Apologies, goal setting, and triathlons

I feel the need to apologize to both of my faithful readers for the lack of “startup-related” posts the last month or so.  My original intent when I signed up to be a book review blogger was to write some insightful posts on how the book related to entrepreneurship and fit with my journey, but blogging is hard work!

Anyway, I wanted to write a brief post to break up the mass of book reviews that have and will continue to deface the front page of this blog…

My triathlon

I haven’t blogged about it here, but over the past few months I’ve been training for a triathlon.  I actually completed the race last weekend (my first ever race of any sort), and the whole journey taught me quite a bit about goal setting.

First, I was amazed at how much more motivation and focus I gained from actually signing up for the race.  Never mind the fact that I had been training for three months — once I mailed in my registration form, suddenly everything I did was going to impact my performance on race day.

I thought about my nutrition, my training, my downtime, my sleep in a whole new way.  All of my energy could be focused on one goal, and it was powerful.

It also helped to have a specific day that I was training toward and approaching.  It gave all of my workouts much more meaning, knowing that I was doing something to improve my time.

I’ve thought about applying this to my next development sprint with ClimbPoint, though at the moment I’m lacking motivation.  I guess I need an inciting incident (the equivalent of a race registration form) to get me started, to move me to identify and start pursuing my next goal.

Which reminds me again how great A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is.  Go buy it and read it if you haven’t yet.  It’s a quick read.

Miscellaneous updates

The recent blogging slowdown (only one post in February) happened to correspond to one intense half-sick, half-busy month. Since releasing the latest version of ClimbPoint at the end of January my attention has been on finishing up my final report of everything I’ve done up to this point. Let me say this much: I have way more to blog about than I have time, but hopefully we’ll get there sooner rather than later.

A few of the posts on the way…

The market for climbing wall management software It’s definitely bigger than I thought, and the initial feedback that I’ve received is that there are quite a few gym managers out there looking for specialized climbing software.

Setting a price point I’m still chasing my tail a bit in terms of setting a price for ClimbPoint when I post it for sale in a couple months, but I’ve gained some insight into what it takes to put a price tag on a bunch of carefully organized bits.

Sales projections This is where I’ll combine the wealth of information set forth in the previous two posts. I put together a three year income & expense statement, a cash flow sheet, and a balance statement.

Feedback from my awesome beta testers I can’t wait to write this post. I’ve talked with all but one of my six beta testers and have received some great feedback, and quite a few glowing reviews. This post will highlight those reviews and generally help me feel like this whole thing has been worthwhile.

If I don’t post here again by next week, please send me a polite but firm email telling me to get it in gear

Back to school

After a life-changing summer, it’s now time to head back to school and once again turn my attention toward this software commercialization experiment. I’ve attempted to get back on the blogging horse before, so I’m not going to make any promises in terms of post frequency.

That said, over the next ten months I’ll be completing my Master’s Project at Purdue, which happens to be commercializing climbing wall software. So I would hope that there wouldn’t be a shortage of post ideas. I would expect, though, that there will be a shortage of time.

Before I fill you in on what I’ve been working on over the past couple weeks, I’m going to bring some closure to my trip to Boulder. So for those of you who have been perched anxiously on the edge of your seats, the details will be coming soon!

Getting Back on the Horse

While this blog began with grand intentions, I’ve come to realize that my initial expectations have kept me from writing here regularly. It’s not that I haven’t thought any more about beginning a startup since April, it’s that I haven’t had any thoughts that directly relate to the next phase of Jolly’s commercialization process (which just so happens to be incubating).

So this post is my first effort at getting this thing back on track. I plan to post here fairly regularly (read: at least every couple weeks) about the software development project outlined in the first post. I’m in the process of writing my directed project proposal, and when that’s finished I’ll post the abstract here. The proposal should be a road map for commercializing climbing wall software, and should paint a pretty clear picture of what I hope to do in the next 18 months or so.

In the meantime I’ll be writing about stuff related to the climbing industry and software startups. For stuff in general, check out my other blog.