Startup-Something

Something Useful

For those who may not have noticed, and since I haven't announced anywhere, I recently updated my One Eye open software, which allows you to search multiple-craigslist communities in a simple, friendly way. This morning, I was thinking about it (while adding some font-size controls and whatnot), and realized that OEO would make a great job-hunt tool. Even better, since you get two searches free (over 5 communities), you could at least look for a job in your area using the trial version.

So.. I thought, why not take a few screenshots and illustrate a job search.

Lets take a look at our fictitious software developer, lets call him - oh, say, Chucky. (Named for a fictitious person used by my high school physics teacher's pop-quizzes.) He's a nice guy who just happens to have lost his job recently due to market forces beyond his control. Now Chucky is out there hitting all the usual job boards, Monster, Dice, Career Builder etc. He is quickly coming to realize that so is everyone else.

Chucky happens to use craigslist every now and then, but realizes he has to do a lot of switching around in order to search for nearby communities. Craiglist is great and all, but it is organized so that you naturally fall into your community. If you live in Chicago, you see Chicago. Well, what if your item is in Topeka? What if you're willing to work in Peoria? Criaglist is great on the local scene, but a HUGE pain when what you are looking for might be somewhere else.

Until, one day, Chucky finds ..

Isn't the internet great?

A friend called me the other day and said "What if I had a few hundred dollars, and wanted to go on vacation - where could I go?"

So I gave it some thought, and realized that I had a pretty good idea how to build something like that. A simple google-like site where you put in your starting city and a $ amount, and it would find you flights, hotels, activities, all kinds of stuff. Silly, yes, profitable - I'll let you know. A man can dream, can't he?

Without the modern "programmable" internet, it would be impossible to build such a thing. Essentially, just about everything you would ever want to know (and some things you wish you didn't) is out there basking under the warm green glow of an ethernet cable.

I made my first localhost TCP connection on a SCO unix shell account, via dialup from an Amiga 500 back in 1993 or 1994 (amaranth.com, I believe) using Berkley sockets in good ol' C, and a health dose of man() and apropos() commands. I used Lynx to browse the web. Netscape ( 1995? ) was mind blowing. Every new thing, every little discovery just astounds me. Its like being in a continual state of awe.

The Internet, at its fundamental level, is really cool. And can be pretty frightening as well. This isn't a news flash, just wanted to let you all know I share the sentiment.

Oh, and go checkout Skeedaddle, and we'll talk about profits later

Phillip Flores - misvCRM

with Phillip Flores creator of misvCRM and VeriTime Time Tracker
Phillip was really the first time I even heard about the 30-day challenge, which was basically to hit the ground running on June 1st, and have a complete sale-able application up and running by June 30th. I've know Phillip for some time, and asked him if he would share some of his experiences with me.
From his site:

The Swiss Army Knife CRM for mISVs* The all-in-one application to manage your clients, licence keys, products, sales, product issues (bugs), and client communications. It even records your expenses!

Phillip, could you give me a quick rundown on how you got involved in the 30 day challenge?

What started me on the 30-day thing was a posting in the BOS forum about writing an application in 30-days. The responses were quite encouraging i.e. people were interested in keeping track of what will be happening. A couple of weeks before this posting I've told myself that from June 1, 2008 I'd start writing my misvCRM application and try to have something in 30-days. It started as a personal challenge. I challenged myself because I've had been procrastinating in starting the development of this application. In short, the 30-day challenge came at the same time of my own challenge. Even if the 30-day challenge did not occur, I would have done my 'own' 30-day challenge.

Phone Home!

My thoughts on phoning home in software.
Disclaimer: My software, when appropriate, phones home.
My life, and the life of my customers were both significantly improved by adding a tiny feature to my software licensing scheme. My software phones home. BUT, a big hairy but, ONLY WHEN THE USER REQUESTS it.
PROBLEM I have discovered that a percentage of users have difficulty copying a license file to a given directory. I have discovered that a percentage of users have trouble copying and pasting from an email.
SOLUTION? A link, IN THE PROGRAM, that the user can click that allows them to enter their email or other inforemation, which then goes out to my system and grabs the license file. I only keep the license on the site for a given amount of time to prevent duplication.
Simple. Maybe not perfect, but it has definitely met my needs.

Nick Hebb - FlowBreeze Flowchart Software

with Nick Hebb creator of FlowBreeze Flowchart Software
Nicholas Hebb has over 15 years experience in manufacturing engineering, test engineering management, and software development. He has worked in the life safety, telecommunications, light industrial, heavy industrial, and medical device manufacturing sectors.

Nick, you have a manufacturing background that seems to have been the source of your BreezeTree software, was it an itch you were specifically trying to scratch?

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 s ..

The lessons we learn

NIN-"The Slip" rolls out of my speakers, while a take a break from the last legs of my current project. You know, all the little things you do at the end of a project - tying up loose ends. Ahh, the light - I can see it.

The biggest lesson I've learned about trying to interview mISV owners? mISV owners are busy people. Yep, they keep chugging along, and may or may not get back to you. It doesn't bother me, its just definitely something within the confines of my project: Learn what makes a great mISV.

Granted, I should have a larger body of leads in the works, if I were to take this very seriously. Maybe 20 or 30 potential interviews in the mix, but like I said, I'm kinda busy myself right now. Head is down, fingers are coding. After a week or two I'll have the ability to pester some more business people into giving me some info.

So I started thinking about all the little tricks and tips I see in JOS, and other blogs, and wondering why there isn't a digg-like service for distilling wisdom. Maybe more like twitter, you find an rss feed, or forum post or wikipedia article - and you post a SINGLE sentence (or two) that distills the fundamental idea going on. Maybe a max % of the source text. Then people could vote on the best summation of text. Whatever, a passing thought.

Although, yes (I was chastised on the Business of Software forum for posting my thought), every business is different - I do see some very obvious ideas for selling software online that are very much becoming standardized and important. I started thinking about SEOMoz's list of suggested SEO ideas, with the "consensus" levels, etc - and thought - why can't we do that with selling software online?

So, I updated my

with Patrick McKenzie creator of Bingo Card Creator
Patrick created, markets, and sells Bingo Card Creator in his spare time. Active in the ESL community and a full time job with a Japanese technology incubator.

From his site:

"My goal in offering Bingo Card Creator to the world is to in my own small way improve students' education by making fun and educational activities possible. In addition, I hope to save teachers from having to spend excessive amounts of preparation time doing a menial task when you could be directly engaged with your students."

It seems like you tool would work well in primary education. You created your software to fit a specific niche market (ESL teahcers/students), did you plan on creating general classroom oriented cards? or was this something your customers asked for?

I never planned on it being exclusively for ESL teachers/students -- the general market for teaching vocabulary is much larger, and it was my plan from the first to target them and all other sorts of educational activities. The number I actually offer with the product has expanded significantly, though. (Version 1.02, which was released in about 8/2006, came with 15 lists. The product now has over 250.)

What percentage would you say your modifications come from your own thoughts vs. customer requests? Is there any significant synthesis that comes from several requests leading you to some new ..

Update - 4 interviews on the way
Just so you don't think this blog died as soon as it started, I have four interviews lined up. NOW I have to pester more people! I'm going to try and space them out so that I have a continuous stream of interviews, so I'm thinking one a week for the moment.

Startup Something
I own a small company in Central Illinois. We specialize in automating business processes - especially in publishing over the last few years, but we've also done everything from insurance subrogation tracking (yeah, and only about 50% of the people I meet actually know what that is) to high volume transactional processing. (Real simple transactions, REALLY fast). And then something changed

A few years ago I created a term vectorspace engine called VSDB as a thought experiment in how search engines work. But instead of focusing on documents, I focused on "dimensionality", and thought how nice it might be to look at objects instead of just documents. This way, you could use it to search a database, using it for dating, use it to find problem/solution pairs in a knowledgebase, or any number of generic matching you need. In the process I also discovered that the data can clump, and the engine could brute-force find Common groupings in data, like finding common groupings of blogs.

I immediately started building little tools to help me do things with VSDB, from searching for recipes based on what I have on hand, to blogging and notetaking in a cloud, to searching my emails (Back to 2000, I'd still like to find the ones going back to 1995.)

So, my background is consulting and problem solving, and this whole "packaged product" thing is completely new to me. So I found Group of enterprising individuals, and started pulling at threads to see how the heck these people make a living selling software.

Now, I realize - I missed a few steps along the way, and need to really examine how to create my "startup" - selling my vectorspace engine and building a pro ..