Cordny

This article describes mind mapping and its advantages and disadvantages

Yes, finally! You decided to become a SaaS entrepreneur.

Your head is full of ideas. Now you want to write them down. For yourself, your bank (you need money!), for your website (marketing!!). You stare at an empty paper. You can’t write anything down. Just words, no sentences, no story, no plan…
 
Now what? Did you know I was in a similar situation when I started my business as a SaaS software tester and content marketer.

But then I remembered something from my high school years. I was not an ace remembering big chunks of texts. My former biology teacher told me I should try mind mapping. This way I would remember the text better, and more importantly, distinguish the essentials from the details.

What is a mind map?

Wikipedia defines a mind map as a diagram used to visually organise information. A mind map is hierarchical and shows relationships among pieces of the whole.

Develop a mind map

Remember your empty sheet. Write down your central theme, eg. the name of your company, in the middle of the sheet and encircle it as a balloon. Now place around this central theme the connected sub-themes: finance, marketing, sales etc. Also encircle these subthemes. Connect the central theme with the sub-themes by drawing branches. Doing this, a diagram is generated and a visualization of your SaaS company is seen on paper.

A very creative way to put your thoughts on paper. As I said earlier, I had trouble remembering large chunks of text. By mind mapping I could visualise this text and remember it. But it is also a great way to put your thoughts on paper, giving it more structure, and also be creative.

Let your thoughts flow, there are no boundaries, except the boundaries of your sheet of paper.

Advantages of a mind map

For a starting SaaS entrepreneur mind mapping has many advantages.

You will see in a glance the connections between the central theme and its many sub-themes. Because you will see it as a whole, the text comes to life making it easier for your brains to process.

Turning the text into a mind map makes it more easier for you to remember it. Associations are made between themes, which improves remembering it. Very handy when deciphering the tax rules.

By visualizing you are more alert, improving the creativity process. Especially beneficial when making your business plan and your thoughts are going all the way.

Mind mapping saves time! By mind mapping you are summarizing your thoughts, which is beneficial when writing a plan or pitch.

With mind mapping you will discover more associations. This encourages you to go on, thinking out-of-the-box. Maybe you will invent a new online sales technique?

This is just a brief list of mind mapping advantages. There are many more….

Mind mapping, are there also disadvantages?

Mind mapping is a creative process. It takes time to master it. But when succeeded, it will save you a lot of time.

Mind you, a mind map is a ‘visual summary’ of YOUR thoughts. Another person has other thoughts and therefore another mind map.

When working in a team always compare the mind maps. Let’s be creative together.

Conclusion

Mind mapping can help you start up your company. It takes time to master it, but by creative ordening your thoughts on paper, it will also save you a lot of time. At a glance you will see associations between themes and it wil help you remember important things more.

You can share your mind map with other people. Take in mind, it is a visualisation of your thoughts, which are very personal. Therefore mind maps of other people are different, although they address the same subject.
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Try mind mapping, you won’t regret it.

And let me know your findings.

Huge news! Tableau gets acquired by SalesForce! A shark deal in the cloud?

It is a $15.3 billion all-stock deal, marking the biggest acquisition in the company’s history.

Not only awesome for Tableau, but also for Salesforce, as it continues to diversify beyond CRM software and into the analytics niche.

And, by doing this deal, Salesforce will also increase its business customer base with 86,000, including Verizon, Schneider Electric, but also Netflix!

“We are bringing together the world’s #1 CRM with the #1 analytics platform. Tableau helps people see and understand data, and Salesforce helps people engage and understand customers. It’s truly the best of both worlds for our customers–bringing together two critical platforms that every customer needs to understand their world,”

Marc Benioff, CEO Salesforce

Salesforce also has most of these customers. But now it has a cross selling opportunity. It can sell Salesforce to Tableau shops who are not using Salesforce yet.

Joining forces with Salesforce will enhance our ability to help people everywhere see and understand data. As part of the world’s #1 CRM company, Tableau’s intuitive and powerful analytics will enable millions more people to discover actionable insights across their entire organizations. I’m delighted that our companies share very similar cultures and a relentless focus on customer success. I look forward to working together in support of our customers and communities.

Adam Selipsky, CEO Tableau

Salesforce knows customer data is important for business. With Tableau it can give its customers insight in their customer data.

Are the sharks on the hunt?

Salesforce buying Tableau seems a reaction on recent buyings by other big tech firms. Google bought Looker last week for $2.6 billion. Looker is a unified platform for business intelligence, data applications, and embedded analytics. And Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016 for about $26 billion. Ok, a few years back, but it’s about billions here, not pennies.

Are the big tech companies behaving as sharks, hungry for analytics?

It seems so. Analytics, and its predicting capabilities, is a growing field.

The big techs want to have the best in their stocks to deliver a complete quality package to their customers.

A shark deal in the cloud, do you agree?

Meetup.com is a great website to find meetups in your neighbourhood.

This way I found out the local Chamber of Commerce (CoC, Dutch Kamer van Koophandel, KVK) was going to organise a workshop about how to go digital as a business. Or in marketing slang: How to digitally transform your business. ( Digital transformation!!)

Interesting, because this also affects my business TestingSaaS: Helping clients create content by testing their software.

Better yet, it was going to be a holographic workshop where speakers were present as holograms. This way the CoC could do this workshop on multiple places.

Awesome because I am an early adopter of this kind of technology, see my VR and AR posts.

How to Digitalize your Business

Here is the list of the presentations and the holographic speakers:

1. The future clients are already there( Steven van Belleghem – Nexxworks.com)
2. This also works – Hans Engelsma (Qoets.nl)
3. How to use videomarketing? – Britt van Smeerdijk (Boomingproductions.nl)
4. Internet marketing for more results with your business- Tonny Loorbach (IMU.nl)
5. The golden rules for today’s networking – Rob B. Tol (Netwerkacademie.nl)
6. Use data to get satisfied customers – Jos & Dorien Beks (Change-hairstyling.nl)
7. How to keep it secure? A story by a hacker – Thijs Bosschert (Ethisch Hacker)
8. Customisation for the masses = Money! – Jos Knulst (Doosopmaat.nl)

All these speakers are very experienced in digitalising their business, and as you can see they come from different niches: hairdressing, video, marketing etc.

A pity they were only present as holograms, engagement was not possible, but, together with the other attendees, I enjoyed myself and there was enough time to engage with the other attendees.

the Workshop Take Away

Every workshop has its homework, so all attendees received a canvas sheet with the take aways from every presentation. Great material to study when back at home.

Thank you for an interesting and engaging evening.

Chamber of Commerce, great holographic workshop, let’s go for a second one!

Last week was a wild kayak ride for TestingSaaS:

1. Writing an article on common logging challenges in the cloud for the DevOps content engine Sweetcode.
   
2. Attending Infosecurity.nl in Utrecht at Thursday (meeting a lot of nice people!)
   
3. Start preparing a Mac Forensics course for eForensics Magazine in december
   
4. Helping Dutch startups like TicTag and CoVince with their contentmarketing for CES2019.
   
5. Content writing for the B2B platform where businesses are connected automatically based on mutual interests: BPConnect.
   

And you know what? I love it!
All these activities lead to new ideas and activities, it never stops.
It’s busy, it’s been like a rough kayak ride, but I help companies grow through my content and marketing.

And that’s what counts!

With my curiosity in SaaS, DevOps, Security and data science I write articles, case studies, blog posts, courses and much more.
And as a bonus, I even test the software I describe, so you have Quality Assurance and contentmarketing in 1 deal!
Even better, I do this as a Service with a monthly subscription.

Do you want to know more about the TestingSaaS Testing&Content deal?

Call me:  +31 (0) 6 12 18 52 62

Let’s launch your IT-company or -product with TestingSaaS , have a great week!

who dares wins!

In the beginning of October, I was drawn to a Tweet on Twitter about families across the UK being locked out of their homes, after a system failure at smart security company Yale causing issues with the Yale Smart Living Home App.

Two days before Yale had warned customers “unplanned maintenance” was going to be done, which could cause some “connection issues”. However, on Thursday Yale updated on this, saying the Smart Living Home App is temporarily unavailable due to an “unforeseen issue” during the maintenance work.

This glitch appears to have prevented customers from being able to get in and out of their homes, and from being able to arm and disarm their alarms.

Although Yale claimed via social media nobody was locked in or out of their homes, damage was already done, and social media was flooded with complaints by angry Yale customers.

Why am I so intrigued by this story?

In May this year I went to the Startup Delta in Arnhem to meet and learn about the Dutch startup ecosystem.

Here I met Peter Heersink, founder and CEO of TigTag, a Dutch startup, revolutionizing the smart lock industry with its SmartTag, a smart sticker.

Imagine you have an office with an electronic door lock.

You do not want to use a smartcard or a PIN-code for entering or leaving your office.

What’s the best alternative? 

TicTag’s SmartTag embeds a unique 5-point identifier which gives the object you tag it on a unique ID.

TicTag’s plug&play software you can integrate in your existing app or website.

Open your app/website on your smartphone and select the tag with your smartphone. TicTag’s plug&play software will recognize the ID.

The TicTag API will send this ID to your server/database where it is verified with the object ID, saved at the server/database. If verification is successful, you can lock/unlock your office door. 

You only need your smartphone, the TigTag’s plug&play software on your app/website and the TicTag SmartTag to lock/unlock your office electronic door. 

Now let’s get back to Yale and its Smart Living Home App.

The main issue with the app was its temporarily inavailability leading to alarms going off all the time and people who apparently couldn’t enter or leave their homes.

With TicTag’s SmartTag you do not need a vendor-locked smart lock like you need with the Yale products. TicTag’s SmartTag can work on electronic doors from different vendors.

If your app/website can integrate TicTag’s plug&play you are ready to go.

You also do not need a smartcard and a PIN code anymore to authorize your entrance to your office.

No risk anymore of not getting into your office, because you lost your smartcard or forgot your PIN-code.

Your office, easy to enter with just your smartphone.

And secure, only people authorized and with the app on their smartphone have access to it.

Like I said, TicTag is revolutionizing the smart lock industry, with a sticker!!

I like to travel.

I like books, especially adventure novels like Robinson Crusoe and Marco Polo.

I want to see the world, on- and offline.

I like to write about my experiences.

It was no surprise for my parents that I wanted to study biology.

Unfortunately, I am not a lab rat and, although I tried, I did not become a member of an expedition group to study wildlife in remote places. 

But I am a curious, stubborn biologist, so I started to study the online world.

I found out this is a jungle too, with the same economics and biology as in the real world. Here too, money is made and here too, it’s survival of the fittest. 

I decided to start a career in software testing.

Great stuff, I was allowed to break things and I became good at it.

Gradually I found out I like to work at IT startups, although I made heaps of mistakes, and still do!

Software testing is my passion, but I wanted to combine it with another passion: writing.

The blog TestingSaaS was born, eventually becoming the network TestingSaaS,

engaging with SaaS marketing and copywriting peers globally.

Meanwhwile I was still an employee, but my entrepreneurs blood was boiling, so this year I decided to fulfill my dream: combine testing and writing for SaaS companies with my own marketing startup TestingSaaS.

There is a time you have to dive into the deep and until now I have no regrets. 

Oh, it’s tough, with low monthly revenue, but hey, I’m Cordny, I am going the distance and succeed. Against all odds.

And revenue is going up!!

The last six months I learned a lot about entrepreneurship, marketing, SaaS, blockchain, security, chatbots, virtual reality, communities and a lot of other awesome stuff. And you now what, I love to write blogs, landing pages, one-pagers, case studies etc. So you have time do do your business and make money.

In my whole career I met wonderful people who want to help me succeed with my business. And I want to help them in return. That’s what business is all about.

Mind you, I will make mistakes, just like Marco Polo did,  but I will learn too and help companies not make the same mistakes twice.
I’m now, like Marco Polo, on a mountain overseeing surrounding mountains and valleys, ready for my next adventures.  

I can’t wait to start another week, do you want to join me?

Exploring new territories

When I started my company TestingSaaS in the beginning of this year I knew I was going to explore new territories.
One of these is Virtual Reality, in short VR.
During my search for Dutch VR companies I met Richard van Tilburg and Melanie van Halteren from the innovative startup CoVince.
Their mission? To make learning an adventure again.
How? To experience a personal learning journey by using mobile and VR technology.
You only need an app and a VR headset.

Together with the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences CoVince created a
personal learning journey where students can practice their presentation skills.
Interesting stuff, so I volunteered as a beta tester.

Beta testing the VR app CoVince

Great, what did I get myself into again? 🙂

Since a few weeks I test the app together with a VR headset CoVince very kindly shared with me.
I never tried VR and I experienced I have to do this alone.
Otherwise my girlfriend and our dog think I’m getting nuts. 
Being in a virtual space does not mean you do not have to mind the real physical space, ouch!!
However, it is quite an experience, with people in a virtual space talking and looking at you and even know when you do not look at them. 
Awesome!

It is not only a personal learning journey regarding presentations, but you also learn to behave in a virtual world.
As I already said, I am beta testing, so now and then I find bugs which I can register in a shared Asana board, and these are picked up very quickly.
Kudos Richard!
Like every mobile app test you have to be aware your phone has its unique features which are not always compatible with the software at hand. This makes mobile development difficult.

VR Software Development kits

As a software enthusiast I’m also interested in the tech behind VR, so I learn every day about the VR Software Development Kits (SDKs) like Google VR or the Augmented Reality SDK Vuforia for mobile devices.
For the coders, ff you have some C++ knowledge you can really try this out and you will see quick results, but beware, working with the SDKs is still a skill to be learned.

The journey continues

This VR journey with CoVince increased my appetite.
So, if you are an IT company with a VR/AR app to be tested, let me know.
I am happy to test.

See you in the Virtual World.

Where am I going and what will I see?

Since I launched TestingSaaS as a company in April 2018 every day I receive the same question:

“Why is your company called TestingSaaS?”

And every time I will give them this answer: 

TestingSaaS was created because every time I worked with a startup/scale-up as a test engineer I saw testing was underprioritized compared to development, leading to buggy products and clients walking away. I also saw many startups doing a lot of development, but less marketing, leading to insufficient traction and startups got broke. A shame, because their product was awesome, only poorly marketed.

As a test engineer, avid IT-blogger and community-builder I knew I could help these companies by delivering them parallel services in software testing and (content)marketing.

It’s a recurring pattern in my life, I never was a specialist, but always in between: bioinformatics, test automation, ..
That’s where for me the adventure is, like being on a rough coast between land and sea. That’s why I added this picture to the blog 😉 .

But the name TestingSaaS has nothing to do with marketing.

Oh yes it does! Every marketeer knows it has to test its copy / marketing material before sending it out to prospects. If you do not test you do not know if the prospect likes it, which is a lot of marketing money spend the wrong way.

As a software tester, testing is my daily job.

I can help startups and other IT-companies with testing their marketing efforts and help them choose the correct marketing strategy. This can be done in combination with principles and tools from data science. 

Now you know why I called my company TestingSaaS. 

It’s where software testing meets marketing!

Starting a company, how did it happen?

When I was a kid I loved to experiment and observe what happened.

Attracting birds in the yard with different food, putting the hamster in a maze and see if he could escape,…

I quickly figured out I had to document these observations to compare them with future ones. 

This could be text, but drawings were sometimes even better. 

It was no surprise for my parents I wanted to study biology.

At Uni I did just the same as what I did in my childhood, creating experiments in the wild and documenting my results. Oh, and a whole lot of statistics and informatics 

So, when I graduated I was ready to explore the natural world, but now as a professional. Sadly, at that time no one was waiting for a biologist with a degree in bio-informatics (yeah, really!)

Pragmatic as I was, I started to think: How can I put my scientific knowledge to use in society?

Where to start?

Where to start? Why not the internet?

I searched for jobs with the same skills as I learned as a biologist.

To become a labrat was not my dream, I just was not the right person for it.

Hm, computer programming, why not?

But after a few months I figured out I was only making bugs and had to re-test all the time. 

And then it hit me, why not become a software tester?

A lot of software testing companies were advertising, but I wanted to be part of the best there was in that time: Polteq!

I wrote a letter and blimey, they invited me for an interview, which I am still grateful for.

The rest is history, after my probie years at Polteq I started to work for different IT service companies and had an awesome time at Immune-IT, like Polteq a software testing company.

It all started with Software Testing

At Immune-IT we were all very innovative, but also pragmatic.

Testing web applications was on the rise.

Frontend, webservices, backend, the lot.

Awesome, just like in my biology days I was experimenting again.

And documenting was necessary for test reports etc.

But I wanted more, I wanted to document new testing techniques and new web applications.

Software as a Service was as new field and I wanted to document this.

Especially the identity management area.

The blog TestingSaaS was born.

This blog created a platform where I could document my adventures in testing.
Immune-IT even let me guestblog on their site.

This was just the beginning.

Through Twitter and LinkedIn I could promote my blog leading to guestblogs on Security Affairs and content writing for eForensics Magazine. 

Cordny meets branding and the brand TestingSaaS was born.

Then Content Marketing came around the Corner

Around 2010 I met a lovely woman, Eve Maler, on one of the identity conferences I visited.

She told me she needed a tester to verify the documentation of a new identity protocol, User Managed Access (UMA) she was creating together with other identity wizards at Kantara Initiative.

Awesome, now I could test a web protocol and work in an international setting.

I was UMAnized (I still am!) and I wanted to UMAnize the whole world through my blogs and articles.

Cordny meets product marketing! 

Mind you, I was still working as a software tester during the day and did all these things at night. I loved to write content and engage with my peers.

Starting a Company: TestingSaaS 

Successful years followed for the brand TestingSaaS, but not for the software tester Cordny.

Almost every year I had a different software testing job and I was getting restless and cynical. When in March 2018 my contract at iWelcome was not extended I knew I had to do something,

die of boredom or holster up my guns!

So, starting a company it was! I went to the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and registered the SaaS software testing and content marketing firm TestingSaaS.

Its mission: help SaaS startups and scale-ups improve their software testing and content marketing.

As a software tester I knew a lot of the product under test and I could also document and write about it. Why not combine this?

Now it’s 4 months ago since I started TestingSaaS and I already helped 5 companies successfully and the Brand TestingSaaS is growing.

Starting a Company is never easy

TestingSaaS is determined to 

help more SaaS entrepreneurs improve the quality of their product 

AND positioning themselves in this crowded market. 

Are you a SaaS entrepreneur and you need help? Starting a company is never easy.

Contact me now and let’s talk, WHO DARES WINS!!

A few weeks ago Kinga Odziemek from Linkhouse asked me to help here with a blog explaining tips and tricks for content and social media marketing.
So I did, together with 30+ other marketers from all over the world.

Here’s the link to the blog:

Content marketing in the eyes of 30+ marketers from all over the world.

and here are the tips and tricks about content and social media marketing I gave in this post:

Content marketing is a crowded space. You need authentic content to stand out. But this is not enough, you may have good content, but without a good headline your content won’t get noticed and won’t get visited, resulting in bad marketing results. Next to the headline you have to research what content type your prospect wants to see: a text, a video or maybe an infographic? Videos are hot these days, but a prospect wants details, which can be explained in a text. If they are interested, they will read it. Content distribution is very important for reaching your prospects. For me, LinkedIn is the distribution channel to reach out to business contacts. Here I can post different content types to inform my network of what I am doing.

Kinga and Linkhouse, thank you for asking me to participate in this questionnaire.
It was fun to do and it’s also very nice to see the views of my peers worldwide on content and social media marketing.