iGap is drawing to a conclusion, just one more session on funding which will be delivered by  Brian Caulfied @BrianCVC . Brian, who gives VC’s a good name, is one of the main organisers of iGAP along with Ray Walsh (EI) and Sarah Buckley (EI).

iGAP is a programme that is designed specifically to help early-stage internet companies to develop that clarity and to give them tools to help them to execute on the strategy they have defined.

It’s the “clarity” bit I’d like to explore a little more. At Cauwill we have a great product that works well internationally. We have (international) customers in the travel sector some of which pay, others are very slow to pay   Before embarking on iGAP we identified a few concerns with the sector which would prevent growth & scaling. iGAP  confirmed our concerns and has helped us to formulate a plan to tackle a new sector i.e. get our value prop and promise statement for the sector,  how best to approach it and the best route  to market. We had a tendency to build things first and then go  to market. iGAP helped to us to step back from the product & features and focus on a strategy before building/coding anything.

So how did iGAP change the way we do things?

I firmly believe it’s a combination of quality speakers and the format of iGAP that makes it a success. I’ll get back to the speakers in a moment but I’d like to focus on the format.

• Training – I hesitate to call it training.. it’s more than training. Speakers provide insight into their businesses, how they run things, how they set the team up and how things work in web businesses.
• War Stories – we get to hear from those ahead of us about how they got there.. and in some case what they did wrong to cause the company to fail. for example Colm Lyon of Realex Payments, Ray Nolan of Worky.com, Feargal Mooney of HostelWorld, Niall Harbison of Simply Zesty, David Lenehan of Polldaddy and others too numerous to mention here but thank you all for coming in and talking to us.
• Networking – everyone on iGAP is encouraged to network, get to know everyone one the programme and the past programme. iGAP also run several events/panels in parallel where more networking is possible. They even had the Telegraph in and several iGAP companies got profiled on it. A common thread with a lot of the speakers was that b2b business can be very personal and finding the right person is half the battle.
• Open and Sharing Environment - after ‘training’ we go to our cohort groups which is run by the facilitators. Here we openly discuss the day and discuss the ‘homework’. Companies bounce ideas off each other and a lot of good stuff comes out of the cohort meetings. We are all in the same boat so it’s easier to row together and share our pains than remain in isolation. Some of the feedback at times can be brutally honest.

I know many such management training and incubation programmes exist, we were on LEAP which was good for us at the time, but iGAP is different because it focuses specifically on the needs of internet businesses.  Over a period of seven months, six modules were led by international lean start-up and customer development experts such as Eric Ries, Scott Rafer, Paul O’Dea , Justin Knecth, Sean Ellisand Oren Michels .Over the programme they addressed issues such as lean startup theory, product market fit, monetisation strategies, internet customer acquisition, business development using APIs, etc.

Here is a quick synopsis of the content covered by the speakers

Paul O’Dea : Provided the Business battle card. This a great way to get an overview of the your business in 5 questions:

• What do you want to be famous for?
• Who are selected customers?
• Where is your measurable value?
• Why should customers choose you rather than your competitors?
• How will you get your product to market?

Eric Ries : What can I say? This guy has changed the way we do things in Cauwill. We love the lean startup theory and before we do anything we pause and think  - how can we do this the lean way? If you’re reading this – thank you so much Eric.  #leanstartup #MVP

Scott Rafer :  Scott dealt with the business models and understanding your customers sales funnel. The better you know your customer – the better chance you have in closing out a deal with them. “Startups fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model” – Steve Blank

Sean Ellis : Delivered content on Marketing and Customer Acquisition. Really enjoyed this talk. Everything in the presentation is based around the Startup growth pyramid. At the base of the pyramid is correctly finding product market fit. He provided us with a set of questions and one very tough task – asking your customers how they would feel if they could no longer use your product. It’s a horrible question because we live a world where we (startup companies) think our product is super cool and everyone should love/use it .. we just don’t want to hear potentially bad stuff from customers. You know what? This was a great (tough) task and helped us to improve our product market fit.  Do it here http://survey.io

Justin Knecht : I was too ill to attend Justin’s talk, but catching up from Ian and hearing his thoughts on the module this was also another great presentation with real insights into user centric design. I’m currently going through the slides so I’ll update this post with my thoughts at a later stage.

Oren Michels : Up there with one of the best speakers I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. This guy is all about biz dev. Very clear delivery on how to be stronger with customers and help prevent the sales funnel from filling up with ‘Barney Deals’. Oren mixes in stories from The Valley which are very entertaining! The timing of this talk was just serendipity.

iGAP has provided us a framework to structure our decisions and do things faster. It’s not rocket science but it is definitely some form of science – mixed with a bit of luck. We still have things to fix but we’re confident that with a clear focus and sticking to a good strategy we’ll be fine.

I’d like to share with you the format of our Seedcorn pitch. For those who don’t know what Seedcorn it’s a business competition where you submit your business pitch, do two presentations pitch and you could walk away with an investment!

The business plan submission part is over, but don’t worry it happens every year, for those companies selected for the regional finals they will be doing a pitch in the next week or so. For those who make it past the regional final they’ll get to pitch at finals late in November.  Our pitch changed a bit from the regional to the final but not radically. Both of us presented. We divided it up into 3 separate parts, one of us did section 1 and 3 while the other did section 2. We also made sure the person that did section 2 introduced themselves prior to section 1. This helped the panel hear from both of the team on the first slide.

• 1^st part focused on the problem and the product.
• 2^nd part focussed on the customer and business model
• 3^rd covered business operational topics

So what did our slides cover? Well there was a lot of pictures and we tried to storytell rather than lecture.

Slide 1: Company Logo, Name of Promoters,  Contact details.

Slide 2: We wanted to make the problem real to the people we were pitching to. We wanted from the get-go to connect with them. In our case we help people from getting lost, so we showed pictures (no text!) of a GPS device, Sign Posts and an arguing couple!  We wanted to convey the problem of getting lost, how current technology (gps/signpost) can let you down.

Slide 3: We focused on the GPS device and its evolution towards mobile platforms and what this meant ( again all pictures). We had done  research on the people on the panel and we would mention hard to find place names that were local to the panel. Again trying to make a connection.

Slide 4 : We showed the panel pictures of smartphones (iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia). Again we were trying to connect with them and the phones they had in their pockets and making the product real to them.

Slide 5: Showed big badges of SMS, EMAIL and Twitter and an example of our product.

Slide 6: Then was a demo of the product. (video swf – 35 seconds long)

Slide 7: Benefits of product in 10 words. (1 big logo of our product & 4 bullet points)

Slide 8: Who would Buy our product? Outlined ALL the various sectors that would buy it, about 20 words. (5 bullet points)

Slide 9: The sector we targeted first and the value of the addressable market. (2 big graphics & 25 words)

Slide 10: Was a slide with why companies in our target market would buy from us. (2  Big graphics & 4 words)

Slide 11: What our customers say. A big and very positive quote from our customers (name and logo) (20 words)

Slide 12: How we charge for the product. (4 bullet points & 15 words)

Slide 13: How much money the company could make. Table y1,y2,y3.

Slide 14: Who’s the competition.(4 big graphics, no text)

Slide 15: The Risks. What are the risks and how we mitigate these risks. (1 big graphic, 20 words)

Slide 16: Who is going to executive the business plan. (brief outline of the founders and advisory board) (Only names were shown)

Slide 17: A big graphic of Milestones of our achievements to date and looking into the future milestones.

Slide 18: What we need and Why. This is basically the Ask Slide “we want XXXk euro and this is what we are going to spend it on”.

We then left this slide up and did a quick summary of the presentation. Then we invited the panel to ask questions.

Cauwill got accepted on to the Internet Growth Acceleration Programme (iGAP).

iGAP is an intensive management development programme aimed exclusively at high potential internet companies.

It’s a real interesting time at the moment and we got some challenges ahead so iGAP is coming just at the right time.

It’s happening over the next six months,according to the blurb iGAP will equip managers within the Irish internet industry with the practical tools needed to formulate aggressive international growth plans and scale their businesses.

The first introduction day is Wednesday where we get to meet all the other participants. I’m going to blog (and maybe tweet) the events  as they happen. As part of the introduction email Enterprise Ireland sent a word document with directions to East Point.. a word document!! All they really need is  http://directions.to/ei in their emails  

This post concludes the series.  Grab the Business Plan template [here] (word document) which has all three previous posts plus extra comments from the IntertradeIreland Cube document.

To summarize:

• Make every statement count – be clear, be precise
• Don’t be technical (after all it’s a business plan)
• Make the job of reading the plan easier,  visually alert the investor to things they want to see
• (Early Stage/Startup Companies) If you have paying customers this is a big deal..
• Really make the executive summary stand out. Give the investor the motivation to read on.It really should be a self contained document that you can extract and it makes sense by itself.

Checklist:

• Business Overview (what you do and why)
• Size up the market opportunity
• Industry Analysis
• Describe the team
• Explain the business model
• Show Financial projections
• Show Funding sources (and usage)
• Exit
• Appendices/Schedules

Personally, I want to wish all entrants for the InterTradeIreland Seedcorn competition the best of luck and cannot wait to see who gets selected this year both as regional finalists and overall finalists. Winning the investment really has helped Cauwill. Financially it helped out but the PR and confidence it gave was worth than the money – as a result we’ve had a great year, signed more customers and are now looking to take our 1 year old company to the next level!

Finally, if any one entering the competition wants to get in touch please feel to do so.

Regards,
Ronan.

Part 3 of the guide covers: the Operations, the Key Risks, the Financials, the Funding and the very important Exit.

These sections really bring the plan to a close and it’s focused one major thing: Think Jerry Maguire – think “Show me the Money!”.

You need to show the money (twice).

1. Money that company will make from the product year to year
2. The amount of money the company will be turning over in 3 / 5 years

Remember you are inside the mind of an investor.. if they are going to but €MONEY into the company they will want to see a return of, say, 10 times €Money. You have to be realistic. You can’t sell an iPhone App to every owner of an iPhone. You’ll get a % (a two digit number if your lucky). Investors are very smart and will therefore spot any flaw.

The last section is “The Exit”. For us (and presumably others) this was a very short section – we clearly stated what we wanted to happen in 3 years. The investor wants to see an exit otherwise no matter how good everything is they won’t invest. Scroll down to see an answer investors like to see.

Tomorrows post will conclude the series and have a word document template with even more comment!

7    Operations

Being a software company we don’t really buy stuff in as part of the production process so there is no real supply-dependencies. This section for us was pretty short.  We do everything in house so there was major outside dependencies except for some 3rd party software.

7.1    Location

Where are the super heroes located? Store house needed?

7.2    Equipment

Shovels? Spades? Clouds?

7.3    Licensed 3rd party software

If you use other software list it here.

8    Key Risks

Spell out the risks
•    Cloning?
•    Speed to Market?
•    Funding & Finance
•    Key personnel ?
•    Scaling

Give clear statements to how these risks can be mitigated. These risks can be fixed, a lot of the time with money – so the next section and this section are closely linked.

9    Financial Plan

So you have outlined a plan showing the product, why it exists, who will buy it, how much they will pay for it. Behind this plan is the team of superheroes and it will cost money to execute the plan. This section does 2 things:
•    Shows how much money the company can make using your outlined business model(investors like to invest in companies that make or show great potential in making money)
•     How tight/mean/lean your company can run on

9.1    Shareholders/Ownership

•    If the superheroes have shares  indicate %
•    Who else has shares?

9.2    Royalties

If applicable.

9.3    Profit and Loss Summary

We put a condensed version of our excel sheets in here. (3 years). Expanded versions were in the schedules below
Year 1                            Year 2                           Year 3
Sales revenue
Less cost of sales
Gross profit
Less expenses
Net Profit(Loss)
Less Tax
Net profit(Loss) after Tax

9.4    Balance Sheet

We put a condensed version of our excel sheets in here. (3 years). Expanded versions were in the schedules below

10    Funding

Now that you’ve shown how much money the company make in 3-5 years but you need a small amount (in comparison to year 3/5 profits) to get there.
How many rounds of funding will be needed?
If there has been previous rounds:
•    How much money have you put in to the company yourselves?
•    How much money has other people put in so far?
If you need money now (and let’s face it you are entering the seedcorn competition to win investment)
•    How much money do you need now? (200k? 500k?)
•    What are you going to do with this money? (Top-tip on what you should NOT spend investment money: your salary, new car etc. )

10.1    Achievements to date

To help the reader/investor believe in your business plan, state you achievements to date.
•    Get on an EPP?
•    Win any awards?
•    Spin out of a knowledge provider?
•    Got customers?

11    Exit Strategy

Right answer: “Trade sale for cash ( with revenue streams of X million euros) in Y years. ”
Wrong answer: “We don’t want to sell the company. It’s our baby”.

Part 2 of the Guide will cover the Product, The  Business Model and The Management.
These are big sections and require you to think long and hard. It requires getting inside the mind of an investor. This is tricky and the investors mind you get into might not be the investor that is reading your business plan. This is where a bit of luck comes into play. The seedcorn competition will try and match your business sector with an investor in a similar sector – it won’t be a perfect match.

Time to get inside the venture capitalist who is now looking at  your business that offers:

1. a clearly specify the product or service
2. a large potential number of paying customers
3. at a price well above what it would cost to produce i.e making a profit (while delivering customer satisfaction)

What else do you need to let the investor know? You need a good business model. One that offers genuine choices of:

1. Who is the target customer? Why was that target sector chosen?
2. What is the product?
3. How is the company planning to deliver the product and maximise margins?

I can’t stress enough that this needs to be in plain and simple English – no jargon!  Each of these points has to be obvious to the investor.

4 Product or Service Proposition

4.1 Unique Selling Points

Expand on your products USP. Sit down and using a clean sheet of paper work on your USP. Remember this is a Marketing concept so thing like a marketing guru.  Why would someone buy your product over the next? If you buy this product what are you getting? Leave the sheet of paper in a drawer and come back to it in a couple of days. Does it make sense now? Show & tell the USPs  to random people – do they look at you with one raised confused eyebrow or nod? If they nod you on the right track.
Have a think about other Products say an iPhone. Why would you buy an iPhone over any other smartphone?

4.2 Protecting the Product

If you have protection on the product – trade marking, patent etc. declare it in full.  Show the logos, box, packaging  etc. of the product.

4.3 Endorsement of the Product

4.3.1 Customers

The biggest endorsement is having customers.  Get the CEO/MD of one of your customers to say something nice about your product.

4.3.2 Reviews

If anyone has endorsed your product – blog write-ups, if it’s been promoted (say at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronic Show by Nokia).

4.3.3 Nominations

Been nominated for any awards? Win any prizes?

4.3.4 Poll/Survey of X000 users

What do your users think of it?

4.4 Additional R & D

What next are you going to do with the product to improve it?

4.5 Time to market and route to commercialization

Is it ready now? Does it need further work? If it’s ready how are you going to bring it to the market?

4.5.1 Selling directly to business

4.5.2 Selling directly to the end consumer

4.6 Technical risk

There is always technical risk! What sort of secret sauce do you have  - is it reversible? Can you prevent it from been cloned?

5 Marketing Plan

How are you going to inform people of your product? Tradeshows? Cold calling? Magazines, Radio, TV, viral marketing ? Have you contacts in the market that you can leverage?

5.1 Business model

Check out “Business Model Generation” by Alexander Osterwalder book for more on this section . I’ve included the Canvas page but make sure you read the freely available section of the book that explains it. [grab it here]

Some fundamentals that need to be clear:  B2B or B2C?  and how you make money!
E.g. you can buy an apple for 10cent.  You sell the apple for 20cent. It will cost you 2 cent to deliver an apple.  8 cent profit.  You must avoid the South Park Underpants Gnomes business model  at all times! [Google it!]

5.2 Distribution strategy

How are you going to distribute the product? Direct Sales or via a distributor?

5.3 Revenue model

Revenue share? Direct Sell? Via a reseller? Transaction based? Percentage of membership?

5.3.1 Business to Business

5.3.1.1 Pricing:

Clearly show how much your product is selling for. The cost of sales etc.

5.3.2 Advertising

Is there a way your product could carry advertisement? Extra revenue scheme?

5.4 Key Customers

Who are your key customers in the next 12 months? How are you going to get them? How do you promote to them? How much can you make if you secure the key customers?

5.5 First Addressable Market

So you have a few markets you are going to go after – but which one first? Spell out your logic.

5.6 Funding Avenues

It’s going to take a bit of time to get customers on board (it always takes longer than you think!) so how are you going to keep the show on the road?

• FFF?
• Banks?
• Business Expansion Scheme?
• Angel Investor?
• Joint funding from EI & Venture Capital investment ?
• Other

6 Management Team

Big section here – you can have a super-duper product but without good people to execute a plan then the product will not gain traction. Who are the super-heroes in your team and what are they responsible for?  What are the backgrounds of the founders? Experienced?
Outside the core team who are the advisors? The accountants, the solicitors? We are fortunate to have a good set of mentors in the Valley and this helped us stand out.

Section 7 ( Operation, Risks, Financials) coming in Part 3.

In a series of blog posts I’m going to share what Cauwill put into the Seedcorn Business Plan.  I (there is no I in team!!) didn’t write the business plan alone nor have I  put this guide together without a great deal of help from Ian. As ever Ian – a big thanks goes your way.

Don’t worry about cutting and pasting from the blog – with the last blog of the guide (Thursday)  I’ll be attaching a complete word document version of the guide with extra comments from InterTradeIreland. Feel free to ask & post questions – I’ll be happy to respond to them.

At a later stage I’m going to do the same for the regional and final presentations for fortunate companies that make past the business plan evaluation section of the competition. Let’s hope it’s you!

DISCLAIMER TIME: There is no guarantee that if you follow the guide exactly that you will win the competition.. quite the contrary this business plan worked for us because it is OUR business plan. Your company business will be different to ours so your business plan will be different also. Things we left out, you may need to include. With that, we wish the best of luck.

So let’s look at Part 1 of the guide which will cover: Overview Document length and style, Cover Page, Executive Summary and  Sections1 – 3.

English and style of our business plan

• Formal English
• Font size 11 (Calibri/Myriad Pro)
• Numbered Section Headings
• Short snappy sections – no long & fluffy paragraphs!

Total Document =

1 Cover page + 25 page BizPlan + 4 pages Schedules / appendices

Cover page had:

Company Name, Date and Seedcorn Category.

Executive Summary (3 pages)

Really important section and you should do this LAST as it’s the best of the document.

• The Problem
• The Solution (add a picture if it helps describing the solution)
• Business Model
• The Opportunity
• Achievements to Date
  • If you have paying customers make sure you state it (helped us stand out)
• Management
• Forecast Sales and Profit
• Funding Required
• The Exit
  • Investors want to see how they are going to get their moneyx10 back

1         Business Overview

1.1       About the Company

Who you are, What you do in. Who you sell to.  All in less than 300 words.

The most important things to talk about here is the “Value-add” – what have you got that others will see the value of and will therefore pay for. Do you save them money or provide a way for them to make more money – that’s all its really about. Need to capture the reader imagination here – if they “get it” and believe you at this point then everything else will confirm it for them – if you lose the reader on the value-add –then you’ve lost them totally!

1.2       What the product is

• Features
• USP
• Benefits (to your customer)

2         Market Opportunity

2.1       Who needs the product?

Identify the sector who needs the product. Cleary Identify why they need it.

2.2       How many of them are there?

Quantify.

2.3       Other Markets

Maybe your product is applicable to other markets but you are focusing on one/two at the moment.  If so identify them here.

2.4       Key purchasing criteria

Why would customers buy your product. Hint you are going to:

• Save them money
• Save them time
• Make them money (by selling it, getting more customer etc.)
• all of the above

2.5       External Factors influencing market demand

Eh – downturn!

2.6       Specific market/demand opportunities

You should show very specific and independently delivered facts that the market is looking for your product.  “According to Market research conducted by PhoCusWright.. PWC etc.)

3         Industry & Competition

What makes you confident that you are in the right industry? What has happened to strengthen your belief that the industry is growing.

What is happening within the markets/sectors that convinces you the business has potential to grow?

3.1       Competition | Direct

List direct competition here – find out as much as you can about them. Market share, funding, backing , strength, weaknesses etc.

ps. You have competition. If you don’t there probably isn’t a market for your product.

3.2       Competition | In Direct

Same here but not as much detail as direct.

3.3       Competitive Advantage

Why is your product better than the direct competition.

Section 4 in tomorrows Post…

It’s July 2010. Cauwill Technologies is one this month.

12 months ago we had a nifty piece of mobile technology, no customers, no money (except our savings) and no real idea what the future held. Leaving the safe* employment as a researcher in a university was one of the scariest decisions we had to make but it’s been all worth since we spun out the company. That’s not to say there hasn’t been bad days since spinning out – of course there has been! Someone told me recently the longer you are in business and the highs get higher and lows get lower.

Looking back over the year we certainly had some really great days, first customer, getting more paying customers, hiring staff and of course let’s not forget about winning InterTradeIreland’s Seedcorn competition as ‘Best Emerging’ Company!

We have learnt so much over the past 12 months and sitting in UL researching & lecturing seems like a lifetime ago. I think I would find it very hard to go back. I spoke to a mate of mine last weekend (whom I spent countless hours in the UL WAR lab trying to get a testbed to work) about leaving and the challenges/changes it has brought. He was adamant that I needed to leave and it was the best thing to do as it’s open a entirely new world. I couldn’t agree more. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. The only downside to leaving is the lack of a salary! Startups don’t pay well at all

So over the past 12 months what have we learnt? Here is a list in no particular order of some of the learnings.

You have to be a little crazy.
You need to love what you are doing otherwise you will grow tired of it. You have to give up a lot of things to follow this dream. You will have to be able to make, what seems like, crazy decisions to try better the company. Finally, you need to be able to calculate risk and act on it (it helps here being a little crazy!)

You need a plan.
It doesn’t have to be much, but you need a plan! Who are the customers? How many customers? Why do they need your service product? Why would they buy from you and not Joe down the road? How much will they pay for it? How do you get to them? Where do you want the company to be in 3, 5 years? How are you going to get there? How much money do you need? Where will it come from?
I’m preparing a post about our Seedcorn business plan which may be of interest to people in Ireland.

Make sure you have a partner.
I was super lucky. Ian was in the same position/mindset. We worked together in UL for the past 10 years so we knew each very well. Cauwill wouldn’t be where it is right now if either did this alone. It probably wouldn’t have made it to one. Simple as that.

Don’t ram technology down customers throats!
We’ve learnt when talking to potential customers the secret is not to talk! Ask questions about their business, their needs, things that are hurting them in terms of time/money. If you have a solution for their pain they will be a lot happier to engage with you.

Build Relationships & Communicate
It’s important to go out and meet people. At times it’s hard but it has to be done. If you don’t do this how will be people be made aware of you and your product? Be active on the social networks, go to seminars, open coffees, trade shows, etc. the key is just to get involved. Some of this seems like it will go nowhere, and the majority of it will go nowhere, but on occasions some connections you make can lead to big things down the line. Some of these connections could lead to my next point.

Build a network of mentors.
Mentors = friends, colleagues, people in the shared office, maybe elite and trusted customers. You won’t be able to do everything and you’ll need people to talk to on a regular basis. You draw on their experience in business, marketing, PR, sales etc. to help you make better decisions. Note: you don’t want a bunch of yes ‘men’ either.

Keep on top of things.
This includes; market research (know what has happened, happening now, might/will happen in the future). Keep all your financial accounts in order from day one. Keep a track of every correspondence with {potential} customers – get a CRM package (onepagecrm, zoho, capsulecrm etc.) in place.

Don’t spend all your time on development
Can’t stress this point enough. Don’t spend all your time developing the mother-of-all-products. No-one will use it. You might get lucky but chances are you won’t. Listen to what your customers want and develop to their requirements. Release often and release early. Provide good great customer service and you’ll be on to a winner.

Out source
Know your weak areas and out source these tasks to people how can do it better than you.

*Safe; once you have a contract you get paid every month! Getting the contract is another matter altogether!

Where does the time go? It’s absolutely flying by. Things are good  but I think I need a break.

Not so long ago the country was crippled by frost and ice – nobody could go anywhere.  Then the deadly ash cloud covered the country and again people were grounded & having to stay put. I’m just wondering what’s next to hit Ireland!? Dust storms? Locusts? Unlikely. They better stay away because I need a break. It’s been over 2 years since I went away for 10 days and switched off. (that means no laptop or blackberry) so it’s high time.

It’s hard to think this time last year I was UL worrying about lectures, students, papers, publishing etc. it’s now a distant memory. It was a tough decision to leave but I’m glad I did. Had I not, I’d still be in UL worrying about lectures, students, papers, publishing etc.

It’s been a terrific year for the Cauwill with things going from strength to strength. Just last week I was delighted to see two more hotels coming online and using the technology as part of their booking – it  made me smile.

The year has brought great challenges and we’ve been learning new (technical & business related) stuff  everyday. LEAP has been good too and I’m glad I did. The year has been a roller-coaster ride with lots of lows including sleepless nights, worrying, having minor-to-major panic attacks when something goes wrong, stressed to max, wondering when were  going to sign a customer, wondering if anyone would ever use the service. But of course on the flip side, the highs have been great including successfully delivery a quality product, securing and getting paid by customers,  receiving a thank-you note from users who love the service and of course let’s not forget InterTrade Ireland Seedcorn

Since we’ve won it’s been really busy.. for sure we’ve had some knock-backs but all-in-all it’s been positive.  You need to be able to take the highs with the lows in this game.

For those entering, I’ll be posting a blog on our experience last year, what we included in the business plan & presentation.

Anyway.. that’s for a little later in the meantime I need recommendations for a vacation! Answers on a postcard please