Nick Hebb - FlowBreeze Flowchart Software...

Yes and no. My original plan was to create a quality management application for small manufacturing companies. After putting months into it, I realized that I was overshooting my capabilities. It would take too long to complete single-handedly, so I decided to create a small application to generate revenue in the meantime.

I had three product ideas, and they all were based on my experience in manufacturing. The two that "scratched an itch" were the ones I didn't go with. FlowBreeze was based mainly on experience and a hunch. I actually had working prototypes of the other two. I didn't pursue one because all the keywords I would need to target for advertising and SEO are very expensive.

I didn't pursue the other because I felt the risks were too high. When companies migrate servers or move files around, hyperlinks in Word, Excel and PowerPoint often break. Admins find themselves in an urgent, need-to-have situation, which means the software could be priced at a premium. The goal of the product was to perform mass repairs of the broken hyperlinks across a network. Unfortunately, there are a few quirks in how these are handled by various versions of Office and the various Office applications. The Microsoft Knowledge Base workarounds for these problems don't always work. So there was a risk that the program could screw up thousands of files in a single shot. I know I could have worked these problems out, but I decided that flowcharts were a safer path. There is a demand for this (I still get inquires) and only one other company making such a product, so if any readers need a product idea...

Many of the changes along the way have been based on customer feedback. Ironically, I have found those who didn't buy because it lacked feature X to be the greatest source of feedback. Everytime I've added a small feature I've seem a small increase in sales.

I've added an Insert Branch feature at the request of customers. I've never envisioned FlowBreeze as an org chart tool, but I've had customers request it. Also, I've had customers send me sample flowcharts that are best described as org chart / flowchart hybrids. The top of the diagram is a tree layout of the personnel, and the bottom branches flow into process diagrams. So in a small instance it's been repurposed, but the bottom line is you adapt the product to what your customers want to do - not what you think they want to do.

I keep a list of planned features. I've gotten only a few requests that I hadn't thought of already. But the customer feedback drives the prioritization. If I had gone with the features I thought were the higher priority, it'd be a very different product by now.

I guess that synthesis does come from support requests. I hadn't really thought of it that way, but when you see patterns in related topics, ideas emerge on how to tackle the whole issue. It might be cause for a new feature - or just small usability improvements or changes to the documentation.

Drumming up a buzz for a flowcharting add-in to Excel is difficult. I'll be the first to admit it's a weird concept in an non-buzzworthy arena. The only thing I have deliberately done is to put an article section on my site. These articles generate decent traffic, help boost my search engine rankings, but only a small percentage navigate through to my product page.

I don't use forums as a marketing tool. Although I frequent Joel on Software, I've never looked at programmers as my target market. Some do buy, but many programmers look at flowcharts as a vestige of the procedural programming days of the 80's. I know that my first flowcharts were for a Fortran class. Truthfully, I don't see a big difference between flowcharts and UML activity diagrams. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think of UML as having a stronger foothold among Java programmers, and there seems to be a natural aversion to anything Microsoft related in the Java community. So that really isn't anything I've gone after.

I do use AdWords, but haven't been diligent enough to make it a great sales driver. I've always considered my primary target market to be people needing to create flowcharts for business process documentation. The search volume for flowcharting keywords alone isn't that great, but many of the keywords bridging the connection between flowcharts and documentation are expensive. Very expensive.

I think my greatest success has been offering a low cost site license. There are some who would advise against this, but I've tested different schemes and prices and feel confident that it's the best route for my product. Selling site licenses (and global licenses to multinationals) turn an OK month into a great month.

There's never been a big neon sign that points the way. And too often the bigger ones are recognizable only in retrospect.

For example, I mentally equated the adoption rate of Office 2007 with the adoption rate of Vista, which only 4-5% of my visitors were running during 2007. By extension I didn't feel a pressing need to add ribbon support for my Excel add-in. Bad move. When I added a customized ribbon tab to FlowBreeze, sales went up roughly 25%. (If you hear a distant thump-thump-thump noise as you read this, it's the sound of me kicking my own ass.)

I think marketing is the biggest challenge for most independent software vendors. It's a big subject that can't be addressed in a short interview - plus I'm not an expert. I will say that the most successful ventures I know through personal relationships do not follow the path chosen by most of the regulars at the Business of Software forum.

They don't market via the trialware model, they don't fuss over AdWords, they don't blog, and they don't submit to download sites. Instead, they get on the phone and call potential customers, they fly out and make presentations, they pitch through channel partners. In short, they target a more expensive market.

But most developers won't take that path. There are a lot of introverts and others who don't feel comfortable in the role as salesman. There is also the lifestyle choice. If you start a venture where sales and customer service are a bigger part of your work day, there's the fear that your business will become a stress pot that's not much different than the day job you walked away from.

I'm in the zone when I think to myself, "Why would I possibly want to be doing anything else than what I am doing right now?" It's just fun. Plus, no matter how well I know my code, there's still a certain amount that I need to wrap my head around in order to be productive. If I'm in the middle of something and stop for the night, I know that it can take an hour or so to get back to that level of productively. So I just don't want to stop.

They vary by person, but common issues are over-analysis, targeting saturated markets, developing another product before learning to market your first, choosing a technology then trying to find a product idea to match it, and many others. If you're determined, then try, fail, then try again.

I currently use SourceGear Vault. I'll be moving to hosted source control sometime in the future. Most of the offerings I've seen use SVN, so that is probably the route I'll go. Currently, I'm too dependent on my main development system. I would like to restructure my tools in a way that allows me to be more mobile.

I'm probably not the best source for best practices. One thing I find myself doing more is pseudocoding on paper. When I'm in front of a PC, I'm more action oriented. When it's just pencil and paper, I'm more thought oriented. I also don't compile until I have walked through the code. I'm not going to pretend that I've never relied on the compiler to detect problems. But it's a bad habit that I've tried to break.

My favorite phrase is "Hope Is Not a Method". It's the title of a birth control film that we had to watch back in high school. It still makes me laugh to think that the title of a sex ed. movie has become my business philosophy, but it really is fitting to many aspects of running a company.