp and all the chamber of Commerce's and become like the new 21st century chamber of commerce slash she helped because you could also have rating systems. You have local companies, right? Or are you already planning yet? We do have that and yeah, certainly we're, we're looking to disrupt Yelp. We'd like to disrupt Google. We'd like to disrupt Facebook, we'd like to disrupt Amazon. It's all [00:11:30] the big guys and it's about putting all that money back into the community. Uh, chambers of commerce. We actually work with them. They're one of our partners. So we've got a way for any local organization, but in particular chambers to get their own business directory that's powered by kind of the master, uh, shop city directory and a, they can get mobile apps, they can get lots of tools to basically minimize their costs and improve their online experience. Speaker 2:I think it would make them better actually. Yeah, we work so in, in Midland, [00:12:00] uh, it's a huge benefit for the local business. They can update their shot midland.com profile and it automatically updates their chamber of commerce profile if they're in the downtown BIA, it updates that it'll update the business directory and the town of Midlands website. And that's really the model that we're looking to build out all throughout. Uh, the communities that we operate in. There is the opportunity for rev share so that these partners can actually earn money through the system. So, yeah, it's a pretty holistic offering. Everybody can win. That's right. Except the big, big companies. [00:12:30] Exactly. That's right. I wanted to talk to you about redundancies in the system. Yeah. You know, with drought and there's so many problems and there are more stresses on the planet as we go forward. Speaker 2:So people are talking about creating redundant food systems, redundant financial systems, and this feeds right into that. It does. Yeah. It's, it's all about resilience. And, and so you asked earlier about, did I read Michael Schulman's Book Smart Revolution for instance? Uh, I didn't at the time, but, uh, the more [00:13:00] that that we've studied it, the more we see that this is extremely relevant to, yeah. The future of, of the world environment. It's a about building a stronger, more resilient economy that is not so susceptible to these, uh, systemic shocks. Uh, like what happened in 2008. And it's really just a, about enabling people to focus on their own backyard and not so much to worry about what's happening in the rest of the world. So they have an impact locally. Then it feeds up to uh, [00:13:30] uh, the global level. So what are your challenges in this process? Speaker 2:Have you encountered anything unusual in the u s that you did not encounter in Canada? Uh, what we, we had, uh, some challenges with Google actually back in 2011. And, uh, they, they ended up blocking our sites and, uh, they just didn't like the business model where we are running multiple domain names. We're enabling each community to have their own site. They, uh, wanted us to all do it through one domain, one brand, which was really, uh, not the strongest model for communities. [00:14:00] And so we, we ended up, uh, going to battle with them and we were involved with the FTC investigation. We connected with, uh, a lawyer, Gary reback, who was the man who was responsible for the antitrust regulations against Microsoft with windows and Internet explorer back in the day. And, uh, we actually made some progress with them. We were on the, the front page of the San Jose Mercury News business section and Google ended up actually building it with a whole bunch of processes around some of the complaints that we had. Speaker 2:So that was probably the big one, [00:14:30] sort of one that we did win that one. Yeah. Yeah. It was a, a big challenge and uh, certainly I, I, it was unprecedented. Nobody really had done it, but, uh, yeah, we came out on top. I mean, in general, um, yeah, we're, we're going against all the, the largest companies in the world. And so, I mean, there's, there's, uh, a lot of, just overall resistance to the model, but at a local level, everybody is really supportive of it. Everybody intrinsically kind of understands it. It's a message that the merchants and the local [00:15:00] stakeholders, the people in the community want to see promoted. And so we've got this kind of dichotomy where on the larger level, I mean raising capital from a venture capitalist for instance, that's really not something that a, we're, we're, you know, seeing success with or not even anything that we're pursuing at this point because they want to steer us in a direction that is contrary to strong communities. Speaker 1:Food comments has been on my program and one of the things that they say is, um, it kind of helps getting the message out that they aren't competing head to head with these large systems. [00:15:30] They think of themselves as another alternative track running alongside them. And then over time that track gets bigger and bigger and bigger. But there's room for both. That's right. And so people can digest it a little bit better I think. Speaker 2:Yeah. We've, we've, we've slowly been shifting our message from, you know, shop local to shop local first and trying to just give people that, that choice and make sure that, that the merchants are represented and that the community is represented and ultimately it is up to, [00:16:00] uh, to the consumer, the person spending the money. Speaker 1:Yeah. Cause you know, you can go on Amazon and order vacuum cleaner bags, but there's a little store down the street and I don't know what people would prefer to do now. So that to me is a challenge. A certain we've gotten used to not having to deal face to face or look for something or walk down the street and find something Speaker 2:that's right. And yeah, I think that's really where we can play a role in. And Yeah, there is just, there's a disconnect because nobody wants to live in a holiday community that has vacant storefronts that [00:16:30] doesn't have the services immediately available and accessible when you do want them. Everybody wants the best of both worlds. They don't want to have to support local, but they want it there when they need it. And it really is. Speaker 1:And they want to see people walking down the sidewalk and the restaurants open. Yeah, Speaker 2:that's right. You want it. You want to be in a, in a vibrant community. Um, and, and so there is this kind of dichotomy, but I think that is where we can, can really have an impact, uh, enable people to have that convenience shopping from home in their pajamas in the middle of the night whenever they want, but still have that money [00:17:00] feed back into the community and enable that merchant to thrive and maintain a storefront and, and provide the infrastructure and the support to the community that Speaker 1:they are small businesses provide the same amount of money into the economy. I think it's $7 trillion as the big corporations, right? I mean, I didn't know it was 50, 50. I think if that, the word gets out about that, people will look at their communities a little bit differently. Speaker 2:People don't realize that there's a, something called the local multiplier effect, which we've actually got a website, local multiplier.com [00:17:30] with some information, some statistics. Uh, but it, it's, there's really two components to the economy. There's the, the volume, and then there's the velocity and the velocity is equally as important as the volume. So how quickly money is spent, uh, has as much of an impact as the amount that's spent. Everything that we've statistically shows that small businesses actually spend money a lot more rapidly than the big companies. If you look at apple for instance, they've got about $170 billion in the bank that is not being spent. [00:18:00] So it's not circulating, it's not creating a wealth and enabling people to offer products and services. Whereas most small businesses, they run extremely lean and they're spending that money pretty much as soon as they get it in and it's actually creating a stronger, more prosperous local economy. And so it's about how quickly that money is spent as well. Speaker 1:So Colin, you have a son, what kind of future are you envisioning for him with what you're doing right now? Speaker 2:Right. Yeah. So Jackson is, [00:18:30] uh, just over two years old. I'd love for him to have a future. Certainly we're where we've addressed a lot of our environmental challenges. I think those are all all looming. And then from an economic standpoint, I'd love to see just a fairer, more just systems, something that is a little bit more focused on the producers and the people that are really adding value to the economy versus the financial architects that are figuring out how to extract money. So I'd love to see a future where he and his friends [00:19:00] can, can start up their own local businesses to find the money to do it. Exactly. Community capital, just to have that support from the community where people recognize the value of the services that they're offering and the fact that they are local. Just a bit of a more connected world as far as where we all, I think idealistically believe things should go. And then where we're actually spending, Speaker 1:I'm on it. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness on [00:19:30] k a l x Berkeley. Today I'm interviewing Colin [inaudible], CEO and founder of Shop city.com. Do you think generally speaking, Canada leans more toward community than the u s Speaker 2:I I think actually it's, it's, it's fairly similar. Uh, I think there is really a, a strong pull to community. I think, uh, ultimately everybody supports it. It's just a, again, these, uh, these big brands [00:20:00] have, have made it so frictionless to, to go in and to, you know, spend your money in. And I mean, local merchants need to do a better job as well. I mean, it's hours of operation, it's a just selection. It's all those different types of things. And, uh, so I, I think intrinsically everybody wants to shop locally, support their community. It just needs to be, if not as easy, very close to, as easy Speaker 1:to do that. When you, as a business person, beyond marketing help marketing my business, [00:20:30] do you provide other things too, like say business analysis tools or is that something you guys are staying away from? Speaker 2:Uh, so that, that's definitely on the roadmap. What we'd like to do at some point is, is be able to share the statistics across comparable. So there's always just that challenge of, uh, of data integrity and you know, sharing information that's too personal, uh, within a competitive environment. But if you have a, a similar community and [00:21:00] you can show them what's happening in another community, then there's, there's an opportunity to improve Democrat study, demographics, trends, and, and if this community to this, this was the, the outcome. Uh, I think internally within our community, there's a huge opportunity to help businesses and nonprofits close gaps. So identify places where there's a lack of service and an abundance of demand, and then the city could benefit from that. Definitely know your data says [00:21:30] you're lacking a pub or you're lacking a restaurant on this corner and it looks like it could be really successful. Speaker 2:That's right. Definitely. Yeah. And then ultimately we, we'd actually, local currency is something that's very interesting as well. So enable people to create and circulate a local currency. I mean, all that stuff's pretty far down the track, but I think in the next 10 years, things are gonna they're going to be so many stresses that we're not seeing. Right. That's right. That's what at least the futurists are saying. Yup. Do you involve students at all here? We haven't yet, but that is the plan. Yes. There's [00:22:00] a, I think, a big opportunity to build a community for the creative, uh, economy. So, so people who are building websites here in graphic design, social media, marketing, these are all services that local businesses use and need. And a lot of the challenge is really just, it's around the sales side. It's around the operational side as far as just, you know, billing goes and customer support. Speaker 2:But we, we'd really like to create a bit of a marketplace so that all of those services are fulfilled locally [00:22:30] by local creatives. And so we can, uh, help them on the sales side, connect them with the businesses that need their services, help them on the invoicing side and just maintaining customer relationships but enable them to actually fulfill the work. Right now we've, we've got, you know, people in, in Midland, we've got a couple of different satellite offices where, where people are doing that work, but ultimately we'd like it all to be done at Berkeley for the Berkeley businesses for instance. And uh, that will definitely require tech savvy, creative [00:23:00] students. I would say fulfill that demand. And how would they reach you? We've got a couple of different websites you can go to shop city.com that's got some information on the company, kind of the opportunity to open up a local market. Speaker 2:And then we've got, right now it's just a landing page woodshop california.com, which is really just more specific to the opportunity, uh, in California. And uh, he'll be able to find all the different, uh, local communities, the 430 that are, that are on there. And uh, ultimately it will aggregate all of that content [00:23:30] that's put into the California communities. They can, uh, find me on that site. All the contact forms. I uh, I'm on those lists that, that those go into a, so you could just fill out the contact form and it'll come across my awareness for sure. Creative idea. And I wonder if anyone else in the world is doing some type of in Europe or do you know of any other examples? Generally people end up doing it with a, a, a single brand. And so it doesn't become really local in the same regard that [00:24:00] our platform enables that to happen. Speaker 2:Our, our sites are only about that community and they're, they're very specific and it's really a, a grassroots bottom up approach. And it is about marketing it out in the community. That's how you drive local awareness and you drive participation. And it's difficult to do that if you don't have that local brand. And so we were fortunate that we recognize the opportunity back when domain names were a little bit more plentiful and we've certainly spent a lot of money acquiring them and, and we've taken some risks, uh, you know, dot com bust everything [00:24:30] everybody's getting out. And uh, Jim Terry for instance, he went all in one day, he bought a $50,000 worth of domain, 750 of them dropped and he bought them all. So yeah, so we've got them. Yeah. And uh, and yeah, nobody that we know of is really doing it in that same way. Speaker 2:Well, I can envision somebody like, let's say Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Amish community where they sell their quilt. I only think they would love something like, you know, little communities like [inaudible] you can go in and, and it almost becomes a tourism draw. Yeah, that's right. [00:25:00] I think that the, the world is, is changing and, and uh, we've gone through different waves. Uh, you know, used to be a very localized world. And then, uh, ever since mass transportation, airplanes and mass communication with the television and phones, things will become more globalized. But I, I think there were really, I'll, I'll, there's a lot to be said for the original local model and then layering some of these newer technologies and opportunities on top, but to just create that stronger [00:25:30] core where we are more connected to a community, uh, I think everybody's is really longing for, for more of a connection. Speaker 2:And, uh, and I think local is really the, the, the way to do it where it's a true, authentic connection. A lot of the stuff that's just online, if it, if it's Facebook, uh, you know, some of the other, you know, channels, Twitter for instance, uh, you can reach a lot of people and you can have a frequent connection. But, uh, you know, it's not [00:26:00] the same as, as walking into a store and bumping into somebody that, you know, who intimately knows that all the same things that you do, the areas, the businesses, uh, the people, uh, the politics, all those different things. I mean, ultimately everything is still local here. You're still getting all of your services locally. And, uh, I think that that, that's where things are going over the next, uh, you know, 10, 20 years because it's, it's a lot more sustainable people. Speaker 2:Honest. I [00:26:30] think it does, you know, you're seeing people that in doing business, spending your money with them and they are with you as well. It's sort of this, that that's right. It's, it, it really is. Uh, it's, it's a lot deeper as far as the, the connection goes. I think it, it just builds a better world when people are more authentically connected to community. I saw you came in here with a book. What are you reading? It's by Michael Shuman. It's called the local economy solution. Uh, we were actually featured in the, in the book, which I'm really excited about and [00:27:00] very proud of. And, uh, it's, it's, yeah, it really, it's a, a practical book. It's a different economic and technological and business models. He calls them pollinator businesses that, uh, that really do a great job of, of building up a local economy and they're, they're sustainable financially, so they're, they're profitable models. Speaker 2:I, I did some research over the past 10 years and I've looked at the history of money. Basically. There's, there's a one documentary that really influenced my thinking, uh, called money masters. [00:27:30] And it talked about, uh, the role of money throughout the, the past millennium basically. And, uh, I think we have a really distorted view of money currently versus what it really is. Well, ultimately money, it's, it's just a, a way to account for things. It's really a debit and a credit system and we've distorted it so that it's all about finances and about, uh, kind of shifting the responsibility [00:28:00] and the control of money to the centralized organizations when it's really in the age of Bitcoin, for instance. Uh, it's really not, not going to be necessary in the future to, to delegate that control. And so, uh, by doing that, you can build just a, a tighter economy where those, those debits and credits are a lot more aligned than they aren't now. Speaker 2:Right now we've, we've got a whole bunch of leaks in the system. Really. We're, we're entrusting the control of, of that accounting [00:28:30] system basically to somebody who has the, the right and the ability to create their own debits and credits at will. And I think that that, that really does a huge disservice to the people that are actually producing things and, uh, particularly locally. And, uh, so, so yeah, really excited to, to prove out the community capital model where the, the money that comes to fund this, this operation is from the community, the, the money that is generated, returns to the community. And ultimately, yeah, to look at a, [00:29:00] a different type of accounting system that returns things a lot more freely to the community. It's a huge, huge subject. It's, it's all very recent. A lot of these new mechanisms that have been put into place. Speaker 2:And I mean they, they're not working. If you look at quantitative easing, how much money is being pumped into the economy just to keep things going at kind of the snail's pace that they are. It is a system that's broken and it needs a, a solution that that is more sustainable. That's what is really intriguing about small business. Growing up [00:29:30] in that environment, we knew where all of our dollars were going and we were very aware of the connection and of the power of spending and you would know that, okay, if I spend money with guy, he's got a project coming up to to supply it and so you just start building that. Really, I would say it's a, it's a relationship and it's an awareness and I think that's lacking in a lot of the models today. The community itself has basically been replaced with all these different networks that don't ultimately work for [00:30:00] the greater good and work for the community as a whole. Speaker 1:Colin, I really wish you luck on this and I want to thank you for being on this program. Thanks for the opportunity. Lisa, you've been listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show onK , a l ex Berkeley, celebrating bay area innovators. If you have questions or comments about the show, go to the Calex website, find method to the madness and drop us an email. You'll also find a link to previous podcasts. [00:30:30] Tune in again in two weeks at the same Speaker 4:[inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

  Highlights of my conversation with Colin Hewitt ·         Insights into pitching and attracting the right venture capital ·         The impact on the business of working with an investor ·         Experience of being part of the Xero add-on eco-system ·         Forming CodeBase a co-sharing space and the Edinburgh start-up scene   Note: After this interview was recorded Float won Xero Emerging Add-on Partner of the Year 2014 Transcript Heather:        Welcome Colin to Cloud stories. We’re so pleased to have you here. Colin:              Hi Heather, good to be here. Heather:        What’s the weather like in Edinburgh at the moment? Colin:              Well it’s a little bit cloudy at the moment. We had a good stretch probably about a week of good weather. It’s come to an end unfortunately today but we’re hoping that’s it’s just temporary. Heather:        Sensational. So Colin, I’ll start with a really hard question upfront. Who is your favourite superhero and why? Colin:              My favourite superhero? Well, I’m not sure if you have the same superheroes as you do in Australia but I was always like a big Spiderman fan. Heather:        Sensational, that’s Scottish Spiderman version. Colin:              Scottish Spiderman, of course, yeah. I like the way he had a spider sense, you know, how the spider sense was tingling. That’s always a good line and sometimes I think have that as well. Heather:        The spider sense. That’s a good heading for a story about you. Sensational, thank you for that Colin. Can you share with us what your business [Float] does Colin? Colin:              Yeah, so our business Float is a piece of software that we’ve designed to try to help business understand a bit more about their business. Really the main thing that we focus on is how much cash is in the business and what your bank account’s going to be at any point in the future. So we think that’s one of the most interesting or the more interesting parts of the business. You can get lots of insightful management reports but sometimes you just want to know, can I afford to pay for this and will there be enough cash at the end of the month to pay the salaries? That’s what we focus on at Float. Why is it important to have a forecast or a cash management system in place? Colin:              Yeah, I mean the story of where we got Float from is I used to have a web design agency, and we were always asking that question of, you know, is there going to be enough to do X or Y, and having to go back into a spreadsheet was a painful process because it was always out of date and we always felt well, hold on I can answer your question in a couple of hours when I’ve put in all the figures. So yeah, having a forecast is really … is definitely important but certainly it can be a bit of a pain to manage if you don’t have it updating automatically. Heather:        I know that spreadsheet pain. When did you start your business Colin? When did you start this business which is Float. Colin:              So Float … there was kind of an overlap period. We started as a side project while we were running the other business, so I think we started in about 2010. It was me and my co-founder. So he was working on it in his spare time. I had the idea, I had the spreadsheet and I said, “This is what I’m looking for,” and he thought it would take about three months. So four years later, we’re still working on it. It was a sort of gradual start but my co-founder came on board full time I think in around the beginning of 2011. Then I sold the web agency in the beginning of 2012. So we’ve probably had about just over two years being full time on Float. Heather:        Sensational. Did you come from a numbers background? Colin:              Not at all. I actually flunked my Maths A level exam. Heather:        You didn’t need to share that with us but it was interesting you said coming from a web design business into numbers which a … Colin:              No, absolutely. I guess where I came from was I was the one who was having to deal with the numbers. We were using spreadsheets to run our business and I thought our spreadsheet was pretty darn good. I’d worked on it quite hard and it did everything that it needed to do. It just took so long and we actually started using cloud accounting software. We used a package initially called Free Agent which is great for our really small business, also another Edinburgh company, and then we just realised that it was amazing to have a lot of that stuff automated all of a sudden and in the cloud. It took a lot of pressure off me but then it didn’t have the forecasting part that was really important to me, so we still had to use the spreadsheet for that. But yes, I wasn’t a numbers person naturally but I’d kind of come to this out of necessity. Then I found I kind of had a little bit of pleasure just about getting everything to match up to the penny but it probably took me a lot longer than it would for some other people. Yes, numbers weren’t my strong point. I had no background in accounting, and when we spoke to some accountants about forecasting and read about forecasting, it all seemed very complicated. We just thought, “Gosh, it’s got to be simpler than this.” Even some of the language, just clarifying, was a helpful starting point. Yes, so we really approached it from a non-accounting point view and then tried to get back to some of the corporate language from accounting as we’ve gone on. Heather:        That’s an interesting perspective to take it from certainly. I’m a great believer that everyone can get their numbers, so it’s exciting to hear someone coming from a different side but sort of coming to the numbers party. Where did you get the name Float from? Colin:              Good question. So what we really like … for me the concept of cash flow is like a wave, you know. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down and when we look at our cash flow graph, it is much more like a wave; we’d get high points in the month and then low points. It was always trying to make sure that the low points weren’t too low. So we sort of have this nautical theme, you know, riding the waves of cash flow and making sure you don’t sink and all this kind of thing. We explored a lot of nautical themes, thinking about life boats, binoculars so you’re looking out over the horizon and all that kind of thing. So we really like the nautical concept of now beginning your way through the business. Yeah, we’d also liked concepts that were about flow, so it was flow, flow, flow. Then we sort of thought, “Float, that works, you know.” Then somebody pointed out that there is also a concept of cash float in a business, you know, you’ve got enough cash in a till to get you started at the beginning of the day. So it all came together pretty nicely for us. Heather:        Serendipity. Colin:              Yeah, we’ve played with the few different variants but Float was the one that stuck. Heather:        So what are the waves off coast of Edinburgh? Colin:              Well, unfortunately they’re not great for surfing because it’s sheltered but if you go up to the north of Scotland, I think you’ve got some of the best waves in the world. But yeah, for the Edinburghers’, it’s not a great … you don’t get a lot of great waves unfortunately. Heather:        So you weren’t inspired by looking at your window and seeing the floating boats coming? Colin:              Well, I also grew up with the North Coast of Ireland, so I was quite used to being in the sea. Heather:        Yeah, I think it’s always good to have a name that has that connotation attached to it. Colin:              When we started off the business, we actually had a lot other parts in the graphics. It was a lot more fun and we’ve kind of grown up a bit but we had light houses and sharks and all those kinds of stuff. View the other Float logos here: http://blog.floatapp.com/2013/11/01/7-steps-to-our-new-logo.html Heather:        I went and had a look at those. Colin:              Did you? Yeah. Heather:        So if listeners are listening, go and have a look at floatapp.com blog. I think if you just do a search for logos, there’s a list of all different logos that you’ve got there. So you’re based in Edinburgh, what’s the internet connection like there? Colin:              Yes, it’s great actually. Scotland seems to have … they’ve really invested in that. We’ve just moved into a new building with a lot of other start-ups called CodeBase in Edinburgh. It’s right next to the Edinburgh castle. Heather:        Oh wow. Colin:              We’ve got a fibre line directly into the building and we get about one hundred megabytes up and down which is incredible. It really makes a big difference just having that consistency. Heather:        That’s amazing. That’s really good. So you’ve moved into Codebase, is that an incubator or a sharing spacing? Colin:              Yeah, so it was interesting, I actually spent a bit of time over in Boston and went to see some incubators there, one called Techstars. Came back to Edinburgh and just said, “Look guys, there’s no point all being on our own. If we were in together, there’d be a lot of synergy, a lot more sharing of knowledge.” Just at that time a building came up and about fifteen start-ups all decided to move into it together. We worked on it, we painted it, we stripped out the carpet. It was a really good experience for the local sort of start-up community. Heather:        Sounds like a reality TV show. Colin:              Yeah, it was. It was a really interesting time just sort of getting the work together and the community forming. That was about two years ago. Then from that building, once there was enough start-ups in that building, we realised we could do with more space and we found this other building which is obviously huge. So there was lots of room to expand. There are about 300 people in here now. Heather:        Oh my goodness. Colin:              Yeah, they’re all working on sort of technology start-ups and a lot of shared talks at lunch time. It’s really … if you’ve got a problem with something or other, we can go and ask somebody else who’s an expert from another company. It’s great, we really love being in here. Heather:        Sensational. So if someone is in the start-up innovation space and they’re visiting Edinburgh, should they pop down into Codebase? Colin:              Definitely, yeah. Heather:        Is that a sort of okay. There’s an open invitation, arrive at the door? Colin:              Yeah, come and see us. You can come and work in our office if you need a desk for an afternoon. Yeah, Codebase is great. It’s really helped Edinburgh and sort of set us up as one of the main start-up hubs in Scotland. It makes such a difference to your business having all these around. Heather:        No, it certainly does. I liaise with some of the ones locally to us and the people in there say that it moves them ahead so much faster than if they were at home doing it, which is interesting. It’s the ideas, I guess, and the connections that you’re making and the inspiration that you’re gathering. Sensational. Now, I have to ask, while this interview is taking place, the Glasgow Commonwealth Games are on at the moment, have you travelled across to them? Colin:              You know what, I haven’t. Heather:        You’ve got to go. You’ve got to go. Colin:              I watched the opening ceremony on TV. That was probably the main investment that I’ve given in my time to the Commonwealth Games. Not that I don’t enjoy it but it’s just been such a busy couple of weeks. Yeah, and apparently it’s quite difficult to get tickets. Edinburgh and Glasgow are … Heather:        Just go to the town. Enjoy it. Colin:              Yeah, there’s a bit of a rivalry between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Heather:        I know. Colin:              They’re about 40 minutes away. I think it’s always a sort of thing of which one should really be the capital city of Scotland. Maybe we’ll go over for a day just to soak up the vibe. Heather:        Soak it up. Colin:              Yeah. Heather:        I know that … I went to the Sydney Olympics Games which is slightly different but it was amazing. We just got the crappiest tickets to anything we could and we really, really enjoyed it but I digress. We enjoyed it and it created a lot of memories for us. It didn’t matter what it was, it was such a good vibe, and you can’t work all the time. Colin:              I will take your wisdom and put it in my diary. Heather:        Sensational. So Colin, late last year you received a significant investment of a £110,000 from Rob Dobson, the tech incubator. Now, Rob Dobson for the listeners, I hope I’m saying his name correctly, was the founder of a mobile phone software company. So with this investment; What insights do you have to share with our listeners who may be keen on attracting a significant investment into their business? What insights do you have to share to them about that? Colin:              That was a good time for us but it was also a very hard time because we’d been pitching for a while, probably about a year of trying to raise some funding. The first piece of advice was that we were probably initially pitching to the wrong audience. The investors that we were pitching to weren’t software based, that was not where they made their money. I think it’s difficult to always understand the software business if that’s not your background. So, when we spoke to Rob, it was a completely different kettle of fish. He really understood it, he really got the prospect, and having run a business himself he understood the pain points. So definitely aligning the investor with the story of your own business is really important and will save you a lot of time. The other thing would probably be making sure you tell a good story. Sometimes it’s easy to kind of play … I find you can play yourself down and certainly in the UK, we don’t like to brag. We can kind of say our … you know, “The business is okay and we’re doing all right.” Actually, you need to tell the story in a way that’s going to caught their imagination and make them want to be a part of the story. Yeah, I’m really thinking a lot … we’re actually going into another funding round pretty soon and just thinking about how do we tell the story? It is a great story, you know, it’s something we’ve put our lives into and we’ve got a real passion about. It’s all about telling that story and really painting the picture of the possibilities of the future. We want to grow a great company and think this product can be wide reaching and really make a difference in the lives of business owners. So yeah, it’s all about putting that compelling story together so that investor can get excited about it as well. What tips do you have about sharing your story? Do you work through a process of that? Do you work with someone to help you do that? Does it just come to you while you’re drinking? Colin:              Well, I think if you sit down and really think it through it terms of where did the idea come from, what really gets me excited about this, what’s my dream for this company, and you start really tapping into some of the bigger picture stuff first of all … especially for me, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details, you know, how you’re going to do something. Then that tends to become quite small picture, like we’re going to add this, we’re going to add this feature next month and then we’re going to hire one more member of staff, and then we’re … you’re thinking through a very specific plan whereas the story has to come from a much deeper place of the beginning of where the idea came from to the end of where you can go to. If that’s not an exciting enough story then it brings up a few questions as well. One thing I find helpful is actually asking other people, to say, “How do you perceive the story of Float? What are you seeing?” Then sometimes they’ll say, “Well, I think this is incredible that you guys manage to go for so long without raising any money,” or “I think, you know, what you’ve achieved with a small team is amazing.” Then you sort of think, “Oh yes, that’s a good point, I didn’t realise that.” So having other people feed back to you what they perceive the story will help you understand things that are actually true but you’re missing or you’ve neglected to include. Actually I had a breakfast with Rob yesterday and he was sort of saying, “I was getting prepared for this next funding rounds, here’s some of the ways that I see this, this product is innovative, the space is really hot right now and there’s all this activity happening, there’s more and more people moving into the market.” You know, just hearing him describe it makes you think, “Oh yeah, that’s true.” When you’re in it for four years, you sort of … it becomes you don’t get the same perspective, so having another perspective is really helpful. Heather:        Is Rob Scottish or is he American or is he something else? Colin:              Yes, he’s English. Heather:        Oh he’s English, okay. Colin:              So, unlike many good Englishmen, he’s moved to Edinburgh with his wife. There are so many people that I meet here who I ask them where they come and they say it was because of a woman or a man. So they moved up after he sold his business. You know there are some great schools up in Edinburgh and they have some family up here as well. They looked around and decided Edinburgh was the city. Yeah, it was good for us. Heather:        Sensational. So Rob Dobson has joined your firm as a director. Apart from the money and the investment, how has he impacted … how has he becoming a director impacted Float? Colin:              I’m a big fan of Rob because I think … we spoke to a few other investor and they all have very different agendas. Rob manages to walk the line very well between pushing us and not interfering too much, so it doesn’t ever feel like we’re working for him but he really provides us sort of mentoring and just a constant push, you know, because sometimes it’s easy to kind of not have that when you’re running the business if you don’t have a board set up. So Rob really just pushes us, he was pushing me the other day about how much money we want to raise, how fast we want to grow. It’s easy for me to think that the first step is about survival and the small picture, and he sort of lifts us out of that and says, “No, I think we can do more here. I think there’s more potential.” So Rob really brings a different perspective, especially because he’s been there before. He’s done it, he’s grown a business, he understands the process, and that gives him a lot of credibility in terms of if somebody else was saying that from he hasn’t been here before and done that, you don’t tend to listen to them the same way.  Yeah. Heather:        Absolutely, yes. It’s interesting because the newspaper headline that ‘a small tech has received a large amount of funding’, you sometimes think, “Oh, that’s going to be good,” or “That’s going to be bad.” So it’s always good to get your insights in finding that right person and you obviously have done that and it’s working out really well for your business. When these people do it, the passion, which is their baby, their small business, is taken in another direction and it’s kind of heart breaking. Colin:              I think that we looked at another investor at the same time as Rob and it was much … you can tell that the incentives were much different for the other investor because he was looking for board fees and consultancy fees. He was going to take a very active role. It’s a very different place when they’re seeing it as a monthly income, whereas Rob’s never taken anything from the business. He just really wants to see it succeed. Heather:        That’s sensational. I hope we don’t get an influx of people going and harassing Rob after this. He sounds like the greatest man in the world. Colin:              Yeah, he’s a good investor. I’ve definitely introduced a few people to him. He seems to manage to see everybody. He picks the ones that he likes but we need more people like Rob up here. Hopefully there are a few Edinburgh companies that are going to be having a few big exits soon. We’ve got a great company called SkyScanner here that are doing quite well, and everybody is hoping that they’re going to get their IPO away soon and make few people some money so they can go back and invest it into the start-ups here too. Heather:        Sensational. So your product, Float, integrates with Xero. What has your experience been as being a part of the Xero add on ecosystem? Colin:              Yeah, it’s been amazing really. When we started building Float for Free Agent, we felt Free Agent was the best piece of software out there. We felt that Xero was nice but it was a bit bland. At the time, there were roughly about the same number of users in the UK but what Xero managed to do in terms of growth over the last three or four years has just been incredible, and we realised that at some point we have to get this integration with Xero built. That actually took us about a year to do. So it was really a big investment of our time and resources to rethink how Float was going to work because there’s such a larger … Xero has a lot of larger companies. Free Agent is typically freelance … freelance one or two people businesses, so the volume of transactions is quite small. We moved to Xero. It was the big investment of our time but we really recognised that they were the ones that were leading the way. The degree I think about Xero is the support that they give to us and the encouragement and saying … that feeling of, “We’re going to help promote you. We want this to work, the add-ons Market page, the add-on support team. Yeah, everything has been really good there, and just a willingness to promote the add-on, that was really a step up for us. We probably saw about a ten times increase when we launched for Xero in terms of signups. It was a big step up for us. Heather:        Sensational. Did that affect your infrastructure then? Colin:              Yeah, it did actually because we launched it in September at Xerocon in London … Heather:        Oh, okay. Colin:              Last year and basically we soon realised that a lot of the larger companies weren’t able to … we weren’t able to get all the information displayed in time before the browser timed out, we were trying to load everything in at once. So we had to then take another couple of months to rebuild Float in order to allow for these much more significant companies, some turning over upwards of a million dollars a month. It was a big change for us, so we have to rethink the whole thing. In terms of hosting, we host it on the cloud and it’s really … that wasn’t such a big issue. We can scale that really easily now which is such an advantage for cloud businesses that were … you know, before we might have to have upgraded our servers and changed everything around, and now that’s really not been the problem. It’s more just been about how we build the software and how we handle the page load speeds and all that kind of stuff. So if Xero releases an update, say it releases an update next Sunday, do you have to do something in your backend or is that okay? It’s just goes with the flow? Colin:              Yeah, it’s fine. Nothing that Xero do on the actual Xero app should affect us because they have their API teams separately. It’s really only when they change something in the API that affects us. More often than not, the API is a little bit behind what the main office is doing, so we’ll only get access to certain data, you know, typically a couple of months later. There hasn’t been, touch wood, there hasn’t been problems yet in terms of Xero changing something, that we haven’t come across. Generally it has been changes for good so we get more and more information that we need. Because that’s always been the thing with cash flow forecasting is it requires a vast amount of data to achieve it. That’s always been the thing, trying to get that in the right place. Colin:              Yeah, there are a lot of transactions that we need … we actually forecast right down to the transaction level. So we’re building up a whole report based on your transactions. It’s not a report that we can just pull out of Xero. We have to only start from scratch and build out ourselves, so we put in a lot of information. As I said, that’s a challenge. I know you use Xero in your business; do you use any of the add-ons from the Xero eco space in your business? Colin:              Yeah, I’m a big fan of Receipt Bank. It’s something that … I met the guys a few times up in Edinburgh first actually. Didn’t really feel the need for a time, and I think I was chatting to Michael at Xerocon and just thought, “I’m going to give this a try,” and really haven’t looked back since then just in terms of processing all my expenses. Now, we’ve actually upgraded to the business version and we send our invoices as well. You know, it just saves me so much time. So we’re looking for a system … we’re looking for a complete system basically where we don’t have to have any much touch on the bookkeeping side of things. Receipt Bank is a big part of that and, you know, they’re improving all the time as well. Heather:        Yes, they’re definitely evolving. Was Michael wearing his kilt at Xerocon? Michael:         No, I haven’t seen that. Heather:        Haven’t you? Every time he wears the kilt, he wins a prize. That’s the theory. Colin:              Ah, I’ll have to bring my kilt over then to the Xerocon Australia. Heather:        Yes, you will. Oh my goodness, if you turn on a kilt, you definitely win a prize. Colin:              That’s it. Heather:        That’s the rule. Colin:              That’s the secret, okay. Heather:        Michael’s obviously not sharing that secret. Colin:              No, he hasn’t. Heather:        There are many photos of him in a kilt at Xerocon. Colin:              Okay. Yeah, so the other one we’ve been looking at is a new one that you probably won’t have heard of. It’s more in the UK but it’s called CreDec. What they do is they connect into … they set up a box payment system, so in Xero you can just mark all your bills as paid on a certain date and they’ll actually then set up a box run and it will just go automatically for you when you approve it. That’s quite a nice one to have when you go into your bank account and sort of do all the pay run and pay all the bills. Heather:        So it kind of creates a bank file does it and then extracts the income and pays … extracts the money and then pays it? Colin:              Yeah. Heather:        Okay, and what was the name of that again? Colin:              It’s called CreDec I think. Heather:        Okay, sensational. Colin:              They’re pretty new. They’re also Edinburgh based. I’m not sure if they’re just the UK at the moment but the concept of having that complete system is really great. Heather:        Yes, it is. I don’t recall them being … hearing of them in Australia but I’ll check and I’ll include them in the notes for show listeners. So, in your business, can you share with us any other useful tools you actually use in your business that other listeners may benefit from? Colin:              As a product business, we feel that customer support and feedback are absolutely crucial. So we use a product called Intercom to do that. It’s a relatively new product but it’s absolutely fantastic in terms of it lets us send automatic messages to users, it does all our internal communications with the users, and we can send out newsletters. It makes building newsletters really easy as well and it also uses our support system, so anybody can write to us from within the app and we can assign that to one of our team and everyone can track their responses as well. It’s kind a like Zendesk from that point of view but also MailChimp. Also it’s having the auto messages going on at fixed periods during the trial is a useful part of it as well. This can be in-app notifications that just pop up on the screen or they can be emails. It’s a great way just for us to say, “We pushed a new feature,” or “We’d love to get some feedback on this if you’re interested, get in touch,” that kind of thing. We really try to maintain a close relationship with our user and that’s a tool that I think is fantastic if you’re a product company. You’ve got a web based product. That’s one thing we use. We use Evernote quite a bit just to track all our documents and keep little notes of things rather than trying to have a complex filing system where you have to dig around for a lot of things. Evernote seems to work pretty well. We use an app called Trello to do our product management and bug tracking. Have you heard of that one? Heather:        Yes. Colin:              It’s like a sort of card based thing, you can drive them around. That kind a keeps us organised. Those are kind of the main ones. I’m always looking for new tools to bring us up to the weekly integrating but it can be a bit of overkill as well. Heather:        Yes, there can be and sometimes you have go and test one for a while to see whether it’s actually going to fit in with what you’re doing. You can see how it fits in for other people but the way you’re doing it, you either have to perhaps change your methods or sometimes they just fit right in. I have one last question for you Colin. Colin, what would you say to a 17 year old about to leave school who wants to be the next Colin Hewitt? He wants to found a tech space, he wants to found a tech company, he wants to attract funding, and he wants to live the dream?   Colin:              Wow, there are a couple of things. One is you need to discover what it is your passionate about and don’t try and fit yourself into some mould that isn’t you because that’s just not going to work. I think for me, I find … at 17, I would have said, you know, “Go to university if you can. Go and get some experience,” because I didn’t have a clue at 17 that I wanted to do a tech company. It was actually after university that I worked freelance for a bit and then came up with that concept. “Spend a little bit of time in America,” I think because there’s a really … there’s a real sort of positive can do attitude you can pick up over there which is actually where I get the courage and the idea to start my first company. Heather:        How old where you when you started your own company? Colin:              21, 22, and it was just that can do Californian attitude, people saying, “Yes, go for it, why not.” I kind of came back to went, “Yeah.” That’s the attitude. It’s always about the level of passion and energy that you can muster because there will be hard times and you have to kind of be able to ride those out. The other thing I think is for us ending up with Float was something we found because we worked in a business. I’d say that it’s an evolution. If you do something you love then it’s often within that process you’ll actually find a real problem that needs solving. That was the case for me but I think that often guys at 17, the apps that they come up with, the ideas that I’ve heard are all very much around something like you want to go out with your friends and you don’t know where they are so you want to be able to have an app that finds your friends. That’s just not … the chances of you solving that problem socially on a B-C level, is going to be really difficult. Whereas actually if you go and work in an industry, it’s much easier to solve a problem that there’s a niche of people that have rather than trying to be the next Twitter or Foursquare or something along this lines. So I think at 17, you’re going to perceive a very different view of the world. Building up experience and working with good people and sort of learning what you like and what you don’t like about the way other businesses run is a good principle but also not to get sucked in. One of the things I was tempted to do is just go and get a job straight out of university with a big software company. I kind a resisted that and I’m glad I did because I think you can get sucked in for a quite long period of time when you get comfortable, and then you don’t want to try anything new. So if you’re not feeling it, sometimes holding off and just taking some time is a good option rather than jumping in. Heather:        Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us here Colin today. We really appreciate it. It was really interesting. Colin:              Yeah, pleasure. Heather:        If people want to get in touch with you, they can go to your website at floatapp.com or they can go and knock on the door of CodeBase. You’ll be there with a cup of tea waiting for them. Colin:              Yeah. Heather:        Thank you so much. Colin:              No worries Heather. Good to chat. Mentions ·         Float website http://floatapp.com ·         Float logos http://blog.floatapp.com/2013/11/01/7-steps-to-our-new-logo.html ·         CodeBase http://www.thisiscodebase.com ·         Sky Scanner http://www.skyscanner.com ·         Receipt Bank http://www.receipt-bank.com ·         CreDec http://www.credec.com ·         Intercom https://www.intercom.io ·         Evernote https://evernote.com ·         Trello https://trello.com Contact Heather Smith http://www.heathersmithsmallbusiness.com/ https://twitter.com/HeatherSmithAU/ https://www.facebook.com/HeatherSmithAU   http://www.linkedin.com/in/heathersmithau