Relax. We would never ask that question. Why? We just don’t believe in writing business plans – especially not web or mobile products of any kind. The reasons are simple:

• Your plan will be full of assumptions. Most of which will be wrong.
• Any time you spend writing a plan is time that could be better spent working on your product or customer development.
• Even when you try to raise money, the plan doesn’t really make a difference to investors.
• Planning is not doing. That’s not good when you have limited time to spare (we all do).

A few other things we don't care about:

• A great logo doesn’t matter and neither does amazing visual design.
• Feature lists are – usually – boring. They don’t tell us much about how you think about what’s really important… and that is: who is the customer? Why does she really need your product? How are you planning to deliver a BETTER product?

So, what kind of documentation can be useful when you come see us? We like to see wireframes or concept drawings focused on the core user experience. So, if you are a “mobile coupon start-up” – we’d really love to see how you think about the core user experience. How does an actual customer move through the application? What are the exact steps you lead them through? How does your product clearly solve the problem? Those things are important to us.

It’s also nice to see the core business model – in visual format. All that stuff about how you will make money and some ideas on how you will convert customers.

Passionate entrepreneurs: Send us your napkin ideas. Let’s get to work!

Attempting to transform a Chloe from being used to sitting behind a desk to becoming the front face for a potential client is not an easy task.

Challenges I had to overcome:

1. Being scared of rejection — I know I can't get a “yes” without even trying, but if I don't try, there's no chance for a “no”…
2. The tendency to mix up clients and projects — I mix things up occasionally; some of the people on different projects have similar names and others are in the same industry.
3. My relaxed approach to interacting with clients — I needed to be more proactive.

Things I learned:

1. How to communicate clearly — both in speaking and in writing. Speaking: I have some things to work on (I talk fast, I mumble, I have a tiny vocabulary, I can't ever think of the right word, I switch words around, I verb nouns and I noun verbs, just to name a few.). Writing: I was never bad at this, but writing proposal after proposal helped me learn how to communicate my thoughts more effectively. Bulletpoints became my new best friend. I honed my skills in categorization and organization.
2. People aren't as scary or as intimidating as I previously thought.
3. It's easier to execute plans when I'm involved from the very beginning.

I got one “no” pretty early on boy was it discouraging. I felt like I failed. I had one “yes” yesterday, which is awesome! …even though I missed an important deadline. I have a maybe which I'm hoping hoping hoping will turn into a yes. I want to get better at this and get more Yes answers. Can't get better at a game if I don't play, right?

It's been a rocket start to the year! Where to start…

Most important: New Fabric people: James Gregg joined our Product Group in LA and Elizabeth Lim joined us as Project Manager and task master extraordinaire. It's great to see the team growing!

We won the development work for Kia Optima Superbowl Interactive campaign which launched the week before Superbowl. The project was on a 5 week delivery time-line. This was a puzzle game with 5 releases in 5 days. Phew. Our development team in Las Vegas pulled it off, but it was a very stressful build. Many late nights. Ideally, not to be repeated ;o)

We recently finished a project for Disney and launched Figling a new consumer web start-up with loads of potential. Our teams in LA and Las Vegas are excited to be working on projects for Toyota and Yakult. Our Product Group in LA is working with Dubspot to develop and expand their online school.

Our Marketing Group helped get Dogasaur past 250,000 Facebook Fans and we're now gearing up for another IKEA campaign and a fresh Summer campaign for a consumer brand (can't talk about it yet).

We'd love to hear from you - give us a call!