Well, you do if you’re Sarah. Now that’s what I call just making it happen! And now we have an in-principle agreement for a fantastic space in Fairfield. Its small, beautifully fit out and has got us written all over it. Nice one Sare.

Fred Wilson, a New York VC recently wrote about the ages of company founders in his portfolio: most of them are under 30! I once heard Gerry Harvey say if you hadn’t made your mark by your 30’s, it just ain’t going to happen. Plenty of people have chimed in saying whaaaaaa!@#$! not true! Clay Shirky has weighed in with a good post saying but it is …

For me? I reckon we can control mindset - hard, but we can unlearn and take a fresh novice-like look at things. But hit your 30s, take on a mortgage, child, family - its tough to step back into a startup venture. And your peers are in the same boat. If you’re compelled to do it, you’ll do it any age, and quitting could be the best thing you’ve ever done - but if you’re looking for reasons not to, you’ll have less of them when you’re 25!

Went to my first networking event last night - the Domain. I felt quite the industry participant with my first APPLEBOX name tag. And wow - theres a world out there of interesting people doing interesting stuff! Brad Howarth interviewed Domenic Carosa (of Destra) ‘on the couch’. I’ve listened to the podcasts of the Sydney versions, but nice to see it happening here. One takeaway for me was Domenic’s observation that ‘businesses that earn cash don’t go broke’. I like it, especially as its part of the APPLEBOX strategy - create a business that earns revenue from day one. And with the first DVD that goes out the door - I’M BUYING!!

Yo Bruce! Thanks for the comment on an earlier post, and even better to then speak to you in real life. That was a total surprise. Also love ya work Ben: ‘The DVD store re-skinned’ - very nice. I might just have to use that!

You can read more about the event here and here.

My apologies to anyone who has tried to access APPLEBOX in the last 26 hours. My hosting provider had a serious network problem, and was unable to stably provide network access to the APPLEBOX server (the server itself has been operating fine). I will update this post once I find out what went wrong.

UPDATE 14/5
Ok - I have discovered network outages are not much fun. The problem was administrative (on the host provider’s behalf) and not equipment or mis-configuration. There has been some compensation, but the choice left for me is to stay or move. As if there wasn’t enough to do already …

UPDATE 16/5
Another outage (couple of hours this time) as my server gets moved to a new data centre. All back up and running and performance is great. Just clocked a 10Mbps download so no complaints there.

The feedback here has been great - thanks everyone for your comments. Theres also been a bit of discussion over at the APPLEBOX forum on Tangler. If you’ve got a moment, its worth a read …

http://www.tangler.com/group/5558/topic/11351
http://www.tangler.com/group/6893

EDIT
Pierre has done a fantastic screencast over at Tangler. I’ve embedded the screencast below, but don’t forget to checkout Tangler:

We hit a glitch with the shop and are on the hunt again. Still looking in Richmond as this is a great area for our target early adopters. We can also get good movies as this is an arthouse market! We are also looking in Carlton again and have found a great shop in Fairfield but its a bit conservative for our likes.

Went to our first buyer’s group meeting today. We are hooking up with the Leading Edge Video group - they give us their buying power, but still let us trade with our own branding. Seems pretty good to me.

It was good to meet other store owners! We might be new, bright eyed & enthusiastic, full of promise and with technology at our fingertips - but there’s still plenty of old school lessons about retail and renting demographics.

We haven’t really laid the APPLEBOX concept out to everyone, and I think most of the owners would consider it warily. I think the proof will be in the execution - gotta walk the walk!

At last, my inaugural post to Applebox!

Welcome to all and sundry. Its great to finally put the Applebox concept out there and see what people think. The wheels are in motion; we are working hard on getting our first store up and running, and the technology is finally in place. It’s great to have Sarah on board - I’ve been lucky to pry her away from the film and events industry.

Who woulda thunk it? I’ll soon be working in a video store! Richmond (Melbourne) is our target area, although we’ve got a couple of irons in the fire. It’s going to be interesting going into retail - we’re a new breed of clicks and bricks and keen to see where it takes us.

There’s soooooo much planned on the web side of things, but gotta start with the basics. In a web 2.0 world where social networks reign supreme, we’ve got boring stuff to do first: stock and inventory, the in-store system, content management. These back of house systems have gotta be in place - the rest will soon follow.

We’re away!