Local entrepreneur Scott Miller has just launched a new company from the
Hamilton County Business Center, and is working to generate some buzz about his new software product, the Bee.
B2BeeLLC launched within the last week with its namesake software product The Bee, an invoicing system designed for small business owners.
"I really wanted to create something that would help small, one-to five-person companies. One day I sat down and had coffee with about 50 of these small business owners, and everyone was having a hard time with accounting and bookkeeping. Most invoicing programs are made for accountants, and these weren't accountants. I wanted to create something that would help them," said Miller, of Blue Ash.
This isn't Miller's first foray into entrepreneurship, in 2004 he sold
Treadstone Group, an IT consulting and systems integration firm, to Exact Software.
"After that I played some golf, taught a class on entrepreneurship at
Miami University and did some Angel investing," Miller said.
But the creative bug, or bee, got to him again.
"I've been planning the venture and writing software for the last 10 months. We've had a soft launch and have some clients signed up, but this week we're starting to gear up our marketing efforts and tell the world about it," he said.
B2bee is a self-funded company and has three full-time employees, as well as several outside contract workers.
The Bee is professional, but simplified version of programs like QuickBooks, Miller said.
"(Quickbooks) is based on double-entry accounting. You have charts of accounts, debits and credits that are very intimidating. None of that is part of our system, it's very simple to get on and start generating invoices," he said.
The software is internet-based, and can be downloaded from the
B2Bee website, users pay $14 a month for the service. Users can access the program for free for their first three clients, when a company gets a forth client the $14 a month service fee kicks in. The website also offers a 30-day free trial.
"It's a web application that you can use from anywhere. You can fire it up from your browser and it's very secure. Every year we will continue to make small changes to software, but there are no upgrade fees," Miller said.
Writer: Feoshia Henderson
Source: Scott Miller, founder B2Bee
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