DealHorizon - the faster, easier way to create and share business plans

Jon Samsel, CEO of Heardable (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder) sent around some good news yesterday - after just ten months of operation, we've gone from a zero base to more than 50,000 uniques a month, for a total of 250,000 views.

The chart is rising like a rocket. Pretty impressive for a boot-strapped startup - and exactly on the path we set ourselves. Compete.com (incidentally the supplier of half of the above stats) hit this exact same mark at exactly the same time, on its way to becoming an industry standard analytics tool. We're determined to do the same thing - for the same result.

Closer to home, I checked out the stats for DealHorizon.com and last month was pretty remarkable for us as well - almost 17,000 unique visitors tried out our collaborative business planning tools, read our blogs, and used our Business Plan Generator (the most popular free tool was the Executive Summary Generator, but our free Sales Projections tool is growing fast in popularity also.)

That's us in blue - not bad! We've already passed Pitchbook.com, and we're almost tied with MasterPlans.com. I expect at this rate, our traffic will surpass MasterPlans.com and AngelSoft.net by the end of this quarter.

If you're one of our recent visitors, thank you!

Watching what is being decided and reported in the United States right now is frustrating on several levels - the most fundamental level being, I want the country to get back on its feet, and quickly.

It remains the largest driver of growth in the world. Too many American friends are suffering, and, it would appear, they are suffering needlessly - because of a distinct lack of strategic partnering between the States and the Feds, and a lack of focus on core data when it comes to the media.

First of all, the core data used by politicians to make decisions and left-wing media pundits to make their points is almost universally wrong (the unemployment rate in the US did not just dip below 10% - it is closer to 16.6% if you go by the "U6" rate - which counts those who have simply given up, plus those forced to take a part-time job instead of the full-time job they need.

Brett Arends of the WSJ provides a great argument about this in the piece he published on June 29th in MarketWatch.com, entitled the "Three Biggest Lies About the US Economy".

Second of all, the spin on the right is out of control. Francine and I don't have a television at home (by choice), which creates all sorts of confusion when we encounter one, in an airport terminal or a friend's house.

Why? Because when you don't have a TV, you tend to assimilate news from a wide array of sources, and assume everyone else is getting the core data too. When we make contact with Fox News in JFK, or CNN in ATL, it is like suddenly arriving on a different place or time.

Neither has it right - and in Hollywood fashion, the commentary increasingly has less to do with facts and more to do with fireworks (Fox is fun to watch - you have to admit). Most of it is pure Aristotelian Drama. But what am I telling you that you didn't already know? Back to the blog...

I saw a piece today from Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, and one economist that I seriously wish had stayed in government. His analysis, entitled "Slouching Towards a Double-Dip or a Lousy Recovery at Best", provides a rational view on what is going on at a macro level. One of the paragraphs in his argument in particular caught my eye (and is the main reason I'm writing this post):

"The states are running an anti-stimulus program (raising taxes, cutting services, laying off teachers, firefighters, police and other employees) that's now bigger than the federal stimulus program."

Now there's a statement. If it's true, and I suspect it is, that statement should be being debated night and day by the media and politicians - a) because it's true: dial up the daily news in almost any county in the nation and you'll see evidence of what Reich is saying (massive layoffs that the county administartors are having to do to keep the wheels on), and; b) because the effect of this is nauseating bad on consumers - you're asking taxpayers to pay more taxes federally, while watching their neighbors get fired - neighbors who are also their customers/employers/homeowner association members.

Part of Brett Arends' article speaks of how the US government is working within its historical bounds, relative to the amount government spending makes up of the economy (25% under Obama, 23.5% under Reagan), and historical debt levels relative to GDP (materially unchanged for almost fifty years). Corporate profits in Q1 were the highest in forty years. Banks are stuffed with cash. Interest rates remain nominal.

So what is the looming crisis? The looming crisis is that the central government doesn't seem to be cognizant of the fact that we consumers spend >60% of our paychecks locally, not federally. Any stimulus plan that is met by a larger reduction in state services is counter-productive - see point (b) above.

Time for a governor's conference? Some core-data-driven media reactions? Some sanity? Certainly time to pay attention to the core data - including data that shows the efforts of the Feds are being canceled out by the poverty of the States.

Don't agree? Log in and post a reply - a healthy rebuttal to this argument would be most welcome!

One of my daily activities is checking house prices in Florida. Because right now, you can buy a lot of home for not a lot of cash.

Okay, let's cut the BS - I also look at it because the drama is such that you can't cover your eyes. Things have fallen too far. Check it out - here is a sample of a suburb taken at random. The green bits don't have any homes on them to sell - or else you'd find a few more Zillow icons there:

That's a typical neighborhood in Florida. Actually, I'm being kind. If you took a Zillow snapshot of a city on the west coast of Florida - a region that was already facing significant economic troubles prior to the BP oil spill - you may not see any free space at all.

When I looked at Miami last week, on the advice of William Fisher, an old friend who lived in Coconut Grove for several years, it was almost impossible to find a house on SoBe that wasn't for sale. Closer to where I live now, prices locally in Palm Beach Gardens have dipped (if "dip" is the right word) from a median of almost $400k to a median of almost $200k - and are staying put.

Another friend of mine recently bought an extremely nice house in West Palm Beach (we were just there for his one year old's birthday party) for $365k that was previously purchased for over $800k. There's a house just down the street that will go for almost half what the owner paid for it - and happily so.

If you're looking for data, the Case-Shiller index is the place to go. According to noted economist Robert Shiller, prices of homes (no one calls them "houses" anymore, because calling them that detracts from their perceived value) are still 36% above Shiller's benchmark 2000 value.

If you're looking for information on homes in Florida, or any of the other "sand states", check out zillow.com or trulia.com - and wait a few months. I don't think these prices are going up anytime soon - there were 21 sales last month in Palm Beach Gardens against 1750 available properties. That's a lot of burn-off that needs to happen.