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Tech Business Tips - Episode 9
174 Plays10 years ago
On today’s episode, Doug and Russell interview Chris Cameron, founder of Field Technologies, Inc. about his app business and running businesses while on the road as a traveling archaeologist. There is a MBA’s worth of advice in this episode and it can be helpful no matter what you’re planning to do, or are doing, with your life.
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Transcript
From Archaeology to Tech: Chris Cameron's Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 9 of the archaeotech podcast. On today's episode, Doug and Russell interview Chris Cameron, founder of Field Technologies Incorporated, about his app business and running businesses while on the road as a traveling archaeologist. There's an MBA's worth of advice in this episode, and it can be helpful no matter what you're planning to do or are doing with your life. There are a few audio challenges with this episode. Keep in mind that when you hear them, that the three people on here are from Washington State, North Carolina, and Scotland. Sometimes things happen with the signals. And quite frankly, it's kind of amazing it works at all.
00:00:35
Speaker
Now onto the episode. We hope you enjoy. So Chris, where, what is your background in? Are you an archeologist who's now working in computers? Are you a computer scientist who's now working in archeology? Uh, so I'm an archeologist who is now working in computers. Uh, so I did, um, I went to undergrad at UNC Chapel Hill University of North Carolina.
00:01:02
Speaker
And I was actually originally in Economics, but also majored in Anthropology. And then I went to University College London for my Master's in Archaeology. Did you do the Heritage Program or did you do the Archaeology Program there? So I did Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean in the Middle East. So you worked with like Andy Bevan and Mark Blake in them?
00:01:30
Speaker
Yeah, I worked quite a bit with Andrew Bevin. So is that how you got interested in working with sort of computer side and stuff? Because I know Dr. Bevin does a lot with GIS, a whole bunch of computer stuff. UCL has a bunch of stuff. I know they have their own web server up there that they play around with and all sorts of stuff. Is that how you got involved? Or how did you get involved in the more sort of technical computer stuff?
00:01:58
Speaker
To be completely honest, no, I should actually drop Andy an email to see how he's doing. But I was in the field for about seven years. I met a beautiful woman who, when we got engaged, the deal was that I would be home in the weekends. So my circle of places I could work got smaller. And then when we had our daughter, the deal was that I would be home full time.
Learning Tech Skills and Building a Startup
00:02:27
Speaker
I was looking for a way to try out something new, work for myself, but also at the same time stay connected to archaeology because I love it. And I still get out a few times a year to do the odd survey if it's local, just to get some exercise and fresh air. And your technical skills. You said you'd done economics and anthropology and then archaeology of Eastern Mediterranean. How'd you pick up all your different sort of
00:02:57
Speaker
technical skills and working with iPads and stuff like that you're working on now. Yeah. So as far as coding, um, it's, um, I guess it's one of those things where I can read other people's work, but I am limited in what I can do myself. We have several developers, you know, that are constantly working on stuff here, uh, for field technologies. So I don't do the heavy lifting for that. And I do a little visual basic and a little swift, but not,
00:03:25
Speaker
I, you know, I did not write most of the app. I mostly can look at other people's work. So, you know, but that's helpful because it means, you know, there's still quite a bit of a learning curve doing that, but it means that I can translate what the developers say to what we need and take care of. It just makes it easier to communicate.
00:03:53
Speaker
So you have a bit more of a management interaction role with your organization. Yes. So I am the chief financial officer, but also the director of marketing. But, you know, obviously is the person in-house who's had the most field experience and up and down the ladder in different positions. You know, I was key in the design, but not the implementation of
00:04:21
Speaker
archaeogen and some other stuff that we're working on right now. I believe Russell has a question for you about work life and how that works out with archaeology. Yeah, Chris, I have to feel that I sympathize with you because I'm sitting here bouncing my son, Nova, on my knee while we're recording this podcast. And that's one of the main reasons that I started my own business was to somehow have a way to keep my hand in archaeology, but also, you know, be at home most nights and see my wife and see my son as he's growing up.
00:04:51
Speaker
So it's really neat to hear that you took that leap because I think sometimes that's hard to see how, if you don't go the traditional mountain archeology, how are you going to be able to keep up with
Advice on Starting a Business
00:04:59
Speaker
it? Yeah. And, you know, I might still be looking for a job in a few months. We'll see. I'll see how this pans out. But so far we've been getting really good traction in a lot of, a lot of projects planned with a mix of academics, contractors, and agencies in four states right now.
00:05:18
Speaker
So if we can just keep doing like we've been doing, I think it'll all work out. And so just a quick question about how many people are on your team in your company, and how did you come to meet them as an archaeologist? So first off, we are a young startup, so nobody is getting a salary yet. But we have two developers, myself, we're currently
00:05:47
Speaker
searching for someone to fill some other roles, but not in archaeology, more of a finance corporate management kind of role. And then we have our, you know, I guess we have our board of directors, but that's shareholders, the bosses, which a lot of that's me, but not all of it.
00:06:12
Speaker
So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about, you know, if you're an archaeologist that wants to get started creating your own business, it sounds like you've got a pretty good sized startup going that's more than, you know, just you hanging out a shingle for yourself. Could you maybe give her some insight into what that process was like for you? Yeah, so the first thing is, I hope you have some savings, because even if you're not hemorrhaging money, you still got to eat to live, right? Money costs, you know, food costs money.
00:06:39
Speaker
So the big thing is have a clear idea of what you want to do, how can you add value to something that someone else will then want to pay for. That's really what it's all about is what can I do for someone else that they would then let me grind out a little profit along the way. The paperwork can be daunting if you're not familiar with it. I ran some side businesses while I was in the field because you get back to your hotel room, you're not
00:07:08
Speaker
where you want to be, which is home, but you're not getting paid for it either. So I had some experience at least in incorporating and starting up a business. You can probably get started for 300 bucks. You can incorporate a business, set up some bank accounts, get a corporate credit card. The big thing is if you have halfway decent credit, because you'll have to co-sign for anything,
00:07:35
Speaker
And then the big thing is just make sure that you work on something every day, because you have to be very self-friendly. Because it helps to write down a goal, and then every day do something. You got to do something, even if it's not really useful, and you have to go back and redo it later. Just staying in motion is very important. So just one question, and I'll let kind of
00:08:03
Speaker
Doug, take over. Chris, what other businesses did you run that because I've read a lot of statistics on startups, especially far better odds of succeeding in your second, third, fourth venture than in your first. Can you maybe talk about some of those that you ran while you were a field tech? Because I know myself, that's how I taught myself coding was at night on my MacBook sitting in the middle of a hotel in Wells, Nevada with not much else to do in town. Yeah, absolutely.
00:08:30
Speaker
So, let's see, originally way back in the day, back during the Great Recession, I tried to start a t-shirt business. It did not do very well. I did not lose money, but I didn't sell very many t-shirts. It's a crowded market. And then later, I tried to start a company that basically did lead generation for CRM firms. Again, didn't lose money, but could not support myself with that.
00:08:58
Speaker
And then much more successfully on the side the last few years, I was into search engine optimization as a contractor for clients that wanted to advertise online. When you type in something in Google and you see a bunch of ads on the right hand side, I had a few clients that I helped for them and it was an eat what you could kill model.
00:09:24
Speaker
I think my biggest client sold vacuum cleaner bags, easyvacuum.com or something like that. And then, obviously, this is the first time that I've actually tried to make a full-time job out of a startup. When you branched out into doing SEO, did you start out with, I guess, archaeology and heritage in that area? Or how'd you get started into doing search engine optimization?
From SEO to Tech Solutions for Archaeologists
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, so this was
00:09:52
Speaker
You know, a few years ago, so it was much less automated now. I'm sure now you see a lot of the clickbait stuff, like three weird tricks to do whatever. A lot of that stuff is automated now. It was more of a Wild West anybody could learn by doing, you know, especially since I was operating under an eat what you kill model. If I didn't, if I couldn't provide conversions for clients under the agreed upon price, I didn't get paid.
00:10:20
Speaker
obviously they could lose money too if I blew out the budget, but I wasn't getting any of it. So it was very much a learn by doing and I think it was, I think I finally figured out like really a lot of the tricks that worked at the time for, I think it was working, I think it was like the client was a plastic surgeon in California or something that was advertising. But it's not something that you can easily get into as a small
00:10:50
Speaker
because a lot of it is getting automated. So the only clients that are really up for grabs are those that do daily or weekly sales, things that need a lot of maintenance and updating constantly, because things that are more static campaigns really can just survive in automation now. And why did you go from your search engine optimization to your current job, working on tablets?
00:11:20
Speaker
Um, automating field work for archaeologists. Well, I wanted to support myself while I was at home and this was a little more vision. The, the, the, the SEO work was mostly, um, stuck in a hotel room. What else, you know, I might as well make a little money while I'm doing it. Uh, whereas this is actually more, uh, more passion driven, uh, cause it's, it's archeology. I love archeology.
00:11:48
Speaker
I want to make it, you know, faster, more reliable and more enjoyable for people. If people don't have to push as much paper, then they can dig more holes. And if you dig more holes, you find more cool stuff and you can learn things and have good times. I don't think anybody goes onto a project and comes off saying, man, you know, the best part of that survey. Oh man, you know, I really enjoyed filling out all those shuffle test forms. That's the best part. So much fun.
00:12:16
Speaker
Earlier you'd mentioned you'd met your wife during archaeology. Did I hear that correctly? No. I met her online. It works. I guess archaeology had something to do with it because a good friend of mine, Richard Friedman, was on eHarmony and a bunch of us had gone out drinking. We were working some job in Pennsylvania. Came back to the hotel.
00:12:45
Speaker
And he was like, oh, you know, I had a reputation, I don't know if it was deserved or not at the time for being good with words. And he wanted my help in writing an email reply to some girl. He was communicating with an e-harmony. Anyway, then we get back out to the picnic table in the hotel courtyard and keep drinking with our friends. We kept drinking and kept drinking. I woke up the next morning and I had an email in my inbox
00:13:12
Speaker
that I had signed up for eHarmony. So I'd paid for it for three months, unbeknownst to me. I have no idea what I put in all the questions that they find out about your personality. But it connected me to my wife. I went on only eHarmony data ever went on, and it worked out great. So yeah, kind of tangential to archaeology. If I'd not been drinking with other archaeologists, I probably wouldn't.
00:13:42
Speaker
wouldn't have signed up. So Chris, starting out this new business, and obviously you've started out many new businesses, what is the sort of the hardest part? Can you tell people who are possibly thinking of doing similar work, what's probably the first step that they need to do and what's the hardest part or what they should expect? So it depends on if people are looking to do something on the side, which I think is a lot easier because you don't have that pressure to support yourself.
00:14:12
Speaker
Or if you want to do something full time, if you want to do something full time, just remember that it's a complex problem. No one else has done it before. If they have, then the problem would be easier to solve. So you just have to break it down in pieces. Sometimes you don't, you know that there's a bottleneck ahead of you, but there's a couple problems to solve before you get there. You just have to have faith that once you, that you'll solve, solve it when you get there. You'll cross that bridge when you come to it.
00:14:41
Speaker
And you will continue to have issues. Things will come up like, oh, you know, there's some issue with my sales tax license, or there's some, oh, why can't I, oh, you know, there will be lots of things that are completely unrelated to your core business that you don't have any expertise in that you have to deal with.
Iterating Based on Market Feedback
00:15:02
Speaker
Like, oh, how do I market this stuff now that I, now that I have,
00:15:09
Speaker
you know, this great product, how do I get the word out? Oh, I don't know how to advertise, especially since, you know, you think, oh, well, there's only 450 or so companies in the US that do CRM, and I can just call them all up, and they'll just knock down my door and be like, take my money. But, you know, things that you just don't have any expertise in, and you don't expect. You just have to be patient. Think about them. I'm a big fan of just breaking things down into small steps and
00:15:37
Speaker
and make sure you do something even if you have to redo it later. Yeah, Chris, when we were talking previously about your work on Archeogen and then especially how you have some more projects that you're working on in the future, it sounded to me a little bit like the lean startup suggestion of get something out there that's small and then iterate and kind of make shifts and changes as you need to in response to market feedback. Have you done any business reading that you'd like to suggest to our readers or do you have other models that you've kind of followed in learning from your previous business work?
00:16:08
Speaker
particularly if you're thinking down the road of a long-term viable thing that needs constant innovation, get your minimum viable product out the door. Whatever you can start making a profit on, get that out the door, and then start investing in other stuff. For instance, there was no point in us going straight to having both a field tech version and a crew chief version of Archeogen. If people didn't want it for their field techs, they're not gonna want it for their crew chiefs, but people can
00:16:38
Speaker
You know, crew chiefs can still take notes the old fashioned way until we get something, you know, set up for them is just a good example. Or phase two, phase three version. If people don't want it for phase one, there's not much sense in trying to tie people into phase two, phase three. So make sure you invest in order with your time and your money because there's nothing worse than, you know,
00:17:07
Speaker
making something perfect when, if you just tried it when it was merely good, you would have found out that it wouldn't have worked.
Hiring Developers: Key Considerations
00:17:16
Speaker
Fail fast, fail cheap, I guess that's the short answer. I'm Chris.
00:17:22
Speaker
Since you have hired other developers and so forth, do you have some advice for listeners who maybe have a similar great idea they want to do but don't have the technical skills? How would you go about finding someone who could do programming? And what advice would you have for hiring someone who can do programming other than using Craigslist or Gumtree or something like that and hoping for the best?
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, first of all, look for somebody that's in your area so that you can physically meet them if you need to. We did most of our weekly conference calls for the outsourced portion. We used phone calls, but it was, you know, you need to be able to meet people in person. So that's the first thing is look, just type into Google, whatever kind of program you're trying to do, whether it's mobile, desktop, whatever, find shops around you that do that.
00:18:16
Speaker
and solicit bids from all of them, put together a document stating if you have any technical expertise at all, exactly what you want because people will give you exactly what you want. So if you forget something, you're going to be screwed because it's very mechanical how people work, particularly coders, you know, they'll give you exactly what you ask for. So look for places that are close by, bid out to as many places as you can.
00:18:46
Speaker
at least 10 because then you can take the say the three lowest bids and then pick the best quality one. Bids will be all over the map probably and so will quality. Make sure people are very clear about what you're trying to contract them to do. Make sure that you ask for a sample of code if you have any coding experience at all or have a friend that does. Some people write clean code, some people don't.
00:19:16
Speaker
If you know even a little bit about the code, if you ask for just a sample of some code, just a few lines of code from any program you've ever written, if there's a bunch of gobbledygoot, then it'll be obvious to anybody that's done any coding, because there's more than one way to get functionality, and if there's a bunch of random stuff, it means they were just banging away, and then they're like, oh, it worked, and they don't wanna touch anything to clean it up to simplify it. That makes adding onto it much harder later.
00:19:46
Speaker
can also slow down your app and have other side effects. And then I guess the final thing is make sure that the code is, because they will deliver the code to you at the end of the contract, make sure you have them store it somewhere like GitHub or somewhere else in case they get hit by a bus or you need to fire them halfway through so that you have your code and you can see the updates.
00:20:12
Speaker
We're going to take a short break here and be back right more with some good business advice and some technology experience with Chris Cameron of Field Technologies Incorporated. But first, we'd like to thank one of our sponsors that helps us bring you this podcast. If you're interested in being a sponsor of the ArcheoTech podcast, you can contact Chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:20:35
Speaker
Okay, we've got Jordan from the Art of Charm back with us. Jordan, what have you had on the Art of Charm podcast lately? Actually, we had a lot of really interesting guests lately. I've had a bunch of entrepreneurs come on and talk about their mindsets and methodologies for getting ahead and kind of keeping the hustle going even when you don't feel like it. I had a guy come on and talk about
00:20:55
Speaker
self-defense but not from like a how-to perspective but more of the mindset of somebody who survives deadly attacks which i thought was really interesting and we had the founder of pencils of promise which is a really large charity that builds schools in third world countries come and talk about
00:21:12
Speaker
actually making your kind of your passion, for lack of a better word, happen in reality. He used to be a finance guy and he bounced and started this uber successful charity. So we talk about that process as well. And we've actually had some people come on and talk about networking. One of the guys that talked about it was a military special forces guy who was in Afghanistan. And he's talking about how he built relationships with people in the Taliban and things like that to save lives. So if he can do it, we can do it for business and academic purposes, of course,
00:21:42
Speaker
Great, yeah, I've heard a few of those already and that pencils for promise one was incredibly inspiring. So what have you got coming up for the month of April? I've actually got a bunch of really talented guests coming in. I've got Gretchen Rubin. She's going to come up real soon where she's actually talking about happiness and how your brain works and how your brain measures happiness and things we can do day to day, actual habits to help make us quote unquote happier.
00:22:05
Speaker
I've got this guy, Knev Medora. He's a friend of mine, but he talks about crashing parties, not just for the sake of, quote unquote, crashing the party and getting into an exclusive event, but using that to sort of meet important people. And that's a really useful skill set. Even if you don't plan on crashing parties, he has some really good sort of life hacky ideas that go along with it.
00:22:25
Speaker
I've got Simon Sinek coming on to talk about leadership. He actually helped develop the Zappos culture and is a business thought leader of the highest caliber. And last but not least, I have Olivia Fox Cabane, author of The Charisma Myth. She's actually going to be talking about the brain science involved in her new book that's coming out like a year from now. But we get a sneak peek at that as well.
Legal Advice and Contracts in Startups
00:22:48
Speaker
And that's that's all coming up in April.
00:22:50
Speaker
Awesome. Well, be sure to check out the Art of Charm podcast, wherever you find podcasts when the show is over. You can find them also at www.artofcharm.com. So Chris, it sounds like when you're starting to talk about hiring outside developers and dealing with contracts and those other things. At what point did you find it useful and kind of this company, maybe even your previous companies to seek the advice of a lawyer or attorney, which
00:23:16
Speaker
I think can seem daunting to many people that aren't already in businesses. Hey, big scary. I know lawyers are expensive. How does that process even work? Yeah. So lawyers are very expensive, especially good ones. Um, you do not need a lawyer for your basic business startup. And as long as, um, when you're contracting with a developer, you're probably fine without a lawyer. Um, though, if you don't feel comfortable reading the contract, uh, then obviously contact a lawyer, but you probably don't need an expensive one.
00:23:44
Speaker
Now, once we were selling stuff and we were no longer the customer but the seller, you start taking on a lot of liabilities. We actually use, our lawyer used to be the head lawyer over at SAS, if you're familiar with them, they're a big statistical software company. And so we paid up and it has been worth it to write our contracts because she has a lot of experience
00:24:12
Speaker
writing software contracts, particularly software as a service. So that way you can limit your liability. Other people can limit theirs to you. And it just, it makes remitting disputes a lot easier because the worst thing is not, is ambiguity. You know, for instance, you know, not knowing who, and like to take our case, for example, who owns the data once it's on our service? Well, you know, obviously our client, you would normally say obviously the client owns their data because it's not ours.
00:24:41
Speaker
But if it's not, if that's not clear, that's, it's not clear. And that's, you know, we can't share clients' data with other people. It's their data. They own it. And that's the kind of thing that you need lawyers for is to make sure things are ironclad. When there's money on the table, if it's, if it's just you, you know, hiring somebody, you're, if it's something simple, you're probably all right without a lawyer.
Coding for Communication and Side Businesses
00:25:09
Speaker
And Chris, I know that you're definitely talking about hiring developers and outside people, but I really liked your point about, especially if you have enough coding knowledge, just a little bit, to be able to kind of sniff check and tell whether it looks like it's clean code. And you mentioned in a previous podcast that you also know a little bit of VBE basic, Visual Basic, in order to do macros in Excel. Maybe tell our listeners a little bit about how you taught yourself that, and maybe the reasons why it was useful to know how to program, even just a little bit.
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's mostly to be able to talk to people who know more than you in general. Visual basic is really easy. Anybody can learn it. There's lots of YouTube videos. There's lots of articles. You can also just go down to Barnes and Noble and buy a big book of Excel formulas. So eventually you learn what is logical in that language.
00:26:05
Speaker
because every language is different, obviously. But Visual Basics is very easy to learn, which is good because it's for Excel. Never wonder, if you can pick up a book, you can learn how to do it. It's not as hard as, it's not sorcery. It's not some kind of black magic. I think people overestimate how hard it is.
00:26:28
Speaker
We're almost towards the end now and just a couple of more questions about sort of businesses and setting up side businesses and stuff. Just because I'm sure most of our listeners will be archaeologists and we all have kind of thought about or have started our own side business sort of stuff. Did you naturally go towards web second jobs as it were or side businesses because you could do it at your hotel or
00:26:57
Speaker
Was that something, did you try other businesses that were more brick and mortar? Do you have any experience with that? And any suggestions for people who are thinking about doing a second business or a side business while doing archeology? Yeah, so I was definitely going for things that could be done from the hotel room on the side. And a lot of people do things, like I have a friend who teaches English online to people in Italy. I have a friend who writes copy for websites.
00:27:28
Speaker
trying to think other examples. I did the search engine optimization thing. Some people do tutoring. That's a little harder if you're moving around a lot. But there are often a lot of great services that have a lot of great marketplaces for these things for freelancers. Like for tutoring, there's a site called Wizzant, W-Y-Z-A-N-T.
00:27:54
Speaker
for search engine optimization. There's one called Trana, T-R-A-D-A. All of these have made up names, obviously. If you can crank out a lot of legible stuff, you can write copy for things at a place called TextBroker. And then there's the one-off stuff, like just connecting with universities, et cetera, to, like I say, do things like teach English or proofread. I know a lot of people who copy edit.
00:28:24
Speaker
Particularly for students, graduate students, who English is their second language. That's another thing you could do.
Developing iOS Apps: Tips and Costs
00:28:31
Speaker
In building the application, archaeogen that you've been working with, you mentioned that it was on iOS for a couple of reasons due to data security and due to take some advantage of some of the hardware features.
00:28:43
Speaker
Can you tell us maybe a little bit about what it's like to develop an ILS application with your team and maybe how it is going through, if you're gonna have to go through the Apple Store and their Apple review process, which is sometimes notorious for block applications for reasons as well as an icon they don't like. Yeah, so to start with the App Store, Apple offers two different developer licenses. There's the kind that goes through the App Store, which we do not have. Archeogen is not available in the App Store.
00:29:12
Speaker
And then the enterprise developer which is more for in-house apps or for ones that will be directly distributed like ours because it's only for people who have signed an agreement with us because otherwise they can upload data and then we're not gonna do anything with it. So the big thing with Apple is get a developer who has done it before.
00:29:40
Speaker
particularly the non-app store route. There are usually three or four different ways to go about it. And your developer, if you're contracting, or if you have someone on your team, maybe a business partner who's experienced with it, can direct you as to what the best choice is for you. And Apple offers their developers some tools, one of them's called TestFlight, that allows you for,
00:30:08
Speaker
emulating it on different devices to make sure things work in a way that's Apple approved. I would also point out with Apple, they just switched, they're just, they're transitioning to a different language, coding language, it's called Swift. So archaeogen is written in the newest and best language, so that'll make it easier to do updates in the future, but you can still do
00:30:34
Speaker
other languages now, but I would not recommend it if you're at this moment in the next few months gonna try to start coding something for iOS. Take the time to learn Swift, because in a year or two you'll have to transition to Swift anyway. Interesting, so you suggest Swift over doing Objective-C, which I think has been the language used up till now? Yes, because Objective-C, Apple's trying to move away from Objective-C to Swift.
00:31:03
Speaker
unclear as to what the reasons were, but I'm sure they have good ones. To us, it was a good time that we came along right as they announced this. So we went ahead and did everything in Swift. It sounds like you have quite a bit of experience looking around and pricing these things for developers. If someone is interested and is listening, could you give us a range of what prices people are looking at when they look at app development?
00:31:31
Speaker
Yes, so it's gonna be all over the map. You'll have people who will, maybe they're brand new or really hungry, need some work, who might low body like 100 bucks an hour. So most places will wanna do a lump sum bid, you know, half now, half later. I highly recommend if you're the risk taking type, which if you're starting a business that you do hourly, because then any gains are savings for you.
00:32:02
Speaker
Whereas if it goes a little over budget anyway, for lump sum, they just would have, you know, cut a bunch of corners. So if it goes over budget, you're at least, you have to pay more, but you're at least still getting the quality that you want. And if it comes in under budget, you're the one that saves money. So just as an aside, I would highly recommend trying to fund someone who is willing to work hourly, but to the completion of the project, not just like ad hoc, you know, I have a few hours here and there.
00:32:33
Speaker
Yeah, and then you're also gonna find companies that, you know, shops that will, or independent developers that will, they can't back out of the driveway for less than $50,000. So it's gonna be all over the map. Also make sure that you look at their portfolio of apps that they've put together before. And if it's anything like Archeogen, you know, there were not a lot of comparable,
00:32:59
Speaker
apps that people had done. So it was actually really very few of the developers. And I live in a very technologically savvy area. We're on tap to get Google Fiber. Hooray. And even here, a lot of the places had not done a lot of enterprise apps. They did a lot of consumer-oriented games and stuff like that.
00:33:24
Speaker
I recommend, if you see somebody that's done a lot of work for hospitals or universities or Fortune 500 companies, that's a good sign. But yeah, the prices are gonna be all over the map. And if you're doing it yourself, I would almost say even if you can do it yourself, hire somebody to work on pieces of it with you, because otherwise you're not gonna get it done quickly enough
00:33:53
Speaker
And we've seen a lot of advantage to being first to market, which I don't know if that's strictly true, but we don't really have a lot of competitors. What few other software packages are out there are really more of a Swiss Army knife that try to do everything. Whereas, you know, we're a screwdriver, we do one thing and we do it really, really well.
Funding and Control in App Development
00:34:14
Speaker
Yeah, so, which also brings me to the point that you should pay close attention to timeline.
00:34:22
Speaker
You know when people think something will get done because the last thing you want is you know Developer takes your project but then they take several other big ones and then your bottom of the pile because you're not a you know multi-million dollar customer And I would also go ahead and offer if you have the money up front and you're not raising it as you go offer to buy their overtime because a lot of times I
00:34:51
Speaker
companies, they might know they're going to be really jammed in November, but in October they have a light schedule and be happy to fill in their time with you. As long as you can get it still at the same price, not at overtime hours price, but you'll buy as much of their time as they will give you. It's also helpful. So Chris, I have a couple questions based off of that. One is, what's sort of a realistic timeline people should be thinking about when they have an app? And I know this is going to vary
00:35:20
Speaker
based off of how complex the app is. But can you give us an idea of if someone's wanting to hire someone to do an app, what sort of time frame they're looking at? Yeah, it's going to vary. I would say 10 weeks is probably pushing it. A lot of it has to do with how rigorously you test it, both your alpha yourself and your beta in front of other people. And Chris,
00:35:48
Speaker
without giving away too many trade secrets there, you're talking fairly large sums of money. Was there any tricks about how you guys, or how did you guys go about raising the money to pay for your app? Any advice based off of that to any of our listeners? Yeah, so Field Technologies was self-funded out of personal savings from people that were involved.
00:36:18
Speaker
overwhelming majority shareholder, so a lot of that goes to me. But if you really have a lot of faith in your idea, I would try to get a loan rather than bring in another investor. Because if you really think it's going to be good, then you don't want to share the profits more than you have to.
Closing Thoughts and Listener Engagement
00:36:39
Speaker
All right. Well, thank you, Chris. That was excellent. And thank you for all the advice to our listeners about setting up a company.
00:36:47
Speaker
app development and all sorts of wonderful things. That is the end of today's episode. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you out in the field.
00:37:07
Speaker
The CRM archaeology podcast brings together a panel of cultural resource management professionals to discuss the issues that really matter to the profession. Find out about networking strategies, job hunting, graduate programs, and much more. We'll often feature interviews with college professors, CRM business owners, and experts as well. Check out the show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com, forward slash, CRM Ark Podcast. Let's get back to the show.
00:37:52
Speaker
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00:38:11
Speaker
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00:38:38
Speaker
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00:38:56
Speaker
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00:39:15
Speaker
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