Archive for June, 2007
Today we are releasing the FreshBooks API.
You can find Ben’s wonderful documentation here. The API now has its own blog to share recent updates, scripts, samples and examples – if you are a developer, subscribe. We also have a forum just for those of you who are playing with the API.
Who is API for?
- Developers connecting FreshBooks with their own systems or cool desktop widgets.
- Web application developers, web hosts, or subscription services who want to avoid drowning in lost time building their own billing backend.
- Companies needing to replace their existing billing backend because a lack of reporting, payment history, and friendly dispute mechanisms is upsetting customers and internal developers.
- Anyone with good ol’ customers that need good ol’ invoices via snail mail.
What Can You Do with the API
Every day, new web applications are joining the Software-as-a-Service movement. We wanted to contribute back to our fellow peers in the simplest way possible, and the best way we know how, and help them get their money in the door. With the API, you’ll be able to:
- Deliver professional invoices over email and through the good old snail mail.
- Efficiently track outstanding accounts receivable.
- Cordially manage billing disputes.
- Record payment histories for your customers’ peace of mind.
- Smoothly collect payment online collecting by credit card, PayPal, or eCheck.
Because the API allows you to manage clients, create invoices, and record payments, it’s easy to slide it into your existing billing system. Don’t go through the agony of learning how to mail invoices, negotiate with payment gateways, and track those delinquent customers yourself! You should only have to worry about your own business.
Other Thoughts Regarding the API
Of course, because the API is a true open API, you can do a lot more with it. FreshBooks doesn’t want to own you. Get your data out, play with it, and shove it back in. Hook FreshBooks up with your favorite productivity tool or desktop widget. (Tip: We’ve already integrated Basecamp! Maybe you want to integrate with some of the other great services out there.) Stuck with QuickBooks? We’re building an import/export tool. Now, you can build an import/export tool for your own favorite or least favorite application.
Have any other cool ideas? Maybe you want to build your own end-to-end sales operations company. Go ahead. Build it on our backs. We’re not asking for a cut from your sweat.
Join our developer community and let us help you with your next steps.
BTW – we were planning to launch the API and documentation around noon, but we’ve been outed by Techcrunch and a few other blog posts, so you can expect this post to be updated throughout the day as more content trickles out. In the meantime, please roll with us. Thanks.
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Ali is a manic guy. Just listen to him, “sleep is my biggest distraction from work. It’s really hard for me to manage. Like I want to stay up every night and work on it and then I’m tired in the morning and I’m trying to figure out how to form that balance so I can work more and still not have red eyes.” What could possibly be so important that he’s sacrificing his health?
Ironically, he’s trying to grow CanadaHomeHealth.com, a Canadian version of America’s Drugstore.com, up from scratch. And he’s doing it because it’s most fun he’s ever had.
Ali has had his share of good jobs before. Ali is the creator of the (in)famous BrickBreaker game on the RIM Blackberry. “I think I’ve destroyed a couple thumbs myself,” he laughs. He’s also done user interface design at Microsoft. However, neither of those plum positions appealed to him. He craved the challenge of starting a business from scratch and growing it huge.
The kernel of the idea was straightforward. His father is a pharmacist at Guelph. Originally, Ali started by selling a few products online from his father’s store, and unexpectedly things just took off. As Ali says, “we just started seeing people coming in without really any marketing. Hey, this is kind of neat, this is fun, it markets itself. People are ordering at midnight and when I’m not even in the store. It became really fun that way. So we just added products and added products. We have 5,000 now and we’re still going.”
That was enough, and so now CanadaHomeHealth has become his passion. As he says, all day and night,
All I think about is scale; I want it to be big, and that’s important for me, for the staff that work with me, and just for the project goal in itself. I just want to see how can you make something out of a garage become something that people have heard about.
I really like what I’m doing. This is the first time I’ve ever been in a job where this is what I want to do. This is the kind of job I like. I love the relationship I have with customers all over Canada. I love managing the stock. I love the fact that it’s changing every day and that I’m right into the code but right into the business and the PR. Oh, I love the fact that it’s really overwhelming! I always want to be in that state. So I’m worried that one day this will become stable and then it won’t be fun any more. That’s something that I worry about.
I haven’t seen someone who wanted it more than Ali. He’ll get there in the end, no doubt. Let’s just hope he takes better care of his own health.
It all started one day, hanging out at the mall. These Ryerson University undergrads, all friends, were sitting there and noticed a curious event. A girl was going from store to store handing out résumés, looking for a job, any job. Here was someone, young, probably a student, who needed a simple job to make ends meet. The best she could do is bet that at least one store needed to replace staff recently lost in their high-turnover retail world.
They saw the pain. They did their research. As it turns out, people who need to work hourly wage, high turnover jobs don’t want to waste money and time commuting for a job that doesn’t pay as much money for their time. Yet, the existing job sites did nothing to address this pain. Enter JobLoft.com, a brilliantly simple idea. List hourly wage jobs by proximity to people’s homes, and text message job listings as they come available to candidates willing to pounce immediately. For employers this was a no brainer: quickly fill jobs with happier employees less willing to quit.
And then enter the Dragon’s Den. JobLoft got their big break on the CBC’s angel investment reality TV show. They were so close to not going. “We went in last minute to the audition. We didn’t even think we would go,” said Chris, but in the end, “I remember telling Lee before the cameras were on like, well, we have nothing to lose.” Not only did they not lose, but they convinced every single Dragon to invest in their company. They did it with poise, with preparation, with professionalism, and with day-glo orange ties.
Things didn’t work out with the Dragons, but it was all for the best. The exposure gave them needed momentum, and JobLoft.com is growing rapidly. It has funding. It has customers. It is profitable. It has a good chance of being a true success story. And it’s only been a year since they started.
What’s next for Canada’s next team of tech entrepreneurs? If anything, the experience has helped them grow together. Three of the four founders live together, with the fourth close by. They have learnt how to balance stress, friendship, and dirty dishes, which is something to be envied. Well, they’re keen to finish establishing JobLoft.com. Then, they have more ideas to work on.
I’d say they are good bets.
While Omar had already gotten his feet wet in the TorCamp community, DemoCamp 13 was his big introduction to the crowd. He was demoing ProductWiki, which for many there was an altogether novel concept. ProductWiki joins the very thin ranks of the commercial, public, open content wikis on the Internet, like WikiTravel and WikiHow. In Omar’s own words, ProductWiki is “what would happen if you took Wikipedia and Consumer Reports and they had a baby.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given a rowdy, half-drunken room of TorCampers, ProductWiki received a lukewarm reception. Well, a surly reception. And that’s unfortunate because ProductWiki harbours a small secret that makes all the difference in the world.
ProductWiki is profitable. Not just break-even profitable, but enough that three engineers could justify leaving their Silicon Valley jobs to move back to Canada and work full time on what they consider first and foremost a labour of love. As Omar says, “it is nice being able to pay ourselves without having to work for any other boss.”
So, how did they get from an idea to having control over their own lives? They believe in what they are doing, and that gives them the energy to work all day long through good times and bad. All Omar wants is to have “an impact on the world, that’s really all I care about. How that comes about right now is ProductWiki, which I am pouring my heart and soul to.”
And second, they are a family business. Omar works with his sister and brother-in-law out of their house. When the riskiest move starting a business is picking the right partners, working with family is a huge leg up. As Omar says, you have “more bonds that keep people honest.” Then again, I can sympathize as a younger brother myself, that there is a huge downside to working out of his older sister’s house. “I’m an expert now on marriage, because I watch them. They’re a married couple, and I see them 10 hours a day, day in and day out. So maybe it can be too much information.”
Facebook has become a monster. The popular social networking website has millions of users worldwide, including over 500k in Toronto alone, and grows roughly 3% a week. Our own FreshBooks User Group, hosted on Facebook, already has 80+ members – okay, not as impressive, but we’re still pretty excited about it.
Several weeks ago, the Facebook team launched the Facebook Platform, a way for developers and companies to create their own applications inside the Facebook mega-verse. As an avid Facebook user with too much time on my hands, I thought I’d fool around and create my own Facebook app. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing – here’s some thoughts on my experience.
Where’s the “Dummies” guide?
When the Facebook Platform was first released, documentation was sparse. The best source of information was the sample application provided, which didn’t work (for me) straight out of the box. All I wanted was “Hello, World”, but after a full night of debugging with no success, I had lost interest and was ready to call it quits. It wasn’t until they added a step-by-step walkthrough and a developer Wiki before I tried my hand again.
Is anybody listening?
Facebook has a developer forum for platform-related questions, and it’s generally pretty busy. When I posted a new thread on some difficulties I’d been having, I was pleasantly surprised to see so many follow up posts by fellow Facebook users trying to lend a hand. Unfortunately, none of their suggestions worked, and 12 thread replies and a week later, I still didn’t have an answer.
It turns out I’m not alone – there are a number of long forum threads like mine to which no one has an answer, and it feels like the Facebook developers have been totally absent. With an estimated 50+ developers on staff, can’t a few take some time to reply to threads and throw out some life preservers? (Yeah, I totally made up that number.)
What I’ve learned
As the lead FreshBooks API developer, I realize I’m playing with fire here. We’re weeks away from releasing our new-and-improved FreshBooks API, and someone could be writing the very same about us shortly.
Still, I think this experience has taught me a few things, and I think the team and I have put together a better product as a result. Keep an eye out for a brand new API documentation page, “getting started” sample code, and a developer forum where we’ll be actively answering questions. Our goal isn’t just to add new features and functions; we want to get you up and building apps as painlessly as possible.
Yesterday, FreshBooks was featured by Andrew Wahl in the latest version of Canada Business Magazine. He highlighted our emphasis on customer service:
“Customers come first. It’s a claim that most businesses like to believe they uphold but often struggle to demonstrate… but at FreshBooks… customer service plays a critical role.”
You can pick up a copy at new stands across the country.
On the cover: fellow Torontonian and friend of FreshBooks, Albert Lai of BubbleShare, which was recently sold to Kaboose. Godfather of the Toronto tech community, David Crow a writes up the two articles.
I first heard about StandoutJobs.com the way most people had. I watched their hilarious video job posting and wondered how a stealth startup hires a Python wrangler. Little did I realize when I sat down to interview Fred Ngo about his new job, here I was talking to one of the creators of that viral video, and one heck of a creative guy.
Fred Ngo used to work on a 100-person CPU design team. On a team that size, he felt a passionate individual could only make so much of a difference in the world. He longed to join ranks with a peppy young startup to make his mark on the world, but it was difficult. Finding the right startup, with the inspiration and drive to make a difference, was not that easy.
Closing the gap
As a consummate entrepreneur, Fred did not let the gap between his passion and available opportunities deter him. He imported BarCamp to Montréal and became a leader in the local tech community. After all, if you can’t find the right opportunity in life, sometimes you must make it by building a better community.
Despite this, he had trouble finding the right opportunity. At BarCamp Montréal, Fred lamented to Austin Hill, a fellow Montréal entrepreneur, “Hey, I can’t find any cool startup jobs. I want to join a startup and make a difference.” Austin replied, “Well, I can’t find any great employees who are passionate and want to join startups.” And suddenly the opportunity was obvious: closing the gap between the passionate and inspiring causes.
The essential problem, though, was that typical recruiting sites sucked. Bullet points strangled the life out of every job. Boilerplate buried each company’s human spirit underneath safe phrases. Job descriptions were optimized for motivating search engines, not for motivating human beings. You’d have a better time getting excited by sticking a battery on your tongue.
Jobs for the YouTube generation
Well, the solution to that problem is obvious once formulated in the right way. Get away from the 1950s. Use the power of new services like YouTube to tell the human story. Show the quirks and personalities that characterize the company. Expose the culture and the emotional drive and the funny bone to the world. Demonstrate that your company is not your average a 100-person team, but a place where the inspired come to inspire.
Really, I think StandoutJobs.com is saying that in a century where top talent is scarce, and work-life balance is blurring, and big tech continues to follow Dilbert into cube hell, “branding” is not just about how your customers see your externally facing product, but also how your employees and prospective candidates see you, as a person, with a personality, with passion, with a funny bone. Someone they actually want to spend most of their day with.
Go figure. People like working with real people. Genius!
(Standoutjobs.com is currently operating in “semi-stealth” mode, but a preview site is available at standoutjobs.com. Fred and his crew expect to launch the full service in the Fall of 2007.)
Introducing Sunir
Entrepreneurism is in my blood. My parents both came from Kenya, where they were children of retailers and industrialites. In fact, I come from from a long line of entrepreneurs escaping poverty in India. They worked hard, starting by laying the ties of the Kenyan railway at the turn of the 20th century to becoming one of the core commercial classes at the turn of the 21st. What was their motivation? Getting others like themselves out of poverty in India on towards a better life. Now, my generation is leaving Kenya for England, Australia, and in my case North America to start the cycle once again.
Me? I’ve worked at a fair share of start ups. Many of my friends are entrepreneurs themselves. In all that experience, one thing struck me time and time again. Every great entrepreneur takes this crazy plunge because they have some dream, some passion they can only satisfy by breaking new ground.
Motivation is about giving
Business isn’t easy. What keeps folks motivated to slog through all the everyday non-sense? I found the most passionate, most focused, entrepreneurs at their core want to contribute to something wider than themselves, like my relatives raising others out of poverty. I actually liked how Tony Robbins put it during his energetic talk at TED: you only grow to acquire more resources that you can use to help others.
My own passion is helping good folks follow through successfully on their dreams. Last month, I enthusiastically joined FreshBooks because they help the little guy start their dreams by starting a business. For my first task, I was thrown at Mesh 2007, a conference swimming in tech startups where I interviewed all the entrepreneurs that I could find. I was struck once again by how many entrepreneurs get in business to make the world a better place.
Entrepreneurs are superheroes
I think entrepreneurs are modern day superheroes. They are taking great personal risk, at great personal costs, because they just want to make your life better. They are people to emulate.
As my introduction to the FreshBooks community, I’m posting a series of Super Entrepreneur trading cards. I encourage you to copy the cards that most inspire you, post them on your blogs, and explain to others why you did this crazy thing in the first place. Show that you aren’t alone. You belong to a League of Business Heroes making the 21st century better through your hard work and love.
I’m walking to the subway, my cell phone rings, I punch in a few numbers and I’ve just paid off some money I owe.
Making collections more mobile is what PayPal has just opened the door to by releasing their new mobile checkout process.
Their new mobile checkout process allows you to pay for goods or services securely through their web terminal on your mobile phone.
I’ve talked about it before, but recognizing when you need guidance is vital – in my opinion this is especially true for entrepreneurs who frequently bear the responsibility of making decisions that affect the rest of the team.
Every few months I find myself wrestling with an important business decision – on what will have impacts long into the future. At times like these I find I am rarely standing on solid ground with respect to making an informed decision. When you think about it, this is not surprising. FreshBooks exists in a fast moving space…relatively speaking, technologies and markets turn on a dime on the web. I like that about what we do, but it also means that I find myself trying to solve problems that have either never been solved before, or have only been solved by a small number of people. Gaining access to those people so you can ask them questions about their experiences is priceless, but not always possible – that’s why I collect advisors and try to cultivate long standing relationships with other entrepreneurs.
If you surround yourself with great people, the trick then becomes swallowing your pride and laying yourself bare and revealing that you don’t know the answer. You may have some ideas, but really what you have are questions. If you have the courage to ask those questions, you’ll find that your advisors can steer you in the right direction. It’s been my experience that the best advisors won’t tell you where to go, but they will keep you from going in the wrong direction, and that’s at least half the battle.
So swallow that pride, and turn to someone you think might help – it might even be your competitor. I’m betting you’ll be amazed at how you will be received.
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