benjamingolub.com

I recently added Google Apps to all of my domains and got to thinking about what tools I’d use if I were to start a (small) business.

Communication

Google Apps would be my primary form of communication for sure.  It provides a robust mail solution with support for webmail, POP3, and IMAP.  Plus, it’s free (or only $50/user/year)!  I have no problem with hosting my mail on Google’s servers, especially because of POP3/IMAP support.  I wouldn’t put any rules as to what interface my employees could use; if they like webmail they should be able to use it because I know I would!

Chat might not seem important to some people but I think it is crucial.  It sucks to be interrupted while programming; you lose your train of thought and need to spend another 10 minutes to get back in the groove.  Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to send a one line question via email but chat solves this; I can answer your question at my leisure.  At work we use an IRC server; which is great for technical users but not ideal for anyone else.  If I were to start my own company we would use both an IRC server and Google Chat.  I have not looked into Campfire yet but it might be a contender too.

I don’t think phone lines are a necessity.  I’d certainly have a few around the building but for the most part I think it would be smarter to just provide employees with cell phones.  Nothing fancy; I don’t think Blackberries are a requirement.

Organization

Google Calendar might be a little simplistic for a large company (although I’m sure Google uses it just fine) but it would work fine for my needs.  Not to mention it has a great API that would make it easy to add in fancy features like resource allocation (projectors/conference rooms/etc).

Basecamp would power things on the project management side.  I’ve tinkered with it and think it would be excellent for use in small company.  I’ve only heard of one downtime from 37signals; not a bad track record. It provides some necessary features like milestones, file sharing, to-do lists, and time tracking (yuck).

Depending on the company we might need a product like Highrise to keep track of clients.  It just makes sense to use Highrise if you’re using Basecamp.  I haven’t really looked into it too much but it looks like it could be useful.

Is there a reason to use Backpack if you are already using Basecamp + Google Calendar?  I’m not sure if it adds anything other than more confusion to the mix so for now I’m saying no to Backpack.

Servers

Ah, the fun part.  Since it’s my company of course it is going to be some sort of web service.  Before Elastic IPs I would have said we’d most likely have our own data center or collocate.  Now I’m going to lean towards using Amazon EC2 for our servers; at least in the beginning when money is tight.  Amazon EC2 gives you a very powerful machine for only $72/month (assuming you want it up 24/7) and allows you to scale as necessary by just adding more servers on the fly.  Amazon S3 would definitely provide storage; the cost is very reasonable.  Can you tell I like Amazon?

Employee Computers

This is one area where I would definitely splurge.  Employee’s would be given an option between PC or Mac laptops.  Whichever PC I went with would need to use reasonably well Linux supported hardware because I’d certainly allow them to install any operating system they want.  If you work twice as fast in Linux then I want you working in Linux!  If you need OSX to save 30 minutes a day doing some task then I’ll get you a Mac!  The benefit to using all of these “cloud” services is that it doesn’t matter what computer you use to access them.  No being tied down to Exchange and PCs for me.

In addition to the laptops everyone would get whatever keyboard/mouse they want and a decent sized LCD.  Providing a laptop to employees gives them options to work extra hours from home if they feel an itch.  Laptops are just as fast as desktops these days so when you throw on a nice keyboard/mouse and large LCD you can’t tell the difference.

Office Space

If possible I’d avoid having cubicles and closed doors.  When I worked at Hyland Software nearly everyone worked out in the open in large “pods” with very low (~3 foot) walls and it was great.  People higher up on the totem pole had their own offices but every office had glass walls so they could not hide; it was great.

I’d try to provide as many services as possible to keep employees in the office.  At first this would probably only mean providing lunch and free drinks/coffee.  Back at Hyland Software we had a cafeteria and even though it wasn’t free it definitely kept me in the building.  Not having to drive for lunch saves at least 10 minutes a day.  Later on I’d try to add more services like haircuts, dry cleaning, and child care.  Happy employees work harder.

HR and Payroll

I have absolutely no clue what people use to manage HR if they don’t have their own HR team.  Can someone help me out here?

Conclusion

Can you tell I have a lot of faith in the cloud?  Maybe I’m being naive but I think it would be a huge time and cost saver to not have to deal with the issues that arise from building your own solution to already solved problems.  There are so many benifits and very few cons.  Do you agree with my decisions?  Did I forget something?  Let me know!