Crunching Numbers

Now that we have three months of solid data to work with, I’ve been spending a lot of time creating  financial models for Ballhype. I used to do this a lot at pretty much every job I’ve had since business school, first because I was in finance and then because I was the marketing girl who used to be in finance. I forgot that you really need to pace yourself with this type of project otherwise you end up paying for it with your wrist, which I have.

But the good news is that we are growing rapidly and if the trend continues we’ll be able to buy Christmas presents this year after all. I’m getting rather used to not spending money, or at least spending very little aside from the mortgage, so any amount of money we begin to earn will feel like we hit the jackpot.

And indeed, this afternoon we put the first Google ads on the site and got our first pennies in the bank. Woo hoo! We are rolling out ads on Ballhype very gradually so that we can experiment until we find the right balance between performance and usability. We’re hoping our users will understand that we need to pay the bills, and if they are in the market for a Barry Bonds bobble-head and happen to see such an item being advertised on our site, they check out the unbeatable price offered by the advertiser.

Posted by Erin 09.Jul.07 Business Read more Comments (4)

Tid bits

What we’ve been up to: thinking a lot about the next phase of Ballhype, namely turning this into a revenue-generating business. The good news is that so far people have been very open to talking to us, and we’re getting a clearer sense of what the timing and other parameters will be for funding.

I have to keep this short because my sister and her family are arriving any minute after going through a hellish day of travel to get here. I’m looking forward to enforced time off from work this weekend - it’s our baby’s first birthday! And traffic has been growing steadily the past couple of weeks — today we had our second highest traffic day, beat only by launch. It’ll be nice to relax this weekend and not worry about Ballhype too much.

Posted by Erin 23.May.07 Business Read more Comments (2)

A lawyer sat down at a computer and…

started blogging. Our lawyer, Yokum Taku, has a new blog called Startup Company Lawyer. When we started Ballhype, I spent a lot of time hunting around for the kind of information that he’s providing. If you’re an entrepreneur, you should check it out. Of course, you should still consult with your attorney but it’s a much better starting point than doing a Google search.

Posted by Erin 30.Apr.07 Links, Business Read more Comments (2)

Hitting the Books

Ballhype’s finances are pretty basic: no revenue, no payroll, and few expenses. But we still need to make sure that we’re keeping track of everything so I downloaded QuickBooks Simple Start Free Starter Edition. I worked at Intuit for years and am a big fan of their products, and so I’m happy to use Simple Start and even happier that it’s free. It supports up to 20 customers and then prompts you to upgrade once you get larger. We won’t be counting customers in the sense that retailers or agencies do, so we should be able to use this for some time.

Today I logged in for the second time to enter the Comcast bill for cable internet services, and was reminded to register the product. Normally I ignore these messages but this one said that it would eventually be required so I figured I may as well get it over with. What I didn’t realize, however, was that once you start the process, you’re forced to call the customer support line to complete product registration. I really don’t like having to sit on hold - it wasn’t for very long, and the rep was friendly and competent, but I still felt tricked into picking up the phone. Sometimes you just don’t feel like talking on the phone to anyone, friend or stranger. It doesn’t mean you’re in a bad mood, but I could tell that I was forcing myself to be nicer on the phone than I felt like being, out of loyalty to Intuit. Fortunately, the anticipated upsell (hey, I was in marketing too) didn’t last very long.

Rep: how many customers do you have?

Me: none.

Rep: ohhhkaayyy… (mousing to correct screen that gets him to the “unlikely prospect” response)…hold on while I get your new license number.

Nine years ago I started out in finance doing the monthly close for the Intel Inside program, which involved accounting for and accruing hundreds of millions of dollars to help pay for all of those stickers and tv and print ads by computer manufacturers. Ballhype record-keeping should be a cake walk in comparison, and if it ever gets complex enough to be a dreaded task, that will be a good thing.

Posted by Erin 27.Apr.07 Business Read more Comments (0)

Now comes the hard part

I’m looking ahead to how we grow Ballhype into a viable business, and realizing that this next phase is going to make the launch seem easy. The hours might not be quite as intense — although at this point that doesn’t appear to be the case — but now we have to sustain the momentum if it’s ever going to make enough money to support one family, let alone someday hundreds or thousands.

Posted by Erin 06.Apr.07 Business Read more Comments (3)

Ballhype, Inc.

We took the plunge and incorporated so we are now Ballhype, Inc. The other option was to save the money and remain a partnership until we knew for sure if this was going to take off, but we wanted to let our advisors knew we were serious about the business, and the risk of getting sued and losing our house, however small, was enough to make me vote for spending the money. So now we are in the process of issuing stock, opening a Ballhype bank account, and after 4.5 years at Intuit, I finally have a reason to learn QuickBooks. My copy is probably a couple of years old so I will have to hit up my former colleagues for an extra NFR.

Our office set up is not great and the filing system needs help. The amount of paperwork generated by this little business that hasn’t even taken in any money and has a couple hundred beta testers is rather ridiculous. Thank god for lawyers, although it’s lawyers in the first place that made the language and guidelines so difficult that you need lawyers to navigate the process. (There’s a business model for you.) I do have to give a nod though to Yokum at WSGR who has been very helpful and surprisingly responsive. I had assumed that one cost of working with a large law firm would be having to wait for days whenever I had a question, but that has absolutely not been the case.

Posted by Erin 15.Mar.07 Legal, Business Read more Comments (0)