Shinefire Studios

This post is part of an ongoing series about how small businesses can use the latest cloud services to get up and running quickly, and how to be more efficient in their operations afterwards.

Having just decided to “go legit” as a small business, we wanted to make sure that with all of the minutiae of day-to-day operations clouding our minds during these first few months, that we still maintained a strong focus on sales and increasing cashflow.  In particular, managing all the different contacts and businesses we’ve talked to, and deals we’re pursuing.  Also – we didn’t want to have to remember who to call when, or what the status on a deal was.

So the basic requirements were:

• Incredibly easy to use
• Decent feature list
• Inexpensive but scalable
• Email reminders
• Web based

I’d seen Salesforce before, and although the testimonials seemed convincing and I’ve heard nothing but good things, you have to fill out a complete information sheet just to view a demo of their software.  That one’s out.

I’d also heard about SugarCRM…which ended up being quite pricey and a little too robust for the needs of a small business.

Having already been a (kind of obsessive) user of Basecamp, we gave Highrise a look.  We ended up not looking much further.

Here’s where Highrise started out right: “Start a Highrise Account: 30-day free trial, 60-second signup, web-based, nothing to install.”

I’m listening.

Next, they have a one-minute guided video tour to give you an overview.

Not only does it satisfy the aforementioned requirements, but you can actually forward correspondence (emails to/from your clients) to Highrise and it automatically files the conversation under the correct Contact.  Can you say time saver?

We started out with the free account which lets us manage up to 250 contacts, and one “Deal”.  Should be sufficient until things really start moving.

I have to say I’ve been quite pleased with how accountable it’s kept us.  Plus, we have our own custom login page:

Here’s the TechCrunch post on the Highrise launch.

Update: Just discovered this page detailing how Google Apps and Salesforce have mashed up their product line.

Found this simplistic, yet entertaining video about how the interwebs came to be.

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

For those interested, I found the video posted on the BlogWell site, which hosted a conference today (that was a phenomenal success according to this tweet), and in general is a blog that promotes “making better use of the social web.” I’m already liking their PDF on how to redirect a Wordpress.com blog to a self-hosted Wordpress blog.

It’s been 37 days since Justin and I officially decided to incorporate Shinefire Studios, and my how fast things have moved since then.

We’ve been hard at work on a couple Rails projects, finishing up the design for our own logo, experimenting with the awesome new Wordpress 2.7, and perhaps monkeying around some with the carputer project we had goin last year.

We have finished putting together our Wordpress-powered website packages, as well as our website hosting service offering…and will be rolling both of those services out here very shortly.

Hit up our contact page if you’re interested in either, as a waiting list is already beginning to form!

The Shinefire Studios name

If you ask us where the name Shinefire Studios came from, we’ll tell you that it doesn’t really represent anything existential. In reality, we spent hours and hours doing word jumbles of our favorite words and phrases in a Google Docs spreadsheet.

Some words that made the final cut:

aether
accelerated
nu
sleek
stasis
red
fire
intelligent
studio
water
mach
arrow
redemption
catapult
elegant

As we continue to develop our vision and get further engrossed in client projects throughout 2009, we’ll keep ya’ll posted with the latest scoop.

Don’t be surprised if you catch a little fire symbolism here or there…we’re doin it on purpose.

UserVoice is one of my favorite new services. It allows me, as a business, to allow my customers…to tell me exactly what they want.  Forget the market research, forget the email surveys.  Instead, click on a feedback button (check out the one on ReadWriteWeb) and write which new feature you want a website to develop for their service, or what topics you would like to hear more about.

I love participating on Ryan Bates’s Railscasts uservoice page, because I know that he actively takes the suggestions and eventually turns them into podcasts.

As a business, you now have the ability to directly engage your customers in your product development.  Will you exercise that ability?