Early stage funding for promising start-up firms appears is set to receive a boost with local and foreign venture capital (VC) investors
lining up investment plans as the economic recovery gains strength both in India and abroad.
Over 30 new VC funds have started putting money in start-ups across various sectors such as clean technology, micro finance, rural technology and genomics apart from conventional segments, a marked contrast to the bleak days of 2007-08 when the global financial crisis hit these investors hard.
The pace of economic recovery now coupled with factors such as higher investment returns and easier exit options have triggered off fresh interest among both domestic and foreign VC firms to invest in India. Amongst foreign VC (FVC) firms, funds such as Artiman Ventures, BAF Spectrum, ATEL Ventures, Blue Orchard, Mercatus Capital and Foundation Capital have already made the initial investments in Indian start-ups.
Newly-set domestic venture capital (VC) funds such as Aavishkaar Goodwell, Ambit Pragma, Axis Holdings, Rabo Equity and VC Hunt are also cutting deals across sectors, according to data maintained by private equity tracker- Venture Intelligence.
“The economic slump has not hit India as badly as it has impacted the West. Early-stage investing is a risky proposition in indecisive markets. This is where India scores well over other markets. Venture funds are seeing limited downside potential while investing in Indian start-ups,” said Harshal Shah, CEO, Reliance Technology Ventures.
VC firms invested $475 million over 92 deals in India during calendar 2009. In the quarter to December alone, VC firms logged 42 investments worth $265 million — significantly higher than that during the same period in 2008.
According to analysts, one of the main reasons for VC gathering pace in India is higher returns and easier exit options.
Most VC funds expect a return of 25-30% on their investments annually. VC funds that invested in listed companies — or had investments at the time of going public — exited these stocks at high prices
when markets were climbing in mid-2009.
Companies such as Gayatri Bio-organics, First Solutions, Excel Glasses, ESS DEE Aluminium. Punj Lloyd, Motilal Oswal Financial and Gujarat State Petronet have seen an exit of VCs from their shareholding scrolls. Companies such as Compulink Systems and Spanco and groups that recently came out with public offerings such as Pipavav Shipyard and Indiabulls Power still have VC holdings between 7% and 20%, according to ETIG’s database.
“The risk aversion attached to early stage investing during economic downturn has come off by a good measure. Once the start-up is validated, venture capital funds do not have any reservations to invest in them these days,” said Gaurav Saraf, director, Epiphany Ventures.
While domestic VC funds have it easy in respect of receiving licences, the majority of foreign VC funds are investing in India through the foreign direct investment (FDI) route. RBI is granting approvals to funds to exclusively invest in nine specified sectors (with tax pass-through benefits) namely IT, biotechnology, nanotechnology, poultry, dairy, biofuels, hotels and hospitality centres, seed research and chemical research & development.
Foreign funds would want to invest in India through the foreign venture captial route as it allows them an easy exit at the time of an IPO. Funds investing through the FDI route will have to hold on to their investments for one year after the listing,” said Pranay Bhatia, partner, Economic Laws Practice.
According to Mr Bhatia, foreign VC funds, at the time of exit, will have to adhere to the valuation guidelines if they are investing through the FDI route.
RBI’s valuation guidelines is not applicable to funds that come through the foreign VC route. Foreign funds investing in domestic venture funds (that are incorporated as trusts) will have to obtain approvals from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board. This is not needed in the case of funds investing through the FVC route.
The Create Yourself – Create Change film and tool kit is an interactive learning resource for teachers and young people. It was produced by a young social entrepreneur Shivani Mair from The Careers Surgery, in order to stimulate a passion and around ethical business. It captures the unique stories, challenges, triumphs and advice of five top young social entrepreneurs in the UK recognised by the governments Office of the Third Sector & UnLtd.
The real- life stories of Emma Speigler, Duane Melius, Lotty Cunningham, Ash Rahman and Laura Burgess (all aged 19 -27) all demonstrate that success can be found using unconventional methods and is a reminder of the amazing achievements young people can make when given a chance.
The Create Yourself tool kit is aimed at inspiring young people aged 14-25 and support the new GCSE social enterprise modules as well as empower the next generation.
To find out more and order your copies call The Careers Surgery team on 0845 519 1063 0845 519 1063 or email contact@creativecareerssurgery.com with Create DVD info /orders
Ksenia Oustiougiva, Founder & CEO, on lilipip.com We make animated videos about products, services, and concepts putting stories into a form that help them go where they need to go. Unlike traditional agencies, we make business fun and deliver projects with a predictable price and a guaranteed date. We advocate an Open-Source Creative approach with transparent pricing, processes, and direct links to the people we work with
By Mark A.R. Mitchell Small businesses face enough challenges in the pursuit of success, and those that operate a mobile office have it even tougher. Why make avoidable missteps? Here are 10 mistakes to avoid in the virtual and mobile worlds:
Failing to back up your data: This is a sure-fire way to destroy your business. It doesn’t seem to matter how often people like me say to back up your files–most people just don’t do it. But when you’re working in a mobile office setting or by yourself from home, you risk losing everything you’ve built if you lose your data.
Solution: Back up your data daily, using an external drive or an online service such as one of those discussed here.
Skimping on connectivity: Connectivity with your team and with your customers is your lifeblood. If you cut costs here, you’ll cut into your success.
Solution: Get the fastest broadband connection you can get–up and down.
Developing sloppy work habits: The virtual office is an office, even if you’re dressed in your bathrobe.
Solution: Keep focused and remember that you are doing real work. If you forget that, so will others.
Isolating yourself: Not having a brick-and-mortar office doesn’t mean you don’t need to interact with your clients and teammates in a traditional manner–at least occasionally.
Solution: Face time with others is important, not just to stay current with your clients but to keep yourself from going stir crazy. If you’re on the road for your company, you need to dock with the mother ship on occasion. It will help you remember why you’re doing this together. If you’re working from home, you need to get out and go to a professional conference or client meeting. You need to find ways to keep ideas coming in–and interacting with other people remains a powerful way to do that.
Working without an IT plan: In a virtual office, many people may come to the table with their own ideas about what information technologies they want to use. Some folks are Mac champions; others are PC lovers. Some love the BlackBerry; others the Palm Pre or iPhone. All this love, though, can lead to IT chaos.
Solution: If you’re the boss, you need an IT plan. Trying to run a virtual office with technologies that don’t work well together consumes time you could be devoting to doing real business. So set standards and expectations and be clear about why you’ve set them.
Micromanaging your virtual employees: One of the reasons people are drawn to a virtual office is flexibility. If you try to micromanage your employees’ time, you’ll run into difficulties.
Solution: In the mobile or virtual environment, you simply can’t keep an eye on what everyone is doing at every moment–so don’t even try. Mature mobile office workers–in contrast to immature slackers–will focus on getting the work done. They may do the work at 10 p.m., after a long day on a mountain bike, but they’ll get it done. If you expect their attendance at a meeting or on a call, make sure they know that, but don’t expect them to be at their desks working just because the clock says it’s 10 a.m.
Failing to manage your virtual employees: While micromanagement is a problem, the absence of active management is equally bad. If you set unclear expectations, or none at all, you (and everyone who works for you) are bound to be disappointed.
Solution: Focus your mobile and virtual employees on goals, deliverables and milestones. Encourage them to ask for help if and when they need it, but otherwise leave them alone to do the work you expect them to do. They’ll do it in the way that works best for them within the timeframe you’ve identified.
Insufficiently vetting your employees: You need to know that your virtual employees can get the job done in an environment that may have few, if any, of the traditional reminders that they’re at the office. How can you know this when you hire them?
Solution: A track record of working virtually helps, but in the absence of that you’ll have to go with your gut when you assess answers to questions like, "Why do you want to work in a nontraditional setting like this?" and "How do you structure your work life?" and "How do you deal with the competing demands of home while you’re in the office?" If you don’t vet your potential employees with due diligence, it’s going to be harder on you and your business in the long run.
Forgetting your boundaries: Traditional offices–even really hip ones with video games and foosball tables–are still bounded spaces. You leave home to go to them. But if you’re working from home, that boundary, like everything else, can be virtual.
Solution: You need to find a way to keep a healthy boundary between your work and home life. If you don’t, both will suffer. A door you can close at the end of the day is a wonderful thing.
Failing to enjoy the virtual office: Ultimately, a virtual or mobile office can be the office you’ve always dreamed of, so don’t miss the opportunity to enjoy it.
Solution: You have a unique opportunity to choose the tools and technologies you use to get your work done, and to shape and control the environment in which you work. If you don’t take advantage of that opportunity and build the world that works best for you, your employees, and your customers, you’ll miss out on one of the best aspects of working in the virtual office.
Mark A.R. Mitchell is an avid technology buff and reporter covering small-business products and the Consumer Electronics Show. He holds a master’s degree in English literature from Harvard and has worked with leading technology companies and research universities.
I can’t play poker, but I do enjoy watching it on TV. We’re in the middle of the 2009 World Series of Poker, an event that draws thousands of professional and amateur players to Las Vegas every year. The grand finale is the Main Event, a massive Texas Hold ’Em tournament with thousands of players and millions of dollars for the winner.
Tournament poker used to be the province of professionals. But starting a few years ago, a huge wave of amateurs has invaded the game. As a result, of the thousands of entrants into the Main Event, only a few hundred are real pros.
To my surprise, I’ve actually learned a lot about entrepreneurship from watching the World Series of Poker. But it shouldn’t be too surprising. Both rely on acting strategically under conditions of extreme uncertainty. And, in both, small changes in your odds of winning can have a big impact on the final outcome. In fact, I now routinely use the Main Event to help entrepreneurs cope with a frustrating paradox.
Why are some terrible entrepreneurs so successful?
Because the structural barriers to creating a high-tech startup have been lowered dramatically in the past few years, we’re experiencing a huge influx of entrepreneurs. This is a great thing. But it’s meant that there are an awful lot of startup stories floating around. When those stories take on the status of myths, they create tremendous confusion. Naturally, we want to emulate those that have been successful. But that’s not always a good idea.
In the World Series of Poker, no professional has won the Main Event in seven years. When you think about it, this is very surprising. Professional players are so much better than amateurs that they can make a living – in many cases, becoming very very rich – by exploiting the difference between their level of skill and the level of the people they play with. The best of the best win many tournaments each year. By any objective measure, they are much better players than the amateurs. Yet the Main Event has been won year in and year out by a complete unknown player. Some of those amateurs go on to become semi-pro players. But most have never won another tournament after their big win. Why?
The reason is that being a professional player shifts the odds of winning a given poker hand in the professional’s favor, just a little bit. Over the course of a year, a given pro will play thousands of poker hands, and so this shift in probabilities adds up to dramatic winnings. But on any given hand, they still have a significant probability of losing — even if their play is perfect.
Similarly, given enough amateurs in the field, the law of large numbers means that at least some of them will get lucky enough times to outperform even the best pros. That’s why I can say with some certainty that an amateur will win the Main Event this year, even though I have absolutely no idea which of the six thousand entrants it will be.
Entrepreneurship is similar. So much of what makes a startup successful is totally out of our control: the timing of the market, the behavior of competitors, the IPO or M&A window, underlying technology trends and, of course, the human factors of investors, co-founders and employees. Truly successful startup methodologies like customer development or the lean startup can only hope to increase our odds of success — they can’t guarantee it. The converse is also true: even entrepreneurs who do everything wrong sometimes get lucky and make a lot of money anyway. Some even do it repeatedly.
That’s why, for any tactic or strategy — no matter how hare-brained — you can find some “proof” that it works in some company somewhere. That’s what makes processing startup advice so hard. Just because someone has had a success doesn’t necessarily mean they understand why they were successful at all.
Which brings me to the second thing I’ve learned from the WSOP. It’s called a disciplined laydown. In poker, winning requires that your hand beats your opponents hand. The problem is that you don’t know what your opponent has. Amateur players often believe that their success depends on the quality of the cards they are dealt. Consequently, they fold their bad cards and wait for that one big hand to get their chips in with. Unfortunately, having a big hand doesn’t mean you’ll win — your opponent could have an even bigger hand. That’s why the most important skill in poker is not bluffing, counting cards, or computing the odds. It’s figuring out when you need to fold a big, big hand. Watching the pros do this on TV is amazing. Over time, they develop an uncanny instinct for knowing when they are beat, and not throwing more money after bad.
In fact, once you realize that this is the most important skill in poker, it becomes clear that when professional players bet, they are really probing for information. Everything is calculated to help them figure out if their opponent has one of those big hands that might beat them. Folding in those situations saves chips that can be used more profitably later in the tournament.
I think there’s some wisdom here for entrepreneurs, too. We get attached to our big ideas, but it’s those big visions that get us into trouble. Just because we’ve sunk a lot of time and energy into an idea doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good one. In fact, the main reason we need to get out of the building and validate our ideas is so that we can realize we’re beat before it’s too late and pivot. Once you have that insight, you realize that all of the work we’re doing in building an initial idea — from minimum viable product to split-testing to customer validation — is all designed, like the bets of a poker pro, to promote learning about where we stand.
And that provides another possibility for dealing with startup advice. Instead of making an exhaustive search for all the smartest, most successful people and copying them — learn to place small bets. Take any advice (including mine), and think it through for yourself. Do you understand the underlying principles? Can you see how it applies to your specific context? Can you tease apart the impact of luck? And, once you think you have some advice you might like to follow, try it out. Find a way to pilot it without betting your whole company. And then be prepared to fold if it’s not working. Each time, make sure you do a root cause analysis, and figure out what you learned.
And, if you find advice that seems to work, be ready to go all-in.
Let’s not forget that the Web 2.0 hype was not just about glossy logos and round cornered buttons; the added value of this new wave of websites is the social part and the huge potential to ‘make things together’. So here’s a roundup of the most popular and interesting services that offer us the opportunity to find or submit designs or ideas.
Need something designed? 99designs connects clients needing design work such as logo designs, business cards or web sites to a thriving community of39,698 talented designers.
A Spring is our voting system. When someone likes your portfolio or your uploads they can Spring it. Items that receive more Springs will receive more exposure.
For all those hungry entrepreneurs/CEOs of startups…
If you cant look at other entrepreneurs and learn – then don’t look at them. Jealousy (or self pity) will kill you in this business!
When you look at facebook and twitter, your imagination must run wild… you heart might say, I wish I could come up with an idea like that. Well here is the truth – don’t try and create something for the entire world – break it down. Remember the British – divide and conquer!
Companies like facebook were never created for the world – they tried to address a small, specific need – and it just happened to become big. And – NO – it didn’t happen overnight!
I see most entrepreneurs trying to sell the product before its fully functional or useful! Give it some time – its good to talk about it – but pls for gods sake don’t spam the networking sites, your friends and families mail boxes.
Don’t copy – After the success of FB and twitter, there came some 100 scripts which can the do the same – what’s the point? Its good to have a niche social networking site about cats or fashion or women in games or what not – but thinking that you can replicate the success of twitter and FB or MySpace is madness – you will end up like orkut – neither dead or alive!
Don’t burn yourself – if you are making a decent salary and working for someone –great – keep doing that until you really really have to quit! thinking that you can survive on the revenue from adsense is crazy talk!
Say yes to venture capitalists – money in all forms is good – if a VC is ready to fund you, I’d say take it! Don’t listen to people telling you about “how VCs will take the control away” that’s nonsense! Having that extra $ or Rupee in your pocket will only help you be a little bolder and experiment with you company/product. Remember, you want to stay alive in today’s business – keep reinventing your products/ideas.
Lastly – marry as many people as you can in your business, its good to have people who believe in you and can advise you in crappy times. You will need more than a couple of shoulders to cry on if you are an entrepreneur – that’s how this game is!
Don’t take on the world all at once, take once city/district/state/country at a time! My 2 cents!
A modestly sized office tucked in the leafy northern corner of Baltimore might seem an unlikely perch from which to crack into the big-bucks video-game industry, but that’s what Kalypso Media USA is setting out to do. Having opened its doors in June, the firm just launched its first title, a strategy game called Tropico 3.
For Deborah Tillett, a local game industry veteran, it’s partly a matter of practicing what she preaches. When not running the U.S. branch of Kalypso, she teaches a class in entrepreneurship at Towson University. There’s one point that she repeats to her students on a regular basis: During an economic downturn like this, there’s no place to go but up.
"This is the best time in the world to start something," says Tillett, the president of the German company’s new U.S. outpost. "You can’t get worse than zero."
As it happens, that’s also a premise that happens to match up with some of the action in the company’s new game, set in a fictional Caribbean island called "Tropico." In the title, released this month, players take on the role of a dictator guiding the tiny island’s limited resources and try to guide it to success, through the skillful management of business and social policies.
"El Presidente," the island’s ruler, can be benign or despotic according to a player’s whim. Players can decide whether to build factories or schools; farms can raise either food or profit-producing tobacco crops. The game’s ultimate goal is to build a country that is both profitable and filled with citizens who are well-fed and content.
It’s not very often, these days, that a new company tries to crack into the business of publishing video games. Talk to game developers and publishers and they typically relate the same headaches: Software development costs are through the roof, marketing costs are growing — and getting shelf space on retail stores is a constant struggle.
As a result of such factors, there’s been a major consolidation in the video-game industry over the years, with deep-pocketed publishers buying up smaller studios. What’s more, as part of that trend, big publishers are typically producing fewer games in the hopes of making stellar profits off the breakout hits that sell millions.
Start-ups like Kalypso, however, hope that running against the grain gives them an advantage. Tillett cites the success of an independent company called Her Interactive, which found its fortune by making games based off of the Nancy Drew series of mysteries.
Her Interactive was launched at a time, a little over a decade ago, when publishers were convinced that games aimed at girls wouldn’t sell, so the game studio offered its first title for sale on Amazon.com. Since that time, the company has sold 7 million copies of its Nancy Drew games, which regularly break onto the industry’s bestseller lists.
"Oftentimes it’s the smaller companies that take the risks," Megan Gaiser, the company’s founder, who grew up in Bethesda and turned to the games industry after a career as an editor and producer of documentary films. "The bigger companies are going to stick with what works."
As the name would imply, Kalypso’s Tropico 3 is itself the third instalment of a series, but the firm did not make or publish the game’s previous versions. Take-Two Interactive, a company famous for the very lucrative Grand Theft Auto games, sold Kalypso the rights.
Take-Two is a huge company that wouldn’t be able to make enough profit for a new Tropico game to be worthwhile, Tillett said. Previous versions of Tropico sold hundreds of thousands of copies; while that’s a respectable following by many measurements, it’s a pittance compared with many millions of unit sales for every new "GTA" game.
Basically, it’s just another lesson that could be taken from one of her business classes. "Bigger companies can’t afford to do what we’re doing and thus are missing part of the market," she said.
Kalypso intends to put out about 10 game products a year, said Simon Hellwig, one of the German founders of Kalypso. Many of those will be games designed by independent studios in Europe that couldn’t otherwise get distribution on the shelves of retail stores in the United States. Tropico 3 was developed by a software team in Bulgaria, under contract with Kalypso.
Hellwig admitted that the company had originally looked in places such as the West Coast when looking to open up shop in this country, but it ultimately decided to give Tillett the job, based on her experience with Baltimore-area companies such as Breakaway Games, a firm best-known for making simulation software used for training military personnel and emergency responders. "To us, it’s more or less equal where the office is, if we have the right people."
As for Tropico 3, the early reviews have been generally positive. At Metacritic.com, a Web site that aggregates reviews written on sites across the Web and distills each down to a number score, the game has gotten an average review of 83 out of 100.
Priced at $40, or a little bit less than the $60 price tag attached to most new games, the title went on sale last week and is available online and in game and electronics stores. Although the game has only been on sale a few days, it is already — by one recent check — at the number-two spot at Amazon.com, in the category of PC strategy games.
An excellent article by Maya on her Blog – “Money is on my mind a lot these days. It is the first time in years that I am not bringing a pay check home. We are paying our bills, thanks to my husband having a job, but I never imagined I’d ever go this long without contributing to the family income (or cash-flow) …” Read more here – Are you rich but unhappy? Or poor and happy Or something else?
An excellent article by Sarah Lacy on business week the prime suspects responsible for the Valley’s nagging aversion to risk. Here is an excerpt
“I was recently at a Silicon Valley conference where one of the debates that raged into the wee hours centered on Silicon Valley’s increasing aversion to risk: Is it a good thing, and who’s to blame for it?
Less risk-taking by entrepreneurs means less outright failure. A lot of burned startup founders and investors see this as a plus. But any macroeconomist will tell you it’s the rare home runs—successful, innovative companies yielding high returns—that create jobs and capital that keep the Valley humming.”
We’ve all heard this advice before. It’s great advice, though not many people truly take it to heart.
But sometimes doing what you love isn’t enough to keep you going. Inspiration, passion, and motivation are difficult things to hold on to. They always seem to slip away right when you need them most.
You know that feeling. Where you’re that close to finishing a project, or achieving a goal, or crossing a task off your to-do list … but you just can’t muster the energy. You’ve lost interest. You’re exhausted. Drained. And you don’t know why.
That’s burnout. It’s something many of us are all too familiar with. I’d like to share with you a few ways that I fight burnout – or prevent it from catching me in the first place.
1. Achieve in increments. When you only focus on a big goal someday, it’s easy to get burned out by the daily grind. It’s like driving toward a mountain in the distance. You can drive for hours, but the mountain doesn’t seem to get any closer. And spinning your wheels gets real tiring real fast.
The solution is to give yourself a way to measure and record every little step forward you take. Here’s how:
Get a journal, notebook, or calendar. Writing things down is important.
Identify milestones on the road towards your goal.If you’re writing a book, you could treat each chapter as one milestone. Or, even better, treat each 500 words or 1000 words as a milestone.
If milestones aren’t obvious, create them. For example, if you’re training for a marathon, hold yourself to a progression of distance. If you start out running at your maximum distance, you’ll plateau very quickly. Instead, start at a shorter distance – even if it’s very easy for you – then work your way up slowly.
Track milestones in a simple, visual format. Think of the progress bar on a download. One glance tells you exactly how much progress has been made. The format you choose doesn’t need to be detailed or comprehensive. It just needs to show that you’re moving forward day by day.
Learn to appreciate the little accomplishments. Let yourself enjoy the feeling of getting things done. 2. Train your muse. One of the biggest myths about inspiration that it’s random. One day you’re inspired and motivated, the next day you’re burned out – and there’s no way around it. Or so they say.
In fact, inspiration is just like any other skill. It may start out as unreliable, but it can be trained and developed into something you can rely on.
So how do you train your muse? The best way I’ve found is immersion. Surround yourself with things that inspire you and reflect your goals. Great composers listen to music. Great authors read voraciously. Great marketers attend seminars. Great productivity-ists subscribe to Zen Habits. And so on. Immersion trains your mind to work efficiently in the ways you need it to.
The more that your inspiration becomes a part of your life, the less likely it is to run out when you need it most. With that in mind, be creative. What ways can you connect with your inspiration on a daily basis?
3. Work less. Cut down on the amount of energy and time you spend working. If you have sick days or vacation days left, take advantage of them. Or, if you’re self-employed, force yourself to work fewer hours each day – even if that means turning down new projects.
Working less doesn’t mean you have to slack off or get less done. It does mean that you:
Eliminate unnecessary tasks.
Take strategic breaks.
Stop multi-tasking.
Seek help from other people.
4. Define success realistically. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having big dreams and big ambitions. But if you’re constantly frustrated by a lack of progress, it might be time to take a step back and examine your goals. Are they achievable? Are you holding yourself to a reasonable timeline?
Here’s a good way to do this. Get a piece of paper and write down your big, ambitious goal. Then write down at least 10 specific, concrete steps that will allow you to achieve that goal. Be as detailed as possible. If you can’t come up with a series of down-to-earth steps to get you from here to your dream, that’s a sign that you need to either redefine your goals or rethink the way you’re pursuing those goals.
5. Get more sleep. You’ve heard this before, I know. So have I. But that didn’t stop me from going against my better judgment and tiring myself out by staying up late to work. Getting enough sleep takes a conscious decision – and, just like any good habit, takes time to develop.
One of the biggest barriers for me in this area is procrastination. I have a tendency to put things off throughout the day, then stay up later as a result. What’s keeping you from getting the rest you need?
6. Take it slow(er). The world tells us to rush things: “Get there faster. Make money quicker. Retire sooner.” And while these things aren’t necessarily bad, they can easily get us in over our heads. If you’re feeling burned out and overwhelmed, it’s time to slow down.
A few ways to take yourself out of 24/7 high gear:
Spend at least 10 minutes a day in a quiet place, away from distractions. Breathe.
Put together a playlist of slow, relaxing music. Listen to it whenever you start feeling frazzled.
Take a butcher knife to your to-do list. Set a limit to the number of tasks you take on each day and stick to it.
Extend your deadlines. Do you absolutely, positively have to get this done now? Just remember – this isn’t an excuse to procrastinate.
7. Get a second opinion. It’s hard to spot burnout from the inside. Your close friends and family are likely to identify the signs of burnout long before you do. So listen to what they’re saying. The next time your spouse, parent, or best friend tells you you’re working too hard, take it seriously.
8. Set clear boundaries. Burnout happens when we allow work to overflow its boundaries and interfere with every other part of our lives. So set strong boundaries. The clearer the better. In writing, if possible.
For example, instead of saying: “I’ll spend at three hours every night with my family,” make it clearer: “I won’t work after 8 o’clock. That’s 100% family time.” Clear boundaries are easier to stick to and harder to rationalize away.
Once you’ve set up your boundaries, make them public. Let your family know that you’ve set aside time just for them. They’ll hold you accountable to your promises. Let your clients know that you’ll be unavailable during certain hours. This will reduce the temptation to fudge on your boundaries.
9. When you’re working, focus. I’ve found that concentrating on work is actually less exhausting than allowing yourself to be wishy-washy about it. When you decide that it’s time to work, buckle down, eliminate distractions, and do it wholeheartedly. There’s something amazingly refreshing about pure, sharp focus.
10. Create outlets. If you’re a person of diverse interests (and really, who isn’t?), it’s likely that you have several very different goals and ideas bouncing around in your head at any given time. These ideas need outlets. If you hold them inside, they’ll eventually start interfering with your focus and creating unnecessary frustration, leading to burnout.
In other words, I think it’s okay – healthy, even – to start a few side projects as outlets for creative energy. Just make sure that you keep your priorities straight and your side projects fun. If these side projects become sources of stress, cut them out immediately.
11. Know when to power through it. This is going to sound out of place given what I’ve said above, but it’s powerful – if applied correctly. Sometimes the solution for burnout is just to power through it. Sometimes burnout can be an illusion. In these cases, the best choice is to refuse to use burnout as an excuse, ignore the fact that you feel burned out, and just work through it. It’s like a runner gaining her second wind and coming out stronger on the other side.
However, just as an experienced athlete knows when to push through the pain and when to pull back, you’ll need to be very careful how you take this particular piece of advice. Until you develop a keen awareness of your own tendencies, it’s usually better to err on the side of caution and pull back when you start feeling burned out.
12. Never accept defeat. Burnout is an obstacle like any other. It can hold you back for a while, but it’s not the end of the world – unless you let it defeat you.
If you have a great goal in mind, don’t give up on it, no matter how apathetic, exhausted, or frustrated you might feel. If everything I’ve said up until this point fails, do this: hold on to your dream – even if it doesn’t feel like much of a dream at the moment. Hold on to it anyway. That way, when the storm clears, your dream will still be intact, ready for another try.
When you make the decision to go out on your own, you are faced with many choices. Should you work from home or rent a space? Bill hourly or by the job? What kind of hours should you assign as ‘work time’?
Amidst all those decisions that have to be made, you also have to choose what tools you’re going to use to actually do your job. And the web is both a blessing and a curse in this regard. It’s a blessing in that it gives you a plethora of choices for the different categories of applications. But it can be a curse because there are so many good options to choose from.
What’s a poor, green-behind-the-ears freelancer to do? Well, you can start by letting us whittle down the list a little for you. Separate some of the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. You’ll still have find which of the tools below best fit your needs and style, but this is the right place to start.
We’ve broken down the apps into larger categories, highlighted the best or most interesting in each category, and included the best of the rest. Click away — each image will take you to the app listed. Enjoy!
Invoicing and Time Tracking
First things first — you need to get paid. And so you need to bill your customers. And if you bill by the hour, you need to track your time. Whether it’s sending professional looking invoices or easily tracking your hours, these apps are the best available and a pleasure to use.
A beautifully designed application that focuses on simplicity, the Invoice Machine is one of the nicer invoicing tools available. A professional looking invoice says a lot to your client — Invoice Machine can help complete a great impression.
Once you start getting paid, you have to do something with the money. Taking care of the finances — bookkeeping, accounting, taxes included — is probably one of the least enjoyed aspects of working for yourself. But it has to be done, so you’re best off finding a tool that makes these tasks easy and efficient.
One of the more refreshing apps to come along recently, Mint was changing the way people were able to manage their finances. With their recent sale to Intuit — makers of Quicken — there has been a bit of a backlash and a lot of people deleting their accounts.
Regardless, Mint is still one of the nicest tools to keep on top of your finances.
Once you’ve gotten the business side of things out of the way, you need to manage the actual work. Projects, recurring tasks, and sharing tasks are all part of the life of a freelancer. Whether you’re looking for a full fledged project management tool or a simple way to track your own work, there are many tools available.
Use any of these top applications to stay on top of what you do.
Despite a lot of other sites copying their style, 37signals still lead the way in the project management space. Basecamp is simply the best application to manage your work. With a focus on simplicity and communication, it’s an enjoyable tool to use.
Ad with so many other web based applications integrating with Basecamp, it doesn’t appear that it’ll be knocked off its perch anytime soon.
After you spend the time figuring out what needs to get done — and start doing — the result will in many cases involve files to manage or share. Some of the project management tools above include file management and online storage. But many do not.
Not to worry though. There are lots of options for storing, sharing and backing up your data. Here’s some tools focused on this essential aspect of your business.
I’ve talked here recently about Dropbox and I have to confess — this is one of my favourite tools. It has been a great boon to my business and makes collaboration a cinch. Add the peace of mind with its file revisions and tight integration with the operating system and it simply fades into the background.
Actually, for a web tool, it feels like a part of your operating system. This still amazes me.
One other vital aspect to your business is keeping track of customers. Tracking interactions, leads, tasks, meetings and follow-up’s is needed to make sure that your revenue streams are always flowing.
Still in beta, Gist is still working out the kinks. But for those who like to get the big picture, this is a tool with a lot of promise. How does it work? It takes your interactions with others from Twitter, Facebook, your email and others and analyzes who you talk to. It then tracks the online activity of those people and ranks the updates based on their importance to you.
This is a simplified overview — sign up to check it out for yourself. It’s probably not for everyone, but it is an interesting way for busy freelancers to stay on top of the people they depend on.
Anyone who has spent some time as a remote web worker knows that paying attention to your social life is important. When you don’t go to an office and interact face to face with other adults every day, you are exposed to the dangers of isolation.
Now, the tools below are not going to replace the physical interaction we all require, but they can help fill in for the banter that you’d participate in at a more traditional workspace. Whether keeping in touch with coworkers and partners or general internet friends, the apps listed here can help you feel in touch with the outside world.
When Twitter first came on the scene, there sure seemed to be a lot of people saying they ‘didn’t get it’ or that it was a waste of time. A couple of years later and it seems that those people aren’t around anymore. Or they’re keeping quiet. Or they’re busy tweeting.
Twitter is the de facto standard for communicating online now.
Many web workers dislike using the phone, but there are going to be those times when email or IM just don’t cut it. Make sure you give your customers and/or teammates another avenue of getting your time and attention.
The following tools are aimed at mobility with flexibility.
People all over the world use Skype as their primary means of communicating. With instant messaging and voice services, including voicemail, huge long distance charges seem like a thing of the past century.
If the controversy and ownership of Skype’s technology ends well, this service will continue to be a mainstay in online business.
From many freelancers, in order to keep the work coming in, you need to be able to show potential customers who you are and what you’ve done. There are many web applications that now focus on this genre.
A newer entrant in this category, Raveal shows a lot of promise. It’s intended to mix both your portfolio and resume into one entity. It’s an interesting approach.
If you are going to interact with your clients via Twitter, than cotweet is a service that may be of interest. It makes managing a business account a little easier with support for dual accounts, assignment of tweets, and robust notifications.
I can’t play poker, but I do enjoy watching it on TV. We’re in the middle of the 2009 World Series of Poker, an event that draws thousands of professional and amateur players to Las Vegas every year. The grand finale is the Main Event, a massive Texas Hold ’Em tournament with thousands of players and millions of dollars for the winner.
A modestly sized office tucked in the leafy northern corner of Baltimore might seem an unlikely perch from which to crack into the big-bucks video-game industry, but that’s what Kalypso Media USA is setting out to do. Having opened its doors in June, the firm just launched its first title, a strategy game called Tropico 3.
“Do what you love.”
