For those looking for enclosed, more private space – we have cubicles available for rent at our corporate office center.

For sound engineers, we have a studio setup with a Pro Tools system and enclosed sound chamber for solo artists and voice-over recording.

Please, visit the contact page and shoot us a message with your interest, or e-mail us at sanmcoworking@gmail.com so we can add you to our mailing list with all the updates.

We are to looking to launch at the beginning of the new year. Prices will stay affordable and all inclusive.

Start-Ups: We would love to get involved and help you set up shop at SANM! Please, give us a call and lets chat.

Cheers!

Their cash flow based on its statements of others. All three statements bind together.

The first section of the cash flow statement is cash flow from operations. Cash flow from operating activities shows that the money coming into or leaving your company on the basis of your operations.

The first line of your cash flow is operating income after taxes and interest, but before dividends. The second line should depreciation, which has fallen on your incomeStatement.

After these two lines should contain the changes (save the patrimony of property, plant and equipment), followed by changes that occur in your liabilities from period to period in a row – these two elements of the budget and can be broken by on-line second as shown in the balance sheet.

The equation in order to have cash flows from operating activities are as follows:

Cash flow from operating activities = Net income + depreciation – Changes in the activities of + changeDebts

Think about how your money is coming into your company: If you increase the value of your assets, less money. For example, if your objections have been raised, you have to wait to cash generated from revenue it receives, but do not have the money for.

On the liability side, if you were able to hold off paying the suppliers for a long time, then he would get more money in your bank account.

The next section of the financial statementsis the cash flow from investing activities. In general, this is the amount that you invest in property, plant and equipment. This section should include investments in subsidiaries or other areas of the capital market. If you sold one of these, it would appear here.

The next section of the cash flow from financing activities. The financing includes equity investments, loans and other debts, buy back any shares, and unpaid dividends.

To get the cash flow for the same period of time, you need the moneyflow from operations, subtract the cash flow from investing activities, and add the cash flow from financing activities. Some experts subjected to a negative number in the cash flow from investing activities, and is, therefore, add together all three parties for the cash (or lose) for the current period.

Add the money for the current period to the money generated at the beginning of the period to get the money at the end of the period. This number will be inserted in the line of cash budgetStatement.

I set an example of statements that show how all representations are held together included. Visit my blog, CFO Yourself, download the sample Excel spreadsheet. Please note that the money is going down, even if sales go up. This is because, in this example, the debt is paid faster than the company generated revenues. Basically, earlier this year, this enterprise, which requires a share of equity.

Do yourself a favor and read this absolutely fascinating article. It’s not denying a free coke to employees that creates an exodus of employees (though offering the coke for 50 cents just makes you look cheap and petty); it’s the perceived lack of respect.

Difference between cost of free coke and .50 cent coke: Very little.

Difference in perceived respect: Very large.

Sun Tzu advised treating personnel like your beloved sons. He also explicitly counseled against spoiling them, but that’s not the point here: the point is treating them with respect. Respect, let it be said, is always personal; perceived lack of respect is, therefore, always taken personally.

I mention this because some seem inclined to draw the lesson that start-ups need to become depersonalized (and therefore, impersonal) to succeed as large organizations. This is an unrealistic expectation. When an employee believes he or she is being disrespected, the type of organization or the history of that organization doesn’t matter; it will be taken personally.

What’s fascinating is that “the free soda issue” seems to be the defining signal of negative change in a small to mid-sized company over and over again. After all, it’s something immediately visible; it affects everyone; and it is universally regarded as petty.

Some may read this and object: but wait! It’s not petty. It’s costing the company money. It’s a perk. This, however, ignores a subtle point.

Why do employees drink cola in copious amounts? This is because they are working longer than 9-to-5 and require extra caffeine to function at a high level. Free cola is seen as a business expense for the men and women investing “sweat capital” into an organization. Charging for it is seen as a sign that management has no idea of what sweat capital is, what role it plays in a business, or why it’s important.

That’s why those seeking a high level of satisfaction in their work look first at the sign on the coke machine – and second, for the nearest exit.

In this article I will cover one special “feature” of the unix variant of CQ, which is the start script “serverctl”; its job is to perform the start and stop of the CQ java process. For Windows there is the server.bat version, which is kind of straight forward. The serverctl script is more complex and historically grown. I try to explain the basics of the CQ process handling, the handling of the java arguments and will show some ways to cope with the open-files problem. If you use CQ without the prepackaged CQSE, you don’t use this script, therefor this posting may not be interesting to you.

The first half of the script has actually no influence on the whole process handling, it is just preseeding parameters and parses the command line arguments. At about line 350 the interesting things start. In the default the CQ process is starting in the background; this start is triggered by the psmon process (actually the script starts a new incarnation of itself with the additional parameter “psmon”; in the process table it is visible with this “psmon” parameter, so I will just call it “psmon-process”).

This process performs the following important things:

• Register a trap: when the TERM-signal is received it will remove the PID-files of its own process and the PID file of the Java process.
• Start the terminator process (again a new instance of the process with the “terminator” parameter”) and attach its stdout filedescriptor to the stdin of the bgstart-process (same procedure here). This actually happens in a endless loop.

The terminator process is actually the another instance of the script. It also registers a trap (reacting on some signals). The main action in this trap-handler is that the string “QUIT” is written to stdout.

The bgstart process is another serverctl-instance, which creates the cq.pid file with its own PID and then replaces itself completly by the final java process. Because the stdout filehandle of the terminator process is connected to the stdin-process of the bgstart process, it is inherited to the java process; so the terminator-process writes its “QUIT” to the stdin of the Java process!

Ok, the startup is quite clear now, so why the hell do we actually need 3 processes, 2 shell scripts and the java process? Well, let’s consider how the whole thing is shut down properly (and killing the Java process is not a good option).

The whole thing starts with the “stop” option (about line 570). First the TERM-signal is sent to the psmon-process, which then removes its own PID file and the cq.pid file of the java process. Then the TERM-signal is sent to the terminator process, which writes the “QUIT” string to the java process. This string obviously tells the servlet engine to start a shutdown. Then the stop process waits up to 20 second and checks if the cq.pid file vanishes. If after these 20 seconds the process is still there, it sends a TERM-signal to the java process (and assumes that this will do the rest and bring it down). But killing the java process isn’t really the friendly way, because the process will terminate immediately, leaving the shutdown process unfinished and the whole CQ/CRX in a inconsistent way. During next startup CRX will usually complain about a unclear shutdown; in most times you need to remove .lock files first before it really starts up properly.

Ok, finally the individual jobs of each process:

• psmon: Restart in case of crashes
• terminator: When issued, write “QUIT” to the java process
• java process: actually do the work.

And for now a few tips:

Especially for large instances 20 seconds are often not enough to properly shutdown the whole CQ system. You want to increase this time when your system does not properly startup because either CRX performs some repair actions on startup; or it just refuses to startup because some .lock files are present. Then change the number in line 591 to something like this (I replaced the value 20 seconds by 300):

COUNTER=0
while [ -f "$CQ_LOGDIR/cq.pid" ] && [ $COUNTER -lt 300 ]; do
  printf "."
  COUNTER=`expr $COUNTER + 1`
  sleep 1
done

This causes the script to wait up to 5 minutes, which should be enough for every CQ to shutdown. But if there are other problems, you have to wait 5 minutes until finally the kill happens.

When the java process was actually killed, it often leaves back some files in an inconsistent state. To stabilize the restart behaviour you may decide that you don’t want CQ to complain and stop during the regular startup; you just want CQ back in action asap and immediately start the recovery. You can add then the following lines to line 476 (before the “info” statement):

# remove all .lock files of a CQ crash/process kill
find $CQ_CONTEXT -name ".lock" | while read LOCKNAME; do
  warn "remove stale lock file $LOCKNAME"
  rm $LOCKNAME
done

Do this on your own risk, because you will never get to know if lockfiles have been left until you see CQ rebuilding its search and/or index files. But, a simple restart will your system bring back up (besides the case, when a crash killed things which cannot be recovered). With this proposed solution you have some data in the startup.log file, if (and which) stale lock files have been removed.

Another problem which often arises, is the number of open files. CQ5 and CRX as repository usually have many files open, a default installation has about 300 open files immediately after startup. If the number of requests increases and your repository grows, this number will grow too. At some point you will need to increase the maximum number of open files (in Unix speak: the value of ulimit -n).
By default this value is set to 1024 (CQ 5.2 and 5.2.1) by the serverctl script (until it is overriden by the value of CQ_MAX_OPEN_FILES in the start.sh wrapper script). Increasing this value by adjusting /etc/security/limits.conf (Redhat/Fedora) or via any other OS-preferred way does not help, the serverctl script always overrides this value. Applying this patch will fix this behaviour (to my readers from within Day: already reported in Bugzilla). A small patch for the “serverctl status” command will also print the configured value plus the current number of open files for the CQ process (also in Bugzilla).

A good manager needs to spend more time with her/his team rather than his boss or peers. I have seen many middle managers working long hours behind closed doors to prepare weekly reports for their managers and cut themselves from day to day operations. These folks rely on high level and brief interactions with their directors. They do not spend time themselves to go through issues and picture the reality.

This can be a bigger problem in smaller companies. Because of the size and limited resources, you need to be more involved as a manager in day to day job. In start-ups you do not have the leverage of a highly structural organization. There is no clear vertical isolation between different functions and groups. Confusion is part of the game! But it is natural to solve the problem at the spot rather than pass it to other people. In a small organization you do not have that leverage.

Robo.toSnagsta

Simler

Kapitall

WheresCool

Life360

Olark

Triond

TopCultured

ChallengePost

PopUrl

A Little Bit Weird

SoundCloud

Paul Graham, başarılı bir girişimci geçmişi olan ve şu anda Y-Combinator isimli erken aşama risk sermayesi şirketinin ortaklarından olan birisi.

Yeni bir girişime başlayacak herkesin okumasının çok yerinde olduğunu düşündüğüm iki tane makalesi var:

1. How To Start a Startup (Mart 2005)
2. What Startups Are Really Like? (Ekim 2009)

Every week I read thousands of blog posts. Here, for your weekend enjoyment, are some highlights from my recent reading, for you.

	On Starting Up… http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/11416/Releasing-Early-Is-Not-Always-Good-Heresy.aspx Getting your product to your customers early is a bad thing. Or is it?
	On Design & Product Experience… http://www.inspiredm.com/2009/12/20/design-real-estate/ Understanding the value of your product’s onscreen real-estate.
	On Modular Innovation… http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/ambient-streams-realtime/ The flowing, ambient streams of Modular Innovation.

Have a great weekend!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy

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I don’t have an MBA. I have never even taken an accounting class. Yet in my years as a product person I’ve had to help generate numerous financial models to help figure out whether a new products and/or services makes economic sense.   Through my mentors, I learned just enough to generate the tables and charts that would show me whether the product or service deserves to be built.

In my mind, financial modeling for a vaporware product is a framework to help the team think through these questions:

• How many units do we think we can sell in the next few years?
• What is the average sales price?
• How much does it cost to sell each unit?
• How much do we need to spend to develop and sustain this business?

The toughest question to answer is the unit projection question.  Some people pull projections out of you-know-where.   I think a little analysis goes a long way here.  I tend to do this with a top-down approach, then cross check against a bottom-up approach.

The top-down approach is a market sizing and analysis exercise:

• Use analyst reports and other sources of quantitative data (e.g. US Census) to size your target market segment.
• Take it down as necessary to accommodate constraints imposed by your technology platform.
• Come up with a percentage ramp that predicts the market penetration you will achieve over time.
• Cross check your projected market share growth against competitors (quarterly or annual reports from public companies in adjacent or comparable markets are a great resource).
• Apply the sniff test: do you think you can sell enough to make this product worth your while?

Once the top down approach passes the sniff test, you can try the bottom-up approach:

• Build up the number of units you think you can sell via each distribution channel in the plan.
• Use hard data as much as possible – for example, if you are selling through retail outlets, check your projections against sell in/sell through data for comparable products through those outlets or classes of outlets to make sure your estimates are not out of whack.

Now that you have your top down and bottom up number, compare them and see if they match.   If they don’t, figure out why.  It may be that your top-down scenario is too rosy and the channels are fundamentally not equipped to support that kind of volume. Perhaps the distribution strategy needs to be revisited.  Or it may be that your channel projections are too rosy and assume an unreasonable growth in market share.  It’s an iterative process until both approaches pass the sniff test.  At this point I would use the bottom-up estimates as a basis to calculate gross revenue projections.

Having a credible unit sales / gross revenue projection is half the battle. The other half is to figure out whether the economics of the business makes sense. This is where the value chain analysis comes in.  Lay out everybody in the product’s ecosystem, figure out who gets paid how much and by whom, tally up all the costs out of your own business and calculate the cost of sales.  At this point, you are ready to calculate the gross margin of the product based on the expected average sales price.

Lastly, let’s count all heads and operating expenses directly attributable to the new business line.   There is the upfront cost (to develop the new product or service) that skews towards R&D.  Then there is the long term cost where R&D spending goes down into maintenance mode and sales and marketing costs go up to fuel growth.

Once all this is done, it’s time to tally it all up and make a nice hockey stick picture – the net income chart.  Typically the income will go up exponentially a couple of quarters after the product or service is introduced.   If it doesn’t, figure out why.  If you can’t make the net income look reasonable, perhaps the product or service doesn’t make sense for your business after all.

The recent notice that Metaplace.com is going to shut their doors and refocus the company is an all-too-often refrain where very big visions are not realized in their first or even second incarnation. I expect we will see the same from another big vision play, Trion, in pretty short order.

The phrase is a takeoff on the old enterprise sales mantra “Market the Vision, Sell the Product” which allowed sales execs to compete in an over-hyped market (remember E-Bricks?). Legitimate software companies could communicate big stories but sell much simpler products. We all know what happened to those who sold the vision.

Customers wanted to hear that you had a big vision — that your products would be around forever and that they would continue to benefit from your big, gamechanging vision.

But the second half of the charge was super critical if your sales exec and firm wanted to avoid unhappy customers and potential lawsuits. Customers expected your stuff to work. If you sold a vision, you had to install that vision. And who could do that?

Customer expectations were often very poorly set, lots of confusion reigned in the sales cycle and implementations became disasters of the first order. You can guess the rest of the story. Many, many companies fell from the sky because their ability to sell real product was completely lost. One of the best examples was I2 Technologies which once boasted a market cap of over $22 billion during the bubble and now has a market cap of less than $500 million after numerous reverse splits (last one was 1 to 25. ouch!!).

Fast forward to today’s startup market.

Replace the word customer with VC and you get the new problem that startups face. Startups need to communicate a big vision to suggest a big market, which VC’s expect.  But if entrepreneurs try to build that vision day 1, they will die. The trick that is often missed is to craft a big vision and lay out a road map (somewhat ill defined, of course) that indicates that day 1 will be a very simple product that is a mere nub or spec of the larger picture.

Look at any of the successful plays on the web, including social gaming, to understand that big visions are not built day 1. The most successful these days is Zynga, who started out with Texas Hold-Em Poker on Facebook. From the beginning, Mark made a concerted effort to be profitable, which meant that he had to ship a real product right away that consumers would buy. Despite his dreams of a big company, he practiced the art of marketing the vision and selling the product. Then over time he began to realize the vision.

Metaplace suffered from the reverse — trying to build the vision from day 1. While it was exciting to see the demos and prototypes, the product vision was too big to build quickly and get customers to use it.

Candidly,  I suffered this same fate with the first incarnation of Hangout. The vision for the concept of socializing online the way friends socialize offline is a big vision, but it could not be built as release 1. We understood that the big vision expected a community, but what we did not appreciate was the cost of generating that community. “Build it and they will come” would not suffice here. We learned that in order to have community, you need to have concurrency. And concurrency could only come by providing enough for people to do — by themselves — so that community could happen. We learned that lots of little products need to happen first in order to get the critical mass to enable this kind of vision.

This time around, our team built our first product (Fashion City) and the first tidbits of the big vision, in one half the time and cost it took to attempt to build a shaky first version of the big vision.

We are learning faster and cheaper from our users while keeping the VC’s excited about the downstream potential.

So as you the entrepreneur pitch VC’s, it is wise  lay out a product roadmap that can achieve results right away and evolves over time to the larger vision. Market the vision, Build the Product

We all know what happens if we try to build the vision. In this market of capital efficiency, its a recipe for failure.

Earlier this week, we made our pitch to the world (and to Dan Grigsby) about why FaceFighter is deserving of year-end awards recognition. Today, we talk up the cause of another game near and dear to our hearts — Zombie Pizza.

Adhering to the hallowed tradition that we just made up yesterday, here are five reasons why you should vote for Zombie Pizza in the 2009 Best App Ever awards in the category of Best Puzzle Game:

1) Zombie Pizza is a different kind of puzzle game.

In an App Store overrun by match-3 clones, a new kind of puzzle game has to count for something. There are time-management elements to Zombie Pizza, and there are some matching elements, too, but Zombie Pizza really is an original take on puzzles in a very crowded field. Balancing the risk and reward of making pizzas to keep the zombies fed against extending yourself to fill special orders or maximize score with the more difficult recipes adds a layer of strategy to what might otherwise just be a fast-reaction game. The game has a pace that unfolds over time — the tactics you adopt when making single pizzas are different than when you have two or three pizzas at the same time. And the Survival Mode (which we introduced in a free update, along with our Open Feint leader boards) require yet another approach to the game.

2) Zombie Pizza has a personality.

Zombie Pizza’s tale of a young pizza apprentice trying to learn the art of pizza making before his mentor turns into a flesh-eating zombie is as old as time itself. Actually, it’s not.

You have to admit … Zombie Pizza’s personality is as infectious as the slobbering bite of a wasteland zombie mutant!

3) Zombie Pizza is an original creation.

We went on at length about how FaceFighter was built fr0m the ground-up for Apple’s iPhone by a bootstraping startup, and the same can be said of Zombie Pizza. But whereas FaceFighter puts your photographs front-and-center, Zombie Pizza features entirely original, hand-drawn art from our in-house artistic maestro, Farzad Varahramyan. Farzad approached the project the way he would a console game, designing the world and characters of the app, as well as the interface and game elements so they would be all of a piece. We didn’t bolt zombies onto the side of an abstract puzzle game — Zombie Pizza is a light-hearted but polished and extensively detailed original property.

4) Zombie Pizza has had critical acclaim.

Zombie Pizza is another Appy Entertainment game that has benefited from Apple’s endorsement. Apple christened Zombie Pizza as a “Hot New Game,” then had us as “New And Noteworthy,” and then made us part of their Halloween Apps spotlight. We are still a staff pick on Apple’s iPhone Staff Picks page. Zombie Pizza was reviewed by Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post, and all the usual outlets. The game has attracted an enthusiastic cadre of chefs striving for the top score on our Open Feint leader board, and we’ve averaged around 3.5 stars in our App Store reviews.

5) Zombie Pizza has pizza AND zombies!

They’re two great tastes that taste great together. Like Batman & Robin, peanut butter & jelly, and … we don’t know … pirates & dinosaurs? (Now watch that concept hit #1 in the App Store).

Look, we know that Zombie Pizza is a goofy idea. Possibly even an insane idea. But we also think this new App Store market needs a little more madness. There’s a place for ports of clever Flash-based puzzle games and big licensed titles (our own iPhones host several of them!), but we think loopy notions like pizza-eating zombies also deserve your support. We will continue bringing lunatic ideas like Zombie Pizza to market because we just can’t help ourselves … but you can encourage us in our mad plans by nominating Zombie Pizza for Best Puzzle Game by clicking HERE (or by clicking the “Nominate” button on the right side of our blog’s front page).

And if you’d like to buy the game, to test your own pizza-making acumen against endless hordes of the restless dead, then click the button below!

Thanks!

New “Founders” Visa can be created in USA. It will allow IT-Startups founders to migrate to USA.

Yes… said the wolf to red riding hood.

Today lends itself to a dual post, because both are non-profit related and similar in theme…

December 21 Project. What did you start this year that you’re proud of?

December 22 Startup. What’s a business that you found this year that you love? Who thought it up? What makes it special?

*This post is part of the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

This year I joined the Share Our Strength Taste of the Nation Houston PR committee. I was on the New Orleans event team several years ago and attended the National Convention in Washington, DC just a couple of months after my world was turned upside down by Hurricane Katrina. I realized when it comes right down to it, it’s all about giving. And Share Our Strength’s mission is to end childhood hunger. That is the bare facts, but it’s more than just hunger, it’s about development, growth, opportunity to thrive. I am proud to join this project and help it thrive.

Become a fan of Houston Taste on facebook or follow us on twitter. Help us gain awareness of this issue and make a difference in a child’s life.

Watch the latest Share Our Strength video to see the direct impact nourishment brings to a child's life.

Also, my favorite organization I discovered this year is Dress for Success Houston. So many of us take for granted the blessing to be able to buy ourselves a new outfit or go out shopping. Their mission is to promote the economic independence and provide professional support to women nationwide. Each client receives one suit when she has a job interview and another suit when she gets the job. I got to tour their facility this year and meet the ladies who make it all happen. Their “store” is amazing & they have wonderful volunteers to help the women find attire and offer resume & interview tips. Help me support them for free via my Social Vibe page or send a note via “cup of confidence” from CoffeeMate & help them raise funds.

One company the Washingtonian techies and VCs should thank to is TECH cocktail DC. They have been around since May of 2006. The company is a community building startup founded by Frank Gruber and Eric Olson that offers events and community-powered projects open to bloggers, technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs & professionals interested in technology in under served technology communities.

Their mission is to amplify the technology signal in under served markets and have fun doing it which is right along our mission in Awesome DC for the entire DC and not just our technology sector.

Referring to my recent coverage comparing our Potomac River with California Silicon Valley, not every city has a sense of community seen in technology rich areas like Silicon Valley. TECH cocktail DC hopes to remedy the situation by creating a place for bloggers, technologists, entrepreneurs and other business professionals to meet, share ideas and have some fun. TECH cocktail is not exclusive to Chicago, and is open to the public in hopes people from around the globe will be able to participate. In the past TECH cocktail has also hosted events in Chicago, Boulder and Boston.

As for the two dudes behind the company, ERIC OLSON is a Massachusetts native and Bentley College alumnus who now resides in Chicago. Eric is currently working on TransFS.com – a comparison shopping website for credit card processing (with more financial services to come). Eric is also an MBA student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Prior to TransFS.com Eric worked as an Associate at DFJ Portage Venture Partners where he worked on evaluating and investing in the top technology startups in the Midwest. Prior to DFJ Portage Eric was in Partner Development at Google and in Business Development for Chicago-based startup FeedBurner, which was acquired by Google in June 2007.

The other co-founder is FRANK GRUBER is a product strategist and evangelist for AOL in the social networking & platforms group. Frank has lead the AIM team to create the AIM Lifestream and was also responsible for the myAOL suite. Frank’s expert analysis on Web 2.0, social media and emerging technologies have been featured in TechCrunch, Read Write Web, iMediaConnection and on SOMEWHAT FRANK. Frank also produces a video podcast called SOMEWHAT FRANK TV. Growing up in the Chicagoland area, Mr. Gruber received his Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems from Northwestern University, and his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Information Systems from Purdue University. Frank is also the co-founder of Shiny Heart Ventures. Frank was named of the 100 DC Tech Titans by Washingtonian Magazine in May 2009.

Tech cocktail events are open to everyone, You can be blogged or podcast. I have been attending most of their events and they are packed and awesome. They gave away a HP Envy laptop last time I attended their event.

Here is their interview during one of their events. Good luck hearing them.