That's not the problem it once was, though, as Robbin and his partner, Jeff Skinner, are using free Web-based software tools to develop, tweak and get feedback from the 1,000 or so people who have signed up to use the program since its introduction a month ago.
The cost to launch the start-up? About $125 a month for Web hosting, plus the evening and weekend time Robbin, 31, and Skinner, 32, have spent building the program while they keep their day jobs.
Ten years ago, such a venture would have cost roughly $5 million to $10 million just to get the technology, such as servers and a fleet of software developers, before an entrepreneur could get an Internet company off the ground. That figure doesn't include advertising, marketing, managing personnel or payroll, costs that led start-ups to spend many more millions of dollars before proving they had a viable business.
"The technology was just emerging, and you had to spend a lot of time and effort to get the core infrastructure to work," said Matt McCall, a managing director for Northfield, Ill.'s Portage Ventures Partners. "Then you would see if the dogs would eat the dog food."
Now, thanks to free or inexpensive Web-based programs, entrepreneurs can be up and running all but after hatching the idea.
The programs include software for project management to note changes and collaborate with others; invoice management to help keep track of billing; Web conferencing to converse with customers; and printing services to make sure a key presentation is bound and shipped to potential investors for morning delivery only hours after completion.
Even executives from the dot-com heyday of the late 1990s are using Web-based tools to launch new ventures at sharply reduced prices.
"You can be up and running in less than a week with world-class software," said Internet veteran Matt Moog.
Moog has done just that with his new venture, Viewpoints.com, a site expected to launch in April or early May.
Viewpoints, a user-generated review site, has backers, but the level of investment is dramatically smaller than in 1996, when Moog was the fifth employee hired at CoolSavings.com.
That site, which helps consumers save money by providing coupons for everyday goods such as diapers or olive oil, burned through roughly $100 million to build the business.
Moog was appointed chief executive of CoolSavings in 2001, the same year its stock was delisted from the Nasdaq exchange. Moog left CoolSavings, now a part of private firm called Q Interactive, on good terms in July.
Two weeks later, he launched Viewpoints and had $4.8 million in funding and a team in place by the end of September.
Those start-up costs are a fraction of what they once were, Moog said, because "a lot of the complexity has been removed" from starting a company.
"We don't have a server," for example, he said. "At Q Interactive, we had a person running the server full time."
The simplicity of doing everyday business functions has been most helpful to Moog.
"The way I've been doing accounting and bookkeeping has been phenomenally simple," he said.
"It takes about three hours a month, and I can produce professional-looking reports at the end of each month and send it off to the investors."
Additionally, he said, "we're hiring fewer people, we spend less on hardware, and we have less overhead. And you can have a more powerful end result."
Much of the software he uses is accessed through a Web browser and not downloaded onto a computer. That is far cheaper than acquiring software licenses for each employee, which can cost thousands of dollars a month, Moog said.
Robbin and Skinner are using a combination of programs and some homemade software code to launch Tappity.com. Tappity is an application to find mobile-friendly Web sites, share discoveries with other users and organize favorite sites.
It is free and works on any Web-enabled mobile phone.
Building Tappity "wasn't much of a risk financially," said Robbin, of Chicago. He and Skinner, who lives in Iowa City, Iowa, "have been developing it for about five months," he said.
"Just on nights and weekends, whenever we could fit in some programming," Robbin said. "But it's not like opening a retail storefront that would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Our biggest cost is the Web hosting."
One program he is uses is Basecamp from Chicago software developer 37signals.
Basecamp has more than 1 million registered users and is a "series of simple tools, like shared to-do lists, that anyone can use," said company founder Jason Fried.
It wasn't designed for a specific industry, so a host of businesses, from wedding planners to homebuilders, use Basecamp to collaborate and communicate on projects. The program is free for the first project.
With Basecamp, a small team works together on a project. For instance, if one person made a revision to a document, others in the team would know.
They could comment on the revision, offer a different idea or the team could move on to the next task.
"We really designed it for ourselves," said Fried, whose company was a Web design firm until Basecamp soared in popularity.
"Before we used it, we'd send e-mails back and forth to one another to stay in touch about a project. For the first few weeks, that was fine, but then it became such a mess. There was no centralized place to check on the work."
Using Web-based products such as Basecamp or 37signals' new offering, Highrise, which launched Tuesday and had more than 7,000 users after 24 hours, is "very low risk," Fried said.
"You don't have to download anything, you don't need an IT department to manage it, and the programs can be up and running in minutes," he said. "If you like it, use it. If not, try something else."
That approach is appealing to venture capitalists like McCall. A nascent company can develop "proof of concept before seeking funding," he said.
"That makes for a better alignment of interests at the end of the day because the last thing you want to do is put a lot of money in a company if there's a lot of risk," he said.
For Robbin, proving his concept is all he is interested now.
"For the next year, we'll be listening to ideas from users and trying to make (Tappity) better," he said.
"The low overhead affords us to make the decision (whether to accept venture funding) more calculated, and we can be more responsible than jumping at the first thing that comes along."
------
(c) 2007, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via Newscom.
