A Little Startup History
1998 - Web 1.0A huge percentage of startups are built on classic ASP.
2008 – Web 2.0Most startups are built on Ruby/Rails or PHP. ASP.Net is ignored (and often ridiculed).
TodayWe’ll see but it’s looking good so far.
What is a Startup?
“A regular company executes on a known business model. A startup is a company searching for a business model.”
- Unknown (but I’m sure I stole it from someone)
“Are you ready to jump off a tall building and build your wings on the way down?”
- Startup Lounge Podcast
If you’re even considering launching a startup, Read this book first
Launching Your Startup
1. Signup for BizSpark
2. Publish a Marketing Website
3. Design and Mockup
4. Build your Minimum Viable Product
1. Signup for BizSpark
Go to http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/ and Microsoft will give you every software product they make for FREE for 3 years if your company meet these requirements:• You are developing software• You are less than 3 years old• You have less than $1,000,000 annual revenue• You have some type of website up (even 1 page)• You can get someone like this guys to nominate you.
– Aaron Stannard, Microsoft Startup Developer Evangelist [email protected]://www.aaronstannard.com/
2. Publish a Marketing Site
• One pages that clearly describes your product and collects email addresses
• You are testing your idea
Cheap but good looking website design99 designs ($400 - $1000)http://99designs.com/
Cheap but solid hostingDiscount ASP.Net ($20/month for web and DB)http://discountasp.net/
3. Design and Mockup
• Mockup every page in your app• Fix things• Show people your mockups
The perfect tool for this is Balsamiq Mockupshttp://balsamiq.com/
4. Build Your Minimum Viable Product
Customer data requires better hosting:($118 - $250/month for cloud server) http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/
What I need in a Startup Architecture
• Speed – If I’m heading toward the ground I want to build
that parachute as fast as possible.
• Flexibility– I assume that I’m going to make mistakes. Making
big changes must be fast and easy.
HireFlo Architecture
• Asp.Net MVC, no webforms• jQuery + lots of AJAX• No Azure! • No Entity Framework• Lots of open source
HireFlo Server Architecture• Everything lives on a
single virtual server running Windows Server 2008
• Two webapps • One processor
(console app that runs scheduled tasks)
• Main SqlServer 2008 database
• A MongoDB document datastore (in progress)
HireFlo DirectWebapp
HireFlo IPPWebapp
Processor
SqlServer 2008
Mongo DB Document Storage
Single multitenant database
Rackspace CloudServer
HireFlo Code Architecture• Common – code
needed across multiple layers
• Core – contains both business logic and data access logic. Core is the only library that connects to a DB.
• All application layer code, like the webapps and the processor, is built on top of Core.
Com
mon
Web App
Core
SqlServer Database
MongoDBDocument
store
WebAPI Processor
We are in a Startup Renaissance!!(and Boulder / Denver is a hot spot)
• newtech Meetup – About 4 tech startups present in Denver and Boulder every month. The Denver meetup meets at Mapquest. The Boulder meetup has free beer! http://www.bdnewtech.com/
• Denver Founders Network – Best startup meetup in Denver. Takes place every month down at Uncubed, a pretty happening coworking space in a sketchy part of town.http://www.meetup.com/Denver-Founders-Network/
• TechStars – One of the first Y Combinator style accelerator programs for early stage startups.
http://www.techstars.org/
• Open Angel Forum – Angel Investors meet in Boulder about twice a year to hear pitches from early stage startups and possibly fund them. http://openangelforum.com/
• StartupDigest – Weekly email digest by Tom Markiewicz ([email protected]) that tracks startup related events in the Boulder / Denver area. http://startupdigest.com/
We’re Done
Get the slide deck at :http://rlacovara.blogspot.com
Rudy [email protected]://hireflo.com