For smaller, more repetitive tasks I really like Mechanical Turk from Amazon Web Services.  If you haven’t tried either of these for your company you might want to check them out.

Things I liked:

1. Website: Liveperson chat feature to get questions answered immediately without waiting on the phone. Full transcript emailed to me so I could forward to accountants and lawyers and have a record of what we needed to do.
2. They emailed the forms I needed to fill out while we were in the chat session. The forms were already pre-filled with my corporate information.
3. Personal service: After we filed a request, a customer service agent followed up with a phone call as we had omitted a few pieces of information. Rather than forcing us to start the process over she helped us complete the form over the phone.

Background –

When we incorporated TownConnect we chose a corporation vs. an LLC so that our staff could participate in a stock option plan. Based on the numbers of shares you authorize, the state bills you franchise taxes accordingly. Thinking big — we authorized a lot of shares which resulted in a franchise tax bill over $30,000. Now, TownConnect didn’t really owe $30,000 because there is alternative method of filing (par value) which put our tax bill under $150 for our first year of operations.

I wonder if there are many startups who authorize a smaller amount of shares and who just pay the bill not knowing they are overpaying?

The alternative method requires a few forms to be filled out and sent in. Unfortunately, we hadn’t hired a bookkeeper yet and filling out forms ranks really low on my priority list so didn’t get around to it. When the Division of Corporations sent a letter regarding the tax filing and our status, it was time to take action.

After a false start delegating this to my bookkeeper, I investigated.  Rather than wait on hold and navigate options, I was able to get my questions answered in a live chat session (7 minutes) and one phone call (they called me).

Special thanks to our customer service rep, Dot Savage, who was very helpful.

In the early stages you are locked away in a cave. In solitude talking to yourself. No one knows who you are, where you are or what you are doing. People with corporate jobs look at you a little differently — “Where are your khakis and golf shirt on casual day?”

Fire! I made fire! You encounter problems — severe challenges and minor issues. You creatively manage to solve them — sometimes ingeniously. You are alone so there is no one to know but you and your team. Some might say how awful. I think entrepreneurs relish the adventure regardless. If what you are doing is really worthy the world will know someday.

Shove off – There comes a point where you have to leave the island – launch your company and launch your product. You build your little raft, load up the team and head into the brutal surf of the sea. Death is a real possibility – “Wilson!” – tears will be shed. Success will depend on how well you prepared, your ability to react, the good graces of your clients and some luck.

Our raft is almost ready and we are discussing the tides. This note is my etching on the stone.

What is U.S. Patent 5,706,434?

If your technical and legally minded you can read about it at Google Patents or the USPTO. The patent covers several seminal Internet technologies that had not yet been fully realized in 1995.

Beside several claims surrounding email protocol and transfer, the patent covers HTML web pages served using data pulled from a relational (SQL) database.

So any company that stores customer or product data and serves it up dynamically to a user with a login is using the IP of this patent. Examples: Login to your online banking account and retrieve your account information, purchase history at Amazon.com, email from Gmail. Vast infringement. While the company was defunct its patent became THE standard for serving up web pages and email communications.

What happened? Before we could use the assets of Electric Classified to pursue licensing deals we had to put the assets up for public auction. Nathan Myhrvold’s company, Intellectual Ventures, showed up at the auction and purchased the patent at a premium to what we had paid. Dr. Myhrvold is the former CTO of Microsoft and under his leadership Intellectual Ventures had gobbled up a lot of patents in the past few years. Stay tuned for that story…

We made over 10x on the money invested in the transaction but it was the toughest check I ever had to cash.