Courier Hell
Lootmaar has been online for 40 days now. In the next few posts, I’ll walk you through the life of a quasi-entrepreneur.
Many a slip, as they say. In the days leading to the beta launch, our courier company backed out of the deal because of a mass exodus of employees on their end, leaving us in the highly desirable position of having a business to launch without the fulfillment capability. We thought about hiring a rider, stealing someone’s driver and scrapping the COD process altogether. The fourth option was for Noman (my partner) to hurl around packages in his glinting new Accord. Noman figured that he could use some (more) driving practice, and the matter was settled. Some concessions had to be made in the process, the most striking one of which was limiting the beta to Karachi. While the immediate problem was solved, the need for a repeatable, mature, scalable process remained.
While this was happening, we came to the realization that our technology development process wasn’t sustainable. To give you some background, over the last 6 months, I had been working long hours to write detailed specifications, which went on to two very smart team members who constituted our technology group. One was responsible for the UI and the other for PHP. Two things happened: The circumstances of our PHP guru changed, and he could no longer give the kind of time Lootmaar required. The second thing was that spending 5 hours a day just to make two people coordinate (they were not co-located) didn’t seem like a very wise use of my time. After an arduous meeting and telecon, Noman and I decided that we needed an outsourced tech team.
References were scanned, specifications were sent out, negotiations were done, but a deal was not made. Choosing a technology partner seemed trivial enough: Find a team, evaluate skill, check references, send specs, get quote, negotiate, sign contract. That’s how most procurement processes go, or so we thought. Of course, we didn’t take into account Ramadan, when productivity also goes into fasting, nor did we consider how unprofessional small software houses can be. Replying to email and meeting commitments is so passe.
Lesson learned: Overestimate, and then double it.
-Adnan
ps. This post was written before the “emergency.” The resilience of my country surprises me. We’ve been beaten, butchered and dismembered, but we haven’t been defeated. Jeay Pakistan.
Tags:
7. November 2007 at 02:15
jeay pakistan!
btw, think of outsourcing it via rentacoder?
20. November 2007 at 00:11
Hey.. what I got to say has got nothing to do with your ‘Courier Hell’ but it being your latest blog I thought it would be most appropriate to reply in here (if I have to, of all the palces) ‘coz what I am saying is totally irrelevant. By now I am sure there would have been a hell lot of people already telling you that you an awesome writer so I wouldn’t repeat the fact. I actually have a flair for sensibly chosen and rightly quoted words. Your blogs here seem to have that and they kept me glued to the chair, infact taking me to flgihts with your adventures, even on a day when I am actually supposed to be studying for my finals =) Good job .. keep posting..
Regards,
ShaharBano Sufi
P.S : just incase I have embarrassed you by publicly appreciating, I looked all over for your email but couldn’t really find it.
21. November 2007 at 11:49
Mansoor, I’ve been meaning to create a listing on rentacoder but haven’t come around to doing it. In the meanwhile, we’re talking to another tech firm in Pakistan. Let’s see how that discussion turns out.
21. November 2007 at 11:53
Shaharbano, If I was any fairer, I would blush.
Thanks for the compliment, and no, I haven’t had people telling me that I’m an awesome writer, except perhaps my mom. She has maintained that since I was in 4th grade.
I would like to post here more frequently, thanks for the encouragement.
7. December 2007 at 08:45
i dont know whether you have tried this yet or not
but here is something to look at.
call up the top management of a courier firm. make them go thru a presentation.
EBAY>how lootmaar is just like EBay> and Ebays profits…First quarter income $377m..
now we all know lootmaar isnt Ebay so lets assume that its not dollars we are talking about and its 10%(ultra conservative estimate of growth based on the fact that we have low penetration of internet), it makes a pretty picture of Rs.37M and since this is like 12 years after so lets tone it down a little more Rs.3.7M . its still a pretty big number, add that Ebay does more than 5-6 M transaction (or a more authentic number), tell them if you manage to do a million transactions by the fifth years end you will have launched pakistani version of Ebay.
quote Baazi.com’s example and just tell them that its a lucrative offer for them to get hooked on to.
if you paint the real picture, with a big vision. i am sure they might get on board. and maybe you guys could think up a nice feasible way for delivery.
7. December 2007 at 08:50
and http://www.egreenonline.com is a nice software house.
pretty professional too.
8. December 2007 at 04:02
Hi Sooban,
Your comments are absolutely on the mark. When we later spoke with a major courier company, this was exactly our approach. The problem with them was that their processes weren’t flexible enough to accommodate our requirements.
We have made some serious progress in the last week tho, and hope to post about it about the contract is signed and the process is rolled out.
egreenonline looks like a very cool software house. The websites in their portfolio are also quite usable. I’ll keep them in mind for future business, as we’re already in the process of handing over the technology to another cool startup.
-Adnan
8. December 2007 at 06:00
=]
would love to be of help if you need any.
31. March 2008 at 11:53
i need job