-
Hi. My name is Adam. I am the co-founder of Pure Adapt, Inc in Albany, NY. We own Detailed Image, LockerPulse, and a bunch of other websites. I write about our company, entrepreneurship in general, work-life balance, and whatever else interests me.
-
If that sounds like something you're into, you can subscribe to blog updates via RSS or email, or follow me on Twitter. You can get in touch by leaving a comment or through email at
Monthly Archives: July 2009
The Entrepreneur’s Social Divide
Most of the people I know work a job they don’t really like. They do it because it enables them to live the rest of their life the way they want it. They work Monday through Friday from 9 – 5 for ~50 weeks of the year so that they can do whatever they want on the nights and weekends. It’s an understandable trade-off. That work provides for you financially. It enables you to buy a house and a car, take nice vacations, and save for retirement. But they only live for the nights and weekends. They are content at … Continue reading
How We Communicate
One of the best arguments against having partners is that you avoid miscommunication. Not only miscommunication about the simple things (did that order get entered into inventory? did someone de-activate that product we sold out of?), but miscommunication about the grander vision of your company (what are our long term goals and why?). Over time, by necessity, we’ve come up with a pretty good communication system that works for us. We haven’t had any disagreements yet about the long term vision of the company, but if we do our system will ensure that we openly discuss it. Conversely, in a … Continue reading
Broncos Tickets in Hand [NFL Season Ticket Experiment]
Finally. I just received the two pairs of Broncos season tickets in the mail. I have one person interested in them (friend of a friend) so I’ll give him first dibs. If not, we’ll probably throw them up on StubHub. The good news is that the Broncos season ticket waiting list is up to 28,000 and the wait is 13 – 15 years. The bad news is that the economy (or perceived economy) stinks so it might be a little tougher to sell than I originally anticipated. Not to mention, Mike and I both agreed that we’d rather sell the … Continue reading
The Manager – Programmer Disconnect
Nethy left an interesting comment the other day in regards to a potential new feature I mentioned: I’m always impressed with how your processes [flow]. Having a system like this that works properly needs: a) the programming doing the work and b) someone to plan the process. That’s something that’s very hard to do on a small business budget. It’s something that’s hard to do via consulting, for example. For a competitor, they might think “Adam blogged that he took 1 week to do this. 40 hours. I can get that done for $4000 (or $400 on elance) by a … Continue reading
Making Inventory Better
I think most retail outlets take a physical inventory every few months to know exactly what they have in stock. Those numbers then get plugged into accounting systems and are used to calculate a true cost of goods sold since the last inventory period, which is necessary to see the real profitability of their business. Up until now, for the most part, we’ve done the same thing. We have our inventory system that automatically deducts an item every time one is sold, but over the course of several months it becomes inaccurate. Either someone doesn’t enter in an order we … Continue reading
The Bootstrapped Office
My favorite Lifehacker posts are their “featured workspaces.” If you haven’t seen it, people submit their unique work areas and they pick the best of the best to display on the blog. The ones they pick are usually some combination of simplicity, elegance, creativity, and affordability. If you have a few minutes, take a look at all of the recently featured workspaces. Being that we’re a bootstrapped company, our work areas are more focused on simplicity and affordability and not so much elegance and creativity. It’s all about setting up areas that get the job done. We need to be … Continue reading
Book Review: e-Riches 2.0
A while back I reviewed Internet Riches, Scott Fox’s first book. e-Riches 2.0: Next Generation Marketing Strategies for Making Millions Online is his most recent. With a strong focus on modern web 2.0 marketing tactics, this book has a much broader appeal than just first-time web entrepreneurs (although Scott has a great way of explaining things so that even the least web-savvy can still understand). Just a sampling of the topics: Email marketing RSS marketing Social media/social network marketing Blogging as a marketing tool Twitter marketing Web PR marketing Video marketing Podcasts Webinars PPC Affiliate marketing It’s a surprisingly exhaustive … Continue reading
Misc Entrepreneurship Ramblings
I always jot down notes when I get the idea for a new post. This week I’ve had quite a few ideas, none of which are enough for a full post really. Too big for Twitter. Too tiny for a full blog post. — Two final thoughts on funding your first business and generating your first cash flow. I just got my Inc. Magazine in the mail the other day. The cover story is titled “How to Build Your Dream Company: Here’s how 10 savvy entrepreneurs got their dream companies up and running – and how you can do the … Continue reading
From Idea to Cashflow
Dale left an interesting comment the other day that I thought I’d follow up on with a post. What I’d love to see is how you got from idea to cashflow on Pure Adapt or SportsLizard. That’s the part that a lot of us who grew up looking for jobs are lacking. It’s a really interesting question and he brings up a good point. Most people, just by the nature of their jobs, don’t really truly think about what it takes to go from idea to revenue. Even if they are very entrepreneurial within their company, they generally have backing … Continue reading
Setting Up Employees For Success
These first two weeks with our first employee have been a fascinating experience for us. John has picked up the job much faster than we anticipated. He’s getting more work done more accurately and in less time than we could have ever predicted. Now, a good portion of that is because he’s a very hard working, intelligent kid. I think we realize that not every employee is going to pick things up quite as fast as he has. But the other portion of that, the part that we have more control over, is how well I think we set him … Continue reading