It is very helpful to be able to compare different code files to see their changes, specially when working in a team. Adobe Dreamweaver is my main choice when developing since I like the color highlighting theme, it has an FTP client included and a simple check-in/check-out functionality that doesn’t need to be set up like SVN and works in cheap shared hostings that don’t support any version control.

To compare files in Macintosh there are several applications and the best, lighter and faster to load is DiffMerge (works great in my old white Macbook), it is also free and open source so more than welcome. This is how you set it up in Dreamweaver so that you can compare files easily by right-clicking the file and selecting Compare with Remote Server:

Also when uploading a file Dreamweaver may warn you that the file in the server has been modified and you may overwrite someone else’s changes:

And also in the Synchronize files list:

It becomes really useful to see what has changed, once you click the Compare button this is how DiffMerge looks like:

Looks good, huh? Let’s get to work then!

Setting up DiffMerge with Dreamweaver

First thing to do is to download DiffMerge from the official site and install it, no need to open it.

Dreamweaver needs a shell command to open DiffMerge with both files. We will install a small script (10 lines of code) into the /usr/bin folder. To do this you first need to be able to view all hidden files:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
killall Finder

Open Finder, go to Utilities and open Terminal. Paste the code above. Finder will restart and all your Finder open windows will close. If the code above doesn’t work then change YES to TRUE and try again.

Now go to Macintosh HD or your main drive and go to usr/bin:

Download this file and rename it as diffmerge.sh

Move diffmerge.sh to the /usr/bin folder, you will probably need to enter your Administrator password since that is a system folder.

Now go to Dreamweaver, open Preferences and go to the File Compare section. In there, paste this text:

Macintosh HD:usr:bin:diffmerge.sh

Yes, it’s got : instead of / but it’s how it works.

Save the settings by clicking OK at the bottom.

You are done! Now you can compare files and see what has changed, great to keep track of your peer changes and even some changes you made months ago and can’t remember.

You can hide the hidden files again by going to Terminal and typing:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
killall Finder

Nice! You made it until the end of the post. Here’s an extra gift for you, a very useful tool to disable or customize the annoying startup sound in all Mac OSX, it is called Startup Sound and it installs in the System Preferences so it gets completely integrated with your system. It’s free too, download here.

Kohana’s official documentation is pretty complete and useful as well as well written. I have been studying it for a few days but wanted to read the tutorials also whenever I had no Internet connectivity. Searching on the Internet for PDFs or ePubs on Kohana didn’t really show much so I developed a little tool that extracts the official documentation and outputs it in one single file so you can read the official Kohana guide anywhere anytime.

You can download the documentation both in ePub, PDF and HTML formats. The ePub format does not have the images in it (I used an online tool and it removed them, there aren’t a lot anyway) but works great in the iPad, Kindle and Android tablets.

Kohana 3.2 Documentation in PDF format (mirror) (3.3MB)

Kohana 3.2 Documentation in ePub format (mirror) (240KB)

Kohana 3.2 Documentation in HTML format (mirror) (310KB)

I have done my best with the crawling tool but it hasn’t been 100% tested so some sections may have been skipped, please let me know in the comments if that’s the case.

Thanks to all the contributors to the Kohana Documentation, as I am still learning Kohana accept this as my little contribution to the framework :)

I mostly use the iPad for reading email, news and blogs although I am still perplexed at how few apps there are for actually doing some work. Well, to be honest, there are many apps to do some work. But I believe in platform-agnostic web-apps or SAAS to be the future of our world and the amount, variety and features of current web apps for web development is still quite scarce.

One of the big gaps that I found was regarding code editors. The lack of fast symbol typing in the keyboard is very frustrating and slow (you need to use iOS’s default keyboard and type 3 keys just to get a “<” sign, plus another one to get back). This is why I came up with a proof of concept on additional keyboard rows with extra keys for touch screen devices and added all symbols frequently used for coding and programming so you don’t need to keep switching from one keyboard set to another. It has been optimised for the iPad in portrait mode although with some responsive CSS queries and device detection it can be adapted anywhere.

The code itself is basic HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript and jQuery. I’ve kept it simple to aid scalability and customisation. This is how it looks:

Demo and download

Click the following link to open the Code Editor. To test it properly you will need an iPad in portrait mode.

iPad web-based code editor with extra symbols keyboard

License

Public Domain, keeping the Internet open. You can use it commercially and distribute it as much as you want without being forced to credit the author.

Changelog

If you have developed it further send me an email and I will include it in the next release and you in the Credits.

8 February 2012 (v1.0)

• First release

If you haven’t seen my iPad HTML/CSS template you must see it now.

Si nos falta el tiempo y el dinero para poder ejecutar un estudio de usabilidad de nuestra página web siempre podemos recurrir a sistemas caseros que son rápidos y económicos.

Escoger la lista de perfiles

Muchos usuarios visitarán nuestra web en el futuro. Entre éstos tenemos que identificar los diferentes perfiles de usuario (llamados “personas” en inglés) y de estos perfiles escoger los dos o tres principales, si hay algo que está claro es que la página web nunca será del agrado de todos nuestros usuarios ya que es imposible que agrade a todo el mundo aunque sí que podemos adaptarla a la mayoría que nos interese. Un perfil de usuario sería algo así:

Persona de entre 25 y 35 años con poder adquisitivo medio-alto, educación universitaria, que vive en una ciudad, no tiene hijos, con conocimientos medios de informática, que navega entre 30 minutos y 2 horas al día por Internet vía un ordenador portátil o de escritorio. Realiza actividades de ocio entre 4 y 8 veces al mes.

Una vez tengamos los perfiles principales deberemos encontrar gente que se adapte a ellos. Si nuestro presupuesto es bajo podemos recurrir a favores de amigos, familiares y conocidos. Lo importante es que puedan estar presencialmente con nosotros.

Test de usabilidad

Una vez tengamos una lista de los diferentes perfiles de usuario, situaremos al primero delante del ordenador y dejaremos unos minutos para que el usuario se acomode y familiarice con él, encuentre el icono del navegador web y lo abra. Si puedes realizar el test desde el ordenador del usuario muchísimo mejor.

Misión

El siguiente paso es el más importante y es que sólo le encomendamos una misión no más larga que una oración y cuya tarea debe durar menos de 15-30 minutos (podemos encomendarle varias misiones, una a una, pero una sola a la vez). Por ejemplo:

Visita la página xaviesteve.com y compra el aparato de música de entre 100 y 200 euros que más te guste.

En esa frase queda implícito que el usuario deberá: buscar el producto, registrarse para poder comprar, confirmar un enlace de activación de la cuenta en su correo, hacer click en Comprar, introducir sus datos de la tarjeta de crédito (una vez saque su tarjeta de crédito le proporcionaremos una nuestra de prueba) y finalmente confirmar. Otro ejemplo sería:

Mañana quieres ir a cenar a un restaurante japonés, haz una reserva para 2 en la web helloplan.com y encuentra donde está ubicado.

Nuestro papel

Lo importante es que el usuario lo deduzca todo por él mismo sin que tengamos que explicarle nada. Si nos hace preguntas le diremos que no se preocupe, que intente descubrirlo él mismo. Si vemos que duda demasiado o empieza a frustrarse le ayudaremos.

Pensando en voz alta

Al usuario le pediremos que piense en voz alta durante el proceso, es decir, que vaya contando todo lo que piensa, hace y por qué, por ejemplo:

Espero a que la página se cargue, a ver… ¡Ahá! Aquí pone Electrónica, los aparatos de música estarán dentro, ah no, hay otro que se llama Música, debe ser este mejor, hago clic… Ok este es, bien, a ver, aquí centrado hay las mejore ofertas… aquí a la izquierda me sale una lista con subcategorías… voy a clicar aquí…

Analizar con detalle

Si disponemos de una cámara de vídeo o programa de screencasts, nos ayudará muchísimo para poder analizar mas tarde cualquier duda que el usuario haya podido tener y descurir las dudas y micro-gestos que ha tenido y que ocurren en milisegundos (estas son las que cuestan más de detectar y las que tenemos que solucionar) o aquellas donde el usuario duda de entre varias opciones.

Objetivo del test

Nuestro objetivo final del test de usabilidad es detectar qué podemos cambiar o mejorar para que nuestros usuarios reales tengan que pensar o dudar lo mínimo. Cuanto menos hagamos pensar a nuestro usuario menor será su nivel de frustración y mayor el de autorealización. Una web usable es aquella donde el usuario cumple su objetivo por intuición sin tener que pensar demasiado. Para acabar, una cita de uno de los genios en usabilidad web, os recomiendo su libro.

Una web poco usable no es aquella web que no se usará pero sí aquella que se usará menos.
–Steve Krug en ‘Don’t make me Think’

If you have set up a new website or a company and want to send and receive emails with your company’s email address but don’t want to have multiple inboxes (specially when you manage more than 5 different email accounts) the best way to do it is to redirect all your emails to the same email account. And thanks to the power of Google Mail or Gmail you can manage unlimited accounts effortlessly and send and receive emails from different accounts easily into one inbox. Follow these two step-by-step guides to set up receiving and sending:

Receiving emails from your website to your email

Go to your website’s cPanel (if you don’t know what cPanel is then send this website to your web developer to do this for you) and click on Forwarding:

Then click on Add Forwarder:

Now fill in your email account name (what goes before the @ symbol) and select the domain you want to use, then forward it to your Gmail account like in the image:

Click on Add Forwarder and a success message will appear. You can now close cPanel. You must wait for a few minutes or even a few hours for the mail server to update and spread your new email account before it forwards emails correctly and you start receiving them.

Sending emails from your company’s email address

First of all make sure that emails sent to your company’s email address are successfully forwarded to your Gmail account, try sending a test email now and look in your Gmail account for the message to arrive. Once you open the message you should see your company’s email address in the To: field as in this screenshot:

If you are not receiving them then wait a few hours and try again later or check the Spam folder in case it went there.

Once you are receiving the emails you can set Gmail up to start sending emails with your company’s email address:

Go to the top right corner of Gmail and click Options > Mail settings:

The Settings page will open, click on Accounts and Import:

Now keep scrolling down until you see a Send email as section and a link to Add another email address you own, click that:

A popup window will open, on this step you need to fill in the name that will show when people receive an email from your company’s address and your company’s email address, then click on Next Step:

The easy and quick way now is to select Send through Gmail and click Next Step. If you want to send it through the SMTP servers of your company you will need to find them out asking your web developer or IT company. For HostGator accounts have a look at the Email client settings.

The next steps are pretty straight forward, a confirmation email will be sent to the company email address (which will be forwarded to your Gmail account), open it and click on the activation link to authorize Gmail to send emails as the company’s address.

Now, when writing a new email or replying to one, there will be a From: dropdown from which you will be able to choose the account to use:

Organizing your inbox

Once you start using multiple email accounts in the same inbox things may start to get unorganised. To solve this you can create tags. Go to your Gmail and go to Mail settings again (at the top right), then select the Filters tab and click Create a new filter and type in your company’s email address there and click Create filter with this search:

In this step select Apply label and create a new label:

You are done! Now, every time you receive an email to the company’s email address a label will appear next to the subject, you can customize the colour of the label and rename it to whatever you want.

In your inbox sidebar you will be able to filter messages sent only to that email address. Find below my own inbox, I have more than 10 email accounts configured and all of them have a different Label so that I keep everything organised:

If you have any questions or anything is unclear let me know in the comments section below and I will do my best to help you.

After trying several mobile phone network companies such as Orange, Tesco and Vodafone I’ve finally discovered the best mobile phone network company in the United Kingdom. It’s called GiffGaff (strange name but keep reading) and it is by far the cheapest and best of them all. Better than T-Mobile, O2, Orange, Vodafone, Tesco, Three, Lebara and so on…

Let’s have a look at the green goodybag. For just £10 a month you get unlimited 3G Internet (there is a flexible limit of 6,000 MB per month which is much more than you can use in a mobile phone), unlimited texts to any UK mobile phone, 250 minute calls to any UK mobile or landline phone and unlimited free calls to other GiffGaff mobile phones (get your friends and family to switch to GiffGaff and you can call them for free).

Already convinced? Click here to receive a free GiffGaff SIM card now

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the network coverage quality?

It uses the O2 network so it is by far the best in the whole United Kingdom.

Is there a permanent/fixed-term contract required?

None at all! If you don’t like it you can switch to any other mobile network company whenever you want. Period. No need to tell them or anything.

Can I keep my old number?

Yes! You can try GiffGaff and if you like it transfer your old number whenever you want so you can keep using it seamlessly. To transfer it you need to ask for a PAC code to your current company and then GiffGaff will switch your number during the night so you don’t have any downtime.

Are there any hidden fees or small print?

Transparent as water! GiffGaff has proven to be a serious company, not like other dodgy mobile companies that say you pay X and at the end of the month you end up paying two times what they promised because you forgot to read the small print in the contract.

Can I get a phone with it?

Nope… for that cheap and without contracts they can’t offer free phones but with the money you save you can buy an unblocked phone and still save money. I bought an unlocked iPhone and have been using GiffGaff for the past several months so saved quite a lot of money.

Can I go on a contract mode instead of Pay-As-You-Go?

If you are looking to not have to worry about topping up: Yes! You can set up auto-topup so that every month (or whenever you run out of credit) your SIM card gets more credit and you never run out of it. It is better than a “contract” since you can cancel it or pause it through the website at any time.

What if I have any problems with it? How is the support like?

Here comes the best part, GiffGaff is mostly web based (you still have a support phone number) but I hugely prefer its web based support. The good thing of being web based is that the support is completely free for you and it is also immediate since other expert giffgaffers earn free credits for answering questions successfully so there is always people there helping you out in a few minutes instead of calling and waiting on the line for a useless operator to come available and drive you nuts.

How about roaming and international calls?

Great! They are also surprisingly cheap compared to other mobile phone network companies and they keep lowering the prices every now and then:

• All EU countries, Australia, Andorra, Croatia, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Iceland, India, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Vatican City: 8p/min landlines, 16p/min mobiles, 8p/text, £1.50 per MB
• USA and Canada: 8p/min landlines and mobiles, 8p/text, £5 per MB
• Other countries: £1/min, 20p text, £5 per MB

250 minutes is not enough for me, is there anything else?

I’ve been using the £10 (250 minutes) for the past several months and never reached the limit but if you speak a lot on your phone you can pay £15 a month and get 400 minutes, or for £20 you get 800 minutes per month, for £25 you get 1500 minutes… which is insane! All of these are with unlimited Internet, texts and GiffGaff calls included so you may want to get your frequent callers to switch to GiffGaff and then you don’t waste any minutes.

YEAH! Where do I get my free SIM card?!

Use the link below to request your free SIM card and get an extra £5 credit thanks to my recommendation. Important: Fill in the form there and in the next step top up £10 of credit but make sure to get a Goodybag, goodybags are the best!

Click here to get a free GiffGaff SIM card

Once you request the SIM it should arrive home in about 3 days (it can take up to 5, don’t stress out). Use it for a few days and let me know your feedback, I am pretty sure you will LOVE THIS COMPANY, personally, it changed the way I saw mobile phone companies, for me they where money suckers, now GiffGaff changed that. Wish we had the same in Spain…

Disclaimer: I’ve done extensive research. If there is a better option post it in the comments and I’ll update this post. I do not work for GiffGaff or anything similar, I just get free credits when someone asks for a free SIM thanks to my recommendation, the asker also gets free credits so it is a mutual win-win. You can get to recommend other people once you get your GiffGaff SIM card too! :)

About a year ago I created a one-page document for content writers in my team to write better online articles. I am now releasing it so you can print it and have it close to you while writing. These are the most basic and important SEO tips you need to know if you want your posts to succeed. You will find a link to download the one-page PDF at the bottom of the article.

1. The most important tip is to create quality content

Posts that are bookmarked, shared, linked, commented or thanked. That should be the purpose of every post and should either be:

1. Useful (people reference to them)
2. Interesting (people bookmark them)
3. Funny or entertaining (people share them)

Here’s a good article extending this concept on writing with a purpose.

2. User goes always first

Keep the post readable and attractive to humans. Google is secondary. Ensuring you write for your users will have long-term SEO benefits.

3. Use Headings to split the content

Heading 1 is always the page title and it is the most important title. Headings to use in the content must start from Heading 2 to a max depth of H6. Use headings instead of bolding or formatting the text yourself.

4. Use eye-catching titles but keep them short

Don’t be just informative, get the user’s attention.

1. Windows tricks -> Top 10 coolest tricks for Windows!
2. London party places -> Best secret places to party in London

5. First paragraphs are the most important ones

Search Engines give more importance to the first part of the posts. In fact, really large posts are usually not indexed completely.

6. Be descriptive by adding keywords whenever possible

All headings should have keywords in them:

1. What I like -> What I like about the HP Pavilion laptop
2. My trip -> My awesome trip to Barcelona this summer

7. Use synonyms

Don’t repeat keywords you are not targeting for, use a lot of synonyms instead.

1. What I like about Acer -> Review about Acer computers / My opinion on Acer laptops

This way, users searching for “acer review”, “acer opinion” or “acer laptop” will find our page.

8. Rich formatting increases SEO

Eases Search Engines to identify the content.

• Using lists (and differentiating between ordered and unordered lists),
• bold and italic words or sentences,
• blockquote paragraphs when quoting or pasting literal text

9. Add both inbound and outbound links

Links to authority webs like Flickr, Wikipedia or YouTube can be frequent (you don’t lose any PageRank juice). But don’t link too much to other websites (one or two per paragraph). Always describe the links:

1. Download the Flash player by clicking here. -> Download the Flash player.

10. Format posts inside WordPress

Text editors like Microsoft Word may add irrelevant or invalid code into posts. If the text is in Word, paste it in Notepad so it looses all formatting, then copy and paste into WordPress and format it there using Headings, lists, bold, italic, etc.

Download the 10 SEO tips for WordPress PDF file

10 SEO tips for WordPress PDF file
If you have any doubts feel free to ask them in the comments. Also, share this article with your team, friends and colleagues for increased results and better blogging.

Esto no debe confundirse con Préstamos o Financiaciones ya que éstos deben devolverse incluso cuando el negocio fracasa o no sale rentable.

Bussiness Angels

Suelen ser personas individuales (normalmente gente de negocios exitosa) que invierten de 10,000€ a 100,000€ en un negocio que está por empezar o ya en marcha. Tienen experiencia del mercado y contactos con los que ayudar y no requieren un puesto en la toma de decisiones del negocio.

Capital de Riesgo (Venture Capital)

Suelen ser empresas que invierten en negocios ya en marcha (o en negocios nuevos con fundadores que tienen reputación) y llegan a invertir cantidades de 200,000€ a más de 1,000,000€ (el dinero proviene de un grupo de inversores). Tienen contactos y normalmente requieren tomar parte en la junta directiva del negocio.

Series A round, Series B round…

Se refiere a las rondas de financiamiento que ha habido. Series A es la primera, Series B la segunda y así succesivamente.

Photo by Xavi Esteve, Tim Dorr and net_efekt

These iPhone apps are must-haves

The most important apps in my iPhone.

Reeder

By far the most used app in my iPhone. Reeder is an RSS feed reader that gathers all your feeds from your favourite websites (blogs, newspapers, comics, etc.) and displays them all in a nice ordered list ready for you to read one after another. But that’s not all, its offline caching ability allows you to download up to 5000 new articles/posts in just 10 seconds and then read them anywhere (tube, airplane, pub or even bathroom) without needing an Internet connection or 3G. Since I’ve got this app I no longer get the free newspaper every morning as I can read tons of online newspapers in my iPhone and I get to read news that happened a few minutes ago. I prefer how MobileRSS Pro works but it is incredibly buggy and Reeder synchronises incredibly well with Google Reader.

Rating: 9/10. Use it 3 times a day. £1.79

RememberTheMilk

The best Get Things Done app ever. RememberTheMilk is my favourite To-Do list. Since I started using this app I have improved my personal and professional organisation a lot. The simplicity of the app is something I still find surprising. You open the app, tap, enter a task and a time such as “meeting w john 8:55” and RTM will remind you on the task at 8:55 (if today is later than 8:55 then it adds it for tomorrow). There are many date shortcuts such as “next tue” or “august” and also features such as priority, repetition, lists, tags, location or sharing. Another nice touch and well done feature is the reminder notification, you can fully customise it to your liking with the perfect sound and timing. The web interface is also great and full of features in a beautiful and simple interface which allows you to either use it for a couple features or utilize its maximum power. Wunderlist is very nice but not as featured as RTM.

Rating: 10/10. Use it 2-5 times a day. Free or £15/year

You should get an iPhone just for this

Anyone without a smartphone should get one immediately just because of these ones.

Skype

Free national and international calls to smartphones and computers at anytime. That is something really amazing. Just for that, people should invest in a smartphone and recycle their old mobile phone. For the chat I stay with Imo app as I find the Skype chat pretty slow and bloated.

Rating: 8/10.Use it twice a month. Free

Imo instant messenger

Imo is a free online chat with support for Facebook, Skype, Gmail and many more. I discovered this app a few weeks ago and now I can be online on more than 7 different chat services and always available to speak to anyone. This is a feature I was missing in my phone but didn’t care too much until I actually had it in my hands and saw the main advantages of the “new mobile texting”. Some people love WhatsApp (Blackberry users mainly) but I find it annoying and heavy to use. Plus you need all your friends to have a Blackberry or a smartphone to contact them while with Imo you can speak to anyone online in their computer or smartphone. The notification system at Imo is pretty sweet and unobtrusive too.

Rating: 8/10.Use it once a day. Free

Very nice apps I’m glad someone invented

Non-essential apps that you could live without although having them available makes a difference in your life.

RunKeeper

Tracks your speed and location by GPS and provides you with statistics and maps. As RememberTheMilk made me a more organised person, RunKeeper makes me healthier. Since I go running with it every week I know how much I run, my average speed, time and route and I can compare it with previous runs to monitor my physical improvements in stamina and speed. You can also use it while driving and it is quite interesting to see the fastest routes around the city and how well/safe you drive.

Rating: 7/10.Use it once/twice a week. Free or £12.50/year

Dropbox

Synchronises a super folder between computers and smartphones so you can access your files anytime/anywhere without the need of USB sticks or emails. I found it to be the best way to move photos from my iPhone to the computer in big bunches as iPhoto from Apple is slow and tedious (I still haven’t figured out how). And Dropbox is completely free (use this link to get an extra free 250MB).

Rating: 8/10.Use it once a week. Free or £6.20/month

Shazam

Tells you which song is playing from any place. You put the phone close to the speaker and hold it there for 10 seconds, wait 5 seconds more and the app tells you the name of the song, the artist, etc. Shazam is not one of the most used apps in my phone but the one I sometimes appreciate most when there is a good track playing and I don’t know the name of it.

Rating: 7/10.Use it twice a month. Free or £3.49 (unlimited)

Millionaire Tycoon

Better game than Monopoly. I payed for Monopoly and I haven’t really played it yet since I’ve spent decent hours with this addicting game, much similar to Monopoly but with more features and a richer gameplay and smarter computer AI that allows for a more complex strategy and challenging game.

Rating: 7/10. Use it once a month. Free or £0.59 (more levels)

TuneIn Radio

Radio is something I started neglecting five years ago until last week I discovered TuneIn. Every morning I use to listen to music while having a shower and getting dressed to go to work but listening to someone telling the news is something much better.

Rating: 6/10.Use it every morning. Free or £0.59 (no ads)

Life saver apps

These are apps I rarely use but occasionally I need them.

Tube Exits

While travelling by underground it tells you which carriage to board to arrive right by your platform exit allowing you to save crowds of people and time. London’s Tube gets specially crowded at peak times and this app makes my travels much better and less annoying. Easy to use and with a great interface.

Rating: 7/10.Use it twice a week. £0.59

Amazon UK

Online price comparison. Anytime I go shopping for anything except groceries I check the prices online from the best and biggest online market. Yesterday I purchased directly from it for the first time and it was very simple and easy.

Rating: 8/10.Use it once a month. Free

Camera+

Full-featured digital camera. I had always been using the default’s iPhone camera and edited the photos with Photoshop/Fireworks later until I finally decided to purchase Camera+ as I saw a lot of people had it and after using it for a while I must say that it has been a great decision. The app is very powerful and can 80% of the times do what I would do in a computer in terms of edition and photoshopping and it actually saves me a lot of time.

Rating: 7/10.Use it 2 times a week. £0.59

Honorable mentions

• SimpleNote: note taking with sync functionality
• ShopShop: groceries list
• 0870: free phone alternatives
• AroundMe: shops and places around you
• Tube Deluxe: Tube status updated live
• Wikihood: sights around you
• Sleep Cycle: intelligent alarm
• WordPress: update your blog through the iPhone
• TeamViewer: see your computers’ screen
• TouchMouse: use your iPhone as a trackpad
• XE Currency: currency conversions
• Light: flashlight with the iPhone
• Pro HDR: nice photos on the fly
• 360 Panorama: awesome 360 degree photos
• Justin.tv: video streaming
• WhiteNoise: relaxing noise
• SongKick: latest concerts
• SoundCloud: great music radio

There are 30 apps mentioned and they are basically the ones I use. I have more than 130 apps installed right now in the iPhone from which I may use about 60.

What are your favourite apps you can’t live without?

El principio más importante a la hora de decidir como repartir una empresa entre sus fundadores es el de Equidad, y la percepción de justicia, éstos son mucho más valiosos que la cantidad de acciones que se poseen. Tenemos que partir de la realidad de que casi todo lo que puede ir mal en una nueva empresa saldrá mal, y una de las cosas más importantes que pueden salir mal son trascendentales y airadas discusiones entre los cofundadores sobre quién trabajo más duro, quién posee más parte de la empresa, de quién fue la idea, etc. Es por eso que siempre repartiría una empresa al 50-50 con un amigo en vez de insistir en un 60% porque “fue idea mía”, o porque “yo tengo más experiencia” o cualquier otro motivo. ¿Por qué? Porque si se reparte la empresa 60-40 la empresa fracasará cuando se discutan las cosas entre cofundadores. Y si se decide “que le den, nunca averiguaremos como dividir la empresa correctamente así que seamos amigos y vayamos todos al 50-50″ permaneceréis amigos y la empresa sobrevivirá.

Así es como os presento con el Sistema Joel para repartir una empresa de manera justa.

Sistema Joel para repartir una empresa de manera justa

Por razones de simplicidad, asumiremos que no se va a recurrir a capital de riesgo y que no se tendrán inversores externos. Más tarde explicaré como tratar con el capital de riesgo pero por ahora asumamos que no hay inversores.

También por razones de simplicidad, vamos a asumir temporalmente que todos los fundadores han renunciado a sus puestos de trabajo y empiezan a trabajar en la compañía a tiempo completo, al mismo tiempo. Más tarde, explicaré como tratar con fundadores que no se inician al mismo tiempo.

Esto es el principio. A medida que la empresa crece, se tiende a ir agregando personas en diferentes “capas”.

1. La capa superior es el primer fundador o cofundadores. Podéis ser uno, dos, tres o más fundadores, pero todos empezáis a trabajar casi al mismo tiempo, y todos tomáis el mismo riesgo, dejamos nuestros trabajos para ir a trabajar para una empresa nueva sin idea de sus resultados.
2. La segunda capa es la primera que empieza a tener empleados. En el momento de contratar este nivel, la empresa ya tiene dinero en efectivo que proviene de alguna parte (ya sean inversores o clientes). Estas personas no toman tanto riesgo, ya que tienen un salario desde el primer día y, honestamente, no han creado la empresa, se unieron a ella como a cualquier otro empleo.
3. El tercer nivel son más empleados. En el momento en que se unen a la compañía ésta ya funciona bastante bien y avanza.

Para muchas empresas, cada capa se irá añadiendo anualmente. En el momento en que la empresa es lo suficientemente grande como para ser vendida a Google o salir a Bolsa o lo que sea, es probable que tenga alrededor de 6 capas: los fundadores y 5 capas de trabajadores. Cada capa sucesiva es más grande. Puede haber dos fundadores iniciales, cinco empleados en la capa 2, 25 empleados en la capa 3 y 200 empleados en la capa 4. Las capas más recientes tuvieron un menor riesgo.

Bien, ahora explico como se utiliza esta información:

Los fundadores deben terminar con un 50% de la compañía, en total. Cada una de las próximas cinco capas debe terminar con un 10% de la empresa, dividida en partes iguales entre todos los miembros de la capa.

Ejemplo:

• Dos fundadores inician la empresa. Cada uno toma 2,500 acciones de las 5,000 que hay en circulación por lo que cada fundador es propietario de la mitad.
• En el año 1 contratan a 4 empleados. Cada uno obtendrá 250 acciones de las 6,000 que habrá en circulación.
• Se contratan 20 empleados el segundo año. Cada uno obtendrá 50 acciones. Éstos reciben menos acciones ya que tuvieron menor riesgo que las otras capas, y se dan 50 acciones porque estamos dando a cada capa 1,000 acciones a repartir.
• Cuando la compañía tenga 6 capas, se habrán dado 10,000 acciones en total. Cada fundador termina siendo el dueño del 25%. Cada capa de empleados posee el 10% del total de la empresa. Los primeros empleados que tomaron la mayor parte del riesgo tienen la mayoría de acciones.

¿Tiene sentido? No tenéis por que seguir esta formula exacta, pero la idea básica es que se configuren capas de antigüedad, donde la franja superior fue la que más riesgo tuvo que asumir y la franja inferior la que menos. Cada capa comparte el mismo número de acciones con lo cual los empleados de capas superiores tendrán más acciones que los de capas inferiores.

Un sistema un poco diferente al uso de capas es basándose en la antigüedad. La capa superior es la de los fundadores, a continuación se reserva una franja entera para los directores que controlan el 10%, por debajo de esta capa está la de los primeros empleados y/o managers, etc. La forma que se escoja para organizar las capas tiene que ser simple, clara, fácil de entender y no susceptible a crear discusiones.

Ahora que tenemos un sistema justo establecido, hay un principio muy importante. Se debe tener compromiso. Preferentemente 4 o 5 años. Nadie gana sus acciones hasta que se ha quedado en la empresa durante al menos un año. Un buen programa de compromiso es obtener el 25% de las acciones que tocan el primer año e ir sumando un 2% cada mes. Si no, un cofundador podría irse a las tres semanas y volver 7 años más tarde reclamando que es propietario del 25% de la empresa. Nunca tiene sentido dar equidad sin compromiso. Este es un error muy común y es terrible cuando pasa. Imaginemos esa compañía con 3 cofundadores que han estado trabajando día y noche durante 5 años y de repente descubren que hay un gilipollas que lo dejó al cabo de dos semanas y aún posee un 25% de la empresa por sus dos semanas que estuvo trabajando.

Ahora pasemos a los detalles que complican la situación.

¿Qué ocurre si se obtiene inversión externa?

La inversión externa puede llegar de cualquier forma: un business angel, Venture Capital o incluso el padre de alguien. La respuesta es simple: la inversión se divide entre todos.

Usando el mismo ejemplo que el de arriba, dos cofundadores tienen 2,500 acciones cada uno (donde cada uno tiene el 50% de la empresa) y llega un VC y ofrece 1 millón de euros a cambio de 1/3 de la empresa.

1/3 de la empresa son 2,500 acciones. Así que se crean 2,500 acciones y se le dan al VC. Este es propietario de 1/3 de la empresa y cada uno de los cofundadores tiene otro 1/3. Así de simple.

¿Qué pasa si no todos los cofundadores necesitan tener un salario?

Con frecuencia, hay algún cofundador que tiene algo de dinero ahorrado y decide no cobrar salario durante un tiempo, mientras otros cofundadores, que necesitan el dinero, deciden obtener un salario. Es tentador darle más acciones al fundador que decidió no tener salario al principio para equilibrar las cosas. El problema es que nunca se podrá resolver cuanta cantidad de acciones se tienen que dar de más. Esto sólo causara conflictos. No resolváis este tipo de problemas con acciones. En cambio, mantened una contabilidad de cuánto se pagó a cada uno de los fundadores y si alguien no está cobrando salario se le da un pagaré. Mas tarde, cuando la empresa tenga dinero, se le paga en efectivo la diferencia. En unos años cuando el dinero empieza a llegar, o incluso después de la primera inversión de capital, se puede pagar lo debido a cada fundador para que todos los cofundadores hayan cobrado lo mismo en la empresa.

¿Debería tener más acciones ya que la idea fue mía?

No. Las ideas no tienen prácticamente valor. No son rentables las discusiones que podría causar pagar más acciones a alguien por haber tenido la idea. Si uno de vosotros tuvo la idea pero todos dejáis vuestros trabajos y empezáis a trabajar al mismo tiempo, deberíais tener todos la misma cantidad de acciones. Trabajar para la compañía es lo que da valor, no el hecho de tener una invención loca un día bajo la ducha.

¿Qué pasa si uno de los fundadores no trabaja a tiempo completo para la empresa?

Entonces no es un fundador. En mi libro nadie quien no trabaja a tiempo completo no es un fundador. Cualquiera que mantiene su otro trabajo gana un salario o pagarés, pero no acciones. Si trabaja en otra compañía y cuando llega la inversión de VC empieza a trabajar para la empresa a tiempo completo entonces no corrió tanto riesgo y tiene que recibir una cantidad de acciones acorde a la primera capa de empleados.

¿Qué pasa si alguien trae equipamiento (ordenadores, teléfonos móviles, etc.) o valores (patentes, nombres de dominio, licencias de software, etc.) a la empresa?

Perfecto. Se le paga en efectivo o pagarés, no en acciones. Calculad el precio justo para ese ordenador que trajo con él o su patente y darle pagarés a hacerse efectivos cuando la empresa vaya bien. Tratar de pagar cosas con acciones en esta primera etapa solo lleva a desequilibrio, discusiones e injusticia.

¿Cuánto deberían tener los inversores frente a los fundadores y empleados?

Eso depende de las condiciones del mercado. Siendo realistas, si los inversores acaban teniendo más del 50% de la compania, los fundadores van a sentirse unos mandados y perderán motivación. Recuerda que los buenos inversores no son avariciosos. Si la empresa puede arrancar sin inversores, los cofundadores y empleados acabaran teniendo el 100% de la compañía. Es interesante saber que hay mucha presión en cómo mantener las cosas equilibradas entre inversores y fundadores/trabajadores; una vieja regla de oro es que cuando se sale a Bolsa (cuando se tienen todos los empleados contratados y el dinero que se planeaba) los inversores tendrán el 50% y los fundadores/empleados el otro 50%, pero con las startups de Internet en 2011 los inversores acaban teniendo mucho menos del 50%.

Conclusión

No hay una única solución para todas las situaciones, pero cualquier cosa que se pueda hacer para que todo sea simple, transparente, al grano, y ante todo justo, hará que la compañía tenga más números de tirar adelante.

Este texto es una traducción al castellano de Forming a new software startup, how do I allocate ownership fairly? de Joel Spolsky por Xavi Esteve bajo licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento Compartir-Igual 3.0. Fotografía por Xavi Esteve bajo la misma licencia.