Saving Your Company Money #4
the home stretch…
- “Q” is for Quickbooks. It’s about $150 and does what you need as a startup. I’ve even heard about frims that are several hundred people still using Quickbooks.
- “S” is for Simple IRA. This is a new one that I just found out about from a buddy. So, I’m trusting his info, but it seems like a Simple IRA can be less complex, broad investment options, some tax breaks and much cheaper than the 401K options out there. For instance, Fidelity would be $25 per year per employee or $350 for the year for the entire company. On face, that sounds ideal.
- “T” is for telephone. We have some dedicated AT&T lines for inbound/outbound/fax, plus much of the team uses Skype. For concalls, freeconferencecall.com is free
. - “U” is for utilities. We’re scrappy and cost-conscious and we like it that way. So, no Class A office space with all the amenities. This means signing up for Gas, Heat and Water with PG&E.
- “V” is for voice mail. We’re trying out GotVmail and it’s doing the job. There are several services out there to choose from with different packages. Most important thing for us is that we could have it call our landlines/cell phones when we’re in the office.
(if i think of an “R”, i’ll get it in next time)
Network World names Coupa to Enteprise Software Firms to Watch
Network World issued a list of Top 10 Enterprise Software Companies to Watch and Coupa was #2 on the list. They looked for standout applications and we’re honored to be included.
Saving Your Company Money #3
About halfway there….
- “L” is for lawyers. You know when you go in to get your car fixed and you have no basis to judge good vs. bad work, fair pricing vs. getting ripped off? The best way to avoid that feeling when dealing with legal representation is to ask your friends for a recommendation. Then, if you feel you are being screwed, then your friend was probably taken too. I think you should find a lawyer you are comfortable with and expect that they’ll get your incorporation / by-laws done right. Assuming this is your first venture, you probably won’t have too complex of a situation. If you seem like a good risk, the legal firm may defer fees until the first financing…and, on closing the round, you’ll have to pay your fees and the VC’s legal fees. Needless to say, those will be hefty bills. Some people choose firms on their reputation with the venture community. Your law firm can definitely make introductions with prospective investors, but I believe that you can’t pick a firm based on this. Chances are that the “named” partner isn’t going to be calling up all their venture friends for you unless the deal is sizzling hot (at which point, many firms are calling you). Expect that your firm will make some introductions based on a suggested list that you and your lawyers work on…and that you need to utilize your network to find additional interested parties.
- “M” is for microsoft office and meebo. At least the PC people at Coupa all run Office. While I’ve tried out some other packages including open source ones in the past, they still don’t compete with Office. Sure, they make take up more space/resources, but it’s worth it. IM is a necessity, expecially when we didn’t have office space. Meebo is a handy cross-protocol website for IM.
- “N” is for Nintendo Wii. The startup months are going to be a ridiculous amount of work. You need some outlets for your health, the team’s health and group camaraderie. For the Coupa team, we have Movie Mondays (about once every 6 weeks) and a Nintendo Wii. While I don’t get out on the real course often anymore, I did make the cut at the Riviera Open at 10pm on Saturday.
- “O” is for Office. Find a good office space through your network. Some use Craigslist, but I find that deals aren’t great there. Maybe one of your buddies has sublet room in their startup or some other special situation. For us, i wanted something that wasn’t expensive (i’d prefer to pay our employees better than our landlord) and didn’t want to be tied into a long lease.
- “P” is for Payroll. Sooner or later, you’ve got to start payroll. Before you get started, you’ll need an EIN # which is your federal employer number and you’ll need to apply for a state one. There are different levels of services the major guys (ADP, Paychex) provide. Another option was Bank of America’s Business Services Group, which white labels a payroll service from Paycycle. You get a hefty discount if you go with BofA, but it doesn’t allow you to do direct deposit outside of BofA accounts. So, we ended up with going direct to Paycycle. Their Plus service runs you about $43/month for 5 employees, with big discounts for first 3 months. Good stuff and it is pretty easy to export stuff from Paycycle and import it into Quickbooks.
Saving Your Company Money #2
Continuing down the alphabet…
- “F” is for furniture. Once you move away from coffee shops and libraries, you need to sit somewhere. When on a budget, you have 2 choices. Used stuff at Craigslist or new from IKEA. We happened to find a craigslist ad for a charter school that was moving and getting rid of alot of stuff. So, it felt good to spare the landfill of a few desks, whiteboards and chairs. IKEA seems to be the popular route for many startups. You can find a decent desk in the $200 range.
- “G” is for Google. Who else? We signed up for Google Apps for your Domain real, real early. I just didn’t see why I should pay for an inferior email system from a hosting provider or one of those Exchange services. The very small downside is the lack of a 2-way sync with my blackberry, but everyone at Coupa has a 2GB mailbox, POP3 access, a shared company calendar, docs/spreadsheets, etc for FREE. Plus we use Google Analytics on our site.
- “H” is for health benefits. This could take up 5 blog postings on its own. In California, you can go to a benefits broker or to one of the PEO services like TriNet or AdminiStaff. The PEOs cover payroll, benefits, worker’s comp in one fee. 25% of my network recommended PEOs for believing that they were cheaper all-in b/c they could get better rates on health insurance. Another 25% went for PEOs saying it’s easier just to write a single check to a PEO versus dealing with different vendors for payroll, insurance, benefits. I sided with the remaining 50% and went a la carte. We’re saving money and providing better options for our employees by what we did (I’m confident of that). For health benefits, I learned that there’s some law in California that guarantees that companies can get health coverage (as long as they have a few months of operating experience) and that all brokers get the same price. So, I found a broker who was responsive. This is critical, because you’re going to have questions…so you want someone to return your call/email. We went with a couple PPO plans, a HSA plan, plus dental/vision. You don’t have many choices on dental and most of the options stink. PS. If you want to know who we chose for certain things, just contact me.
- “I” is for Incorporation. I’d recommend getting a lawyer to do this. There are a few options to choose from: S, C or LLC, plus you need to pick an incorporation state. You might want to hold off incorporating until it’s necessary, which is probably the earlier of having employees/stock/payroll or taking venture money. There are a million posts on the benefits of one model vs. the other. VCs typically won’t invest in LLCs, so we went for the C.
- I can’t think of anything for “J” and “K”
Saving Your Company Money #1
Now that we announced our Series A round, the work has REALLY started. And we thought the team was busy before the funding .
Besides designing and testing the product, I wear a couple of other hats here at Coupa. I tend to do most of the Costco trips for drinks/snacks and be our CFO/Operations guy. I’m not sure how I got saddled with the last thing, but my guess is that Dave realized that I’m incredibly cost-conscious and would get into those little details. And there are so many details associated with starting up a company. The list seems to grow and grow. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Like all entrepreneurs, we leveraged our network of friends, business contacts and random people on the street to figure out how to get these things done. Without naming names, I thank each of them for their past and continued help!
Nothing here is going to be “strategic” to our business but they are probably things that you’ll face in your first year or two. And since I have a couple young children, I figured I would put this in an “alphabet” theme. So onto the details:
- “A” is for accounting. Two rules on accounting. First, get a package like Quickbooks once you need to keep track of finances (3 guys in a coffee shop do not require audited books). Second, don’t do it yourself. I often hear “get an outside resource because you can’t waste your valuable time on something like that”. That’s 50% correct. You actually can’t do it. 2 classes in accounting doesn’t qualify you to put together your chart of accounts, figure out how to enter a simple thing like a rent deposit, etc. So, pay someone ~$50/hour for probably 2 hours per week (at the start) to get it right.
- “B” is for business checking. Very easy to open up a business checking account and they are all pretty much the same. Just make sure they can easily integrate with Quickbooks and have online bill pay. And get your series A money to be earning some better interest rate than a 1% money market. Talk to a banker, since you’ll want some account that is earning at least 4%.
- “C” is for computers. We went the refurbished/remarketed route with laptops and our first server. Definitely a cost savings. Laptops were fine..the 2 processor HP server was loud in Dave’s living room (one of our early work locations), so we eventually sent it to colo. Nowadays, all our developers seem to want a Mac, so we’re pretty much stuck paying retail.
- “D” is for design stuff. Unless you are some design genius, you’ll probably want to outsource much of the identity work (e.g., logos, business cards, website). We used DesignOutpost a bunch, where you can post your requirements and how much you can pay and designers compete for your business.
- “E” is for Eisners. My family has stood by and supported me through the very intense startup phase. It’s often hard to separate home time and work time. But my wife and kids are the best.
More to come over the next week!
An Alternative to ASNs
Advanced Shipping Notices can take too much effort and too much time to justify using for indirect procurement. And yet everyone benefits by knowing when an order has been shipped and when it will arrive.
Office Depot has an interesting capability – direct email to the requester acknowledging the order and providing shipment tracking information. Sure it would be better if the information was captured in the system, but it’s a start.
If you have ideas on how to simplify shipping notifications, drop us a line.
Live help available
If you are playing with our open source project or trying out the Coupa Enterprise demo, we are now offering (at least for a limited time) live help. Just click our Live Help link to go to the page. Enterprise demo users can also access the link directly from the news section of your demo instance. If we are around to answer your questions, you’ll see a message that says “Coupa Help is online.”
If not, you can always leave a message, post in our forums or send us an email to noah at coupa dot com. It’s all about being a different kind of enterprise applications company and creating a more continuous dialogue in the Coupa community.
PS. We’re using a widget from Meebo called MeeboMe. They’ve done some really great work on a web-based IM solution.
Test Automation
As Coupa eProcurement Express and Enterprise continue to advance, testing becomes a bigger priority and challenge. Towards the end of my Oracle career, I took on the additional responsibility for 100-person QA team split between the US and India. It gave me a first hand look at the “secrets” of testing enterprise software. Oracle is a complex beast, and the fact that most of the testing was done manually exacerbated the problem. It could take 12 months to QA a single release. I’d like to say that my short tenure with the QA team helped increase their focus on test automation, but it will take a while to tame the beast.
At Coupa, we are trying to do test automation right from the start. We’ve been able to release 3 versions of the open source project since July and so it will be 4 releases within a year with our upcoming Prime-Time release. Part of our strategy is to focus on automating unit tests in addition to the functional tests. Unit tests validate the individual units of source code and created by the developer. The functional tests look more at a flow approach, such as a test where user logs in, does a search, adds an item to his/her shopping cart, checks out. A complete suite of automated tests do both positive and negative testing. We’re not there yet, but the team is making good strides. Fortunately, we can supplement the automation with human testing.
We’re using a package called Selenium, an open source test automation tool. They even have a Firefox extension that allows you to record tests as you walk through the application. Some of the unit tests that we’ve created are included in the open source project and we hope to include the functional tests in the future.
4 Coup-aholics and a Big TV
It was fun to see the great write-up the Examiner placed in the Business section on Tuesday. Better still was the fact that they liked the Coupa story so much they sent out a photographer to our offices. Fun stuff!
From left to right – Seggy Umboh, Dave Stephens, David Williams, and, seated, Noah Eisner.
A-Round Announcement
I was happy to release our A-Round funding announcement on Business Wire today. BlueRun, as a leading early stage venture firm, adds fantastic operational insight to the Coupa team. And at the end of the day, it all comes down to people – so I’m just thrilled with the depth of experience our Board brings. This announcement, and BlueRun’s financial support, should provide additional evidence Coupa is gaining momentum in the market.
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