Semantic Compositions

Up and running

Well, it's been much longer than your host expected, but Step 3 Systems is finally about to be more than just a piece of paper sitting in a file cabinet somewhere in the California Department of Corporations. Things that have been accomplished since last there was a posting in this space:

• Step 3's first employee not named SC has signed an employment agreement, and begins work at the beginning of September
• Payroll services went out for competitive bid and have been established
• A timecharging system is in place -- and it runs under Linux! (*Windows is a major operating constraint here, but you can call it Open-Source if you prefer your constraints to be positive)
• Rather than continuing to use the mediocre mail and calendar solutions included in Network Solutions' web hosting package, the company is now using the insanely bargain-priced Google Apps to provide e-mail, calendar and collaborative document services
• The company has a Dun & Bradstreet number and credit file (the establishment of which is very unlike consumer credit)
• The company is now a registered Federal contractor, which is most certainly not where your host plans to take his business in the long run, but which is a sensible thing to do for a variety of other reasons which merit further discussion later

Of course, all of these things don't happen without two other very important things, and they've actually occupied a good 90% of SC's time in the last two months:

• Finishing the business plan
• Raising money

It's funny how that last one determines your ability to do everything else, and yet it's much easier to raise money if you do all the other things first to show that you've got a serious business in place. However, the commitments are very much in place, and SC is very grateful to the angel investors who are making this all work.

You'll be able to find out more about Step 3 Systems' new Chief Software Architect when a short biography goes up on the website at the beginning of September. In the near-term, SC regrets to inform suddenly interested job-seekers that the first position the company will openly be advertising is for a statistician, not a linguist. But if a lot of things go right, SC's planned trip to LSA 2008 will indeed include recruiting.

In the meantime, there are plenty of next steps:

• Hire a patent attorney
• Use said attorney to file patent applications
• Get boards of advisors and directors organized (these are not the same thing -- the advisors are for science, the directors are for business)
• Finish writing the world's first management handbook based on optimality theory (this is not at all a joke, and is part of a very conscious effort on the part of your host to design a successful corporate culture -- for now, just ask yourself how you might use tableauxs in doing performance reviews)
• Keep writing software -- no matter how much other business issues may intrude, this company is about products, and the faster the first one gets to market, the sooner SC can stop thinking about burn rates (speaking of which, good book, if a bit dated)

Running a business is hard, so let's go shopping!

For the last week, SC has been buried deep in the process of writing a business plan. Initially, this seemed like it wouldn't be too difficult; tedious, certainly, but also formulaic enough that you could get a book (your host is using this one at the moment) and follow the instructions. Ah, like Teen Talking Barbie, how little SC knew. It turns out that, despite the mockery justifiably attached to management jargon (thanks to AL Daily for that link), running a business is hard. Perhaps more to the point, it involves learning just how much you didn't have to know when you were only an employee.

There are a couple of different types of information that go into the plan: what you're doing, who you're doing it against, how much this is all going to cost, and how your investors are going to get their money back. Prior to last week's announcement, SC actually had a pretty good handle on the first two, and some rough calculations for the latter. However, in order to get formal term sheets done for prospective investors, it's necessary that the whole plan be in place, and this means doing serious financial projections.

That brings us to an ad in yesterday's Linguist List, for a "linguist with project management skills". Your host does not wish to dissuade the optimists at the company that placed the ad, but in the last week, he's had to think about all sorts of things that probably weren't on most linguists' course schedules in school. A sampling:

• How much will you be spending on health insurance for your employees monthly?
• Estimate the number of processors you'll be needing software support contracts for in year 3.
• What will it cost to market your fourth product line, which you might not introduce until that third year?
• What will it cost you to rent office space, and where will you do it?

Shopping for these things is not all that easy. Want a health insurance quote for a group rate? Get ready to sit down with sales representatives for every company you want a quote from, and be prepared to go over your projections about how many people you'll have at the end of this year, the middle of next year, and so on. Want to estimate your software support costs? Get ready to figure out how many servers you'll be running per customer, how many customers you might have, and how many transactions per minute each of those servers will support -- using performance figures you have to guess at for software that doesn't exist yet. (We'll have a lot to say later on software costs, because while SC is a firm believer in open source, as the Free Software Foundation says, that means free speech, not free beer.)

Now, far be it from SC to suggest that every graduate program should be combined with an MBA. That would be an enormous waste of time and resources. But it might not be too much, to go back to some thoughts inspired by Mark Liberman's LSA talk, to bring a little training in the art of being a professional into graduate schooling. It's already commonly the case that Ph.D. programs will include a course on professionalism as regards being an academic -- how to write grant proposals and resumes, and how to submit papers. If you're going to pursue an advanced degree and then go into business, it stands to reason that you might be called on to fulfill similar managerial functions in the business world, as the Linguist List ad attests. SC isn't saying that linguistics faculty ought to be teaching a course on this stuff themselves -- again, a waste of time and resources. Outsourcing such a course to the business school sure to be attached to any university that can support a graduate linguistics department might be just what the aspiring Dr. ordered.