Web 2.0 Entrepreneur

How much money do you need to start a Web 2.0 business?

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on June 8th, 2007 filed in Web App Development, Thoughts, Entrepreneurship, Financing/funding


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There’s actually no definitive answer to how much capital you need to start a Web 2.0 business. How much you need may depend on so many factors that it can sometimes be a thousand bucks, 5 thousand bucks, 10 thousand bucks, 20 thousand bucks, or down to only a few hundred bucks. Those factors include what type of application you’re building, your own skillset, existing resources, whether you need staffs (if you need then how many of them?), whether you need an office, outsourcing, additional machines, servers and whatnot. Even though I can’t really estimate how much you need to start a Web 2.0 business, I can roughly say that if you spend more than 10 thousand bucks just to develop and launch your web application, then I think you’re overspending. And you better think of how you can mitigate your spending fast because touching that 10 thousand threshold shows that you’re spending too much on unnecessary things. Spending too much money before you even start making money is bad because that means it’ll take longer for you to be in profit. Not only that, if things doesn’t turn out the way you planned it to be, you may even go bankrupt for spending more than you need on the beginning phase.

Sometimes I find it rather disturbing when some of the new Internet startups claimed to have spent over millions of bucks just to get their Web 2.0 ideas developed and launched. That is totally unacceptable in my opinion. Even the overall cost of development, launching, marketing and maintaining of the web app should not take up to millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Why? Because we’re on the INTERNET business. And when I say INTERNET that means things that used to be 10,000 bucks in real life can be absolutely FREE in the cyber world. Consider some of things below:

- Development tools are free (Komodo Edit, PHP+Apache+MySQL, Linux?)
- Open source scripts (which are free) can be leveraged for creating your app’s blog, forum or support center.
- Communication is free via E-mail, Skype, IRC or Instant messaging.
- Outsourcing is cheap.
- Existing programming components can be reused. Think about rapid PHP frameworks and Ajax frameworks
- Google is your library for doing researches
- Advertising can be free by leveraging search engine marketings, social networks, blog marketings, forum marketings, the good-ol “word-of-mouth” marketing. Or even if you purchase advertisings on certain websites, Google Adwords, Advertlets, or other PPCs, it won’t take up so much to kickstart the hype.

There you go. I just can’t help but wonder what have some of these companies spent on that took up millions of dollars for their web application business. Internet business is meant to be cheap but highly profitable. Let’s just keep it that way… Truemors did it with 12 thousand bucks overall. They could’ve spent way less…

Develop like an architect, not like a cowboy

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on May 16th, 2007 filed in Web Programming, Web App Development


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Few years back when I was still in University, one of my lecturer who taught us Software Engineering said, “Don’t be a programmer, be a developer.” I was a bit confused back then. In my head I asked, “What’s the difference? Don’t developers also write codes?”. I’m pretty sure the other students in the lecture hall were as confused as I was at that time. But now I know for sure that programmers and developers are from different planets.

In software development, there is a term called “Cowboy coding” which implies the method of writing softwares where the programmer start coding the application without doing any sort of proper “planning”. They just picture in their head how the application will look like in the end and start coding straight away…. do whatever they think is right. They hate planning. They think planning is boring and a waste of time. The idea of writing codes straight out from the head may sound cool, but in reality, applications that are written by cowboy coders are typically sluggish, full of bugs and very troublesome to maintain. I know this because I used to be one of them (in certain cases I still am, but well that’s a different story ).

An experienced developer will plan his project out before he even writes a single line of code. Knowing the basics of UML (Unified Modelling Language) is an advantage. Now you don’t have to plan out too detail until you had to prove the cowboy-coder’s point - wasting time. No. The best thing is to balance your planning phase so that you have a firm base to start writing the code. For me, I like to use UMLPad to plan for my project. It is a very lightweight program, free, easy to use, very straight forward, and eliminates the complexities of other more sophisticated UML tools like Rational Rose or maybe, ArgoUML. Since PHP is not really a pure Object-Oriented programming language, all you need before you start writing an application are:

1. a simple Class diagram - to define your classes/objects and the relationships between them,
2. an activity diagram - to define your application’s flow, and
3. a state diagram - to define your application’s behavior.

UMLPad provides exactly that. Alternatively, planning the traditional way (ie: sketching on papers or white boards) is also very recommended because many finds it to be more comfortable and allows us to think out of the box. What about the rest of the diagrams in UML? No need to worry about them for now. Is UML hard? Trust me, UML is just common sense. Do you need to plan in detail about everything? If you can do that very quickly, go ahead, but you probably don’t need to. Remember, we don’t want to waste too much time on planning, but we also understand that no planning is planning to fail. So if you respect yourself as a person, be a developer who plans, not just a programmer who cares about nothing but codes.

Should you build localized or international web apps?

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on May 10th, 2007 filed in Web App Development, Advertising, Thoughts


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Local web applications

Local web apps means the applications are focused and meant to be used by only some people in certain countries or communities, not meant to be used by the general Internet users everywhere. For example, if I am to build a localized web application, it may be something that only Malaysian users would be interested in using. Such app could be a Malay-based search engine that searches for only websites in the Malay language. Or it could be something like a video sharing portal - like YouTube - but only focused on Malaysian-made videos.

The good thing about localized web application is that it can get famous pretty quickly. People like something if it is close to themselves. You don’t need to put massive advertising to promote your web apps because word-of-mouth advertising will efficiently do the trick for you. Malaysian-specific web apps like Tumpang, Advertlets and Nuffnang proved this is true.

International web applications

International web apps on the other hand, can be used by anyone regardless of who they are or where they live. MySpace is a good example. Everyone can use it and it doesn’t specifically mention if it should only be used by, say, the American people. In fact, many big Web2.0 companies targets the wider audience - everyone. But unless you have a pretty damn brilliant idea, promoting an international web app can be quite tough as you need to reach for more people.

So which one is better?

Localized app give you fame very easily. But the fame you get is focused only to some geographically centralized users. If your international web app becomes successful, your credits will be recognized internationally. Localized app can pocket you money a lot faster, but international app is where the big bucks are made. If localized web apps can give you 10k a month, international apps could possibly give you a 100 times more, but that may take patience and longer bootstrapping. Making your international app a success takes more effort, and usually means needing more capital to do the marketing. Localized web app is way cheaper.

My point is, both local and international web apps have their own strengths and weaknesses. If you’re still new, maybe it is wise to start with a localized web app. Apart from giving you the good portfolio you need, it’ll also give you the experience of running a web2.0 application in a smaller scale. This can prepare yourself for your next international web app idea. Not only that, because localized web app needs less money and gives you cash faster, it will be the one to support your international web app developement that needs more money, more dedication, and more time to give you the wealth that you and your team are waiting for.