Diary of a software start-up. Day 19.

It’s the wife’s fault.

Ok, the first ‘down’ or ‘low’ of my start-up journey. Less than 3 weeks in and I’ve already failed to write a blog entry at least every week but, it’s not my fault. In fact, none of this is my fault. It’s not my fault that I am working again. It’s not my fault that I have spent the last few weeks building prototypes, writing business plans, investigating markets, pricing, APIs, competitors, calculating TAM, SAM, SOM and sooooo much more.

I am sure there will be more about all of these items in future diary entries but let’s focus on the question everyone is asking: Whose fault is it?

If you are a little slow on the uptake the sub-title gives rather a large hint but, let’s be clear. It’s my wife’s fault. It is ALL my wife’s fault.

Meet Suzie.

Before stopping work to raise our two children Suzie was a textiles and art teacher. When the children started school…

Wait: You may have seen a picture of our two children on the @ikooloo_com Twitter feed modelling ikooloo t-shirts. If not, FOLLOW NOW! I may even tweet a picture of a cute dog soon — doesn’t every start-up has to do that? What’s not to like?

… Suzie decided she wanted to go back to work. And so in 2013, rather than go back to teaching Suzie decided to start a real job and opened The Little Sewing Company.

I think it’s fair to say that Suzie very quickly discovered that opening and running a shop was not quite what she expected. Suzie loved teaching people how to sew, meeting new people and selling them fabric, haberdashery and everything else they needed on their sewing journey. Suzie’s passion for sewing and teaching shone through, the team grew to four and the “sweety shop for fabric” started to do pretty well.

But — Suzie did not like other aspects of running a small business including tracking deadlines, sending out newsletters to customers, dealing with social Media, selling online, trying to understand P&L statements, dealing with invoices, suppliers.. I could go on (and on and on) but I think you get the idea.

What made it worse was that due to ‘unbundling’ of business software in recent years the sheer amount and complexity of the software Suzie had to deal with on a day to day basis was pretty overwhelming. Suzie struggled to keep on top of everything which made deciding how and where to prioritise her and her staff’s time very difficult.

To be honest, Suzie didn’t phrase her problems exactly like this, it was more like…

****! ****! ****! What the **** am I doing? I HATE ******* COMPUTERS.

The **** were added for effect — As a real-life example of a ‘Suzie-ism’, whilst I am writing this, Suzie has just asked me whether I have Word on my little Google :)

But let’s get back to the point. Suzie was stuggling to keep track and found it difficult to answer questions such as: What are my competitors doing? How is our marketing going? How many new customers have we sold to today?Was today profitable?

I asked Suzie what was the one question she needed to answer to which she replied:

How is my business doing?

It dawned on me that Suzie didn’t ‘know’ her business. Suzie’s focus was (rightly) making sure her customers were happy, strike that — very happy and to know the business, to really know the business, Suzie and her team had to look in too many places which took time they didn’t have to produce answers that were out of date.

A typical male response.

I am a man. And, when a man (any man) is presented with a problem they want to fix it. I could fix this.

p.s. Suzie — if you are reading this please don’t get any ideas. I will not be putting up any shelves or doing any more DIY.

So, a couple of years ago I tried to fix it. I tried to find a piece of software that would help Suzie. I failed. I gave up looking. I felt less of a man.

A few months ago, whilst my brain was slowly turning to mush I thought I would look again. This problem I had to fix had been nagging away at me. I spoke to some other people who ran small and medium businesses. They had the same problem. Hmmmm…

I started looking again, properly. Maybe I just hadn’t been looking for the right thing or looking in the right place. HURRAH! It turns out I had been looking in the wrong place. I found something. HURRAH! turned to BOO! as I thought I had missed a whole suite of solutions to Suzie’s problem and my idea was useless. I would have to think of something else. Or would I?

I came closest when looking at Business Intelligence (BI)/Analytics solutions. At first glance, they looked like they would provide a solution. But the more I investigated the less convinced I became. Too technical. Too difficult. Too expensive (or more commonly all three). Worst of all, once I had set up some sample dashboards and showed them to Suzie they didn’t actually help. How many of you have sat in your weekly review meeting looking at graphs, dials and thought what the **** does that mean? I know I have and, whilst looking at the standard offerings, now Suzie was.

The available solutions caused more confusion and exacerbated the problem.

I could fix this. ikooloo was born. ikooloo will fix this.

ikooloo
verb

1. To help someone know about their business.
2. To use that knowledge to help someone grow their business.

ORIGIN: Hawaiian: ‘ike’ -> know; ‘ulu’ -> grow

ikooloo is mobile first.
ikooloo focuses on small data.
ikooloo provides meaningful information.
ikooloo is a business intelligence solution for small & medium business. ikooloo helps business owners and managers know and grow their business.
ikooloo is Small Business Intelligence.

ikooloo is my wife’s fault and I love her for it.

That’s it for now. Thank you for reading and please, please, please comment here or send me any comments good, bad or indifferent. I don’t write too much so would love to know what you think. In the next couple of blogs I plan to answer another couple of questions that people have asked me: ‘Are there any books around that can help me do this?’ and ‘How do you actually design a product?’ I’ll try to think of more catchy titles.