Comments on: Capital Factory Demo Day 2009

By: Kristen

Kristen — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:23:54 +0000

Thanks for your explanation! Perhaps I can pick your brain in the future when we are ready to go after public opportunities. My background is all on the private side.

I completely agree with you here–”know your selling proposition, and know how the buyer will be able to use your product.” We just set up live chat on our website, and we need to start doing more brown bags presentations again.

By: Bill Solominsky

Bill Solominsky — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:24:07 +0000

Kristen, thanks for checking out my blog. I spent 4 years working in engineering for a big government defense contractor, which is where I am coming from with my thoughts on Cubit Planning. I know when I wrote that sentence it wasn’t worded the best way, so thanks for calling me out! The mentality that I saw with most government contractors is a “use it or lose it” approach to their budget each year. A cost saving software system would be great in theory, but would they actually put it in a bid and severely lose out on more potential money? Would they even include it in their bid, or would they use their years of metrics they’ve compiled on cost? What I was saying with “study the bidding process in each city” is to look at a few projects and all bids if you can. See if the lowest bid always won out, or if there were other factors. Were most contracts “cost plus”, where the company can charge the city/state/country for any cost overruns? If so, there is reduced incentive to save time. In your presentation you mentioned that you think it can be used as a line item in bidding; I’m saying that that might be a poor way to sell it in that the bidder might not want to show the absolute lowest cost. For example, if they can realistically come in 50% lower than all other bids, they still may only bid 10% lower than the others.

Having said that, I don’t have any experience with private engineering firms, so that world may be totally different. Overall, my point was to know your selling proposition, and know how the buyer will be able to use your product. Are they using it purely for internal gain, or are they externally using it as a leveraging chip? Know why a private engineering company may be losing out on bids. Is it always because of cost? Find those companies that are losing because of that and target them if time and cost savings is the biggest benefit of Cubit Planning.

By: Cubit Planning in the Austin American Statesman « Plannovation

Cubit Planning in the Austin American Statesman « Plannovation — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:34:07 +0000

[...] Bill Solominsky’s Capital Factory Demo Day 2009 [...]

By: Kristen

Kristen — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:18:53 +0000

Thanks for checking out Capital Factory Demo Day and Cubit Planning.

One thought. You said “If I were with this company, I would study the government contract bidding process closely in each city, and find out all minute details of the contracts that have been won.” I agree with you 100% that selling to the government can be lucrative.

However, Cubit Planning is an early stage, two person start-up. In striving to get to Ramen profitable as fast as we can, we’ve decided to focus on the private engineering firms. Engineering firms can use their credit cards to purchase services, and we don’t have to go through a bidding process. So instead of spending time researching government contract requirements, we can focus on building amazing technology. Any thoughts here?

By: Bill Solominsky

Bill Solominsky — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:39:36 +0000

Thor, keep up the good work at Sparefoot, and thanks for checking out my blog. @Thor

By: Thor

Thor — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:13:04 +0000

Hey, thanks! Good insights too.

By: Dan Waldron

Dan Waldron — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:16:48 +0000

Do you do blogroll exchanging? If you want to exchange links let me know.

Email me back if you’re interested.