Business Cycles

It's interesting, we've had a few cycles where the workload and the pipeline seem to be exploding, only have the world slacken off again.  One of the problems with cashflow is that the issue of being very busy doesn't really correlate with the money coming into the company.

The interesting thing at the moment, is that if we had the $14K we were owed, then that would have been enough to bridge us through the busy period of doing stuff, before the next spurt of new business comes in.  April, business wise, is looking a bit insane.  We closed what could turn out to be our biggest and arguably most important deal yesterday,  This was followed up by a call with one of our early customers who are a) happy and b) want to work with us on some other deals with $GLOBAL_BRAND which we're going to work out some concepts for.

All in all it's been a pretty busy few weeks, and it's not slacking.  The main thing, as my ever cheerful VP Marketing said, is to avoid us going personal bankrupt while we wait for the money to arrive :)

Ringing the bell

I've worked in sales, for one form or another, for the majority of my adult life.  When I realized that I honestly didn't have the temperament to be an engineer and that, frankly, it doesn't pay all that well, I moved into something that did.

I've worked in a lot of environments over the years, including some fairly aggressive ones, but there are some things that are traditional which are part of the experience of working in selling.  While selling can pay well, it is also extremely hard work.  If you work in anything which requires cold calling, then you're really doing something I wouldn't recommend to anybody - cold calling people sucks.

But, the flipside is closing the deal, getting the contract is an amazing feeling which is why in a lot of sales environments you have a bunch of little traditions that go along with it.  In some it'll be a ringing a bell, or having deal closers get a round of impromptu applause.  In large organizations they'll have the President's Circle where the top performers are taken to a top resort and treated to a holiday with their spouses.

Being in a start up is a little weird.  You live and die by your sales...  literally.  But you're also a small team who are pretty familiar with everything that you're doing.  When that is the case, the traditions tend to get lost and you don't really have the money nor the ability to make up new ones.  I do miss that.

We don't have a bell to ring.  We can't practically go to the pub on the last Friday of the month and have a drink.  It can be very lonely.

But we've had a good week - we just had some more good news.  We are starting to roll.

Running a start up is a lot like a roller coaster ride.  There are a lot of ups and downs.  Things are trending up at the moment.  So, just for now, I'm going to ring the bell, take the bow, buy a drink for the team and wait for the next hump!