It’s been one full week since I left my last company to launch SalesCrunch, a Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) company who’s mission is to  revolutionize the sales profession and make sales sexy through technology and education.

No matter how great your idea or how much funding you have, the clock is always against you in a startup. That is true when you are two guys in a garage and its even more true when you are 100 people and your monthly nut is in the millions, especially if you are not yet profitable.  So, you need to get a lot done in a very short time with limited resources at just about every stage of growth.  While I am always looking for ways to be more productive, frankly I have been running on a startup clock for so many years I get more stuff done in a day than most people get done in a week or even two.   My biggest problem is making sure I stop to take measure and smell the roses every once in a while.

So when I thought about all that I have accomplished in one short week, I had to share.  Below is a list of just the biggest accomplishments. I elaborated on a few in more detail below and, since finalizing the logo was one of the accomplishments this week, I am using this post to update the one I did earlier this week “What Not To Say To Your Logo Designer.”

Top Accomplishments of the Week:

• Finished 90% of the business plan
• Got verbal commitments for $250,000 from a few angel investors
• Scheduled several more investor meetings for the coming weeks
• Designed the logo and business cards
• Setup up Microsoft Exchange Server
• Secured an office in TechSpace in Union Square, New York
• Hired a kick-ass Director of Engineering – now I can say “we” instead of “me”
• Setup a basic “about us” website
• Met Marc Benioff in person. Marc is the Founder & CEO of Salesforce.com, on top of which we are building our technology platform.

The Logo:

What’s Behind a Name?

1. More Revenue. Less Time. – One of our goals is to empower sales professionals, and therefore the companies for which they work, with the ability to create more revenue (Sales) with less time and resources (Crunch) through education and technology.
2. Bite-Sized Learning – The word “Crunch” is symbolic of a much bigger philosophy we have about how people learn.  One of the biggest problems in sales today is that professional training is so expensive it is often done in marathon sessions that last days or weeks.  Unfortunately, people quickly become overwhelmed and forget most of what learned within days. However, retention increases 2-5 times over classroom training when information is “crunched” into “bite-sized” increments and when they can control the time, place and pace of their training.

What’s With The Rhino?

1. Unstoppable Power & Endurance -  Rhino’s can charge at up to 35 miles an hour. Weighing in at between 1 and 10 tons (2,000-10,000 lbs), experts agree that you can’t stop them or charge their course, so its best to just get out of their way. Despite being hunted near extinction for their horns, Rhinos date back 20M years.  When singularly focused, good sales people are similarly unstoppable and very hard to kill off!
2. Thick-Skinned – Rhino’s have a thick protective skin made of layers of collagen.  Facing constant rejection day in and day out, sales people need to be very thick skinned above all.
3. Crunch-ability - Rhino’s can crunch a small car underfoot.  There are also legends about rhinoceros stamping out fire in Malaysia, India and Burma.  Sales people are put under constant strain to “crush” their sales goals.

The Office:

The gang in our new downtown office. From left to right: Founder & CEO Sean Black, Director of Engineering David Sommers, and fellow entrepreneur in arms Eloise Bune of Gracious Eloise.