Your Minimum Viable Product is Processing Credit Cards

If you’re building any sort of web service or mobile app and you can’t yet receive money from people – stop. Right now. Stop. For all that is right in the world – stop.

If you can’t process credit cards right now – you don’t have a product and you barely have a business. Your minimum viable product isn’t _would_ someone pay for it at some price, it’s _can_ someone pay for it at any price. You could be selling nothing right now – I don’t care. You need to figure out how to process credit cards. So, the exact moment you have anything to sell – you’re ready to make that first sale.

Sure, there’s still something of a taboo around asking people to pay for software especially browser-based software – and other text work. Something about a culture of free, marginal cost is $0, economies of scale, SEO-findability, marketshare, blah, blah, blah. It’s bullshit. Part of it’s a remnant from a time when processing credit cards was hard, required merchant accounts, and more security than a $90 HTTPS certificate. The other part is people whose business is to turn interesting software companies into massively awkward advertising companies (MAAC) before selling their interest for a huge profit.

Neither of these things really a problem – the high of making your first sale will quickly evaporate both these notions. There’s a reason restaurants frame their first dollar received. That first sale is a vote of confidence, a recognition of value received, and most of all a ‘Thank you’.

Unlike even 5 years ago, there are plenty of services that will happily process credit card transaction for you – from the ubiquitous PayPal, to Stripe.com, Amazon Payments, and Google Checkout, the list goes on and on. For mobile apps – all the app storefronts will handle payments for you. One caveat – you need to price your app above $0.

Not asking for money guarantees you’ll never receive it. Asking for something only improves your chances that you’ll receive something. Based on my experience, for small services 1% of the people will give you an average of $1. This conversion rate can easily cover hosting costs for a year. It only goes up from there.

Though, the primary benefit of being able to take money isn’t really about being able to take money.

It’s about seeing your product through your potential customers’ eyes. Who they are? Which aspects of what you’re building are most valuable to them? What’s the most valuable thing you could build that they’d open their wallet for? Build that atop your payment processing system. Done. With enough customers, we can talk about bundling features into different payment tiers. Even completely different products. That’s down the road. But now that mindset exists, the technical capability exists, more paths to success open up. All in this small shift from $0 to >$0.

This isn’t even specific to building software – this is for anyone that creates something and distributes it online. Late last year I paid $250 for a weekly 5 minute video series. Announcements of new videos are distributed via email (one of the few emails I look forward to each week). The videos themselves live on Youtube. Last I heard, 160 others had paid as well. That’s $40,000 gross – atop an email with a YouTube link – from the sheer audacity of asking for real money for a year of creative work.

Brew Day for the 2012 Hop Clearance

Today was brew day for the 2012 Hop Clearance and it could have gone much better. I forgot to put the false bottom in the brew pot (that’s step 1, even before turning on the burner).

So, the weight of 19 pounds of grain and the heat from the bottom of the brew pot burned a hole in my BIAB grain bag. Spilling out all 19 pounds of grain loose into the mash water. Thankfully, I had a leisurely 90 minutes before I needed to separate the soon-to-be spent grain from the soon-to-be hot liquor. In an effort to maximize my ‘it came to me in the shower’ chances – I grabbed my gym bag and headed out for a quick 30 minutes on the spin bike. Once on the bike, the answer was clear:

  1. grab the spare grain bag
  2. binder clip it into the unused large, rectangular, Igloo cooler
  3. dump the contents of the brew pot into the grain bag in the cooler
  4. put cooler on bar stool and drain back into freshly-cleaned brew pot

It worked slick and the walls of the cooler provide excellent resistance in squeezing every last drop out of the grains and into the brew pot. This process showed me the value of a separate mash/lauter tun and spigots – even for BIAB (admittedly this does mostly defeat the purpose of BIAB).

With the hot liquor ready for boil, I turned back on the outdoor burners and tidied up. Fifteen minutes later the temp was still reading 140°F. Oh sure, it’s only 16°F outside and the heat of mash has melted the snow off by back patio – but push through little turkey fryer – we gotta reach 212. I dove into the depths of the summer storage side of the garage, extracted the propane tank from the grill, and tagged it in. Fifteen minutes later – still 140°F. With both tanks giving up, it was time to take 6 hot and sticky gallons of grain juice into the kitchen to boil.

The Power Burner on the range quickly brought on a boil, and I prepped my first hop addition and an impromptu recipe tweak. Turns out my 4oz bag of Northern Brewer was hiding .8oz of Saaz. Fine. This is Hop Clearance – throw it in. It does mean, I don’t have as many IBUs as I planned, so while we’re here, let’s move the 10AA Centennial from flame-out to 45min. That’ll give us 10 IBUs back.

Then, I remember it’s January – which means the outside water’s been turned off for 2 months. Which means it’ll need to get turned back on, and hoses attached, to chill the wort. Now I have something to do between dropping the Irish Moss and flame-out. Perfect.

Through all of this, the starter of Headwaters waited patiently. I pitched them around 4pm and by 7:30 there was a nice solid krausen across the entire fermenter. Win.

With all the gear, the kitchen, the back patio clean, and Hopville’s calculators giving me a 73% efficiency on the mash (hitting 1.108 rather than the estimated 1.114) I’m tentatively optimistic on this one.

BTW – the fermenter smells fantastic.

Update 7 January 2013:

It’s been so long since I’ve brewed that I’d forgotten how wonderful fermentation smells.

Update 5 April 2013:

Turned out ok. Hops seem to be quickly fading. Overall, grainy/husky and less body than I’d like. I’m finding the strong finishing bitterness quite enjoyable. Barely any carbonation came through. The 12.8% ABV is quite prominent. I’m interested to see what the judges at the NHC think this weekend.

Update 18 Apr 2013

Received a 21 & 25 @ NCH Round 1. Higher than I anticipated. Primary fault identified by the judges: acetaldehyde (caused by weak yeast). Both judges describe the hops as low – glad I put so many in.

Big Beer Year: #1 The Hop Clearance American Barleywine

One thing that beer class confirmed for me – I have a strong preference for the rich, full, maltiness of big beers. Hops I’m ambivalent about, but if a beer doesn’t have a prominent malt presence – it won’t make my Ongoing Beer List.

With this in mind, I’m planning 8 beers for 2013, each a different style with common thread: big and malty. The first of these is The Hop Clearance, a big American Barleywine that will eat the unused hops I acquired in 2012. Recipe below:

17.5 # American Two-row Pale
1.0 # Table Sugar
1.0 # American Crystal 80L
0.25# Belgian Special B
0.25# American Chocolate

2.75 oz German Northern Brewer @ 60
1.0 oz Sterling @ 60
1.0 oz US Golding @ 60

0.5 oz Centennial @ 45

0.8 oz Saaz @ 0
1.0 oz Styrian Goldings @ 0
1.0 oz Willamette @ 0

Headwaters Yeast

1.108 SG
1.014 FG (25 Jan 2013)
99 IBU
0.87 BU:GU

The Hop Clearance @ Hopville