Halebop
26-07-2004, 07:36 PM
Due to an overwhelming public demand... well 2 requests... I've been prompted to muse on a software startup. I shall leave the company un-named because we are not really equipped to deal with customers or scrutiny as yet (although we do have a princely 3 customers piloting our system).
I don't want to give too much away until we are better prepared so I'll have to be a bit vague. We have a product (well, 50% or so of a product) that can analyse almost any data and tell you if you've done a good or bad job. Its visual, distributable, simple, low maintenance. It's designed to be scalable and incremental. It (this is part of the "next" 50% that is still being developed) conforms to basic concepts of Business Excellence/Baldridge which is more familiar to genuinely innovative organisations but in practice usually this means large organisations because formal business excellence systems need substantial resources and specialisation.
At the moment we are tailoring it to some specific and unique people (I dislike the "HR" name) related needs. I can't be more detailed than that or you might guess who our customers are.
Now I'm sure a few of you have started up businesses but here are my day to day challenges and rewards:
Everything costs more than you plan because/and it takes longer than you plan. But such an amazing number of things are given freely and unbidden that I have tears in my eyes just writing about it. There are many good people in this world. I feel very lucky.
You make your luck. I'm also reminded of a quote: "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams"
It's impossible to write a full, accurate, functional specification for a piece of software. The client changes his mind all the time (that's mostly my fault). Your programmers are forced to make lots of assumptions that often need "un-assumptioning". Sometimes however, the angels of all innovation shine out of assumptions. Glory be blind luck and the spending of lots of money.
New Zealand is a fabulous place to do business. There are very few restrictions on anything we do. There is very little red tape. I am very grateful to be a kiwi.
New Zealand is a small place to do business. Our business will need foreign markets to build into something meaningful.
We are not interested in any of the innovation funds up for grabs. We are masters of our own destiny. If I was to ask for help from the government it would be to ensure better research and statistics on local and foreign markets. We could probably get tens or hundreds of thousands in innovation money when what we really want and need is foreign networks and timely access to intelligible market data. We're not ready to go anywhere overseas except maybe Australia but we are children wandering a huge and dangerous wilderness.
We value the opinions of experts and consultants. The decision needs to be yours but other influences can be a bargain, even at hundreds of dollars an hour. This includes Lawyers! They can be great value.
There is an amazing amount of free stuff on the web. I use a free graphics package called The Gimp and I'm our (un)official in-house graphic designer and can make a reasonably proficient job at creating web-graphics and icons. There are free internet browsers (I use firebird which is more secure than IE), free email applications (Thunderbird), free word processor/spreadsheet etc (Open Office), even free antivirus (AVG - though this might not be free forever). Hopefully nobody will produce a free version of what we are doing just yet!
The downside of software businesses:
When you are trying to cut back on work a new venture can be a sometimes troublesome demand on your time. My barks worse than my bite though.
The Software Industry is fickle, usually low margin and most companies fail. I rate our chances of success at maybe 10 or 20%. I guess it's just one of those "I climbed it 'cos it was there things".
Hopefully this says enough without saying anything at all! [:p]
I don't want to give too much away until we are better prepared so I'll have to be a bit vague. We have a product (well, 50% or so of a product) that can analyse almost any data and tell you if you've done a good or bad job. Its visual, distributable, simple, low maintenance. It's designed to be scalable and incremental. It (this is part of the "next" 50% that is still being developed) conforms to basic concepts of Business Excellence/Baldridge which is more familiar to genuinely innovative organisations but in practice usually this means large organisations because formal business excellence systems need substantial resources and specialisation.
At the moment we are tailoring it to some specific and unique people (I dislike the "HR" name) related needs. I can't be more detailed than that or you might guess who our customers are.
Now I'm sure a few of you have started up businesses but here are my day to day challenges and rewards:
Everything costs more than you plan because/and it takes longer than you plan. But such an amazing number of things are given freely and unbidden that I have tears in my eyes just writing about it. There are many good people in this world. I feel very lucky.
You make your luck. I'm also reminded of a quote: "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams"
It's impossible to write a full, accurate, functional specification for a piece of software. The client changes his mind all the time (that's mostly my fault). Your programmers are forced to make lots of assumptions that often need "un-assumptioning". Sometimes however, the angels of all innovation shine out of assumptions. Glory be blind luck and the spending of lots of money.
New Zealand is a fabulous place to do business. There are very few restrictions on anything we do. There is very little red tape. I am very grateful to be a kiwi.
New Zealand is a small place to do business. Our business will need foreign markets to build into something meaningful.
We are not interested in any of the innovation funds up for grabs. We are masters of our own destiny. If I was to ask for help from the government it would be to ensure better research and statistics on local and foreign markets. We could probably get tens or hundreds of thousands in innovation money when what we really want and need is foreign networks and timely access to intelligible market data. We're not ready to go anywhere overseas except maybe Australia but we are children wandering a huge and dangerous wilderness.
We value the opinions of experts and consultants. The decision needs to be yours but other influences can be a bargain, even at hundreds of dollars an hour. This includes Lawyers! They can be great value.
There is an amazing amount of free stuff on the web. I use a free graphics package called The Gimp and I'm our (un)official in-house graphic designer and can make a reasonably proficient job at creating web-graphics and icons. There are free internet browsers (I use firebird which is more secure than IE), free email applications (Thunderbird), free word processor/spreadsheet etc (Open Office), even free antivirus (AVG - though this might not be free forever). Hopefully nobody will produce a free version of what we are doing just yet!
The downside of software businesses:
When you are trying to cut back on work a new venture can be a sometimes troublesome demand on your time. My barks worse than my bite though.
The Software Industry is fickle, usually low margin and most companies fail. I rate our chances of success at maybe 10 or 20%. I guess it's just one of those "I climbed it 'cos it was there things".
Hopefully this says enough without saying anything at all! [:p]