Name: Smart Little Web Co
Based: Winchester
Website: www.smartlittleweb.com
Running Smart Little Web Co as a bootstrapped side project has been challenging. Our consultancy part of the business, Jelerang, works with large corporates on large projects. That means a few relatively large blocks of income arrive each year. We use super spreadsheets to manage the irregularity of income.
Our new venture also works with small businesses and that means lots of smaller payments. Landing a couple of big projects a year is a million miles from servicing dozens of smaller ones so we made our invoicing much slicker. We’ve gone for Zoho CRM and Invoice to ease the burden. It automates much of the process and has the integrated ability to pay online by PayPal or credit card. This has been a real success – our clients are happy to pay upfront so making it easy to do so removes a barrier to sale.
Smart Little Web Co is still in the early startup stage. Our mission is to help local businesses create effective and attractive websites. Cashflow wasn’t an afterthought, it has been at the centre of our thinking from day one, helping to guide us along the product development pathway.
For example, as we’ve developed our new technology in-house it’s been possible to make efficiency as much of a priority as features. The result is a platform that doesn’t require expensive, highly-skilled designers or developers to service our customers. It allows us to run lean, keep overheads low and turn around new projects super fast.
Chris John is the co-founder of Smart Little Web Co.
