Build vs. Buy

So my travel was supposed to be finished until mid-June, but alas, I find myself this week in San Mateo, CA for 4 days of administrator training for Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com is a very robust customer relationship management Software as a Service platform. We’ve decided at Doba to move our CRM (marketing, sales, and service) operations onto this hosted platform over time. We’ve been testing it in a limited fashion for the last several weeks.

In the past 5.5 years, we’ve built A LOT of software that originated from our “internal tools” roadmap–software to manage sales processes, billing processes, marketing processes, service processes, etc. Over the next many months, we’re going to work towards fulfilling those internal needs via the Salesforce.com system rather than building our own software. In essence, we’re working to stop building software that isn’t our core business, and leverage other platforms and software that are out there.

Let me say this: I’ve told quite a few people that we’re doing this, and a few of them have said, man, that Salesforce.com is expensive. We can build our own tools better/faster/cheaper. To that I say: no you can’t. Not even close. In my class with me is the Salesforce administrator (yes, at larger companies, they separate out that role) for AMD. Yeah, this AMD. And several other large companies from around the country. Salesforce Professional starts at $65 per user per month. They have a Group edition that’s even less. For that much hard money, not even counting the opportunity cost and distraction factors, you can’t build 1% of what this platform does off the self. And even if you need to customize it (a standard objection to not building things yourself. The whole “customizing it will cost us more than just building it ourselves” argument), it’s still so much more efficient to leverage the base of other software.

So my advice? If you’re a software company, build software that you sell. Build your competitive advantage. Anything else your business needs to operate and function? Buy it. And Salesforce.com is a dang good place to start looking for the whole CRM world. What I’ve seen here at Salesforce.com training is extremely impressive. Totally changing my build vs. buy viewpoint going forward. If you need bookkeeping/accounting, you buy Quickbooks. If you need word processing, you buy MS Word. If you need anything related to full lifecycle (leads to accounts to opportunities to service cases to service solutions) CRM, buy Salesforce.

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Posted by Jeremy at 12:47 PM
Category: Doba, Specialization, Technology| 3 Comments| Trackback

Sportsmanship with Style

Read this article for all the details:

‘Unbelievable’ sportsmanship in softball game

That’s the definition of sportsmanship. On a technicality, they could have forced the opposing coach into a decision to sub a player and only make it a single. But she hit the home run. She deserved the home run.

Good stuff. Play hard, but play fair; and sometimes fairness isn’t the letter of the law (rules).

More people in business should play (compete) this way.

Posted by Jeremy at 9:23 AM
Category: Competition| 2 Comments| Trackback

Doba Kiva Fund

Last November, Doba worked with Connect Magazine and the Utah Technology Council to bring Guy Kawasaki to Utah.

I posted at the time that because we charged attendees $10, we were able to make a donation to Kiva for $4,000.

Shortly after the event in November, we loaned that money to 40 entrepreneurs all over the world. Well, a few weeks back, we had our first loan repaid in full, so we were able to re-loan $100 of the initial contribution. We’re well on our way to support at least 200 small businesses from around the world with micro-loans in the next 5 years.

Check out the Doba Kiva Fund to see the portfolio of loans we’ve made.

If you don’t know about Kiva, go check it out. It’s pretty dang cool to help these people better their lives. And it literally blows my mind that of the millions of dollars lent, Kiva has a repayment rate of 99.89%. Can you believe that? These entrepreneurs really don’t know how to fail when someone reaches out a hand and says, here, borrow a bit of money from me to drastically change you and your family’s circumstances.

Spearheading the Doba Kiva Fund is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been involved with in supporting entrepreneurship.

To participate,signup for a Kiva account and do your small part to help better the world. (Enter jhanks ‘at’ doba ‘dot’ com in the Referral field and they’ll link your new Kiva account to Doba’s)

I guarantee this is worth your time. It’s not worth your money however because you have a 99.89% chance that you’ll get that repaid to you!!!

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Posted by Jeremy at 10:44 AM
Category: Doba, Entrepreneurship| 1 Comment| Trackback

Record Setting

I think I set a record this month for the LEAST amount of time in the office ever. Since March 28 and through this coming Monday April 28th, I’ve been/will be in the office exactly 5 days. 25% of the time.

Anyway, hope to be back to posting more regularly next week as I have a lot of things to catch up on.

Posted by Jeremy at 6:35 PM
Category: Miscellaneous| 1 Comment| Trackback

2008 vSpring v|100

I wanted to post the list and congratulate everyone named to the 2008 vSpring v|100.

Because this is a peer-nominated and peer-selected process, it’s cool to be included with so many great entrepreneurs that are really at the heart of driving the Utah economy and growth story–at least that or it means that I am good looking enough to get the votes to put me in the top 100.

(If you’d like more information, vSpring talks about the selection process for this list)

vSpring Capital v|100 2008 Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs:

Rick Alden — Skullcandy
Curt D. Allen — Agilix Labs
Paul Allen — FamilyLink.com
Dallin Anderson — Code Nutrition
Jeremy Andrus — Skullcandy
Lindsay Atwood — LTA Enterprises
Kirt Bailey — Celio Corp
Brad Baldwin — RMV
Bob Barnes — Zonder
Jeff Barson — Sendside Networks
Jay Bean — OrangeSoda
Brian Beutler — Alianza
Brent L Bishop — ContentWatch
Brock Blake — FundingUniverse
William Borghetti — Sendside Networks
David Bradford — Linking Universe
Dr. Jack Brittain — U of U Tech
Stead Burwell — Alliance Health
Greg Butterfield — Symantec
Josh Carr — Sprout Marketing
David Carter — S5 Wireless
Josh Coates — Mozy Inc.
Jonathan Coon — 1-800 CONTACTS
Troy D’Ambrosio — Pierre Lassonde
Nicole Toomey Davis — GOED COE /Enclavix Director COE/
Ed Donakey — LDS Church/Family
Adam Edmunds — Allegiance
John Edwards — Move Networks
James Endicott — Exact Wave
Bjorn Espenes — Infopia
Christian Faulconer — Public Engines
Martin Frey — PowerCode
JD Gardner — Monarch Partners
Jeremy Hanks — Doba
Richard D. Hanks — Mindshare
Nathan Hatch — Center 7
Matt Hawkins — Sirsi Dynix
Greg Heaps — Allegiance
Tim Hunt — MIR Foundation
Josh James — Omniture
David Jenkins — DealerTrack
J.D. Jeppson — Allegiance
Scott Johnson — AtTask
Steven G. Jones — Vilect
Kimberley Jones — Vérité
Dr. Greg M. Jones — VisTrails
Stan Kanarowski — USTAR
Jeff Kearl — Skullcandy
Abraham Knell — AtTask
Kristen Knight — NuSkin Enterprises
Chris Knudsen — Sapha
Fred Lampropoulos — Merit Medical
Andrew Laver — APL Capital
Bruce Law — Sprout Marketing
Christopher Lee — Heritage Makers
Darren Lee — NextPage
Scott C. Lemon — HumanXtensions
Shawn J. Lindquist — Omniture
Ty D. Mattingly
Ned L. Maxfield — Utah Angel Network
David B. McGinn — Agilix Labs
Glen Mella — Control4
W. Tim Miller — Echelon
Clarke Miyasaki — Logoworks
Ryan Money — DealUtah.com
Mark Newman — HireVue
Dr. Tom Ngo — NextPage
Brent Nixon — Cymphonix
Warren Osborn — Seastone
John Pestana — Omniture
Ben Peterson — Independent
Erich Pletsch — Tier Four
William Price — BYU Center for Entrepreneurship
Michael Proper — DirectPointe
Amy Rees Anderson — MediConnect Global
Prof. John Richards — BYU e-Business Center
Larry D. Rigby — Larada Sciences
Kevin Santiago — Cymphonix
D. Todd Shepherd — Studeo
Otto Silva — AtTask
Eric Smith — Control4
Cheryl Snapp Connor — Snapp Conner PR
James Lee Sorenson Jr. — Sorenson Media
Jesse Stay II — SocialOptimize.com
Joshua Steimle — MWI
Jack W. Sunderlage — ContentWatch
Benoy Tamang — Sapha
Cydni Tetro — NextPage
Kimball Thomas — BilliardEx
Kent Thomas — CFO Solutions
Devin Thorpe — USTAR
Will West — Control4
Tyler Whitaker — TM Ventures
Greg Whisenant — Public Engines
Ethan Willis — Prosper
Dr. Phillip Windley — Kynetx
Ken Woolley — Extra Space Storage
Ralph Yarro — ThinkAtomic
Allan Young — SocialOptimize.com
Richard Zinn — GeoAMP.com

Posted by Jeremy at 10:09 AM
Category: Utah| 1 Comment| Trackback