Today I found an article that really caught my attention. The article was written by Paul Graham, a startup-guru(?) who has been around for while, and pretty much knows what he’s talking about.
Anyhow, this article was called the 18 mistakes that kills a startup. So, since we’re a startup, I thought that I’d analyze his list a bit, to see how we’re doing.

• Single Founder
• Check. Last time I counted we were two at least.

• Bad Location
• No way. We’re located at the best possible location.

• Marginal Niche
• Not really, our potential is certainly not a ‘Marginal Niche’.

• Derivative Idea
• Our idea is great. It’s simple, and yet powerful. However, most importantly, I want our product. It’s something that I would use on a daily basis.

• Obstinacy
• I don’t think this will be a problem. We’re certainly flexible, but we still know what we want. Also, customer feedback is definitely something that will be used in the future to determine where we’re going with our products.

• Hiring Bad Programmers
• Not gonna happen. Alex is an awesome programmer, and he’ll code just about any language you can imagine, and he’ll do it good. It’s hard for me to imagine that he would hire a bad programmer.

• Choosing the Wrong Platform
• Not at all. No money will be wasted on expensive licenses. All the money will be placed right into the R&D-account.

• Slowness in Launching
• I don’t think this will be a problem either. We’re trying to launch our product as soon as we think it’s ready to be released. Sure, there will be some bugs, but if Microsoft can get away with like a billion bugs, I think our initial launch can get away with a couple as well.

• Launching Too Early
• Yeah. We’ll keep this in mind.

• Having No Specific User in Mind
• We know who our customers will be. And there will be plenty of them.

• Raising Too Little Money
• We just started, this is not really relevant right now. We have enough capital to start up.

• Spending Too Much
• Nope. We’re really conservative about this. No unnecessary expenses. We put all our money into R&D.

• Raising Too Much Money
• Nope.

• Poor Investor Management
• We’re the investors. I hope we can manage ourselves.

• Sacrificing Users to (Supposed) Profit
• No, both Alex and I are really customer-oriented. We’ll try to do our best to cater to our customers.

• Not Wanting to Get Your Hands Dirty
• Yeah, we admit it. Neither of us like to clean the toilet. Except for that, I don’t think there’s anything that we consider dirty. Alex is a programmer, I’m a business-guy with a background within computer-science. I think we have the field covered pretty well.

• Fights Between Founders
• Sure hope that’s not gonna happen. Alex’s been a good friend of mine for years, so I think I know him pretty well by now. We also share a similar vision regarding the future of the company.

• A Half-Hearted Effort
• Not so much.

Read the entire article at Paul Grahams’s homepage.

Ok we admit it, we love Open Source. Both Alex and I have been using Open Source-products for almost decade. I first installed Linux about 10 years ago, and have been a user ever since.

In this manner, I bring you the software of the day: RoundCube WebMail Project.

For a long time, I’ve been looking for a webmail that both looks good, is easy to set up, and have grown out of the alpha-status. RoundCube Webmail is the best looking and coolest webmail I’ve seen so far (check out these screenshots). RoundCube comes with Web 2.0 and AJAX support and the whole shebang. I particularly like the ability to drag you e-mails between different folders.

When I set up RoundCube for the first time, I was surprised how easy it was. You need a mySQL database as backend, and a webserver that supports PHP (I prefer Apache). If you have all of this running, the you just import the sql-file that comes with the package, and edit the config file, and you’re set. The entire installation takes less then 10 Minutes.

Even though the current release of RoundCube webmail is v0.1-beta2, it really runs fine. I’ve been using it for one of the companies I administrate now for about two months or so by now, and haven’t had any problem at all. I think this is the next big webmail, and I’m sure you will hear much about this project in the future.

I want to add a piece of advice to all of you guys before you run and install this software. Please use SSL for you webmail. If not, it’s really easy for other people to sniff your password and read your e-mail.

By the way, do I need to mention that RoundCube is our choice of WebMail for the company?

Today Alex and I are signing the Article of Organization-paper that is a required form to start up a company here in California. We chose LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) as our form of incorporation, since it gives us many benefits. One benefit is that the required administrative paperwork is less than other corporation forms. Another reason is that LLC (as the name implies), protects us as individuals from economical liabilities in case of something goes wrong, and we get sued. If that happens, the worst thing that can happen is that the company goes bankrupt.

For further information about forming an LLC, I’d recommend you to visit the Secretary of State in California. There you’ll find all the forms and information that you need to form an LLC.

Take care,
Viktor