A few years ago in Wellington, we had this weird wave of businesses that were so over-hyped, everyone assumed the founders were superstars, despite there being virtually nothing behind the buzz.

Out of the rubble a couple of key names emerged. These people actually seemed to have their heads screwed on correctly and had spent that time, heads down getting stuff done.

Rowan Simpson, has invited a few of them to guest post on his blog about their experiences and lessons from their own startups. Their stories are hugely interesting to read and shine a light on what it REALLY takes to get a technology product off the ground, while being honest about the gap between ‘off the ground’ and ‘driving Ferraris into the sunset’.

The posts will continue over the next wee while, so here’s a link to Rowan’s homepage. If you get lost, you’ll most likely find everything else there pretty darn useful anyway.

Just heard from Michele about some early buzz around MyLawsuit.com.

Michele and I ‘met’ several years ago now, and we designed the initial screens for MyLawsuit. Michele is a true inspiration (just read the articles to see what she gets up to!) and I love the concept of a website that helps the little guy in the legal world. With a limited, yet hugely painful experience of the reality of legal battles, I very quickly realised that even if you are 100% in the right and/or you are fighting to regain something someone took from you, it costs a FORTUNE in time, emotion and finance…

Michele (like all my favorites clients) has a very unique and very cool view on her industry, you can see a lot of her personal ethics in the product. I love the fact that she’s trying to remove the terrifying legalese that you are normally subjected to, and run a very open and transparent process to connect lawyers with clients. Its an industry full of sharks and awesome to see someone who’s not afraid of taking them on!

One of my favorite customers just sent me the latest review of Moneyscope – a Basecamp style approach to financial planning, that enables financial planners to quickly produce attractive, simple and understandable reports for their clients… As opposed to the typical, hugely complex modeling systems that result in reports no one really understands.

I love this product. I love designing it, I love working with Richard (who is about as onto it as they come), and I love the idea of taking on an industry that, to the ordinary person, is shrouded in mystery and complication.

Moneyscope has never intended to compete directly with the big players – it’s monthly cost and simple functionality attest to that, BUT we are quickly picking up on more and more users switching the vast majority of even their most complex customers to Moneyscope… And this is even before the next release of some cool functionality that will take it to the next level.

Read page 25 of this industry publication for this full review, but I think this sums it up:

The discussions with the users of Moneyscope were quite enlightening. We had expected the tool to be used by the mainstream adviser, for simple cases or for initial engagement of clients. The reality is that it is used by sophisticated financial planners as a core part of their advice process.

Keep an eye out for Moneyscope, it’s got the perfect mix of strict focus, simplicity and a massive need from the market.

We’re starting the new year with a bang at AllAboutTheStory.com, with a full scholarship to one of the biggest web events in New Zealand – Webstock.

It’s a pretty cool package: The Allaboutthestory.com Media Scholar will get to attend Webstock 2011, interview big names from overseas tech companies and fill their contact books with the good and the great of New Zealand’s own web glitterati.

How to Apply

Email Julie Starr – julie@allaboutthestory.com – by January 30, 2011 explaining:

• why you would like to attend Webstock 2011
• which speaker you most want to interview and why
• which publication you write for or intend to pitch any Webstock-related stories to
• how the scholarship would help you in your career
• why you’re the right person for the scholarship

Find out more about the scholarship here.

There was much excitement over MyTours email in the past few days, when Glen announced that we are a finalist for the onyas (which for those NOT in NZ, is basically our tech version of the Oscars… Sort of)

The funny thing about making products, is that you spend most of your time just trying to make things look/work better, and as a result, you sort of focus on all the bad stuff and the to-do list, rather than how awesome the product is. And despite a very disparate team who are all very much part time, it’s quite nice to look back and see what we’ve made… Which is pretty darn cool, if I do say so myself!

The judges say:

“Worked well. Like the integration of service website, clear targeting, and a nice-looking app.”

Check out the available apps here or signup to make your own

And thanks gang! There is nothing better than working with awesome people, on an awesome idea and seeing it come together.

Apparently the gang at Allaboutthestory.com celebrated our one year anniversary a month or so back.

And what a year it’s been!

From the start, we were all aware that this was not the sort of site that will go from no to woah in a year. Anything to do with listings requires a delicate balance of building of the buyer and the audiences. But on the discovery of this satisfied user, it struck me that it could well be a good time for the ‘State of the Startup’ overview.

Our big focus

One of the big mottos of the year, and a question thrown about with abandon is ‘what will this new functionality/tweak/button etc etc TEACH US?’. Learning about how people use the site was priority number 1, 2 ,3 4 and 5. This can prove amusing in the early days when the user base is so small that 50% of your audience doesn’t equate to a huge number of real people.

But we’ve learned a lot. Most importantly, that the mainstream media industry is indeed changing and people are gearing up for it. I think this was proven very early on, when our founder/cheif editor and super talented Julie Starr signed up some fairly substantial publications and journalists before we’d really even proven ourselves.

Some big highlights

• The first sales made to people we didn’t know
• Discovering Cartoons! Allaboutthestory.com has some of the funniest and most clever cartoonists around, regularly selling their relevant and timely takes on the world.
• Watching traffic rise – as I say, it’s early days, but it’s growing. This is especially cool when it’s the result of some new thing that Julie has done (anything from a good blog post, to email newsletters, to Twitter and Facebook)
• Seeing the quality of the content continually rise. As the site grows, so, it seems, does the percentage of really well written articles. We’ve had some sell within hours of listing, which is pretty exciting and does mean that publications are on the lookout constantly.
• The process we’ve developed of regular monthly/6 weekly get togethers with intense updates. These are prioritised around time and focused on making the biggest improvement within that site – which can be the subject of much debate and hard questions. Some months, I believe Julie forces herself to not pull her hair out at the lack of progress, other months, we make a leap forward.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many hiccups, barriers and whole sections of the website we still cringe at. But that’s life and a million times better than my experiences of intense startup environments, full of infighting and freakouts.

Check out the website

About 6 months ago, I wrote about customers who were refusing to pay.

What a way to start the year, it really made life hard and even harder because they not only DIDN’T pay up, they also tried to lay the blame on me.

And I’m one of those people who has weird guilt complexes about almost everything (our building’s fire alarm went off at 4.45am the other day, and despite the fact I’d been asleep for hours, my first thought was that the whole thing was my fault and I’d burned the building down). It’s really hard for me to listen to people tell me something is my fault, without automatically shouldering the blame and assuming they are right.

But in this case, after hours/weeks/months of heartache, searching and searching through conversations and signoffs and milestones, I realised that these slime bags didn’t even make sense.

The other day I experienced a similar situation, where someone tried to back out of a project they’d agreed to. The excuses, once again, made no sense to me, but still, I felt awful and offered to start from scratch and wipe the current fees. It quickly became apparent that they’d just changed their minds and employed a pretty unethical way of trying to weasel out of a contract. My guilt complex really doesn’t help these situations, nor does my desire to leave every customer happy…

But this year has been hard.

And this year I have learned to back myself.

So c’mon you slime bags, I now know for certain you are out there, sliming your way into peoples lives. I’m onto you, I’m not scared of you and I’m certainly not going to deal with you then let you get away with screwing me over without a fight.

Oh the ways life shapes your personality…

One good thing about being in a small business is that you have a lot more control over WHO you work with and you actually build up a fairly substantial list of ‘workmates’… And because you wind up working fairly closely with partners and customers, you build quite solid relationships with them. So you manage to avoid the boring water cooler conversation (that I can’t understand how people find time for), while taking advantage of the support and connections that make the world go round.

It does get tough when you are doing your accounting though. I know some friends have questioned by ‘business entertainment’ at times… And now laugh that every time I go out, I either wind up drumming up a new lead or bumping into an old customer and start talking about work again. In my mind, life is different when you own the company. You NEVER stop working, and you survive off any networking you do.

But, am I the only one who often finds the line blurred between having a good time with friends and doing business with work colleagues?

I know a lot of people would say that if it’s fun, it’s not work, but I feel like that myth was dispelled the day I started working for myself and basically spend my life doing stuff I like (and get severely depressed when I go through a couple of months of NOT leaping out of bed to get cracking).

The I wonder if it’s the mix? Like if Im out with a group of people and one of them happens to be an accountant, and we spend 30 minutes going over the fine points of financial statements on my Friday night – I consider this valuable information, or is it just idle chit chat? If it’s 30 minutes out of 2 hours, does that change it? Is this a meeting or is it a drink?

Is it defined by the purpose? i.e if you INTEND to go get financial information, it’s a meeting, whereas if it happens by accident, it’s a drink.

Sometimes I think it’s funny that the things I get the MOST work out of or the best advice, are probably considered social situations, while the stuffy old ‘business’ events can often generate nothing, but probably look better in the accounts. Hmmm.

If you still haven’t taken the leap away from your crusty old power company and joined all the cool kids at Powershop, now’s your chance!

We’ve made it even more tempting, by putting the first $50.00 in your account when you sign up through the Flower Power Daisy promo.

And to sweeten the deal even more, the Power Kiwi AGM yesterday resulted in some cool plans to reward our loyal customers… We’re intend on being everything your current power company is not.

And remember, signing up to Powershop will probably be the easiest thing you do this week. Just enter a few details from an old power statement in their online form, and they do the rest.

So go on! Join the revolution!

The gang at PowerKiwi have long since been aware that the average New Zealander can’t get ENOUGH of analysing their power bill.

Actually, we know that you can, and you do, within about 2 seconds of seeing it in the letter box.

However, we also all know that if you don’t PAY the bill, you’ll be disconnected, and I for one, cannot handle icy cold showers all winter, or not being able to cook my new FAVORITE vegetable EGGPLANT, or being able to switch on the old electric blanket, etc etc.

So, while the rest of us were sitting around contemplating how to make your lives easier, Rowan made his first (?) iPhone app.

It’s pretty simple, and like most great inventions, solves one problem well. The Flower Power iPhone app allows you to plugin your current meter balances, then click through to be told how much power you need to buy, which you can then buy from your default Powershop provider.

The great news is that outside of stopping you from having to remember a series of numbers while you head back to your computer, or writing your balance on your hand, only to wash it off… it’s FREE, it’s super easy and it takes the pain away from paying your power bill.

So go on, download it, use it, and send us any feedback :)