Tag Archive for 'freshbooks'

Money 2.0 Panel

Published by Ben Kepes on September 5, 2008 in Business, SaaS, Society and The Cloud. 1 Comment

I’ve just finished moderating the Money 2.0 panel at the Office 2.0 conference. We were a little time-compressed as the previous session had run late. All in all it went pretty well. The participants were;

  • Aaron Forth (Mint.com)
  • Marc Hedlund (Wesabe)
  • Justin Kitch (Intuit)
  • Jeff Schultz (Bill.com)
  • Mike McDerment (FreshBooks)

It was hard moderating a panel which was so polarised between the consumer and business space but notwithstanding that it went pretty well. The audience was a little jaded but the participants appeared to enjoy themselves and said they got something out of it. It was great to be around the real players in this space.

Check out the video below…..

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Seven founders sins

Published by Ben Kepes on September 1, 2008 in Business, Design, Efficiency, IT, New business, SaaS and Strategy. 5 Comments

I’m looking forward to meeting the founder of FreshBooks Mike Mcderment next week at the Office 2.0 conference. I’ve spent a heap of time watching and talking to the founders and CEOs of other SaaS businesses generally and SaaS accounting businesses in particular so I’m really looking forward to getting a better understanding of the FreshBooks perspective on life.

This post by Mike gave me a bit of an insight into the person and the business. It’s a list of seven ways Mike almost kicked the chair out from under FreshBooks so far in their journey. It tells of his appreciation for the people he’s put around him, and gives some excellent lessons for new businesses.

The entire post is worth reading but the key points are,

1. Thinking we had to move faster than we did

2. Placing my faith in a spreadsheet

3. Thinking we had to spend more than we did

4. Placing my faith in consultants

5. Underestimating word of mouth

6. Believing we could not get this far without doing “x”

7. Doubting ourselves too much

Thanks Mike for you honest and insightful post.

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On to it with Intuit

Published by Ben Kepes on August 29, 2008 in Business, IT, SaaS and Web x.0. 2 Comments

As mentioned before I’ll be moderating the Money 2.0 panel at the upcoming Office 2.0 conference.

I’ve just been told that joining the other panelists will be Justin Kitch, the head of SMB SaaS for Intuit. Kitch is formerly CEO of Homestead which was recently acquired by Intuit.

The entire panel now consists of;

I’m more than keen to take questions from the "floor". Leave any you have as a comment on this post and I’ll try to fit them in to the panel. The panel occurs on Thursday, September 4, 2008, 2:15PM to 3:00PM (San Francisco time), and you should be able to follow it from the Office 2.0 website

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Accounting, it’s the choice of a new generation

Published by Ben Kepes on August 19, 2008 in Business, Design, IT, New Zealand, New business, SaaS and Strategy. 4 Comments

I’ve spent the past 15 years being in sole-charge of the accounting function for a number of different SMEs. Now I’m not an accountant by any stretch of the imagination (I can tell a joke which precludes me already) - but I believe I’ve got a pretty good handle on what accounting is like, and what it should be like.

The way I look at it the accounting world is still mired in a pre-release beta stage and there’s a new class of product which will drag it along, bypassing 1.0 and straight into the 2.0 world.

I was stoked to see that Xero has reacted to the buzz from its being awarded the distinction of being judged one of the top 10 UIs of the year. Their reaction was to announce that;

by early 2009 it will release a global version of its award-winning online accounting software

Now this is exciting on a number of levels - firstly as a proud Kiwi it’s great to see that we’ll have a global accounting solution created back here in New Zealand. Secondly Xero heralds the dawn of a new age of accounting. And it’s the dawn of this new age that gets me all fired up.

I was pleased then to be asked to moderate the Accounting 2.0 panel discussion at the upcoming Office 2.0 conference. The participants at the panel include;

  • Aaron Forth (Mint.com)
  • Marc Hedlund (Wesabe)
  • Rene Lacerte (Bill.com)
  • Mike McDerment (FreshBooks)

It’ll be great to assess each of these participants view as to where accounting is going - and their vision for what Accounting 2.0 will look like.

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