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Pushing the Button on the idea.
Go to Launch.
Note: This is Part 3 of 6. You can see on Part 2 here.
With all the creative design work completed and the wireframes done, we needed to move on to the backend programming of the site. We decided to have the site built in Python and we found a programmer to do what we needed to get done in Bogota’, Colombia.
Python Magic.
When you build a custom e-commerce website, there’s the part the world sees and there’s the backend Admin part that allows you to run the business.
All of the creative essentially gets digitally stitched to both the front end and the back end so the whole thing works as a custom built e-commerce platform.
About this time I took the idea over to a chef I knew from my days in selling illy coffee, Chef Gerry Klaskala at Aria in Atlanta. We sat down in his restaurant one day about noon and with my iPad in hand and I showed him the One Hundred Tables concept.
When I wrapped up my presentation, I told Gerry “look, the absolute worst case scenario is if we fail, you’re gonna lose a hundred bucks”. He looked at me and said “I’ll give you $100 right now”.
He said that he thought this was super cool and if it’s designed well it’s a no-brainer. He said something that I always recall when speaking with a new customer.
He said “it’s a 1 hour ROI”.
Exactly.
I told Gerry “I don’t want your $100 now but we’d like to offer you the first spot on the site immediately after we go live.”
The final step prior to launch — how to process the transactions?
We had to select a backend payment processing system to handle the credit card processing on a worldwide basis. We narrowed our choices down to two companies, Braintree and Stripe. Both were great choices but we had to select one.
