A milestone
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Thanks for the advice John. So far the VC people have left us alone, but advertisers and resellers are beginning to become more persistant (which is a good sign I guess). We're not particularly interested in the "build the business fast and sell it on even faster" approach either....the way we see it, we are in this business to serve our customers, not to make a fast buck and bail out. To do that would be to turn our backs on everything we are, really. If we can keep growing to the point where we're still able to provide well respected solutions in the market in 10 years time, I'll be very happy indeed. :)
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Just don't forget the golden rule: you're in business to make money first happy customers second and software third. :) You're not doing your customers any favors if you go belly up because you didn't cover yourself first.
When everyone is a hero no one is a hero.
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Hi Vivek, You may want to try nosing around the Business of Software Forum[^], as there are a lot of experienced ISV people there, too. FWIW we're self funded as well, albeit not as far down the line as John's company (we incorporated in July 2004, and made our first sale in December 2005). Good luck with your venture. :rose:
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Thanks Anna, I visit Joel on Software on the odd occassion. Its cool.
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We've always had a smallish overdraft for unexpected circumstances and to get us through the odd slow month here and there. We never took out an actual loan or any direct business financing. We worked doing networking support for a variety of businesses and I got tired of it and started doing contract programming for different businesses in the town we were in at the time. It was very stressful dealing with so many different people all the time all who had wildly different sets of expectations and wanted everything on extremely short notice. Mostly I got tired of starting from scratch over and over on new projects. I was getting paid to write software from nothing over and over again but I never really had total control over it and the stuff people would ask for or the way they wanted it done often didn't make a lot of sense but they insisted. I did learn a *lot* though about usability in dealing directly with the end users onsite often having to redo elements of an interface at the job site while the people (often the office ladies) all stood around and threw their 2 cents in. I had made some software years before that we used for our own network and computer support business to track service because there was nothing remotely affordable at the time and it occurred to me one day that rather than doing all the contract programming I had a good product already that just needed some tweaks to get it into a saleable version we could sell over the internet. The idea of writing software how *I* wanted it to be and writing it once but selling it over and over again just made all kinds of sense. So I dropped as much of the contract programming as I could while everyone else continued doing the network support, we had some pretty big clients in the oil and gas industry as well as the local hospital, some law firms etc which freed me up to work at it almost full time. There's no way I could have worked on the software product and did anything else at the same time. It was just way too much time required. I'd program for 14 hours straight as it was while also doing tech support by email, writing the manual and marketing and website and everything pretty much other than the bookkeeping. We decided early on that we would spend no more money on the software business than it could raise on it's own after the initial investment of my time and a small amount of money for the website and the initial marketing. Initially I released with very few features but at a very rock bottom price. As time wen
Thanks John, There is a lot to be learnt from your reply. We are especially guilty of geeking out instead of doing the mundane yet profitable work. It is just great to know that it is possible for a coding geek to also acquire business skills.
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Just don't forget the golden rule: you're in business to make money first happy customers second and software third. :) You're not doing your customers any favors if you go belly up because you didn't cover yourself first.
When everyone is a hero no one is a hero.
I do the books so I doubt I'll ever let our Board forget that! ;)
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Thanks Anna, I visit Joel on Software on the odd occassion. Its cool.
It certainly is. There are some very interesting and helpful people there too (some of whom we've met at the ESWC). :)
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"