DUBLIN, IRELAND - Tonight, Damien reminded me the closing date for the €5,000 innovation vouchers from Enterprise Ireland is at midnight.
I went through a range of emotions…Damn, I thought. I am so bad not applying for money, funding, and grants. Kick yourself together, just do it. Fill it in - you can use it to seed your concept that if we were to create an API for disaster relief we could focus coder’s attention on building apps to save lives rather than building gimmicky iPhone Apps and social aggregation mashups. We could rank our apps not by download but by lives saves. Imagine!
I spent 40 minutes completing the form and trying to mould my idea into one of the e-commerce, communications or digital media categories. In the background, my continuous partial attention caught a Twitter message from @tferriss (author of ‘the 4 hour work week’). Tim linked to “Tyler Durden’s Rules Of Innovation” - a mock-up of Fight Club script.
Tyler’s First Rule of Innovation really cut it with me:
“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”
I then read Tyler’s Second Rule of Innovation:
“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”
And with that I looked back to our Seedcamp mantra “The main thing is keeping the main thing, the main thing.” Focus, Focus, Focus. My API for rescue is for tomorrow, not for today. I need to focus. Getting that €5,000 could be disastrous. With that - I hit [Discard].
And wrote this on the whiteboard above my head instead…
This is the date by which I want my first revenue.
-Robin.
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DUBLIN, IRELAND - Web2Ireland put out a call for all Irish web applications to add themselves to CrunchBase. I love CrunchBase and Crunchbase-y type sites.
Here are all the companies who’ve done it so far. It’s so important people in Ireland talk with each other - join the online community of people doing the same thing as you and shout out to the world about your stuff. Thanks to Crunchbase today I found some new Irish start-ups Hobeze.com, Babelgum & Iceberg.
Here’s our widget.
-Robin.
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DUBLIN, IRELAND - As I move ever closer to my first paying customer I need to implement an online payment system.
As the ‘Basecamp for Danger’ (more on that later), I’d like to implement a payment system similar to 37Signals (read this great post). Monthly subscriptions with easy money back, vouchers, offers, etc. all automated. I’ve worked with Realex before, but only their online terminal and single transaction processing.
What other options are there for an Irish business who wants to do this…
- Roll our own payment processing engine. Where we control customer experience, exact emails, account freezing choice, etc. Run a nightly payment check.
- Not store any credit card numbers, keep them at the payment gateway and interact with tokens only.
- Have the freedom to put through larger single transactions manually.
- Take multiple currencies.
- Easily and cheaply transfer the money to our own AIB Euro Business bank account.
?
-Robin.
(Image Credit: I took this photo from inside Alcatraz Prison looking back out at San Francisco. Prison is a place where I don’t want to end back up with this payment processing system!)
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DUBLIN, IRELAND - Our product Decisions for Heroes is into the final short-list for ‘Most Innovative Web Site’ at the Irish Web Awards. The ByteSurgery blog (the one you’re on!) is up for ‘Best Technology Site’.
Below are the other finalists in our categories. Well cool.
Most Innovative Website - Sponsored by iQ content
Best Technology Site - Sponsored by BH Consulting
(Image Credit: 300 “Prepare For Glory” poster by Ken McGuire. Nice!)
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DUBLIN, IRELAND - I’m back in London next Wednesday to speak about Decisions For Heroes at a Social Innovation Camp meetup.
Social Innovation Camp is an experiment in solving big problems by starting small and supporting the individuals with the ideas, skills and tools to create change by leveraging the power of the web.
[We] wanted to help get the conversation started. So each month we’ll be hearing two or three people who are already working on a web-based tool to create social change Show and Tell what they’re up to and either ask for a hand to get their idea off the ground or bring a little wisdom to share with others.
Very fitting that today Google launched Project 10 to the 100. I think we’re going to have to drop D4H in there as a submission.
I’d also like to put together a ‘Social Innovation’ / ‘Hero Camp’ for Ireland (this is where we all get together to plan, design & implement something non-profit in 24hrs).
-Robin.
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![Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com ]](http://www.bytesurgery.com/blog/wp-content/themes/starkers/images/blank.gif)
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