Preparation is the key to success (at least when cooking Chinese food)

The problem with working for yourself and at home is that there is a continual sense of guilt that you should be doing something else.  Remember when you were at college and you knew you had an essay to write but were at the pub or doing the food shop at low-cost, well it feels a little like that.

I’ve been in this position before, and I knew that as soon as we started the company, there would be an unspoken pressure that anything other than writing the software would be a bad use of time.  That’s all well and good, but this is a team of three people, and before we all start working with our heads down, we need to have a plan, and we need to make sure that we’re all working as effectively as we can.

In my last company, we never made those preparations, the product was being developed and we had to attempt to create a working structure and a plan as we went along.  Not this time.  This time we’ve created a “start” date; 1^st August 2010.  That’s the official, birthday of the new company.  All the time up until then is preparation, and all the preparation is about making sure the team of people will be as effective as possible from the start.  Here are some of the things we’ve been working on this week in preparation:

How we communicate with each other (see my other blog)

Setting up our hosting provider, security and systems

Choosing and setting up a CRM, mail etc 

Establishing a task list and priorities

Sourcing a logo designer (really time consuming)

Incorporation forms and banking services

Writing a new software framework (it’s called “Flow” and it’s cool)

I know that if we had tried to start building the software before we’d done these things, then all of them would have been really stressful because they would have felt like they were taking time away from the product. Equally, we know you can’t prepare forever, and we‘re all looking forward to when we do start the product proper.

Excitement levels: Rising