Ugh.

I find that the process of starting a company is a combination of mad dashes and frustrating slow-downs. This week featured a lot of the latter.

My main concern at this point is insurance -- as it turns out, virtually no insurance company is willing to insure this kind of business. The problems are multiple: they don't like the fact that I am taking possession of other people's stuff (unlike a normal, you-lease-the-space storage company); they don't like the fact that I am providing services that require me to actually open those boxes; they don't like the fact that I have never been in the storage industry before; and they don't like the fact that the company is a start-up. I had assumed up until now that, since my company is a mishmash of services provided by other companies, I would be able to take care of this insurance thing (there really is very little new here; it's the combination that is new). I also assumed that the multiple insurance brokers I had working on the problem were correct when they said that they should be able to find something. Now they are all coming up empty-handed, and I have taken more ownership of the problem, and have called many companies this week that advertise that they insure in the storage, consignment, or warehousing space. So far no luck. Need some Felix Felicis. HP reference! I am a nerd.

To add to that, this week I took on one of the few remaining technical challenges of the business: making it so that people can print out Fedex shipping labels so they can easily ship their own boxes and just schedule a pick-up with Fedex. As it turns out, this is surprisingly difficult, and each option includes annoying little challenges. My first inclination was to use Fedex's XML interface, but they change this interface so frequently that at this time there are no rails interfaces off-the-shelf anywhere that I can use. I am loathe to build my own WSDL processor myself, as the Fedex spec is rather long and complex, so I tried to modify one off-the-shelf that works (supposedly) with Fedex's spec a few versions back. I got it to work ... then discovered that with that tool installed, the entire site stops working! Fun. Traced that problem back to a one-line bug deep within the SOAP code (damn you Ruby for allowing dynamic extension of core classes! This seems like a terrible idea to me), and discovered that the code was improperly packaged so it won't work on Heroku without yet more debugging and customizing. Sigh. So I think I'm going to try to use a different interface and hope for the best. Call scheduled with Fedex on Monday to work through the details of this.

On top of all that, the designs are coming along, and some of them look really nice, but I wish they were moving a lot faster. Come on Capacitr, you can do it!

I suppose these are the things that separate the entrepreneurs from the wannabe's -- or at least, the entrepreneurs who actually have a launch from those who give up when the going gets tough. Looking back on the week, I do have other successes to report, most of which happened before the Fedex / insurance things got painful on Thursday.

Weekly Accomplishments

• Completed a survey for gathering more market research and delivered it to some friends / mentors for review on Monday. They have yet to get back to me.
• Met with the folks at Campus Solutions to talk about potentially using their space. They are just about out of space, so they were not able to help, but the person I spoke with gave good guidance on the kinds of things they did to get going several years ago.
• Met with a VC I know to talk about the business. His reaction was: it's all about SEO. This might have something to do with the fact that he and his partner specialize in SEO, but I agree with him that SEO is very important. We agreed that the site really needs to get up, though I am of the opinion that it has to be functionally complete for at least a few workflows before I can really show it to the world.
• Met with a potential partner in Urban Bound, a start-up in the HR outsourcing space. Michael, one of the founders, is excited about the prospect of offering his corporate customers the option of having employees store their things with the company while they are going through the moving process.
• Met with a representative of Chase Bank to talk about the work I will have to do if I am to hire someone. Overal a very pleasant meeting. Technically I think both the people I spoke with are employed by ADP.
• Met with my friends at Suggenda to work out how we are going to handle ownership of that company (not really important to the company, but important that I am not distracted by that!)
• Committed (mostly) to the space in Evanston as a processing and shipping location. Reviewed a lease and applied for a background check.
• Received my official credit card for the company. I have $15,000 in credit. Woo hoo!
• Called a bunch of consignment places to talk about partnership. Talked with one at length, and scheduled meetings with a few more for next week. The one I talked with was positive about the prospect of forming a partnership, and wants to talk more once the site is up and running and I turn on the "sell" option.
• Implemented the image browsing functionality in the site. I am now able to inventory and tag someone's stuff, and they are able to see that information in a very nice and sexy layout. This was surprisingly difficult, but ultimately successful, and I learned a lot about CSS along the way.
• Saw the last Harry Potter. This was a major downside to the business, as it depressed me that there are no more Harry Potters coming, and reminded me how much fun film-making is. Then I realized that I need a good source of income that will allow me to fund my film-making habit, and that I need to get the company off the ground for that reason alone, and that TVC is better than working for another company because it allows me to work for myself and organize things, something I love to do. Tom Cox is probably going to message me now saying "yeah, Z, keep telling yourself that". :)